Publications

2025

Chen J, He MY, Murthy VN, Pehlevan C, Zavatone-Veth JA†, Masset P†. 2025. Simultaneous detection and estimation in olfactory sensing. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2025.11.01.686013. †– joint senior authors.

Dhanyasi N, Meirovitch Y, Kapoor V, Wilson AM, Wang S, Wei D, Schalek R, Ma R, Wu Y, Manthena A, Cervantes DC, Lin Z, Liu Y, Chimaladinne S, Morris B, Vaddiparti IA, Zhu Y, Dokiburra S, Parampalli R, Yang F, Berger DR, Pfister H, Murthy VN, Lichtman JW. 2025. Developmental connectomics of the mouse cerebellum. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2025.09.15.676403.

Tong WL, Murthy VN†, Reddy G†. 2025. Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior. PLoS Comput Biol. 21(9): e1013454. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013454. †– joint senior authors.

Fernández del Castillo JC, Pashakhanloo F, Murthy VN†, Zavatone-Veth JA†. 2025. Convergent motifs of early olfactory processing are recapitulated by layer-wise efficient coding. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2025.09.03.673748. †– joint senior authors.

Jayakumar S, Rigolli N, Mathis MW, Vergassola M, Mathis A†, Murthy VN†. 2025. Mice navigate scent trails using predictive policies. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2025.08.27.672631. †– joint senior authors.

Nelson AC*, Kapoor V*, Vaughn E, Gnanasegaram JA, Rubinstein ND, Talay M, Murthy VN, Dulac D. 2025. Molecular and neural control of social hierarchy by a forebrain-thalamocortical circuit. Cell. (advanced online). * joint first authors [Press: MCB News]

Qian L*, Burrell M*, Hennig JA, Matias S, Murthy VN, Gershman SJ, Uchida N. 2025. Prospective contingency explains behavior and dopamine signals during associative learning. Nat Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/s41593-025-01915-4. * joint first authors [Press: MCB News]

Tolooshams B*, Matias S*, Wu H, Temereanca S, Uchida N, Murthy VN, Masset P†, Ba D†. 2025. Interpretable deep learning for deconvolutional analysis of neural signals. Neuron. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2025.02.006. * joint first authors; † joint senior authors. [Press: MCB News, Nature Neuroscience, Kempner Institute blog]

Boero L*, Wu H*, Zak JD, Masset P, Pashakhanloo F, Jayakumar S, Tolooshams B, Ba D, Murthy VN. 2025. Perception and neural representation of intermittent odor stimuli in mice. bioRxiv.  doi: 10.1101/2025.02.12.637969. * equal contribution

Drnovsek D, Weitkamp K, Murthy VN, Gurbuz E, Haehner A, Hummel  T. 2025. Detection of odorants in odour mixtures among healthy people and patients with olfactory dysfunction. Eur J Neurosci. 2025;61:e16633.

2024

Patel H, Garrido Portilla V, Shneidman AV, J. Movilli J, Alvarenga J, Dupre C, Aizenberg M, Murthy VN, Tropsha A, Aizenberg J. 2024. Design principles from natural olfaction for electronic noses. Adv Sci 2412669. [Press: Harvard Brain Science Initiative]

Kumar T, Bordelon B, Pehlevan C, Murthy VN, Gershman SJ. 2024. Do mice grok? Glimpses of hidden progress during overtraining in sensory cortex. arXiv 2411.03541 (published as a conference paper in ICLR2025)

Liu B, Qin S, Murthy VN†, Tu Y†. 2024. One nose but two nostrils: learning to align with sparse connections between two olfactory cortices. PRX Life. 2, 043016 †– joint senior authors. [Press: MCB News]

Grimaud J. Dorrell W, Jayakumar S, Pehlevan C, Murthy VN. 2024. Bilateral alignment of receptive fields in the olfactory cortex. eNeuro. 0155-24.2024. [Press: MCB News]

Murthy VN. 2024. Olfactory navigation in fluctuating environments. Curr Biol. 34:R1013-R1018.

Zak JD†, Reddy G, Konanur V, Murthy VN†. 2024. Distinct information conveyed to the olfactory bulb by feedforward input from the nose and feedback from the cortex.  Nat Commun. 15:3268. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-47366-6. †– joint senior authors. [Press: UIC]

2023

Tong WL, Iyer A, Murthy VN, Reddy G. 2023. Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2023.12.03.569774.

Zak JD, Reddy G, Konanur V, Murthy VN. 2023. Distinct information conveyed to the olfactory bulb by feedforward input from the nose and feedback from the cortex.  bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2023.10.09.560787.

Brandt S*, Pavlichenko I*, Shneidman AV*, Patel H*, Tripp A, Wong TSB, Lazaro S, Thompson E, Maltz A, Storwick T, Beggs H, Szendrei-Temesi K, Lotsch BV, Kaplan N, Visser CW, Brenner MP, Murthy VN, Aizenberg J. 2023. Nonequilibrium sensing of volatile compounds using active and passive analyte delivery. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 120 (31) e2303928120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.230392812 *- joint first authors [Press: SEAS News]

Zavatone-Veth J*, Masset P*, Tong WL, Zak JD, Murthy VN†, Pehlevan C†. 2023. Neural circuits for fast Poisson compressed sensing in the olfactory bulb. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (NeurIPS 2023). *– joint first authors, †– joint senior authors.

