Laura Grima
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lauragrima.bsky.social
Laura Grima
@lauragrima.bsky.social
Research Scientist in the Dudman lab @HHMIJanelia. PhD @Oxford, BSc @RoyalHolloway.

dopamine | foraging | decision-making | hippocampus | reinforcement learning

🧠🧪👩‍🔬🐭💻

Wondering what mice are thinking about.
Pinned
The first preprint of my postdoc with @dudman.bsky.social is now online! Here we wanted to understand the algorithms mice use when learning to forage in large environments with many potential resources. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Beautiful set of experiments. Congrats Lauren et al!
November 14, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by Laura Grima
Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)!

This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/
October 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
October 13, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
Amazing! Hard to believe this didn't exist until now.
October 10, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
We started our RL debate series!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0A0...
RL Debate Series: Eli "abolish the value function" Sennesh
YouTube video by Sensorimotor AI
www.youtube.com
October 2, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
We're very proud to be releasing the complete male fly CNS connectome!

It's the product of a huge team effort here at Janelia in partnership with the Cambridge Fly Connectomics group (@jefferis.bsky.social and colleagues), plus invaluable collaborators.

More soon...
www.janelia.org/project-team...
Male CNS Connectome
A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...
www.janelia.org
October 5, 2025 at 6:02 PM
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 Laura Grima
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 Laura Grima
If you want to hear about more like this, come join us at the University of Birmingham for ‘The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging’ conference. Registration closes 20th October!
uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Home - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
October 7, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
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 Laura Grima
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
Reposted by Laura Grima
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
Pleased to have this review out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. In it we discuss various aspects of the intersection between foraging behaviors and neuroscience, and offer some future directions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience
The study of foraging is central to a renewed interest in naturalistic behavior in neuroscience. Applying a foraging framework grounded in behavioral …
www.sciencedirect.com
October 7, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Registration closes in just 2 weeks! We’ve got a great line up of speakers, definitely not a conference to miss if you’re into interesting behavior…!
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
October 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM
My favourite sentence to read in a sys neuro paper is “we designed a new task…” What strange little game have you given your rodents to play, eh? Are they pushing levers or pulling strings? Do they have to move things around, lick them? What clues do you give them - sights, sounds, smells? Such fun!
September 30, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Enjoying a flying visit to Boston. Strange to think that last time I was here was back in 2017, on the way to my first GRC (Catecholamines). I remember my PhD advisor’s sage advice when choosing between conferences: SfN is fun, but go to a GRC to really make connections with people in the field.
September 20, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Caught most of the @python.org documentary as part of a showing today @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. Fun and interesting viewing for fellow pythonistas: m.youtube.com/watch?v=GfH4... (Also appreciated the commentary on getting women into coding!)
Python: The Documentary | An origin story
YouTube video by CultRepo
m.youtube.com
September 11, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 8, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
Brain as a computer arguments in shambles. Brain as toilet arguments reign.
September 4, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
pyPhotometry v2 is now in our store! 🚀

⚡Output current of the 2 onboard LED drivers increased to 300 mA
🔦🔦 2 alternative LED digital output channels to trigger external optical hardware that have integrated LED drivers
🔌Additional connections to the pyBoard for expansion

#OpenEphys #pyPhotometry
pyPhotometry V2 — Open Ephys
SKU: OEPS-8011 pyPhotometry is an open source system for fiber photometry data acquisition . Version 2 includes: 2x Analog inputs for photometry signals. The system supports time-division mul...
open-ephys.org
September 2, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Deadline for abstract submission has been extended to 29th August!
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
August 18, 2025 at 4:46 PM
I enjoyed reading this and agree with a lot of the takes here. I also think the lack of any resounding “yes”es would surprise the average non-neuroscientist...
12 leading neuroscientists tackle a big question: Will we ever understand the brain?

Their reflections span philosophy, complexity, and the limits of scientific explanation.

www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/blog/wil...

Illustration by @gilcosta.bsky.social & @joanagcc.bsky.social
August 6, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Laura Grima
✨ We’re #hiring Theory Fellows!✨

Janelia is recruiting early-career scientists to join our collaborative research environment and use #computation & #theory to tackle bold questions in #biology.

🔗 Apply by Nov. 3 👉 janelia.link/theoryfellow...
@hhmi.org
August 5, 2025 at 6:01 PM