Zachary F. Mainen

This study shows serotonin induces DOWN states in the anesthetized mouse forebrain, with effects on cortex and striatum but not midbrain, using optogenetics and Neuropixel recordings.

This study examines age-related changes in neural and behavioural variability during a decision-making task in mice, finding increased neural variability and reduced variability quenching in specific brain regions.

The paper uses facial expressions in mice to identify latent cognitive variables and their neural correlates, showing that facial features reflect computations beyond task demands.

Mice infer stimulus-side priors from recent choices; prior signals are decodable pre-stimulus in 24.0% to 30.2% of 242 brain regions, including early visual and motor areas.

The paper presents a brain-wide neural activity map from 621,733 neurons across 139 mice performing a decision-making task, showing how neural activity encodes task variables across brain regions.

This study shows serotonin modulates brain-wide neural activity during wakefulness but not during decision-making tasks, affecting a subspace orthogonal to choice.

The paper shows that mice with ASD-related mutations exhibit similar computational and neural anomalies in prior updating during decision-making.

The paper introduces an adaptable implant for chronic Neuropixels recordings in mice, enabling stable, reusable, and lightweight neural recordings across multiple experimental conditions.

This study shows that maturation of prefrontal cortex to dorsal raphe nucleus projections in mice enhances behavioral persistence, as demonstrated by optogenetic stimulation and genetic ablation experiments.

The paper describes a modular data architecture for a neuroscience collaboration, enabling data contribution, access, and analysis across multiple labs.

The paper shows humans estimate environmental controllability by comparing actor and spectator models, with stress reducing perceived control and increasing reliance on the spectator model.

This study shows that posterior piriform cortex neurons in rats carry spatial maps during odor-cued navigation, forming olfactory-place maps.

The paper uses hidden Markov models to show metastable attractors explain variable timing in stable behavioral action sequences in rats.

This paper develops a standardized task for measuring decision-making in mice, showing reproducible results across multiple laboratories and providing a public dataset and tools.

The paper identifies a repertoire of decision variables in the mouse brain during foraging, showing that the secondary motor cortex encodes multiple strategies beyond those directly used in the task.

The paper introduces citric acid water as an alternative to water restriction for motivating mice in behavioral tasks, showing it maintains performance without health risks.

This study shows that transient serotonin activation in the dorsal raphe nucleus increases pupil size, independent of locomotion and dependent on environmental uncertainty.

This study shows that learning influences speed-accuracy tradeoffs in decision-making by combining reinforcement learning with sensory evidence accumulation in rats.

This paper develops an fMRI approach for whole-brain activity recording in behaving mice, demonstrating its use in complex tasks and reducing movement artefacts.

This study compares inference-based decision-making in mice and humans using a foraging task, showing humans learn the strategy much faster and identifying orbitofrontal cortex's role in maintaining inference-based decisions.

The paper derives a Bayesian learning rule for diffusion decision models that incorporates confidence and prior biases to improve decision-making under uncertainty.

This study shows that Weber's law arises from bounded evidence accumulation in rats, as evidenced by level-invariant discrimination accuracy and reaction times.

This study shows that optogenetic activation of dorsal raphe serotonin neurons in mice increases learning rates for rewards after long inter-trial intervals based on recent reinforcement history.

This study shows that activating serotonin neurons increases mice's willingness to actively exploit a reward site before giving up in a probabilistic foraging task.

This study identifies firing patterns of serotonin neurons in mice during reversal learning, showing they respond to both positive and negative prediction errors and differ from dopamine neurons in learning rates, supporting a role in cognitive flexibility.

This study shows that activating dorsal raphe serotonergic neurons increases mice's ability to wait for delayed rewards without affecting appetitive or aversive responses.