peterdoohan.bsky.social

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New review about computations in PFC, led by two deep thinkers, @melgaby.bsky.social and @kristorpjensen.bsky.social, with contributions from many more. Discussing the implications of a bunch of new exciting recent PFC findings for how we think about PFC computations.

World models are central to intelligence - but how do we actually use them to behave flexibly? We review emerging findings on how the PFC’s inner dynamics translate structured knowledge into action. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵 1/15

Super proud of many things about this work by the amazing @kristorpjensen.bsky.social. The work is one of my favourite things ever from the lab. Also super proud of Kris for choosing to send it to @elife.bsky.social - we get to see Kris explain every figure! elifesciences.org/articles/109...

New preprint out (first from my new group!) 🚨 "Predictive Grid Cell Coding Does Not Require Explicit Planning" biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

I wanted to highlight the work of Alison Comrie et al. that recently came out in Neuron and I don’t think it is getting enough attention: paper: cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(26)00674-4 #neuroskyence

⚠️PREPRINT ALERT⚠️ How can we better understand distributed brain activity across temporal and spatial scales? In this collaborative project, we combined ultra-flexible electrodes with two-photon imaging to illuminate brain-wide neural dynamics. Link: doi.org/10.21203/rs.... 1/8

Congrats @jespass.bsky.social on her new paper! PFC is widely thought to talk to HPC via nucleus reuniens - but no one has tested if this actual connectivity exists. Turns out it's wired to block it: PFC inputs to reuniens contact only neurons projecting back to PFC, not ones projecting to HPC. 🧪🧠📈

Nucleus reuniens is organised as parallel circuits rather than a prefrontal-hippocampal relay https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.11.744129v1

Now in Science: How does the brain’s navigation system allocate its limited representational resources during behavior? We found that grid cells sweep toward locations of interest, providing a potential mechanism for allocating spatial attention in the cognitive map.🧵 science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social talks to Timothy Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social about which neural systems the field has genuinely cracked. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/computationa...

For 30 years, neuroscientists have argued about whether theta sweeps are just passive sensing, or something closer to planning. So which is it? #neuroskyence By @natmesanash.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/memory/new-f...

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.

***New preprint from the lab*** showing “Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits”. In sleep we show spiking sequences in V1 (sensory neocortex!) that represent information that has not been directly experienced www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @bndu.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social

This is a spectacular paper

📜 Project Showcase 🛠️ pyControl: Open source, Python-based, behavioural experiment control. 👩‍💻 🧑‍💻 Developed by Thomas Akam 👀 To learn more about it: open-neuroscience.com/en/post/pyco... #OpenSoftware #OpenScience #OpenSource

Our work on goal-directed theta sweeps is out! We found two different types of theta sweeps in the rat hippocampus. During random foraging, left-right alternating sweeps dominated (Vollan, 25). However, during memory-guided navigation sweeps pointing to hidden goal locations emerged with learning.

Beautiful! Hippocampal theta sweeps are biased towards sampling more promising futures 🧹📍

How does the human brain extract abstract structure from experience? We show that sensory-independent relational representations emerge in mPFC over several days. Work with @mgarvert.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Good scientist, terrible designer? We feel you. Inspired by MetBrewer, the palette chooser for the connoisseurs, @sandra-neuro.bsky.social and I present EraBrewer: great looking colours for us Swifties! github.com/mathias-sm/E... cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

This makes some fun experimental predictions ... 👀📈 @lpriestley.bsky.social

This is one of the coolest things I have been involved with. Truly flexible navigation in mice. Real insight into how mPFC computes the plans. Great fun to see what PFC is doing with those hippocampal theta sweeps. From the awesome @peterdoohan.bsky.social and (now on bsky) @thomasakam.bsky.social

This paper is so cool that it’s finally convinced @thomasakam.bsky.social to join Bluesky

This project builds on work establishing the behaviour done at Champalimaud in Lisbon with @michaelfsp.bsky.social, Beatriz Godinho, Christian Machens, and @ruimcosta.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It has been super fun to work on this, where we learned that: 1) Mouse PFC is needed for model-based override of habits. 2) Separate PFC populations encode a 'policy' and the current 'value'. 3) The policy and value codes alternate theta sweeps towards the goal. ...and much much more!

Today! 13:15–16:15 poster session #cosyne26 @sumedhanalluru.bsky.social

Come see what grid cells do on complex mazes tonight at #cosyne2026 :) @charlesdgburns.bsky.social

Excited to see this Version Of Record of my work out in @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/articles/106... We investigate the mental representation of geometric shapes in adults and children using fMRI and MEG. Each figure has a video of me explaining the figure: go and read it, or read below.

Out today in Neurophotonics, we show that cross-talk between the imaging laser and opsin in all-optical experiments can affect response dynamics beyond what has been accounted for. Imaging conditions subthreshold for evoking spikes can accelerate opsin desensitization: doi.org/10.1117/1.NP...

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

1/ Excited to share that our symposium review covering cognitive mapping in the PFC just came out in the Journal of Neuroscience: www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Come join us at #SfN25 for the minisymposium "Cognitive Maps in the Prefrontal Cortex"! Saturday, Nov 15, 2:00-4:30pm, Room SDCC 6CF www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171... We will explore how the PFC represents structured relationships across species and how this supports flexible behavior.

🚨New pre-print!🚨 Can we truly independently read and write neuronal activity at the same time using all-optical techniques? Here we show that even two-photon imaging over large fields of view with low dwell time per cell can bias neural dynamics! Read on for some potential fixes: (1/5)

** We have up to TWO funded PhD positions available in our lab!! Apply below to find new ways to enhance memory👇 Pls retweet ** Deadline: 2nd December 1. Cross-species closed-loopTMR: tinyurl.com/bddu4tp6 2. TUS and TMR in humans: tinyurl.com/jjws5ctj Happy to chat to interested applicants.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350.... A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n 🗣️🧬🧪

I’m pleased to share our new paper, “Hippocampal ripple diversity organizes neuronal reactivation dynamics in the offline brain”, out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social ! With @vitorlds.bsky.social and David Dupret, we show that diversity in ripple current profiles shapes reactivation dynamics

Planning with attractors in PFC!

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨We believe this is a major step forward in how we study hippocampus function in healthy humans. Using novel behavioral tasks, fMRI, RL & RNN modeling, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), we demonstrate the causal role of hippocampus in relational structure learning.

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory. 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...