All of this is captured by a simple deterministic model, showing that a substantial share of behavioural variability can be attributed to history-dependence alone. (5/7)

Repetition slowly builds over the course of the experiment, increasing the number of incorrect trials — where fish move opposite to the direction of the stimulus. (4/7)

Surprisingly, the two histories pull in opposite directions. Sensory history is repulsive, promoting response alternation. Response history is attractive, promoting repetition. This pattern has been observed in humans and rodents as well. (3/7)

Congratulations to Lucas Heger for successfully defending his master’s thesis! 🙌 Under the supervision of postdoc @danielhummel.bsky.social, he explored the molecular biology of designing transgenic fish lines with light-inducible proteins to label neurons in the zebrafish brain! 🐟

Swim bias has long-range temporal structure, with fluctuations remaining correlated over long periods and no single timescale dominating the behavior. These fluctuations persist even in the response to visual stimuli, suggesting that the underlying dynamics are intrinsic.

We find that swim direction bias fluctuates spontaneously, even in spatially uniform environments. The probabilities of consecutive swims can be captured by a Markov model with dynamic transition probabilities. Together, these findings reveal unexpectedly rich internal dynamics.

🚨New preprint doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.07.730682. We show that zebrafish larvae exhibit complex, internally generated, spontaneous behavioral patterns in the absence of stimuli. These dynamics can be described by a simple Markov process with transition probabilities that change over time.

Congratulations to our bachelor student @valentindsr.bsky.social on successfully defending his bachelor's thesis! 🥳 Under the supervision of postdoc Margherita Zaupa, Valentin's dedication helped to pioneer targeted electroporation in the lab, laying the foundation for future work.

Congratulations to our bachelor student Anna on a fantastic defense, supervised by postdoc Margherita Zaupa. In a remarkably short time, she used molecular biology techniques to make real progress on mapping where ribosomes are located in larval zebrafish neurons. 🧠🐟

New paper out: www.cell.com/iscience/ful... Congratulations to our former PhD student @maxcapelle.bsky.social whose work reveals that the switch in light preference across zebrafish development is driven by a reweighting of three parallel visual processing pathways. Check out a short summary below!

What a great start to the summer with @elefp.bsky.social and @syddoingscience.bsky.social representing the lab at the Neural Basis of Natural Behaviors conference!🧠 From worms to humans, the talks reflected an exciting new direction in neuroscience toward studying the brain in natural environments.

A huge congratulations to Katja, who defended her PhD last week 🎉 As one of the lab's founding members, she played a pivotal role in shaping the lab from its earliest days, and her hard work, passion, and scientific curiosity have set the bar high. We look forward to her next scientific adventures 🚀

Decision algorithms change over development. Self-reinforcing integration arises abruptly early on. Autism & epilepsy-linked mutations in zebrafish alter these integration dynamics. Our validated DDM fitting reveals how development and single-gene knockouts reshape the cognitive algorithm. (3/4)

Individual brains, individual algorithms: we extract latent cognitive variables from a DDM fitted on optomotor response behavioral data across fish. After validating the model against 100+ synthetic models, we apply it to experimental data, revealing high inter-fish variability. (2/4)

How do development and genetics shape evidence integration? 🧠 In our new preprint, we dissect how sensory evidence accumulation over time guides decisions. Want to know more? Keep reading or or come to Roberto's poster 1-003 this Thursday at #Cosyne2026. (1/4) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

New paper out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🥳 Congratulations to our PhD student Katja for her inspiring work just published in Nature Communications on how the larval zebrafish brain processes multiple visual features. Check out a short summary of the work here: tinyurl.com/yzv4ct9k

Another memorable Bahl Lab Winter Retreat made even better by having the Vogt and Bollmann labs join us for two days of sun, snow & science! 🌞❄️

Congrats to Philipp and Vincent supervised by our post-doc Margherita for each successfully and fantastically defending their bachelor's thesis today! Wishing them both the best of luck with their future endeavors 🎂🥳

it’s offishial ! the end of the year is upon us and what a year it has been. wishing happy holidays to all and a fishtastic new year! 🐟✨

Congratulations to the lab's first PhD student @maxcapelle.bsky.social for defending his PhD last week! Max not only helped shape the lab from day one, but also made outstanding scientific achievements, which have laid the foundation for future research. Wishing him all the best 🥳

Congrats to Margherita 🥳 a post-doc in the lab who was awarded a Walter Benjamin Position from the @dfg.de to investigate how zebrafish integrate predator and social cues during collective escape responses.

Congratulations to Susanne (mentored by post-doc @mehaj.bsky.social) for successfully defending her master's thesis investigating neural dynamics in the larval zebrafish brain 🥳 Wishing you the best of luck with your #jobsearch for a PhD position!

These results demonstrate how distinct visual features are extracted, processed in parallel, and eventually integrated to guide behavior. This modular and parallel circuit architecture provides a context-flexible solution for transforming sensory input into action. (5/7)

We investigated the morphology and neurotransmitters of functionally identified neurons and show how the identified pathways converge in the anterior hindbrain. (4/7)

Through brain-wide 2P calcium imaging, we identify neurons whose activity matches our model components. (3/7)

Larval zebrafish follow the direction of whole-field motion #OMR and prefer to swim towards brighter areas #phototaxis. But what happens in the brain when motion goes left, and there is brightness on the right? (1/7)

How do brains make decisions when faced with multiple, potentially conflicting cues? In our latest preprint, we show how #zebrafish use an additive strategy and process multiple visual features through anatomically distinct parallel pathways tinyurl.com/mvkn8em9 Thread 👇

The Behavioural Neurobiology Summer School in Kosovo is back for the 2nd year and after just a few days we already made it onto live TV! For anyone who speaks Albanian, you can check out the full broadcast here: shorturl.at/kpUzp 🎙️

We ran simulations with virtual fish to test the model’s prediction for brightness navigation. Our model is able to qualitatively reproduce the behavior of the real fish. (7/10)

Using these pathways, we build a library of agent-based models to predict animal behavior across stimulation conditions and in more complex environments. (6/10)