Matteo Guardamagna

Recurrent cortical networks encode natural sensory statistics via sequence filtering The visual cortex receives a stream of high-dimensional sensory input. The role of dense local, recurrent cortical connections in shaping responses to these inputs has been unclear. Here, we show that...

Recurrent cortical networks encode natural sensory statistics via sequence filtering
www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...
#neuroscience

Finally getting on top of new papers and god there are so many good ones. This from Lykken, Kanter, @edvardmoser.bsky.social & @m-bmoser.bsky.social is brilliant. Neuropixels showing differential phase shifts across grid modules drive place cell remapping. Elegant grid-to-place transformation story.

Dendrites help neuroscientists see the forest for the trees Dendritic arbors provide just the right scale to study how individual neurons reciprocally interact with their broader circuitry—and are our best bet to bridge cellular and systems neuroscience.

Dendritic arbors provide neuroscience with an ideal opportunity to study how individual neurons interact with their broader circuitry and are the field’s best bet to bridge cellular and systems neuroscience, writes @justinkohare.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/dendrites/de...

Mission: record hippocampal place cells in zero gravity
Crew: 3 rats with electrode arrays
Vehicle: Space Shuttle Columbia
Status: data now publicly available on DANDI, 28 years later

The ratstronauts' mission is finally complete. 🐀🚀 h/t NASA

about.dandiarchive.org/blog/2026/02...

Calcium spikes know which way the wind blows!

Lily Nguyen and I wrote a dispatch on this fascinating work led by Itzel Ishida+@sethisachin.bsky.social+Gaby Maimon!

authors.elsevier.com/a/1mfk53QW8S...

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom Nature Ecology & Evolution - Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal...

Our new paper is now out showing how time perception in animals is linked to their ecology. Using data from 237 species we show temporal perception is faster in species that fly and pursuit predators www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐

The social origins of vocal sequences in songbirds and human infants Abstract. From birdsong to human language, acoustic communication by vocal learners involves the concatenation of sounds into sequences. Sequences are more

Wonderful new paper from @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social 's lab! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Neuronal spiking in the mammalian forebrain is dominated by a heterogeneous ground state Neuronal firing patterns have significant spatiotemporal variability with no agreed-upon theoretical framework. Using a combined experimental and mode…

With this one in print, I think I finally earned that PhD... 😅
Presented for the first time at the cosyne when the world ended (March 2020). I'll bring over a summary thread from twitter when it was still twitter...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Humbled by Evolution Understanding the history and diversity of life inspires awe and wonder.

1. I’m quite happy with this popular piece that Lee Dugatkin and I wrote recently. For the next two weeks it’s free to read on the American Scientist website.

🚀 New preprint from the lab! Our first foray into the subiculum uses in vivo whole-cell recordings to show that dendritic plateaus are a prominent, learning-dependent signaling mode of subicular neurons. Feedback is welcome!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

My paper on the head direction neurons in the larval zebrafish is now published on Nature! Read it here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

PhD opportunities The School of Convergence Science at Imperial College London is inviting applications for fully funded PhD studentships on research projects that sup...

PhD opportunity in "The role of neural development in multimodal intelligence" with me, @marcusghosh.bsky.social and @flor-iacaruso.bsky.social. Read details below 👇.

Note there's a very short window for applying (deadline Feb 27).

🤖🧠🧪

www.imperial.ac.uk/school-of-co...

My first first-author paper is on bioRxiv! Here we ask whether the same subset of neurons in ACC always display object correlates during extensive familiarisation to 2 objects. A short 🧵1/10

PIEZO channels are opening the study of mechanosensation in unexpected places The force-activated ion channels underlie the senses of touch and proprioception. Now scientists are using them as a tool to explore molecular mechanisms at work in internal organs…

There is a new wave of neuroscience research detailing how PIEZO channels contribute to the brain’s sense of what the internal organs are doing. It’s a “PIEZO-driven renaissance,” @wormsense.bsky.social says.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/interoceptio...

