We want to understand how animals infer and use internal models to produce adaptive, flexible behavior in dynamic, uncertain settings.
Head of Mechanistic Cognitive Neuroscience
What is Mechanistic Cognitive Neuroscience: Q&A with Vivek Jayaraman »
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Summary
We aim to discover the circuit dynamics, network architectures, neuronal biophysics, synaptic rules, and molecular pathways that make cognition possible.
We are quantitative experimentalists, theorists, and tool-builders, all working together to break through technical, conceptual, and computational barriers that make cognitive computations challenging to understand.
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News
Publication
News
Welcome to our new lab heads in MCN!
Sue Ann Koay (Koay Lab)
Rob Johnson (Johnson Lab)
Gowan Tervo (Tervo Lab)
Publication
6/2/21 | The anterior cingulate cortex directs exploration of alternative strategies
Labs: Karpova Lab and Tervo Lab
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Publication
Publication
Publication
10/14/20 | The neuroanatomical ultrastructure and function of a biological ring attractor
Lab: Jayaraman Lab
Publication
NEWS
05/11/20 | We are excited to welcome Carsen Stringer as a Group Leader in MCN. Learn more about the Stringer lab.
Publication
10/9/19 | Learning from action: reconsidering movement signaling in midbrain dopamine neuron activity
Lab: Dudman Lab
Publication
NEWS
06/20/19 | Frustrated Fish Give Up Thanks to Glia, Not Just Neurons: Giving up when efforts are futile depends on glial cells called radial astrocytes, highlighting a novel computational role for the underappreciated brain cells.
News
02/07/19 | How Larval Fly Brains Deal with Windy Situations: Researchers are uncovering the neural mechanisms behind Drosophila larval navigation in wind.
Publication
01/11/18 | Persistent activity in a recurrent circuit underlies courtship memory in Drosophila
Lab: Keleman Lab
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Meet Vivek Jayaraman
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Our Work
Creating new behavioral paradigms
Our researchers are developing ways to elicit, perturb, measure, and interpret complex and rapidly adapting behaviors, both in the lab and in enriched, ethological settings. This visualization from the Dudman lab shows the trajectories of a mouse learning to run to two remembered locations to trigger release of a reward. Paths to the different locations are depicted in white and blue.
Pioneering new techniques
Janelia labs collaborate across disciplines to pioneer new techniques to probe mechanisms of cognition. The Ahrens Lab used whole-brain imaging to monitor the activity of neurons and glia separately in behaving zebrafish, sorting out the relative contribution of each cell type to a specific behavior – giving up in the face of futile actions.
Building upon Janelia’s strengths
Our labs benefit from the ongoing, foundational work at Janelia on neural circuits. Shown here are Drosophila ellipsoid body “compass neurons” segmented in an electron microscopy reconstruction from the Hess Lab and FlyEM team (left) and genetically labeled in a light microscopy image from the Rubin Lab and FlyLight team (right).
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Open Positions
Group Leader
We’re looking for an early-career scientist interested in gaining insights into the neural underpinnings of cognition using flies or fish as model organisms.
To learn more about the application materials and apply, go to our application portal.
Postdocs
Multiple labs are recruiting postdocs. Please see each lab webpage for more details.
Doctoral Students
More information can be found here.
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“How the brain enables cognition is one of the biggest questions in neuroscience. To tackle it, we’re doing everything from designing new imaging techniques to creating novel paradigms to study flexible behavior.”
-Vivek Jayaraman
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