Beyond the tail. The tail captures only part of hindbrain motor activity. Recording the eyes, fins and mouth alongside the tail let us see activity linked to these movements too — including fin- and mouth-related activity when the tail was still.

Expression matching. We can also ask whether the spatial organization of an activity-defined ensemble has a counterpart in gene-expression data. For several ensembles, matching them against expression patterns points to striking candidate molecular identities.

Across datasets. The same functional ensembles reappear across independent datasets, with remarkably consistent spatial organization. This gives us a common reference for linking activity across experiments and connecting it to structural and molecular datasets.

Functional ensembles. From these recordings, we can extract reproducible functional ensembles distributed throughout the hindbrain. (Movie idea: thx Alice Wang!)

Whole-hindbrain activity. One of our favorite things about this dataset: we can watch activity across essentially the entire zebrafish hindbrain while the animal behaves in a virtual-reality environment.

Congratulations Max for a successful defense!🎉📓 In his master's thesis under the supervision of our postdoc @danielhummel.bsky.social, Max Widmann explored how the neural activity of motion integration circuits in the anterior hindbrain changes during the first days of larval development. 🐟🧠

Congratulations to @ashritocyte.bsky.social on an amazing PhD defense! 🎓🐟 Ashrit uncovered structure in zebrafish behavioral variability, showing how past decisions influence what fish do next. He also shaped lab life, from cooking and game nights to chats and teaching. We wish him the best of luck!