Laboratory of Nachum Ulanovsky
       
          Mailing address:  Nachum Ulanovsky, Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

Nachum Ulanovsky: Research Interests

Our lab studies the neurobiology of learning & memory, and the relation between brain activity and behavior – more specifically, neural activity in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, brain regions crucial for memory in animals and humans.  The animal model used in the lab is the echolocating bat, a flying mammal that has extraordinary spatial memory [pdf].  We pioneered the usage of bats as a model for studies of mammalian hippocampal function: tetrode recording techniques were used, which allow collecting data from dozens of neurons simultaneously.  We found 'place cells' in the bat hippocampus, similar to rodents; however, 'theta oscillations' differed from theta of rodents in both its behavioral contingency and its time-course, prompting a re-interpretation of the similarities and differences in theta oscillation between rodents, bats and primates [pdf].  Recently we started using the Egyptian fruit bat – a large bat species weighing ~150 gr – to conduct recordings of grid-cells in the entorhinal cortex of crawling bats, as well as to record neural spiking activity in freely flying bats, using a custom radio-telemetry system.  We also showed recently a surprising optimization principle in the sonar system of Egyptian fruit bats – a principle that we predict would generalize also to other organisms and sensory modalities, such as dog olfaction and human vision [pdf]. Additional studies included tracking of bat navigation in the wild, using the smallest GPS dataloggers in the world, which provided evidence for a 'cognitive map' on a 100-km scale in bats [pdf].  Overall, our general approach is to take advantage of the unique properties of bats – their use of a temporally-discrete sensory system (sonar) and their 3-D flight abilities – in order to ask general questions in systems neuroscience.

Some research themes in our lab include:


Movies / TV  - Watch a Discovery Channel movie on the work done in the lab, as well as the following Interview on Israel TV channel 10 - London & Kirschenbaum show.


Selected Publications

  • Tsoar A, Nathan R, Bartan Y, Vyssotski AL, Dell'Omo G & Ulanovsky N, Large-scale navigational map in a mammal, PNAS 108, e718-724 (2011).   [PDF]  [Supplementary Movie] 
  • Yovel Y, Falk B, Moss CF & Ulanovsky N, Active control of acoustic field-of-view in a biosonar system, PLoS Biol 9, e1001150 (2011).   [PDF]
  • Ulanovsky N, Neuroscience: How is three-dimensional space encoded in the brain? Curr Biol 21, R886-888 (2011).   [PDF]
  • Ulanovsky N & Moss CF, Dynamics of hippocampal spatial representation in echolocating bats, Hippocampus 21, 150-161 (2011).   [PDF]
  • Yovel Y, Geva-Sagiv M & Ulanovsky N, Click-based echolocation in bats: not so primitive after all, JCP-A 197, 515-530 (2011).   [PDF]
  • Ulanovsky N & Moss CF, What the bat's voice tells the bat's brain, PNAS 105, 8491-8498 (2008).  [PDF] 
  • Ulanovsky N, Fenton MB, Tsoar A & Korine C,  Dynamics of jamming avoidance in echolocating bats, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 271, 1467-1475 (2004).   [PDF]
  • Ulanovsky N, Las L, Farkas D & Nelken I, Multiple time scales of adaptation in auditory cortex neurons, Journal of Neuroscience 24, 10440-10453 (2004).   [PDF]  [This Week In The Journal]  [Correction]
  • Ulanovsky N, Las L & Nelken I, Processing of low-probability sounds by cortical neurons, Nature Neuroscience 6, 391-398 (2003).   [PDF]  [News & Views] 

People

          Name                                                                        Background


Alumni & Sabbatical Visitors

          Name                                                                        Background


Positions Available  for outstanding, highly motivated graduate students and postdocs who are fascinated and interested in systems neuroscience, the neurobiology of learning & memory, the neural basis of behavior, and/or in computational neuroscience.


Courses


Lab trips - photos & fun

          Click here to see photos of Lab Trips.

 

Bat hippocampal spikes and place fields


Cover image of Nature Neuroscience

Personal

Some old pictures: photos from our Costa Rica trip (2006); a collage of pictures from my 8-day sea-kayaking trip in Croatia; a picture of rappelling in the Yehudiya waterfall; and our family trip to Nepal (10-day Jomsom trek).

Last updated by Nachum Ulanovsky on 15-April-2012.