Neuroscience
Neuroscience
Internal states, circuits, and the behaviour they produce.
Ethomics — What Is a Hungry Fly?
High-dimensional behavioural state benchmarking in Drosophila. The Espresso platform captures 17 behavioural metrics simultaneously across hundreds of flies. Used here to ask: does a serotonergic circuit manipulation produce genuine hunger, or just a superficially similar signature?
→ bioRxiv Read more Ethomics GitHub ↗ ESPLoCo GitHub ↗Intertemporal Choice
Dorsal raphe serotonergic neurons bidirectionally control delay discounting in mice. Activation increases patience; silencing increases impulsivity. Effect is trade-off specific — not a motor or motivational confound.
→ Read more Paper ↗Noradrenergic Attention
Two distinct noradrenergic pathways implement different attentional control mechanisms in rodents. Selective lesions reveal a functional dissociation not apparent from anatomy alone.
→ PublicationEpitranscriptomics
Direct RNA nanopore sequencing pipeline for m6A and pseudouridine mapping in Drosophila serotonergic neurons. Does hunger change the RNA modification landscape?
Basolateral Amygdala Valence Circuits
Antagonistic negative and positive neurons of the basolateral amygdala encode opposing valence signals. Selective activation and silencing reveal a functional opponent architecture for fear and reward.
→ PublicationOctopamine, Dopamine, and the Hungry Fly Circuit
A mushroom-body output neuron (MBON11) integrates octopaminergic and dopaminergic signals to control hunger-motivated feeding in Drosophila. Octopaminergic VPM3/4 neurons are instructive but not required for hunger-driven feeding; dopaminergic PPL101 neurons are required but not instructive. MBON11 sits at the convergence point.
→ bioRxivKalium Channelrhodopsins (KCR)
Comparative evaluation of light-gated potassium-conducting channelrhodopsins as neuronal inhibitors in Drosophila, C. elegans, and zebrafish. KCR1-ET matches ACR1 potency while avoiding the depolarising artefact that chloride conductance produces in high-chloride cells — including axons.
→ Nature CommunicationsLSSmScarlet3 for Two-Photon Imaging
A long-Stokes-shift mScarlet variant that can be co-imaged with GCaMP using a single 920-nm laser in Drosophila. Simplifies two-photon setups by eliminating the need for a second excitation wavelength when using a red structural marker alongside a green calcium indicator.
→ bioRxiv