Misha B. Ahrens

Two-photon optical backfills of pan-neuronal photoactivatable GFP in larval zebrafish yield an estimated 1,300 spinal-projecting neurons per larva across hindbrain, midbrain and diencephalon, with tentative homologies to mammalian nuclei.

The paper shows how instructive inputs during a critical period shape neural circuits to enable effective credit assignment in learning.

The paper identifies a neuron-glia circuit in zebrafish that anticipates hypoxia by integrating behavioral intent and physiological state to prevent internal oxygen depletion.

This study identifies stk32a as a conserved sleep regulator that links neuropeptidergic signaling to sleep homeostasis by suppressing sensory and motor systems in zebrafish and mice.

The paper develops WARP, a platform integrating neuronal activity and gene expression data in zebrafish brains, revealing functional roles of molecularly defined cell populations and their activity correlations.

The paper shows that astrocyte activity drives brainwide changes in sensory, integrative, and motor computations during a passive state in zebrafish.

SpotDMix improves mRNA spot assignment to cells in spatial transcriptomics by using a mixture model and EM algorithm, outperforming simple methods in accuracy and exclusivity.

This study tracks the development of heart-brain circuits in larval zebrafish, revealing three stages of functional maturation involving vagal motor, sympathetic, and sensory pathways.

The paper introduces WHOLISTIC, a method to image cellular activity across all organs of a vertebrate, revealing body-wide circuits and responses to stimuli.

The paper presents a connectomic dataset of a larval zebrafish brain, enabling circuit analysis through synaptic and neuronal annotations.

The paper uses voltage imaging to show how serotonergic neurons in the raphe encode action outcomes and modulate motor vigor during learning in larval zebrafish.

The paper shows that heart rate changes influence behavior and brain activity in larval zebrafish, with specific brain regions encoding heart rate signals.

AQuA2 quantifies molecular spatiotemporal signals from live imaging data by decomposing complex datasets into signaling events, demonstrating applications across biosensors and cell types.

The paper develops an all-optical system to study whole-brain neuronal dynamics during gut interoception in zebrafish, revealing how nutrient delivery and sensory stimuli are encoded across brain regions.

This paper introduces a fluorophore for imaging extracellular matrix in live tissues and organisms by binding to glycans, enabling nonperturbative and wash-free visualization.

The paper shows norepinephrine induces astroglial purinergic signaling that suppresses behavior through adenosine receptor activation in zebrafish.

The paper develops fast and sensitive GCaMP indicators for neural activity imaging, achieving ultra-fast kinetics and high sensitivity.

The paper shows ketamine suppresses futility-induced passivity in zebrafish by modulating astroglial calcium through norepinephrine signaling.

This study evaluates dimensionality reduction methods for calcium imaging data and introduces CILDS, which outperforms existing methods in recovering low-dimensional neural activity.

The paper uses voltage imaging to identify spinal circuits in zebrafish that modulate locomotor adaptation by characterizing a novel sub-population of V3 neurons.

The paper identifies a brainstem circuit in larval zebrafish that integrates optic flow to maintain positional homeostasis by modulating cerebellar activity.

The paper develops cell body-targeted calcium indicators to improve signal fidelity in one-photon imaging of neural activity in live mice and zebrafish.

The paper develops a new genetically encoded Ca2+ indicator, mNG-GECO1, based on mNeonGreen, which is brighter than GCaMP6s and performs comparably in various imaging applications.

The paper develops a high-throughput method to map synaptic connectivity in zebrafish using two-photon optogenetics and volumetric Ca2+ imaging.

This study identifies a bidirectional interaction between hypothalamic nuclei in larval zebrafish that regulates hunger and satiety through opposing activity patterns.

The paper introduces a new genetically encoded voltage indicator, Voltron, which improves brightness and photostability for extended in vivo voltage imaging in mice, zebrafish, and fruit flies.

This paper develops a genetically encoded fluorescent sensor, iGABASnFR, to monitor GABA in vivo and demonstrates its use in tracking GABA dynamics in various neural contexts.

The paper analyzes whole-brain neuronal activity in larval zebrafish during visual stimuli and motor output, revealing functional brain nuclei and convergent sensorimotor transformations.

The paper introduces multi-scale approaches to improve imaging and analysis of large neuronal populations by decimating spatial and temporal resolution to enable faster imaging or larger field of view with minimal accuracy loss.