Johannes Felsenberg

At the FMI Basel, we study how experiences that contradict learned expectations modify memory. Our work combines behavioral assays, genetic tools, and in vivo imaging in Drosophila to uncover how new information reshapes memory representations in the brain. Contact us to learn more.

We're hiring! Join the Lüthi lab as a research technician and help uncover how specific neuronal populations in the amygdala shape emotional evaluation and behavior. Work with cutting-edge electrophysiology, imaging and behavioral techniques. Find out more and apply at www.fmi.ch/education-ca...

In our latest Spotlight on FMIers, Chiara Ceriotti, the new Head of Student and Postdoc Affairs at the FMI, talks about mentoring, professional development, community, and supporting early-career researchers. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

#CellBio community, this one is for you! Applications are open for the #LakeConference on Modeling Life from Cells to Tissues! 📆 Mar. 21-25, 2027 📍 Lake Thun, Switzerland 🔬 All career stages welcomed Apply to attend by 12/10: https://bit.ly/4ANhchR

Congrats to @anupamahl.bsky.social & Selma Dahmane on their @snsf.ch grants, totalling nearly CHF 2 million! Hemalatha's team will explore how metabolism shapes the fate of cancer-causing mutations in skin. Dahmane's group will investigate how immune cells detect Zika virus and trigger inflammation.

Excited to share the first preprint from the Ferreira lab, led by PhD students Mirjam Heinemans and Rui Goncalves! 🪰🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We knew fruit flies freeze when threatened alone and that they freeze less in a group. Surprisingly, we found this social buffering differs by sex!

1/ Why does predicting in latent space (JEPA, CPC, SimCLR...) work so well on messy data, with changing lighting, camera angles, and busy backgrounds? The usual answer: it can ignore nuisance. But that answer holds a conundrum.

Single-neuron computations depend on the subcellular distribution and voltage sensitivity of ion channels. | @pnas.org #HorizonEU @erc.europa.eu (1/5) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nuclear speckles are “hot”, but how do they actually sequester mRNPs? We find that stalled mRNPs are retained in nuclear speckles by a combinatorial RNA-binding protein network. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new study by Silvia Arber’s team at FMI & @biozentrum.unibas.ch @unibas.ch, with collaborators at @alleninstitute.org, delivers the most detailed map yet of the mouse motor cortex—offering new insight into the brain circuits that link intention, sensation and movement. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

Many thanks to @lochlanw.bsky.social and @prelights.bsky.social for highlighting our preprint!

I am excited to announce that I will start the Brain Origins Lab at the Crick in March 2027! Using acoels as a model system, the lab will study how animal brains evolve, and how innovations in brain organisation enable new computational abilities and the evolution of complex behaviour.

I am looking for a lab manager for my group that I will be starting at the @fmiscience.bsky.social in February! We will use in situ structural biology to investigate dynamic ciliary processes. More info here —> bsky.app/profile/comp... #cilia #teamtomo #proteomics #protistsky

The first Danionella paper from the lab. Danionella cerebrum is transparent, so you can see all of the internal organs. But what sensory information are the organs sending to the brain? In our new preprint, Emily Bayer wanted to find out. 1/4 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Amygdala dopamine is often studied in response to external rewards or threats. But what happens during self-initiated exploration? Our new preprint suggests a broader role: a state-dependent salience signal linking exploration and associative learning. 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We're about to start an exciting new project with generous support from the @erc.europa.eu In SIMBIO, we want to know how bacterial endosymbionts modify neurons on the genetic and functional level and how this shapes the evolution of their host's mating behavior.

We are looking for a research assistant to join our team. brain.mpg.de/brand Apply using the link below if you are interested in doing research on the neural and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. jobs.brain.mpg.de/jobposting/6...

🚨 I AM HIRING a 3-year postdoc & 4-year PhD student 🚨 [PLEASE SHARE WIDELY] My Emmy Noether @dfg.de funded Neural Circuit & Systems Evolution lab (🌟) at the @unimainz.bsky.socialÍ wants to start existing. So..., what do we need? WELL... we need you! APPLY UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER.

📣 Apply early to get a chance to be selected for a short talk!!!! Early-bird registration: 15 September 2026 Abstract submission: 1 October 2026 Standard registration: 1 November 2026

Thrilled to be co-organising the EMBO Workshop Comparative (neuro)science in insects, 13–16 April 2027, Engelberg 🇨🇭 with @megyounger.bsky.social, @nkonst4.bsky.social, and Yun Ding@UPENN Abstracts due 11 Dec 2026 🔗 meetings.embo.org/event/27-ins... Register and join us! #EMBOneuroInsects

🚨 4 new positions for postdoctoral research available at our @zukunftskolleg.bsky.social in beautiful Konstanz! If you are interested in exploring collective behaviour at the interface of theory and experiment, then consider applying! ⚠️ Deadline October 12 stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/4...

A brand new lab with an amazing PI and terrific new ideas and projects: I highly recommend @harriskaplan.bsky.social!...

