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Quantifying behavior to understand the brain

Over the past years, numerous methods have emerged to automate the quantification of animal behavior at a resolution not previously imaginable. This has opened up a new field of computational ethology, and will in the near future make it possible to …

SLEAP: Multi-animal pose tracking

The desire to understand how the brain generates and patterns behavior has driven rapid methodological innovation to quantify and model natural animal behavior. This has led to important advances in deep learning-based markerless pose estimation that …

A machine-vision approach for automated pain measurement at millisecond timescales

Objective and automatic measurement of pain in mice remains a barrier for discovery in neuroscience. Here, we capture paw kinematics during pain behavior in mice with high-speed videography and automated paw tracking with machine and deep learning …

Toward Community-Driven Big Open Brain Science: Open Big Data and Tools for Structure, Function, and Genetics

As acquiring bigger data becomes easier in experimental brain science, computational and statistical brain science must achieve similar advances to fully capitalize on these data. Tackling these problems will benefit from a more explicit and …

Inexpensive multi-patient respiratory monitoring system for helmet ventilation during COVID-19 pandemic

Helmet non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is a form of continuous positive applied pressure that has emerged as a useful therapy for COVID-19 patients who require respiratory support but may not require invasive ventilation. Helmet NIV has seen an …

Fast animal pose estimation using deep neural networks

The need for automated and efficient systems for tracking full animal pose has increased with the complexity of behavioral data and analyses. Here we introduce LEAP (LEAP estimates animal pose), a deep-learning-based method for predicting the …

Normal cognitive and social development require posterior cerebellar activity

Cognitive and social capacities require postnatal experience, yet the pathways by which experience guides development are unknown. Here we show that the normal development of motor and nonmotor capacities requires cerebellar activity. Using …

Discovery of a New Song Mode in Drosophila Reveals Hidden Structure in the Sensory and Neural Drivers of Behavior

Deciphering how brains generate behavior depends critically on an accurate description of behavior. If distinct behaviors are lumped together, separate modes of brain activity can be wrongly attributed to the same behavior. Alternatively, if a single …

Automated gesture tracking in head-fixed mice

BACKGROUND: The preparation consisting of a head-fixed mouse on a spherical or cylindrical treadmill offers unique advantages in a variety of experimental contexts. Head fixation provides the mechanical stability necessary for optical and …

To Fight or Not to Fight

In this issue of Neuron, Watanabe et al. (2017) uncover how octopamine, an invertebrate norepinephrine analog, modulates the neural pathways that bias Drosophila males toward aggression.