Felix W. Moll
Research Group Leader at the Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen. Neuroscientist. Studies crows and modern dinosaur brains 🦖 --> 🐦⬛.
Group website: felixmoll.com
- Nice commentary on our recent paper on crow stick tool use. To add one piece of information: One of our crows did, in fact, sometimes use the substrate (i.e., the apparatus desk) to adjust its grip—the crow for which stick re-grasping by tossing was too subtle to be reliably detected.
- New paper: Stick dexterity in carrion crows🥢 Commentary on Moll et al. 2025 in which they trained crows to use stick tools. Their neat set-up allowed tracking tool motions, showing that crows became more efficient over time. Could nest building affect their stick dexterity? Full text: rdcu.be/eSOMF
- Reposted by Felix W. MollAfter the Ngogo chimpanzee group killed 21 members of neighboring groups and expanded their territory by 22%, female birth rates more than doubled and infant survival increased sharply—showing clear fitness benefits from intergroup killing. In PNAS: ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY
- Reposted by Felix W. MollAs a longtime fan of cool papers in @currentbiology.bsky.social, I am really thrilled to see this out! This study sets the stage for understanding the origins of novel (vocal) behaviors. Big shout out to the main architects of this work @xmikezheng20.bsky.social and @cliffscience.bsky.social
- Great @currentbiology.bsky.social study by @xmikezheng20.bsky.social @cliffscience.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social 🧪🧠🐭🎶 Vocal repertoire expansion in singing mice by co-opting a conserved midbrain circuit node www.cell.com/current-biol...
- Reposted by Felix W. MollResearchers gave female canaries testosterone, which causes them to sing. Two-photon in vivo imaging reveals that songs emerge due to changes in brain cell function rather than by increasing the size of a key brain region, as was once thought. In PNAS: ow.ly/pn1750XhFL5
- Great Dispatch piece by @milliejohnston.bsky.social et al.. Our crows are very flattered: "Great skill can be found in the dextrous movements of a tool tip. [ ] from cave paintings and papyrus scripts to Da Vinci’s sketches and today’s remote laparoscopic surgery." www.cell.com/current-biol...
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- Reposted by Felix W. Moll🌆🐀Scientific American article about the project we're starting on NYC rats!! scientificamerican.com/article/scie... w/ Emily Mackevicius, Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, @basisresearch.bsky.social Seeking collaborators and funders 🐀🌆
- Reposted by Felix W. MollEin Forschungsteam der @unituebingen.bsky.social zeigt, wie Krähen lernen, ein Stäbchen präzise im Schnabel zu führen, um damit an Futter zu gelangen: 👉 uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet... #Neurobiologie #Biologie #Forschung
- New paper on precise tool use learning in carrion crows @currentbiology.bsky.social. We show that—like New Caledonian crows—expert carrion crows pay close attention to the working end of their tool, suggesting tool integration into their peripersonal space. 🧵 & vids! 👇 www.cell.com/current-biol...
- DeepLabCut pose estimation (@trackingactions.bsky.social) revealed high intitial motor variability, which is essenatial for motor learning (Dhawale et al., 2017, Annu. Rev. Neurosci.).
- Trained crows dexterously corrected errors when the tool’s working end lost control over the target.
- Cool new paper on how neurons in my favorite bird's brain encode time. Congrats Millie and Max!! @milliejohnston.bsky.social , @crowbrain.bsky.social
- Cool new method (functional ultrasound imaging) now established in the crow by @daliao.bsky.social and colleagues: www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2...
- Amazing meeting with amazing people!
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- Reposted by Felix W. MollMy latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature! When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️ The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar bit.ly/3HvWSum
- Reposted by Felix W. MollOur first look at midbrain PAG’s role in singing mouse vocal control. When near each other, these mice produce two divergent vocal modes. Same circuits for USVs and Songs—or different ones? Bets were made..some of us bought beers for others! Led by @xmikezheng20.bsky.social & Clifford Harpole. 👇🏽
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- Reposted by Felix W. MollProud to have contributed to @jiaxuanqi.bsky.social's masterpiece out @nature.com! She shows that dopamine transients track the learned quality of song during juvenile learning and that dopamine release is driven not just by VTA firing, but by a local cholinergic mechanism! (1/x)
- Reposted by Felix W. MollExcited to share our latest work! It’s been a great experience working on this (including building a whole new lab!) 😊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
