Andrew Lin

Congratulations to Greg, Melissa, Katie, Philippe and Tom on the great work!

In the fly mushroom body, excitatory Kenyon cells receive feedback inhibition from the APL neuron. When Kenyon cells are over-activated, APL compensates by reducing its activity. But this decreases inhibition onto Kenyon cells, conflicting with the Kenyon cells' attempts to reduce their activity.

Conflicting adaptations in an inhibitory feedback circuit Abstract figure legend We studied activity-dependent adaptation in the fruit fly Drosophila’s memory centre, the mushroom body. Here, excitatory Kenyon cells (KCs) receive feedback inhibition from th...

Check out our latest paper - In neural networks with inhibitory feedback, local homeostatic adaptation can conflict with adaptation at the network level doi.org/10.1113/JP29...

Oxygen-free metabolism in the bird inner retina supported by the pecten - Nature While the photoreceptor outer segments in the bird outer retina have access to oxygen, the inner retina operates under chronic anoxia, supported by anaerobic glycolysis in the retinal neurons.

Birds have a thick retina devoid of blood vessels - so how do they ensure sufficient oxygen availability?
They don't - neurons rely on glycolysis, metabolizing glucose released from the pecten.

Insane new study that includes comparative data on lizards and crocs.🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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

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

✨ Deadline extended! You now have until 22 January 2026 to nominate inspiring Europe-based students or PIs for the ALBA-FKNE Diversity Prize. Honouring work advancing #diversity #equity & #inclusion in #neuroscience. Self-nominations are welcome.

🏆 €2000 + travel to #FENS2026
👉🏾 loom.ly/elEwkCE

Call for junior or mid-career group leaders in neuroscience! Apply by 30 Jan to join the FENS-Kavli Network. We are looking for excellent and engaged future scholars who are committed to exchanging scientific ideas & improve neuroscience in Europe. fenskavlinetwork.org/who-we-are/a...

🌟It’s that time of the year! Nominate Europe-based students or PIs advancing #diversity #equity & #inclusion in #neuroscience. The winner will be celebrated at #FENS2026 in Barcelona, receiving €2000 + travel support to attend the meeting. Self nominations are welcome!
👉🏾 loom.ly/elEwkCE
📅 8 Jan 2026

BBSRC Yorkshire Bioscience DLA Programme: Neuronal compensation for natural circuit perturbations at University of Sheffield on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - BBSRC Yorkshire Bioscience DLA Programme: Neuronal compensation for natural circuit perturbations at University of Sheffield, listed on FindAPhD.com

Fully funded 4-year PhD position available in my lab! Study neuronal compensation for natural circuit perturbations in the fly brain - learn calcium imaging, electrophysiology, genetics and computational modelling. Apply by 7 Jan 2026. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)!

This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

Visceral signaling of post-ingestive malaise directs memory updating in Drosophila Consolidation is a time when labile memories transition to a stable form. Malaise learning in Drosophila reveals consolidation to also permit memory updating. Flies taught to associate one of two odor...

@senapati.bsky.social latest and greatest! Charly Treiber on board too. Over and out.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

A multisensory, bidirectional, valence encoder guides behavioral decisions A key function of the brain is to categorize sensory cues as repulsive or attractive and respond accordingly. While we have some understanding of how sensory information is processed in the sensory pe...

How is valence computed in the brain? Check out our new preprint about a single cell that integrates excitatory and inhibitory input across modalities according to valence and impacts behavioral decisions. An exciting collaboration across many labs. Enjoy reading!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

NIBAI 2025 Workshop on the Nature of Intelligence was held in Sheffield, bringing together over 70 participants from diverse backgrounds in neuroscience, animal cognition, philosophy, and AI.

Thanks to @asab.org the @sheffielduni.bsky.social, and @devjoni.bsky.social for sponsoring this event.

Congratulations Oliver!

First episode is out! I spoke with Professor James Marshall @sheffielduni.bsky.social @opteran.bsky.social about his research on modelling the #brain of #bees and implications for #ai . Take a listen! #neuroscience #sciencecommunication

An optical brain-machine interface reveals a causal role of posterior parietal cortex in goal-directed navigation Relating neural circuitry to behavior is challenging due to closed loop interactions between neural activity, actions, and sensations. Sorrell et al. present evidence for a causal role of mouse PPC in...

