Last week, I moved from Frankfurt to Berlin and started my new postdoc position at Freie Uni with @talking-bat.bsky.social and @ycabral.bsky.social 🥳
I am super excited to set up our new lab for more work on bats and their brain+behavior! 🦇🧠🧠

New paper out!
We found that in pipistrelle bats, social vocalizations carry a stronger phylogenetic signal than echolocation calls, suggesting the former evolve more slowly, while the latter remains flexible and shaped by the environment.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Team effort by Ava Kiai, @talking-bat.bsky.social , Francisco García-Rosales and me :)

Are you interested in bat vocalizations and the neural circuits that give rise to their emission?🦇🎶🧠
We reviewed the recent literature on neural activity underlying echolocation and communication calls across multiple bat species in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences:
doi.org/10.1111/nyas...

From student to researcher, a #career in #science can come with a high price tag. @drcraigmc.bsky.social explores how wealth shapes opportunity in #STEM and proposes structural changes to support #equity and inclusion. 🧪
plos.io/4edGlY4

Ever wondered how baby bats learn to sing? 🦇🎶
Turns out, their moms support their practice! Our study shows that maternal feedback leads to:
More vocal practice
Higher song syllable versatility
More mature song syllables
🔗https://elifesciences.org/articles/99474
elifesciences.org/digests/9947...

#Hippocampus & PFC interact to support spatial #WorkingMemory, but are dHPC & vHPC functionally redundant in this? @susannebabl.bsky.social @torfisigurdsson.bsky.social show that both regions contribute differentially to spatial WM & coding of spatial info by PFC @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4cXyddO

Our results indicate distinct contributions of the two hippocampal poles in spatial working memory and in communicating relevant spatial information to the prefrontal cortex.

Interestingly, prefrontal representations of the animal’s goal location during encoding was disrupted only when the ventral HPC was inactivated. Inactivation of the dorsal HPC had no effect on these spatial goal codes.

Then, we looked at prefrontal activity when either dorsal or ventral HPC were inactivated. We found that while neurons in the prefrontal cortex still represented the animal’s position in the maze, spatial codes were altered compared to trials with a functioning HPC.

However, the ventral HPC is only necessary in the encoding phase. Neither ventral nor dorsal HPC were needed to maintain the location in memory for a few seconds.

First, we found that the dorsal and the ventral HPC play distinct roles in supporting spatial working memory: the dorsal HPC is necessary during two critical phases of the task, namely during encoding a spatial location and while retrieving this information.

The last part of my PhD with @torfisigurdsson.bsky.social is now published in @plosbiology.org

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

We looked at the interaction of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex during spatial working memory when mice were navigating a T-maze, using ephys and optogenetics 🧠🐭

In his new book, published today, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...