Ahrentlov, N., Kubrak, O., Lassen, M., ...., Nagy, S., Imig, C., Richter, E. A., Texada, M. J., Rewitz, K. (2025). Protein-responsive gut hormone tachykinin directs food choice and impacts lifespan. Nat Metab, 7(6):1223-1245 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

We're advertising a PhD project on how social isolation influences aggression in flies. Based at Durham, co-supervised by @clarahowcroft.bsky.social . Despite what the ad says, this is also open to international applicants! Any questions, shoot me a msg! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill? Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes. Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

We have a fully-funded PhD project on mosquito behaviour and AI, based at @durham.ac.uk and supervised by Amir Atapour Abarghouei (Durham Computer Science), @viveknityananda.bsky.social and myself. Check the project description here tinyurl.com/2hven83a and apply here: www.needl.org.uk/apply/.

The second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉

Elegant, beautiful work from Anissa Kempf’s lab. Congrats!

How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Step into a Europe-wide community of neuroscience leaders. Junior & mid-career group leaders: apply by 30 Jan to become a FENS-Kavli Network Scholar and connect, collaborate, and contribute to shaping neuroscience in Europe. rb.gy/havqur

Vaxenburg, R., Siwanowicz, I., Merel, J., ...., Reiser, M. B., Botvinick, M. M., Branson, K. M., Tassa, Y., Turaga, S. C. (2025). Whole-body physics simulation of fruit fly locomotion. Nature, www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Registration will open soon for the next JEDI meeting: June 1st - 3rd in Palmela, Portugal! Join us and our keynote speaker Eugenia Chiappe. Her #neuroscience lab studies how #Drosophila estimates its own movement and integrates sensory inputs to control locomotion. chiappelab.org

Raffaele Sarnataro of ox.ac.uk presents this #SymposiumReview examining the #neurobiology of mitochondrial dynamics in #sleep 🧠 💤 🔗 Read the article here: physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...

Join us at #DrosoSpain2026 for some great #Drosophila science! @flybase.bsky.social @fly-jedi.bsky.social @bdsc.bsky.social @dgrc.bsky.social

Our follow up paper on Sex: Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

📣First preprint of the lab📣 Did that really happen?😅 Enteric neurons, aka somatic postmitotic cells, must hold on to their sex identity tight, to deliver a tuned response to signals from the ovary that instruct the animal to engage sex-matched behavioural programmes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!

Interested in the neurobiological basis of social behaviour and its dysfunction? Join the Ferreira and @wolfhuette.bsky.social groups at Northumbria University for a fully funded PhD opportunity studying group behaviour in flies. Further details are available here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Starting 2026 with a thread a very recent manuscripts at Ryan Lab @tcddublin.bsky.social @tbsi-tcd.bsky.social "Extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear responses to a visual looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms" journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @PLOSBiology

Very happy for this @ejneuroscience.bsky.social editorial on the importance of diverse research animals in neuroscience. We make the case that embracing a plurality of model organisms enriches the field and accelerates both basic and translational research. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... We had a lot of fun working on this project (led by Itzel Ishida, not on bluesky). Some interesting highlights from the paper -

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

Happy to share our Current Opinion on the 'Neural basis of sexually dimorphic decision-making', written with Megan Day. Many thanks to @jefferis.bsky.social for the invite to be part of this special issue on Sexual Dimorphism in the Brain. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Applications are now open for the University of Birmingham’s 125th Anniversary Fellows & Chairs, celebrating 125 years of research excellence with 125 outstanding researchers. Deadline: 11 Jan 2026 @unibirmingham.bsky.social

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️

📣We have 2 open faculty positions for senior researchers in Neuroscience at Queen's University! healthsci.queensu.ca/administrati... 1. a new Director for our Centre for Neuroscience Studies 2. a non-human primate NeuroAI researcher Please share widely and reach out for questions!

🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding. How is this massive network organized? Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/

I am proud to present my latest research at the ISSCR 2026 Annual Meeting, taking place in Montréal, Canada on 8-11 July 2026. Register to hear my presentation! #ISSCR2026 invt.io/1bxbzdbzjfq @isscr.org

Why do humans dance, if our ancestors and primates in general are not vocal learners? It is widely thought that only vocal-learning species are able of moving to a beat... Right? In this new paper authors show that macaques can synchronize to a beat spontaneously www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... 🙊🙉🙈💃

lab preprint! Interopceptive predictions are central to many brain-body interactions theories, but it's unclear if/how they affect bodily physiology. We (fearless Einav Litvak et al) show that insular cortex predictions are essential for glucose homeostasis-THREAD.. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Lee, S. J., Dallmann, C. J., Cook, A., Tuthill, J. C., Agrawal, S. (2025). Divergent neural circuits for proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing of the Drosophila leg. Nat Commun, 16(1):4105 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Erginkaya, M., Cruz, T., Brotas, M., Marques, A., Steck, K., Nern, A., Torrao, F., Varela, N., Bock, D. D., Reiser, M., Chiappe, M. E. (2025). A competitive disinhibitory network for robust optic flow processing in Drosophila. Nat Neurosci, 28(6):1241-1255 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am super thrilled to announce that I have been awarded an @erc.europa.eu Consolidator Grant to build novel interventions for #OCD. The plan is to exploit recent insights from computational neuroscience and closely work together with people with lived experience of OCD to create novel treatments.

How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm? Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg. w @bingbrunton.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beyond excited to be awarded an ERC consolidator! Exciting times ahead for the lab. Very thankful to lab members for their work every day that made this possible!! Time to celebrate!

I am grateful and excited to receive the Humboldt-Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Award) from the @humboldt-foundation.de I look forward to inspiring interactions with this amazing scientific community. Thank you to Prof Robin Hiesinger for the nomination and the award committee for selecting me.

I’m proud to have helped launch the #PITraining survey of FKNE @fkne-scholars.bsky.social We ask PIs to share what really matters for effective research leadership. Your feedback = better support, better science. Take part or share: fenskavlinetwork.org/fkne-pi-surv... Deadline: 29 Dec 2025

A 4-year fully funded international PhD project in the lab in collaboration with Johan Vande Voorde. Apply if you are interested in working on an exciting project on CRC and interorgan communication in flies and mice. www.crukscotlandinstitute.ac.uk/cruk-si-educ...

New review out! 🔥🧊 We break down how rodents, primates & insects encode temperature in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... View-only: rdcu.be/eThU1

Join the 4th Asia Pacific #Drosophila Neurobiology Conference in China: lhs.suat-sz.edu.cn/info/1031/13... @fly-eds.bsky.social @flybase.bsky.social @the-node.bsky.social

Apply for a PhD in Paris!! A project to come and work with me and my team at the GutSense lab included in the list! 🪰🧠⛽

Want to carry a PhD in London, in one of the best Universities in the world? We have two calls for PhD students to join our lab at Imperial College. Deadline January 12th. More details for applications in the link below. Feel free to keep in touch!

Mind-bogglingly detailed recordings from virtually every neuron in the higher olfactory centres of the Drosophila brain reveal how innate odour values (= nice/nasty) are encoded by different processes (also, attractive pheromones share the nice process). www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer, says Giorgio F. Gilestro go.nature.com/3McjUsw

Cool preprint from the lab of Raouf Issa at ESPCI in Paris with a small contribution from our lab at @ijmonod.bsky.social Padmanabhan et al found that a specific set of Drosophila dopamine neurons, which is already active in embryos and stays functionally important for locomotion throughout life.

Looking for an interdisciplinary funded #PhD in #bees and #physics, #behaviour, #physiology, #neuroethology, modelling? Call open now. International students eligible. www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin... Centre for Research in Aimal Behaviour @crab-exeter.bsky.social Exeter campus.

Our paper on the counterintuitive effects of activating dopamine "reward" neurons is out now! Props to all the trainees, especially Fio Lozada-Perdomo and Yuzhen Chen who did most of the work. Yuzhen is applying for PhD programs now and you'd be lucky to get her! www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Paper for the #Drosophila community on a food recipe that rears dozens of species. This was a full team effort, with key contributions from UG, MSc, and PhD students! 👩‍🎓🎉 Plus an #infection observation re: Diet x #Microbiota 🦠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #EvolBiol #AcademicSky #SymbioSky 1/4

Happy to see that our recent work led by @nataliafavila.bsky.social and @jcmneuro.bsky.social on amygdala interneuron function for learning and memory was selected as an Editor’s Highlight by @natcomms.nature.com Check our work an many other great articles out here: www.nature.com/collections/...

Excited to share the latest work from the lab: rdcu.be/eRWuD Great team effort, led by @enriberti.bsky.social first at @unil.bsky.social and now @unifr.bsky.social; with fantastic collaborators @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social and @dahaniel.muench.bio.

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...