@article {70284, title = {Astrocyte-induced internal state transitions reshape brainwide sensory, integrative, and motor computations}, journal = {bioRxiv}, year = {2026}, month = {2026 Feb 05}, abstract = {

Animals rapidly adapt to changing circumstances by shifting how they perceive, integrate, and act. Such flexibility is often attributed to transitions between internal states that exert widespread influence across the brain. Yet the mechanisms that drive state transitions and how they reconfigure brainwide computation remain unclear. Larval zebrafish, when actions are rendered futile by decoupling visual flow feedback from swimming in virtual reality, enter a temporary passive, energy-preserving state. In this state, astrocyte calcium levels are elevated, and swim reinitiation requires greater accumulated visual motion. Using whole-brain, cellular-resolution activity imaging, we observed widespread circuit alterations underlying this disengaged state: neuronal visual responses weakened, visual motion integration over time became dramatically leakier, motor inhibition increased, and motor preparation slowed, together suppressing conversion of sensory evidence into action. Astrocyte calcium rose during futile swimming, tracked the emergence and resolution of these brainwide changes, and was both necessary and sufficient to drive them. Thus, astrocytes orchestrate internal states that profoundly reshape neural computations, most powerfully at intermediate integrative processing stages, to meet changing demands.

}, doi = {10.64898/2026.02.05.704034}, url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2026/02/05/2026.02.05.704034}, author = {Lim, Jing-Xuan and Wei, Ziqiang and Narayan, Sujatha and Zhang, Yan and Hasseman, Jeremy P. and Kolb, Ilya and Zheng, Jihong and Sheikhattar, Alireza and Mi, Xuelong and Zheng, Wei and Yang, Xueying and Beriashvili, Mariam and Fleishman, Greg and Wee, Caroline L. and de Zeeuw, Chris and Yu, Guoqiang and Babadi, Behtash and Rubinov, Mikail and Looger, Loren L. and Bergles, Dwight E. and Fitzgerald, James E. and Ahrens, Misha B.} } @article {69847, title = {Fast, accurate, and versatile data analysis platform for the quantification of molecular spatiotemporal signals.}, journal = {Cell}, year = {2025}, month = {2025 Apr 04}, abstract = {

Optical recording of intricate molecular dynamics is becoming an indispensable technique for biological studies, accelerated by the development of new or improved biosensors and microscopy technology. This creates major computational challenges to extract and quantify biologically meaningful spatiotemporal patterns embedded within complex and rich data sources, many of which cannot be captured with existing methods. Here, we introduce activity quantification and analysis (AQuA2), a fast, accurate, and versatile data analysis platform built upon advanced machine-learning techniques. It decomposes complex live-imaging-based datasets into elementary signaling events, allowing accurate and unbiased quantification of molecular activities and identification of consensus functional units. We demonstrate applications across a wide range of biosensors, cell types, organs, animal models, microscopy techniques, and imaging approaches. As exemplar findings, we show how AQuA2 identified drug-dependent interactions between neurons and astroglia, as well as distinct sensorimotor signal propagation patterns in the mouse spinal cord.

Preprint:\ https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.02.592259

}, issn = {1097-4172}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2025.03.012}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.03.012}, author = {Mi, Xuelong and Chen, Alex Bo-Yuan and Duarte, Daniela and Carey, Erin and Taylor, Charlotte R and Braaker, Philipp N and Bright, Mark and Almeida, Rafael G and Lim, Jing-Xuan and Ruetten, Virginia M S and Wang, Yizhi and Wang, Mengfan and Zhang, Weizhan and Zheng, Wei and Reitman, Michael E and Huang, Yongkang and Wang, Xiaoyu and Li, Lei and Deng, Hanfei and Shi, Song-Hai and Poskanzer, Kira E and Lyons, David A and Nimmerjahn, Axel and Ahrens, Misha B and Yu, Guoqiang} } @article {68665, title = {Fast and sensitive GCaMP calcium indicators for imaging neural populations.}, journal = {Nature}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Mar 15}, abstract = {

Calcium imaging with protein-based indicators is widely used to follow neural activity in intact nervous systems, but current protein sensors report neural activity at timescales much slower than electrical signalling and are limited by trade-offs between sensitivity and kinetics. Here we used large-scale screening and structure-guided mutagenesis to develop and optimize several fast and sensitive GCaMP-type indicators. The resulting {\textquoteright}jGCaMP8{\textquoteright} sensors, based on the calcium-binding protein calmodulin and a fragment of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, have ultra-fast kinetics (half-rise times of 2 ms) and the highest sensitivity for neural activity reported for a protein-based calcium sensor. jGCaMP8 sensors will allow tracking of large populations of neurons on timescales relevant to neural computation.

}, issn = {1476-4687}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-023-05828-9}, author = {Zhang, Yan and Rozsa, Marton and Liang, Yajie and Bushey, Daniel and Wei, Ziqiang and Zheng, Jihong and Reep, Daniel and Broussard, Gerard Joey and Tsang, Arthur and Tsegaye, Getahun and Narayan, Sujatha and Obara, Christopher J and Lim, Jing-Xuan and Patel, Ronak and Zhang, Rongwei and Ahrens, Misha B and Turner, Glenn C and Wang, Samuel S-H and Korff, Wyatt L and Schreiter, Eric R and Svoboda, Karel and Hasseman, Jeremy P and Kolb, Ilya and Looger, Loren L} }