We all know that correlation doesn't imply causation. So we took some correlations and tested if they were causal. Here's what happened:

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This was the work of Katie Greenin-Whitehead and Melissa Tan in my lab, with @eyalrozenfeld.bsky.social and @mosheparnas.bsky.social who did the electrophysiology, and Anthony Moreno-Sanchez, Kurtulus Kullu & Jessica Ausborn who did the compartmental model. Thanks for the super collaboration!

Ectopic sodium channel expression decreases excitability of Drosophila Kenyon cells Abstract figure legend: We tested the effects of expressing the bacterial voltage-gated sodium channel NaChBac in the Kenyon cells of the Drosophila memory centre, the mushroom body. NaChBac expressi...

Excited to share our latest work - expressing the bacterial sodium channel in fly Kenyon cells surprisingly *decreases* their excitability, thanks partly to decreased endogenous sodium channels. This prevents learning and decreases odor-evoked calcium influx doi.org/10.1113/JP28...

Stereo olfaction underlies stable coding of head direction in blind mice - Nature Communications Stereo olfaction involves comparing odor differences between the two nostrils. Here, using neuronal recordings and a behavioral test, the authors demonstrate that blind mice use stereo olfaction to fo...

🚨new paper alert
Blind mice use stereo olfaction, comparing smells between nostrils, to maintain a stable sense of direction. Blocking this ability disrupts their internal compass.

Kudos to @kasumbisa.bsky.social! Another cool chapter of the Trenholm-Peyrache collab😉

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations Silke!

2024 marked the 10-year anniversary of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence. We warmly invite you to explore the 10-Year Report, showcasing its impact on science, mentoring, outreach, advocacy, and personal achievements. @fens.org @kavlifoundation.bsky.social fenskavlinetwork.org/fkne-10-year...

Distinct input-specific mechanisms enable presynaptic homeostatic plasticity Input-specific mechanisms that achieve the homeostatic control of synaptic function are resolved using a botulinum neurotoxin.

Excited to have this study out today (on my birthday and 'tines day no less!). Here we resolve input-specific mechanisms of homeostatic plasticity! Congrats Jerry, Kaikai, and team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dear All, I believe that this thread will become one of my most important contributions to the fly field (I hope I will make other contributions)! Here, I introduce the Soy Milk Machine Fly Food Method, a.k.a., DeepCook!#Drosophila#NewPI

Odour representations supporting ethology-relevant categorisation and discrimination in the Drosophila mushroom body Neural representations of sensory stimuli serve multiple distinct purposes, from the rapid recognition of familiar environments, to the precise identification of individual salient cues. In the insect...

Excited to share our new preprint: How does the fly mushroom body support odour categorisation and discrimination? 🧠✨ Dive into Ivy Chan's @ivychanchiwai.bsky.social findings on how neural circuits enable complex olfactory processing in flies. Check it out here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An integrated anatomical, functional and evolutionary view of the Drosophila olfactory system The Drosophila melanogaster olfactory system is one of the most intensively studied parts of the nervous system in any animal. Composed of ~60 independent olfactory neuron classes, with several associ...

New pre-print: an one-stop shop for everything you wanted to know about the fly olfactory system: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nonresponsive Neurons Improve Population Coding of Object Location Understanding how heterogeneous neural populations represent sensory input to give rise to behavior remains a central problem in systems neuroscience. Here we investigated how midbrain neurons within ...

This article shows that "non-responsive" neurons can still add to the Fisher Info about object location in the midbrain of weakly electric fish:

www.jneurosci.org/content/45/3...

Brings me back to one of my usual bugbears in #neuroscience, i.e. don't judge a cell's function by its tuning curve!

🧪

Dear Droso peeps, we re-announce the upcoming JEDI meeting that will take place at Château du Feÿ from June 3rd to 5th in 2025.
You'll find a prelim program flies-jedi.github.io/projects/202...
We're hoping to gather about 45 of more or less young droso PI to reboot the community.
-> Register Now!

The unbearable slowness of being: Humans still clock in at just 10 bits/s. Even after peer review :) Share link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kHVa3BtfH.... ArXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234