Adithya Rajagopalan
adiraj95.bsky.social
Adithya Rajagopalan
@adiraj95.bsky.social
Neuroscientist hoping to understand decisions - currently in the Constantinople lab at NYU via the Turner lab at HHMI Janelia, Johns Hopkins and IISER Pune. Enjoyer of books, games and Chelsea FC
Website : https://rajagopalana.github.io/adithyarajagopalan/
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
1/ Hello Drosophila-philists and braino-maniacs! 👋🪰🧠🧪

The Caron lab has a new preprint, and it is about 🥁🥁🥁 democracy!

Neuro-democracy, to be precise. So: drop EVERYTHING and listen up — a 🧶!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 30, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Our paper on foraging is now published in Neuron! Read it here:

www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

This project was co-led by Michael Bukwich (not on Bluesky) and me, with major contributions from all co-authors. Huge thanks to the whole team!
Competitive integration of time and reward explains value-sensitive foraging decisions and frontal cortex ramping dynamics
Bukwich and Campbell et al. show that mice integrate elapsed time and reward intake, scaled by a latent patience variable, to decide when to leave virtual “patches.” Frontal cortex ramping activity ma...
www.cell.com
August 7, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
October 13, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Had a lot of fun co-writing to this review! Discussing #foraging through the lens of neuroscience.
October 7, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Really excited to share a review I contributed to, out now in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. We explore how foraging can offer a framework for studying brain and behaviour in natural contexts. It’s been a pleasure working with colleagues across species and disciplines on this. Check it out! 👇
October 7, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Plus, there's now a related conference organized by some wonderful people @unibirmingham.bsky.social in the UK, including @brainapps.bsky.social, @markdhumphries.bsky.social, and others. (Registration for this conference is still open until the 20th October!) uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Home - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
October 7, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
A little backstory on this one: sometime during the pandemic @hannah-haberkern.bsky.social and I were chatting in the servery at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social about how to encourage interactions between people working on foraging (+ neuroscience) across different species and perspectives... 1/n
October 7, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Years ago @lauragrima.bsky.social talked about what a pity it is when scientists who work on #foraging miss out on fruitful interactions because they work with different animals. Together with collegues we started a virtual seminar series, which grew into a conference and now a review!
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.
authors.elsevier.com
October 7, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Inspired by discussions at several recent foraging-related seminar series and conferences, our review in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social explores an expanded role for foraging as a framework in neuroscience and discusses future directions for the field. Do check it out.

doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
October 7, 2025 at 1:10 PM
defector.com/sure-we-gain...

While I agree that @taskmaster.tv is indeed close to "the absolute zenith of humanity's artistic development". I would like to refer the author and anyone who follows my bluesky to @dropout.tv's incredible @gamechangershow.bsky.social.
Sure, We Gained Our Independence, But We Lost The Ability To Make Anything As Good As ‘Taskmaster’ | Defector
The Fourth of July is always there to remind us that we aren’t the country we fancy ourselves being, but this year’s national try-not-to-blow-your-hand-off munitions festival was even grimmer given th...
defector.com
July 9, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
I am delighted to announce registration and abstract submission is open for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" to be held at the Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham, UK on 3-5th November 2025. uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Homepage - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
July 4, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Do register for what is going to be a very exciting conference!

uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Super excited to announce a follow-up to the Janelia 'mechanistic basis of foraging' conference - this time held in Birmingham, UK! Join us from the 3rd - 5th November to discuss all things foraging: uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Homepage - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
July 2, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Rat-mon y Cajal, our lab mascot, is a pro at our task because he went to kindergarten first. His nemesis, Le Chat GPT, just copied off everyone else’s homework.

www.nature.com/articles/s42...
June 19, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
David Hocker’s paper about compositional pretraining for RNNs that efficiently produces animal-like behaviors! Modeling cognitive tasks in RNNs requires thinking about latent abilities that animals bring to an experiment. Funded by NIH/CRCNS. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Compositional pretraining improves computational efficiency and matches animal behaviour on complex tasks - Nature Machine Intelligence
Hocker et al. demonstrate a method for training recurrent neural networks, which they call ‘kindergarten curriculum learning’, involving pretraining on simple cognitive tasks to improve learning effic...
www.nature.com
May 21, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
During Q&A, whenever someone asks a question about our "mice."
May 22, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Started off this morning emailing my Senators and Congressman about the NIH and the potential damage being done by unnecessary disruptions.

They need to hear from us loud and clear. Constituents matter to them as one of the primary purposes of a politician is to get re-elected (and its their job).
January 23, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Looking forward to this!
Join us on 30 Jan for the first Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series talk of 2025.

With @lauragrima.bsky.social (@hhmijanelia.bsky.social)

‘Dynamics of learning in many option foraging’

Find out more & register: www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/events/e...
January 23, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
The whiplash that I feel traveling between India and US is hard to explain. When I’m in one place, I blend into life there, it doesn’t feel alien. Family/childhood memories in one place. Career/folks that I love in another. Each time I travel, it’s an opportunity to question my identity.
January 3, 2025 at 2:03 AM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
Anybody from the Hindustan Times here? An article written by Ishita Singh Rajput has fabricated a quote that I never provided for this article. I was not approached for it and have no comments.

I know they will drag their feet in issuing a correction 😒

www.hindustantimes.com/cities/gurug...
www.hindustantimes.com
December 17, 2024 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
My thoughts on the "one nation, one subscription" plan.

I started writing this at the request of Nature India but withdrew when they said they wanted it for free, despite Springer-Nature being one of the richest and most profitable publishers.
horadecubitus.wordpress.com/2024/12/12/o...
One nation, one subscription: A good first step
A version of this piece was originally written at the request of Nature India. Due to various points of friction, both on content and on remuneration, I withdrew the piece. (They informed me that t…
horadecubitus.wordpress.com
December 12, 2024 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Adithya Rajagopalan
I'm struck by how grad students in psych and neuro programs aren't generally expected to know basic facts about animal learning. For the psychologists, it has an odor of behaviorism, and for the neuroscientists it has an odor of psychology. Yet it's so fundamental (in my view).
December 13, 2024 at 9:49 PM
It was nice to take a break from project-related OFC/amygdala papers & read a fun fly study from the Parnas lab this morning: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Exciting to see potentially distinct pathways for cue- & action- outcome learning in the fly, drawing parallels between the MB & striatum.
Neuronal circuit mechanisms of competitive interaction between action-based and coincidence learning
Parallel and interfering neuronal circuits are responsible for operant and classical learning.
www.science.org
December 12, 2024 at 1:26 PM
Question for all you blueskyers (is that the equivalent of tweeps?). Can someone point me to a book that has a brooding non-male protagonist. Brooding heros tend to be my favorite to read about - think Batman or Edmond Dantes - but thinking about it, I'm wondering if only men are written this way.
December 5, 2024 at 1:55 AM