Roxana Zeraati
@roxana-zeraati.bsky.social
In search of computational principles of natural adaptive behavior. Postdoc with Peter Dayan @mpicybernetics.bsky.social
Website: http://roxanazeraati.org/
Website: http://roxanazeraati.org/
Pinned
My PhD journey has officially come to end with a Summa Cum Laude, thanks to all the amazing people who’ve supported me along the way, especially my advisors Anna Levina and @engeltatiana.bsky.social!
Which apparently coincided with graduation from a witchcraft and wizardry school 😉
#neuroskyence
Which apparently coincided with graduation from a witchcraft and wizardry school 😉
#neuroskyence
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
1/6 New preprint 🚀 How does the cortex learn to represent things and how they move without reconstructing sensory stimuli? We developed a circuit-centric recurrent predictive learning (RPL) model based on JEPAs.
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Led by @atenagm.bsky.social @mshalvagal.bsky.social
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Led by @atenagm.bsky.social @mshalvagal.bsky.social
November 27, 2025 at 8:24 AM
1/6 New preprint 🚀 How does the cortex learn to represent things and how they move without reconstructing sensory stimuli? We developed a circuit-centric recurrent predictive learning (RPL) model based on JEPAs.
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Led by @atenagm.bsky.social @mshalvagal.bsky.social
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Led by @atenagm.bsky.social @mshalvagal.bsky.social
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Thrilled to share our new paper!
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature
Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...
www.nature.com
November 26, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Thrilled to share our new paper!
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Excited to announce our book “Neuroevolution: Harnessing Creativity in AI Agent Design” by Sebastian Risi, Yujin Tang, Risto Miikkulainen, and myself. We explore decades of work on evolving intelligent agents and shows how neuroevolution can drive creativity in deep learning, RL, LLMs and AI Agents!
November 20, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Excited to announce our book “Neuroevolution: Harnessing Creativity in AI Agent Design” by Sebastian Risi, Yujin Tang, Risto Miikkulainen, and myself. We explore decades of work on evolving intelligent agents and shows how neuroevolution can drive creativity in deep learning, RL, LLMs and AI Agents!
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Psst - neuromorphic folks. Did you know that you can solve the SHD dataset with 90% accuracy using only 22 kb of parameter memory by quantising weights and delays? Check out our preprint with @pengfei-sun.bsky.social and @danakarca.bsky.social, or read the TLDR below. 👇🤖🧠🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2510.27434
Exploiting heterogeneous delays for efficient computation in low-bit neural networks
Neural networks rely on learning synaptic weights. However, this overlooks other neural parameters that can also be learned and may be utilized by the brain. One such parameter is the delay: the brain...
arxiv.org
November 13, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Psst - neuromorphic folks. Did you know that you can solve the SHD dataset with 90% accuracy using only 22 kb of parameter memory by quantising weights and delays? Check out our preprint with @pengfei-sun.bsky.social and @danakarca.bsky.social, or read the TLDR below. 👇🤖🧠🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2510.27434
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Jaxley: differentiable simulation enables large-scale training of detailed biophysical models of neural dynamics - Nature Methods
Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...
www.nature.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:38 PM
I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
🧪Preprint!
How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions.
A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches.
A 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
With
@emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions.
A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches.
A 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
With
@emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 4:32 PM
🧪Preprint!
How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions.
A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches.
A 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
With
@emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions.
A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches.
A 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
With
@emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans
In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, w...
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#blueprint 1/7
#blueprint 1/7
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning - Nature Neuroscience
Dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors naturally fluctuates over females’ reproductive cycles with estrogenic signaling due to reduced expression of dopamine reuptake proteins.
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#blueprint 1/7
#blueprint 1/7
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
How do VTA DA neurons sculpt downstream representations to reinforce actions? VERY excited about our new preprint (by Alex Pan Vazquez & @czimmerman.bsky.social )
VTA dopamine neuron activity produces spatially organized value representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.685995v1
November 7, 2025 at 8:46 PM
How do VTA DA neurons sculpt downstream representations to reinforce actions? VERY excited about our new preprint (by Alex Pan Vazquez & @czimmerman.bsky.social )
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
📣 Apply now for the 🌵CaCTüS 3-month fully funded internship in Germany in 2026!
