Roy Harpaz
I study how animals use social information to guide moment-to-moment decisions, and how these individual decisions give rise to collective behavior. Working at the intersection of neuroscience and ethology, I seek to identify the behavioral algorithms animals use and the neural mechanisms that implement them.
My primary model organism is the zebrafish, whose behavioral repertoire spans split-second movement decisions within a shoal, flexible foraging strategies, and learning. The genetic accessibility of zebrafish, together with advanced imaging techniques, makes it possible to connect these behaviors to the activity of identified neurons and neural circuits.
Natural collective behavior of zebrafish larvae
Individual larva interacting with virtual agents
2-photon calcium imaging in a socially interacting larval zebrafish
Zoom in view on neural activity in the zebrafish habenula
A group of adult medaka fish
A female Amazon molly swimming with her offspring, all clones of their mother.
My research also takes a comparative approach. I study medaka to examine distinct forms of social behavior and Amazon mollies, whose clonal reproduction provides a powerful system for disentangling genetic and environmental influences on behavior. I also compare artificial and biological neural networks, using artificial networks as computational models to investigate the representations and algorithms that generate complex behavior
I believe that neural mechanisms are best understood in the context of the natural behaviors they evolved to support. By integrating quantitative behavioral experiments, mathematical and computational modeling, and neurobiological approaches, my work aims to reveal how the social brain transforms information about others into adaptive individual and collective behavior.