Kristian Herrera

New paper out : "Synchronization of behavioral and cardiac dynamics in larval zebrafish" Here, we report a pretty striking relationship between behavioral state and heart rate in larval zebrafish, and then explore the mechanisms that lead to this coupling bit.ly/4ciYt3R

I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.

New lab preprint: @grace-padilla.bsky.social studied how zebrafish respond to chemical cues of death and decay. Brief exposure initiated a persistent state, but not through olfaction. Instead, these cues' basic pH was detected by trigeminal neurons and TrpA1 channels www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social

Whole-body cellular activity imaging in zebrafish, headed by Virginie Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social - new paper is out: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The animal is the same. The stimulus is identical. Yet the behaviour varies. Why? In our new study, @ashritocyte.bsky.social explores the sources of this behavioural variability under fully controlled conditions in larval zebrafish doing optomotor response. (1/7) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Yet another cool story just came out of the ever-so-capable hands of Roy Harpaz (@royharpaz.bsky.social). www.nature.com/articles/s41... Roy showed that larval zebrafish will adapt and get used to crowded conditions, and that they are then, later on, less sensitive about their personal space.

I am excited to announce the latest paper from our lab, published in Science ! In this study, we show that thalamocortical-like circuits in the zebrafish brain process sensory information hierarchically across topographically organized forebrain circuits.

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!

JOB ALERT🚨The Zwaka Group at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg 🇩🇪 is seeking a full-time Postdoctoral Fellow to be a key part of their fishy research team. 🐟💤🧠🫀 More details and how to apply in this thread ⬇️ #ZebrafishJobs #PostdocJobs #zebrafish 🧪 @hannazwaka.bsky.social

Fintastic thread on cool paper 😎

PGE2 modulation of stimulus valence directs zebrafish behavioral fever https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723740v1

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How does the brain manage metabolism proactively? We show that a neuron–glia circuit helps zebrafish anticipate the delayed oxygen cost of movement and act before brain O2 drops. Excited to share our preprint on predictive oxygen regulation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Allostasis

Check out our Q&A with Mark Fishman, who uses the zebrafish to study body–brain interactions and the genetic structure of social behavior at Harvard University! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Very happy to see this out. 👏 @yinanwan.bsky.social Bogdan Bintu and team. Whole-embryo spatial transcriptomics at subcellular resolution from gastrulation to organogenesis | free link Science www.science.org/eprint/5MHTM...

Brain and Heart in Parallel: Zebrafish Study Reframes the Biology of Fear 🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @engertlab.bsky.social @kherrera.bsky.social @mishaahrens.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social

I'm pleased to share our newest preprint, which was actually the very first project started in my lab. It took a long time to come together! We address the challenge of translating complex psychiatric genetics into biological mechanism. tinyurl.com/4w7hv8d8

Social context modulates cannibalistic attraction in Drosophila larvae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.08.698439v1

1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here: rdcu.be/eX1L4

Smarter Microscopes, Faster Maps: Lichtman Lab’s “SmartEM” Brings AI to Connectomics 🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @yaronmr.bsky.social @harvard.edu @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @natmethods.nature.com @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @thermofishersci.bsky.social

New paper alert!!...🤩 Led by @blogeman.bsky.social, we identify how cell type-specific hormonal responses in the hypothalamus tunes parenting behavior in males and females 🐭🧠🍼. Highlights in thread 👇 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

To study how animals understand the physical world (and the rules that govern its dynamics), @jinyao-y.bsky.social trains rats to play fetch with robots 🐀🤖🎾 To learn more, come to our poster Tuesday morning! [Board W11] Rats learn and use intuitive physics knowledge to solve fetch tasks. #SfN2025

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...

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

Lab’s 1st preprint! Menstruation is understudied due to societal taboos + a biological challenge: mice (a key system for research + drug discovery) don’t menstruate. @cagricevrim.bsky.social made menstruating mice + used them to discover early events in menstruation. He is on the job market!

“Blame your parents if you can’t pay enough attention." At least when you are a zebrafish! Our new study on attentional switching together with Kumaresh Krishnan, @paulapflitsch.bsky.social , @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social and Florian Engert is out in Science Advances: doi.org/10.1126/scia...

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵

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...

🚨Hiring Alert! Join Gregor Schuhknechts’s new group Brain Algorithms and Circuits @mpibrain.bsky.social ! 🧠 Fully funded PhD & Postdoc 🐟 Larval #zebrafish model 🔬 Imaging, electrophysiology, EM 💻 #SystemsNeuroscience 👉 brain.mpg.de/schuhknecht

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com! We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments www.nature.com/articles/s41... This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Solar-Powered Thieves: New Study Uncovers Animal Organelle That Sustains Photosynthesis from Stolen Chloroplasts 🧠🧪 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @nbellono.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social

Octopuses Use Microbial Signals to Guide Complex Behaviors 🧠🧪 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @nbellono.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social

A connectomic resource for neural cataloguing and circuit dissection of the larval zebrafish brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658982v1

Now published in @plos.org Computational Biology our paper led by @yesthatlindsay.bsky.social on the integration of sensory and motor information in zebrafish thermoregulation. Thanks to the peer reviewers for great suggestions. dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Wouldn't it be great if we could not only image large connectomic volumes but also completely reconstruct them? And if a whole mouse brain project didn't cost billions? With the PATHFINDER preprint (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), we preview a future where it doesn't have to.

Excited to share that the astrocyte-centered half of my thesis work is now out @science.org ! With @mishaahrens.bsky.social and @marcduque.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/8

Maps are everywhere in the brain...and finally we've discovered one in the nose! Led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social, we uncovered the logic that specifies the positions of each of the 1,000 sensory neuron subtypes in the nose and aligns their projections to the brain.👇👃see more details below👃👇

A drop of milkshake takes a wild ride as it passes through the body. Rachel and Kiersten and the team came up with cool strategies for visualizing food passing through the mouse GI tract and mapping the activity of the same 100s of brainstem neurons across weeks during feeding and other behaviors.

3/3 We are looking for a lab technician, a lab manager and researchers to join us in this new chapter. Read the post here: portugueslab.com/the-lab-is-h... Reach out to us if you are interested.