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de
October 21, 2025 at 8:23 AM
📣 Apply now for the 🌵CaCTüS 3-month fully funded internship in Germany in 2026!
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de
Work on ML, theor. neuroscience, computational psychiatry, behavioral experiments or data analysis at a top institution in Tübingen. For students facing barriers in higher education. 👉 cactus-internship.tuebingen.mpg.de
Very much looking forward to this exciting lineup!
Also excited about presenting our work on how timescales of environmental dynamics affect foraging decisions (Wednesday), a work together w/ Tiffany Ona, @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social, Bruno Cruz, @xindipoo.bsky.social and Peter Dayan
Also excited about presenting our work on how timescales of environmental dynamics affect foraging decisions (Wednesday), a work together w/ Tiffany Ona, @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social, Bruno Cruz, @xindipoo.bsky.social and Peter Dayan
🚨Registration for Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 closes October 20th 🚨
Speakers
@mkflugge.bsky.social @aaronbornstein.bsky.social @benhayden.bsky.social @ellileadbeater.bsky.social
@davidrobbe.bsky.social @dlbarack.bsky.social @becketebs.bsky.social
uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Speakers
@mkflugge.bsky.social @aaronbornstein.bsky.social @benhayden.bsky.social @ellileadbeater.bsky.social
@davidrobbe.bsky.social @dlbarack.bsky.social @becketebs.bsky.social
uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
Home - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
November 4, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Very much looking forward to this exciting lineup!
Also excited about presenting our work on how timescales of environmental dynamics affect foraging decisions (Wednesday), a work together w/ Tiffany Ona, @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social, Bruno Cruz, @xindipoo.bsky.social and Peter Dayan
Also excited about presenting our work on how timescales of environmental dynamics affect foraging decisions (Wednesday), a work together w/ Tiffany Ona, @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social, Bruno Cruz, @xindipoo.bsky.social and Peter Dayan
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Our work with @pawa-pawa.bsky.social is out in Nature Machine Intelligence! The choice of activation function affects the representations, dynamics, and circuit solutions that emerge in RNNs trained on cognitive tasks. Activation matters!
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
October 24, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Our work with @pawa-pawa.bsky.social is out in Nature Machine Intelligence! The choice of activation function affects the representations, dynamics, and circuit solutions that emerge in RNNs trained on cognitive tasks. Activation matters!
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions, writes Xiao-Jing Wang.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
The missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory
Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions.
www.thetransmitter.org
October 27, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions, writes Xiao-Jing Wang.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience
Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E
@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E
@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution
Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Recent studies have shed further light on the evolutionary origins of chemical synapses, In this Review, Colgren and Burkhardt explore how ancient proteins were...
rdcu.be
October 27, 2025 at 6:48 PM
First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience
Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E
@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E
@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
I saw David (Anderson) present this at a meeting. It's incredible - the idea that we can finally record the neural correlates of emotions like "hanger" in the brain. Congrats to this team!
The neuroscience of hanger: "When confronted with food and an intruder, hangry mice alternated between feeding and fighting" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A line attractor maintains aggressiveness during feeding in “hangry” mice
Aggression evolved to protect resources such as food from competitors, but animals must balance fighting and feeding so that they facilitate rather than hinder re-establishment of energy homeostasis. ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 25, 2025 at 2:27 PM
I saw David (Anderson) present this at a meeting. It's incredible - the idea that we can finally record the neural correlates of emotions like "hanger" in the brain. Congrats to this team!
This looks quite exciting!
Discovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms @Nature.com
Discovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms
Nature, Published online: 22 October 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09761-xDiscovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms
dlvr.it
October 24, 2025 at 8:38 PM
This looks quite exciting!
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Exciting new work from former team members Eric Romero, Cwyn Solvi, Fei Peng and colleagues makes the cover of Science: affective contagion in bumblebees! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
October 24, 2025 at 6:13 AM
Exciting new work from former team members Eric Romero, Cwyn Solvi, Fei Peng and colleagues makes the cover of Science: affective contagion in bumblebees! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
New #NeuroAI preprint on #ContinualLearning!