Congrats to Pius, Shuhao, and the team! Check out our latest publication: Molecular glue degraders (MGDs) like lenalidomide have transformed multiple myeloma treatment by inducing degradation of non-native substrates via the CRL4CRBN E3 ligase—but which proteins can they actually reach?

Read about our latest work here www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... or let Alessandro tell you all about it (link below)!

Yahooo 🎉 We got the cover! Meet our cute cover girl 🥰: the naked mole-rat Queen! 👑 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re recruiting postdocs! Join our @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded programme 'Decoding competition in the brain'. How does the brain resolve competing needs and prioritise behaviour? 📅 Deadline: 1 September Apply: rezavallab.org Please share! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSM781/r...

The animal is the same. The stimulus is identical. Yet the behaviour varies. Why? In our new study, @ashritocyte.bsky.social explores the sources of this behavioural variability under fully controlled conditions in larval zebrafish doing optomotor response. (1/7) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We’re hiring a research technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/11232

Excited to announce "The Body in Dialogue" workshop @institutducerveau.bsky.social! 4 sessions on how the brain talks to the body across the animal kingdom: My session features Ana Domingos, @karalmarshall.bsky.social, Denis Burdakov & Michael Krashes. More announcements coming soon, stay tuned!

When you start running, your breathing speeds up before your body needs the oxygen. Turns out flies do the same thing and @camellyc.bsky.social worked out the circuit that makes it happen. Check out our new preprint on how the nervous system coordinates breathing with movement.

New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Nearly a decade after starting the project, the first major results from our comparative connectomics work is online! Comparing the head direction circuits of the central complex in bees, ants and flies, recapitulating >300million years of evolution.

Really happy to share exciting news for the lab: @ukri.org has awarded us a ~£1M BBSRC New Investigator award over 5 years to investigate the neurobiological basis of 'safety in numbers'. 🧵 1/3

If you’re at the FENS Forum, consider to join our symposium: S28 – Flexible Memory Systems: Adaptive and Maladaptive Pathways! Today Hall D at 15:40! Kate Wassum, Mihaela Iordanova, Scott Waddell, and Jan Haaker. @fensorg.bsky.social #FENS2026 fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/#/de...

We have recruited another rockstar! Welcome Caitie

Congratulations to Marylène Bonvin, who defended her PhD thesis last week! Her work explored how metabolism and gene regulation help Hydra — a tiny freshwater animal famous for regeneration — organize and maintain its body plan 👏

Two brain circuits. Same learning problem. Shared learning outcomes. Different dynamical implementations. Our work shows that learning is not a single canonical solution but can emerge through distinct population dynamics shaped by circuit architecture. Excited to share our latest preprint! 🧵1/12

@dahaniel.muench.bio one of the co-organisers of the @fly-jedi.bsky.social 2026 meeting using a gorgeous and scrumptious-looking picnic scene to explain his lab's research question.

Our seminar room was almost overflowing for the third Friedrich Miescher Lecture, hosted by @priscaliberali.bsky.social and delivered by Ewa Paluch from @cam.ac.uk. Paluch gave a fascinating talk on cell shape and the cross-talk between cell shape and cell fate 🔬🧫

Postdoc opportunity at FMI + Novartis Biomedical Research 🧬 The Dahmane lab (FMI) & Farady lab (Novartis) are seeking a postdoctoral researcher to study how extracellular inflammasome particles propagate inflammation during neurotropic RNA virus infection. Apply by May 31: www.fmi.ch/education-ca...

Congratulations to Margherita Turco and the whole team on this beautiful @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social cover, celebrating new work on an in vitro model of the menstrual cycle using human endometrial organoids. Read more about this research & watch the accompanying video: www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

Hiring! Please share! Two postdoctoral researchers at EPFL, Lausanne, to join an SNSF-funded project on stress, motivation, immersive VR, physiology, multimodal sensing and translational biomarkers. Details & applications: www.fens.org/careers/job-... www.fens.org/careers/job-...

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Spreading the word!

Spread the word: We’re hiring a Director of Operations to lead scientific support at the FMI. This senior role enables cutting-edge research by partnering with scientists, overseeing technology platforms, ensuring safety & compliance, and representing the FMI externally: www.fmi.ch/education-ca...

A privilege to have Julia with us.

Keep the Batki lab on your radar! Julia has an exciting research program. Can’t wait to see the insights that come out of it.

Thank you Georg! Very happy to have worked on this. Here is a short 🧵 on what ECT-triggered CSD looks like, and why we think it is going to help shape the future of ECT research. (1/12)

Félix Simon's paper is out in its final form 😍 When we got into (extreme) detail in the temporal and spatial patterning of neuroblasts, Félix asked a simple question "sure, but how does this translate into neuronal cell fate?". www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hans-Werner Hector + Rector Katharina Holzinger signed a new funding agreement for #UniKonstanz. The Hector Stiftung fosters cutting-edge research and enables the university to implement new developments regarding teaching, internationalization and transfer. https://t1p.de/sse8i @cbehav.bsky.social​