Ben Engelhard

Small animal brain surgery with neither a brain atlas nor a stereotaxic frame

This paper introduces a brain surgery technique for small animals without requiring a brain atlas or stereotaxic frame, using MRI and CT scans with fiducial markers for probe positioning.

A feature-specific prediction error model explains dopaminergic heterogeneity

The paper introduces a feature-specific reward prediction error model to explain heterogeneity in dopamine neuron responses in the VTA and shows it aligns with neural recordings.

Overlapping representations of food and social stimuli in VTA dopamine neurons

The paper shows that VTA dopamine neurons respond to both food and social stimuli, with overlapping populations and increased overlap under hunger or social experience.

Opponent control of behavior by dorsomedial striatal pathways depends on task demands and internal state

The paper shows that dorsomedial striatal pathways oppositely control behavior depending on task demands and internal state.

Choice-selective sequences dominate in cortical relative to thalamic inputs to the nucleus accumbens, providing a potential substrate for credit assignment

The paper compares cortical and thalamic inputs to the nucleus accumbens in mice during a reinforcement learning task, finding that cortical inputs represent actions and choices while thalamic inputs represent cues, with cortical sequences supporting reinforcement learning.

Inferring spikes from calcium imaging in dopamine neurons

The paper validates a spike inference method using calcium imaging in dopamine neurons, showing accurate spike detection in both slice and in vivo settings.

Specialized and spatially organized coding of sensory, motor, and cognitive variables in midbrain dopamine neurons

The paper investigates how midbrain dopamine neurons encode sensory, motor, and cognitive variables during a complex decision-making task, finding that neurons are functionally and spatially organized into clusters specialized for specific behavioral variables.

Neuronal activity and learning in local cortical networks are modulated by the action-perception state

The paper shows that neuronal patterns in motor cortex change during brain-machine interface learning to align with the current action-perception state, with pre-learning activity predicting these changes.

An accumulation-of-evidence task using visual pulses for mice navigating in virtual reality

This paper introduces a new evidence-accumulation task for mice in virtual reality, showing they accumulate visual evidence to make decisions, with performance influenced by evidence magnitude but not duration.