Continual learning methods struggle in mostly unsupervised environments with sparse labels (e.g. parents telling their child the object is an 'apple').
We propose that in the cortex, predictive coding of high-level top-down modulations solves this! (1/6)
Continual learning methods struggle in mostly unsupervised environments with sparse labels (e.g. parents telling their child the object is an 'apple').
We propose that in the cortex, predictive coding of high-level top-down modulations solves this! (1/6)
June 10, 2025 at 1:17 PM
New #NeuroAI preprint on #ContinualLearning!
Continual learning methods struggle in mostly unsupervised environments with sparse labels (e.g. parents telling their child the object is an 'apple').
We propose that in the cortex, predictive coding of high-level top-down modulations solves this! (1/6)
Continual learning methods struggle in mostly unsupervised environments with sparse labels (e.g. parents telling their child the object is an 'apple').
We propose that in the cortex, predictive coding of high-level top-down modulations solves this! (1/6)
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
How does the brain balance learning new things without overwriting what it already knows? Our new paper tackles this long-standing stability–plasticity dilemma during active navigation. With Tony Drinnenberg from the Deisseroth Lab (@deisseroth.bsky.social)
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Environmental Novelty Modulates Rapid Cortical Plasticity During Navigation
In novel environments, animals quickly learn to navigate, and position-correlated spatial representations rapidly emerge in both the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and primary visual cortex (V1). However,...
doi.org
October 24, 2025 at 3:40 AM
How does the brain balance learning new things without overwriting what it already knows? Our new paper tackles this long-standing stability–plasticity dilemma during active navigation. With Tony Drinnenberg from the Deisseroth Lab (@deisseroth.bsky.social)
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
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/
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
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/
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/
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!
We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
October 22, 2025 at 8:41 PM
🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!
We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
The final paper of my PhD is now out as a preprint. This is a follow-up piece in series of two companion papers modelling awareness and suppression in a new variant of continuous flash suppression.
arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154
🧵 1/3
arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154
🧵 1/3
A Minimal Quantitative Model of Perceptual Suppression and Breakthrough in Visual Rivalry
When conflicting images are presented to either eye, binocular fusion is disrupted. Rather than experiencing a blend of both percepts, often only one eye's image is experienced, whilst the other is su...
arxiv.org
October 21, 2025 at 6:10 AM
The final paper of my PhD is now out as a preprint. This is a follow-up piece in series of two companion papers modelling awareness and suppression in a new variant of continuous flash suppression.
arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154
🧵 1/3
arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154
🧵 1/3
The applications for the new round of CaCTüS Internship are now open! This is an extraordinary opportunity for students from underrepresented backgrounds to develop research skills necessary for advancing their careers!
www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de/application/
www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de/application/
October 20, 2025 at 7:53 PM
The applications for the new round of CaCTüS Internship are now open! This is an extraordinary opportunity for students from underrepresented backgrounds to develop research skills necessary for advancing their careers!
www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de/application/
www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de/application/
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Our new paper would not have been possible without a brilliant team! Huge thanks to Katie Keller, @rorycoleman.bsky.social, @noelleeghbali.bsky.social, Sarah Zylka, @neuroluci.bsky.social 🪰🧪✨
Especially grateful for guidance and inspiration by my mentor Vanessa Ruta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Especially grateful for guidance and inspiration by my mentor Vanessa Ruta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 17, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Our new paper would not have been possible without a brilliant team! Huge thanks to Katie Keller, @rorycoleman.bsky.social, @noelleeghbali.bsky.social, Sarah Zylka, @neuroluci.bsky.social 🪰🧪✨
Especially grateful for guidance and inspiration by my mentor Vanessa Ruta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Especially grateful for guidance and inspiration by my mentor Vanessa Ruta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Roxana Zeraati
Architectural immunity: #ants alter their nest networks to prevent epidemics | Science @Science.org
Architectural immunity: #ants alter their nest networks to prevent epidemics | Science
In animal groups, spatial structure shapes social interaction patterns, thereby influencing the transmission of infectious diseases. Active modifications to the spatial environment could therefore be a potent tool to mitigate epidemic risk. We tested ...
dlvr.it
October 16, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Architectural immunity: #ants alter their nest networks to prevent epidemics | Science @Science.org