Hagar Lavian
hlavian.bsky.social
Hagar Lavian
@hlavian.bsky.social
Assistant professor at Tel-Aviv University. Likes to confuse tiny fish and watch their brains.
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Like most animals, fish move less at night. Underwater, stable posture requires movement. Find out how fish don't fall down at night in: Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish from @yunluzhu.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish
Most fish are inherently unstable and must swim to stabilize posture. How diurnal fish reduce activity at night while maintaining postural control remains unclear. We defined distinct locomotor strate...
doi.org
November 19, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
New work from Baier Lab 🧠 🐟

🔗 to paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
November 10, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Now online! Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background
Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background
Vertebrate eyes first evolved in water, where spectral content rapidly fades with distance. Zebrafish exploit this loss by antagonizing cone signals to suppress the background, pointing to distance estimation—rather than color—as an ancestral cone function.
dlvr.it
November 3, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Kaarthik A Balakrishnan: We identify medullary circuits that represent the valence of thermal stimuli and control both long-term strategies of cold-avoidance and short term hot avoidance behaviors to enable thermoregulation. www.cell.com/current-biol...
Behavioral and circuit principles of temperature gradient navigation
Behavioral thermoregulation is critical for survival across animals. Balakrishnan and Haesemeyer discover that thermoregulatory behavior in larval zebrafish is organized into longer-term swim modes. T...
www.cell.com
October 24, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
I am excited to share my PhD work on head-direction cells recorded in the wild, now published in @science.org, where we recorded neurons in bats flying outdoors on an island.

doi.org/10.1126/sci...

With @ray-neuro.bsky.social, Shir Maimon, Liora Las, Nachum Ulanovsky and many others
October 16, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Ever wonder if there are spatial maps in the brain outside the hippocampal-entorhinal regions? In this preprint, we describe a novel spatial map in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that preserves the topological arrangements and distance between locations. However, ...

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
The orbitofrontal cortex forms a context-generalized spatial schema that preserves topology and distance
Flexible and efficient navigation requires the brain to construct maps that are both topological, preserving the relationships between locations, and schematic, enabling generalization across environm...
www.biorxiv.org
September 26, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
*New preprint from the lab* – “Granularity of thalamic head direction cells”
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🧠📈 🧪
1/11
Granularity of thalamic head direction cells
Head direction signaling is fundamental for spatial orientation and navigation. The anterodorsal nucleus of the thalamus (ADn) contains a high density of head direction (HD) cells that process sensori...
doi.org
September 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧵1/
September 11, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 8, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social
August 28, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
In the past year and a half, we have been intensively protesting and fighting the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the war, secure the release of all hostages, and prevent the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Until now, our protests have primarily been focused internally.
July 27, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Tomorrow at 19:30 a huge demonstration in Tel Aviv - The Israeli Academia demands to end the war NOW. These horrors are unbearable and must stop.
July 23, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity, says Alon Chen

https://go.nature.com/40wXMx6
How we’re rebuilding the Weizmann Institute — and our hopes for a better future
Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity.
go.nature.com
July 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
I am proud to share that our work of 4+ years has finally been published. We wondered if there are distinct behaviors that mark sleep in 🪰, where sleep has been defined as prolonged immobility.
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in Drosophila
A machine learning platform identifies and characterizes the dynamics of microbehaviors during fly sleep.
www.science.org
April 8, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Hagar Lavian
Neural blueprint for credit assignment in zebrafish 🐟

@sinanmalik.bsky.social covers work describing how motor actions are linked with sensory feedback via the dorsal habenula–interpeduncular pathway
#preprint from the Portugues Lab #TU_Muenchen

#preLight⬇️
prelights.biologists.com/highlights/a...
A zebrafish circuit for behavioral credit assignment - preLights
Neural blueprint for credit assignment in zebrafish: linking specific actions to outcomes via a dorsal habenula–interpeduncular circuit.
prelights.biologists.com
March 4, 2025 at 3:37 PM