Baier Lab MPI for Biological Intelligence

Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence - bi.mpg.de/baier

Another great collaboration with the fabulous Alex Jordan (Konstanz).

Video abstract with lots of movies: ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/…

Paper alert! Cognitive ethology of nest building in a shell-dwelling cichlid Swantje Grätsch et al. found that L. ocellatus builds nests through an innate behavioral sequence, which is orchestrated by a series of stimulus-response loops. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@lisa_giocomo @NatureNeuro @EmilyAeryJones Cool work. Congrats!

New paper out @NatureNeuro! Congrats to @EmilyAeryJones & team! The brain doesn’t just map where you are, it maps where it matters. Entorhinal cortex represents important, distant reward locations. A step toward understanding how experiences are linked across space. rdcu.be/fbcS4

@Evolutionistrue @hoovlet Amazing! See also our paper on nest building by a fish. Coming out in Current Biology very soon. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Think of all the natural selection involved in producing this behavior. It boggles the mind.

Wrote a review on voltage imaging at the invitation of Neurophotonics, with @UrsLucasBoehm and Zeguan Wang. This method transformed how you see neural activity in small animals, but it is still somewhat exclusive. Hope this helps break the barrier. spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/neuro…

What’s going on here? @mleptin

@leonard_zon Congratulations! Well deserved, Len!

Honored to be selected as this year’s March of Dimes Prize awardee. Grateful for the incredible work my lab has done over the years. I embraced developmental biology when I started my lab and am excited to see its principles translate to patients. marchofdimes.org/about/news/ren….

Joint junior faculty position in Computational Neuroscience, split between Ctr for Computational Neuroscience at @FlatironInst and the CUNY Graduate Center @GC_CUNY. Application deadline: 16 Jan 2026! simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/caree…

See you in Florida in March! @MPFNeuro #Sunposium2026

How do brains make decisions and why does this matter for human health? John Fox and I discuss this here on the latest episode of his "Neuroscience Perspectives" podcast. youtube.com/watch?v=-UeC-D…

Apply by Feb. 3 to become a Janelia Group Leader! Group Leaders drive breakthroughs & experimental approaches in imaging, molecular engineering, protein chemistry, mass spectrometry, & methods that don't yet exist. Learn more: janelia.org/groupleader

Inbal’s and JJ’s 2025 paper on the topographic variation of cell-type function made it into a very exclusive list of highlights of remarkable science published in Nature! nature.com/articles/d4158…

Fascinating @ScienceMagazine article on magnetosensing and its unexpected ties to mechanobiology. A pigeon’s semicircular canal in their ears, long regarded as a fluid-filled labyrinth that acts as a kind of gyroscope for orientation (much like our own) - is receptive to weak electromagnetic fields, activating evolutionary conserved brain circuits for motion and spatial orientation. What other tissues are covertly multiplexing multiple streams of biophysical information to regulate health and behaviour? Link: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Now online! Retraction notice to: Transcriptome-scale RNA-targeting CRISPR screens reveal essential lncRNAs in human cells dlvr.it/TPdpN6

@AdrianoAguzzi @reviewer3com @Proofig Agreed.

@AdrianoAguzzi A bit late…

@AdrianoAguzzi Apparently, the entire paper, not just this figure, was generated by AI. If true, author should be banned from publishing again.