Hamza Giaffar

Nucleotide-binding motifs nucleated folding of the first enzymes

This study investigates the emergence of two key cofactor-binding protein folds by analyzing their metabolic roles, structural organization, and folding mechanisms.

The anterior olfactory nucleus mediates curious exploration evoked by novel odors

This study investigates how the anterior olfactory nucleus (AON) and anterior piriform cortex (aPCx) contribute to novelty-evoked exploration in mice, finding that AON mediates immediate reactions to novel odors while aPCx supports stable odor memory.

The primacy model and the structure of olfactory space

The paper develops a theoretical framework to map odor input space to olfactory receptor responses, finding that Kenyon cells integrate high-affinity receptor inputs.

The effective number of shared dimensions: A simple method for revealing shared structure between datasets

The paper introduces a model-free measure called effective number of shared dimensions (ENSD) to quantify shared structure between datasets, demonstrating its utility across neural networks and neuroscience data.

Darwinian dynamics over recurrent neural computations for combinatorial problem solving

The paper proposes a Darwinian process over reservoir computing units to solve combinatorial problems, showing how neural dynamics can enable efficient evolutionary search.