Publications by Pavan P Ramdya

Modeling conditional distributions of neural and behavioral data with masked variational autoencoders

Pavan P Ramdya, Victor Lobato Rios, Daniel Eduardo Morales Garza

Extracting the relationship between high-dimensional neural recordings and complex behavior is a ubiquitous problem in neuroscience. Encoding and decoding models target the conditional distribution of neural activity given behavior and vice versa, while di ...

2025

Descending networks transform command signals into population motor control

Pavan P Ramdya, Jonas Friedrich Braun

To convert intentions into actions, movement instructions must pass from the brain to downstream motor circuits through descending neurons (DNs). These include small sets of command-like neurons that are sufficient to drive behaviours—the circuit mechanism ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2024

NeuroMechFly v2: simulating embodied sensorimotor control in adult Drosophila

Pavan P Ramdya

Discovering principles underlying the control of animal behavior requires a tight dialogue between experiments and neuromechanical models. Such models have primarily been used to investigate motor control with less emphasis on how the brain and motor syste ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2024

The neuromechanics of animal locomotion: From biology to robotics and back

Auke Ijspeert, Pavan P Ramdya

Robotics and neuroscience are sister disciplines that both aim to understand how agile, efficient, and robust locomotion can be achieved in autonomous agents. Robotics has already benefitted from neuromechanical principles discovered by investigating anima ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2023

Ascending neurons convey behavioral state to integrative sensory and action selection brain regions

Pavan P Ramdya, Florian Aymanns, Nicolas Talabot, Chin-Lin Chen

Knowing one's own behavioral state has long been theorized as critical for contextualizing dynamic sensory cues and identifying appropriate future behaviors. Ascending neurons (ANs) in the motor system that project to the brain are well positioned to provi ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

NeuroMechFly: an integrative simulation testbed for studying Drosophila behavioral control

Pavan P Ramdya, Victor Lobato Rios

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Connecting the dots in ethology: applying network theory to understand neural and animal collectives

Pavan P Ramdya, Adám Gosztolai

A major goal shared by neuroscience and collective behavior is to understand how dynamic interactions between individual elements give rise to behaviors in populations of neurons and animals, respectively. This goal has recently become within reach, thanks ...

CURRENT BIOLOGY LTD2022

Microengineered devices enable long-term imaging of the ventral nerve cord in behaving adult Drosophila

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Pavan P Ramdya, Florian Aymanns, Victor Lobato Rios, Murat Kaynak, Semih Günel, Chin-Lin Chen, Laura Joan Hermans, Jonas Friedrich Braun

The dynamics and connectivity of neural circuits continuously change on timescales ranging from milliseconds to an animal's lifetime. Therefore, to understand biological networks, minimally invasive methods are required to repeatedly record them in behavin ...

Nature Research2022

Descending neuron population dynamics during odor-evoked and spontaneous limb-dependent behaviors

Pavan P Ramdya, Florian Aymanns, Chin-Lin Chen

Deciphering how the brain regulates motor circuits to control complex behaviors is an important, long-standing challenge in neuroscience. In the fly, Drosophila melanogaster, this is coordinated by a population of similar to 1100 descending neurons (DNs). ...

eLIFE SCIENCES PUBL LTD2022

NeuroMechFly, a neuromechanical model of adult Drosophila melanogaster

Auke Ijspeert, Pavan P Ramdya, Jonathan Patrick Arreguit O'Neill, Shravan Tata Ramalingasetty, Victor Lobato Rios

Animal behavior emerges from an interaction between neural network dynamics, musculoskeletal properties and the physical environment. Accessing and understanding the interplay between these elements requires the development of integrative and morphological ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022