What drives the sequential emergence of spatial neurons in developing rats? In our ICLR 2026 paper, we show how changes in movement statistics drive spatial tuning. Our model replicates experimental timelines and predicts novel conjunctive tuning maturation.
doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.30.696864

Position-independent emergence of neocortical neuron molecular identity, connectivity and function - Nature Neuroscience Even when neocortical neurons form in abnormal locations, they retain their identity and function, revealing that brain circuit formation can be guided by intrinsic developmental programs rather than ...

I'm very excited to finally see this one out in @natneuro.nature.com ! It has been an incredible journey alongside extremely talented people! Thanks to everyone involved and enjoy the reading! 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PIEZO channels are opening the study of mechanosensation in unexpected places The force-activated ion channels underlie the senses of touch and proprioception. Now scientists are using them as a tool to explore molecular mechanisms at work in internal organs…

After sketching out how PIEZO channels contribute to touch and proprioception, scientists are now using the channels as a tool to study internal organs, including the heart, bladder, uterus and kidney.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/interoceptio...

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction | Quanta Magazine Researchers documented the activity of neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania.

Amid the hype around prattling "AI" models, astonishing research into living minds gets overlooked. Wonderful piece by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social about bats navigating in a natural environment, decoding the sense of direction. www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

We had a lot of fun doing these experiments! Theta sweeps in MEC and internal direction signals in parasubiculum track moving objects during pursuit and reverse during backward movement. Simultaneously recorded HD cells in other areas remain locked to head direction across behaviors:

Neuronal calcium spikes enable vector inversion in the Drosophila brain In the fly central complex, PFNa neurons switch from firing classical sodium spikes when depolarized to firing non-canonical T-type calcium spikes when hyperpolarized. This bidirectional spiking allow...

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 -

Whether the system can be flexibly redirected to prioritize specific locations has been unclear. Using large-scale #Neuropixels recordings in freely behaving rats, we find that both sweeps – and the internal direction signals driving them – are dynamically modulated moment by moment. (4/6)

New great work from our lab. Check out the beautiful videos!
Bravi @azvollan.bsky.social and the team!

Pyramidal neurons proportionately alter cortical interneuron subtypes - Nature Pyramidal neuron-driven mechanisms actively promote the survival and terminal differentiation of their associated interneuron subtypes.

Excited for the publication of our recent work on how pyramidal cells shape the identity of interneurons in the Cortex! Big shout out to @artofbiology and Sherry Jingjing wu! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature

Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward.

Full text here:
rdcu.be/eY5nh

Ultrafast Frame-Free Imaging of Neural Activity with Event Cameras Frame-based fluorescence imaging has long defined how neural activity is optically measured. This approach requires acquiring all pixels within an image, regardless of whether they carry meaningful ne...

For decades, imaging has forced the same trade-off:
Set a frame rate → sacrifice resolution or field of view to go fast.

We break that rule

Using an EVENT-BASED CAMERA, we record neural activity without frames. Signals are captured only where and when they occur:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is going to be an amazing conference in Athens in June 2026

The Neural Basis of Natural Behaviours

I'll be there talking about recording brains while riding the waves between atolls on trimaran in the pacific:

conferences.weizmann.ac.il/NBNB2026/spe...

Ontogeny of the spinal cord dorsal horn The dorsal horn of the mammalian spinal cord is organized into laminae where each layer is populated by different neuron types, has distinctive circuit connections, and plays specialized roles in beha...

Excited to share @rbrianroome.bsky.social ‘s beautiful paper on development of the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord @science.org

This is how the anatomical organization and cell types that process pain, touch, body position and more are laid down.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons Nature - Using two-photon microscopy with a panoramic virtual reality setup, how head direction cells in larval zebrafish integrate visual landmarks and optic flow to track orientation is revealed.

1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here:
rdcu.be/eX1L4

Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals Nature Neuroscience - Bergel et al. show that an infraslow rhythm connecting the brain and body during sleep is shared by lizards, mammals and birds, revealing an ancestral process and reshaping...

⚠️ New paper alert and what a way to end 2025! 🎉
Happy to share our story “Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals.” published today in Nature Neuroscience.

Sleeping dragons 🦎 and functional ultrasound!
Read the full paper here: rdcu.be/eWJHb 1/8