Berners-Lee A*, Shtrahman E*, Grimaud J, Murthy VN. 2023. Experience-dependent evolution of odor mixture representations in piriform cortex. PLoS Biol. 21(4): e3002086. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002086  *- joint first authors (earlier bioRxiv version). [Press: MCB News]

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2022

Masset P*, Zavatone-Veth J*, Connor, JP, Murthy VN†, Pehlevan C†. 2022. Natural gradient enables fast sampling in spiking neural networks. NeurIPS 2022. (bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2022.06.03.494680). *- joint first authors, † – joint senior authors.

Ganga Prasath S*, Mandal S*, Giardina F*, Kennedy J, Murthy VN, Mahadevan L. 2022. Dynamics of cooperative excavation in ant and robot collectives. eLife. doi: 10.7554/eLife.79638. *- joint first authors [Press: MCB News, SEAS News]

Martiros N, Kim SE, Kapoor V, Murthy VN. 2022. Distinct representation of cue-outcome association by D1 and D2 neurons in the ventral striatum’s olfactory tubercle . eLife. doi:10.7554/eLife.75463 [Press: MCB News]

Lauer J et al. 2022. Multi-animal pose estimation, identification and tracking with DeepLabCut. Nat. Methods. 19:496–504. doi:10.1038/s41592-022-01443-0 [Press: Nat Methods Preview]

Reddy G, Murthy VN, Vergassola M. 2022. Olfactory sensing and navigation in turbulent environments. Annu Rev Condens Matter Phys. 13:191-213. doi:10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031720-032754.

Jayakumar S, Murthy VN. 2022. A new angle on odor trail tracking. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 19:e2121332119. doi:10.1073/pnas.2121332119

2021

Martiros N, Kim SE, Kapoor V, Murthy VN. 2021. Distinct representation of cue-outcome association by D1 and D2 neurons in the olfactory striatum. bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2021.11.01.466363

Lau CG, Zhang H, Murthy VN. 2021. Deletion of TrkB in parvalbumin interneurons alters cortical neural dynamics. J Cell Physiol. doi.org/10.1002/jcp.30571

Grimaud J, Dorrell W, Pehlevan C, Murthy VN. 2021. Bilateral alignment of receptive fields in the olfactory cortex. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2020.02.24.960922.

2020

Zak JD, Reddy G,  Vergassola M, Murthy VN. 2020. Antagonistic odor interactions in olfactory sensory neurons are widespread in freely breathing mice. Nat. Commun. 11(1):3350 doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17124-5. [Press: MCB News]

Zak JD, Wallace JL,  Murthy VN. 2020. How neuroscience labs can limit their environmental impact. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/s41583-020-0311-5. [Press: MCB News]

Millman DJ, Murthy VN. 2020. Rapid learning of odor-value learning in the olfactory striatum. J. Neurosci . pii: JN-RM-2604-19. doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2604-19.2020. [Press: MCB News]

Wallace JL, Lord J, Dissing-Olesen L, Stevens B, Murthy VN. 2020. Microglia depletion disrupts normal functional development of adult-born neurons in the olfactory bulb. eLife  9. pii: e50531. doi: 10.7554/eLife.50531. [Press: MCB News]

2019

Zak JD, Reddy G, Vergassola M,  Murthy VN. 2019. Antagonistic odor interactions in olfactory sensory neurons are widespread in freeling breathing mice. bioRxiv preprint. doi: 10.1101/847525.

Nelson AC*, Kapoor V*, Vaughn E, Gnanasegaram JA, Rubinstein ND, Murthy VN, Dulac C. 2019. Molecular and circuit architecture of social hierarchy. bioRxiv preprint. doi: 10.1101/838664. * co-first author

Chae H, Kepple DR, Bast WG, Murthy VN, Koulakov AA, Albeanu DF. 2019. Mosaic representations of odors in the input and output layers of the mouse olfactory bulb. Nat Neurosci. 22(8):1306-1317. doi: 10.1038/s41593-019-0442-z [Press: EurakAlert, MedicalXpress]

Platel JC, Angelova A, Bugeon S, Wallace J, Ganay T, Chudotvorova I, Deloulme JC, Béclin C, Tiveron MC, Coré N, Murthy VN, Cremer H. 2019. Neuronal integration in the adult mouse olfactory bulb is a non-selective addition process. eLife. 8. pii: e44830. doi: 10.7554/eLife.44830.

2018

Albeanu DF*, Provost AC*, Agarwal P*, Soucy ER, Zak JD, Murthy VN. 2018. Olfactory marker protein (OMP) regulates formation and refinement of the olfactory glomerular map. Nat Commun. 9(1):5073. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07544-9. (*joint first authors)

Draft RW*, McGill MR*, Kapoor V, Murthy VN. 2018. Carpenter ants use diverse antennae sampling strategies to track odor trails. J Exp Biol. pii:jeb.185124. doi: 10.1242/jeb.185124. (*joint first authors) [Press: J Exp Biol,  Harvard MCB; New York Times; ScienceTake video]

Mathis A, Mamidanna P, Cury KM, Abe T, Murthy VN, Mathis MW#, Bethge M#. 2018. DeepLabCut: markerless pose estimation of user-defined body parts with deep learning. Nat Neurosci. 20. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0209-y. (#joint senior authors) [Press: Nature Neuroscience, The Atlantic, Phys.org, Schwäbishes Tagblatt, Harvard Gazette]

Zak JD, Grimaud J, Li RC, Lin CC, Murthy VN. 2018. Calcium-activated chloride channels clamp odor-evoked spike activity in olfactory receptor neurons.  Sci Rep. 8(1):10600. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-28855-3.

Grimaud J, Murthy VN. 2018. How to monitor the breathing of laboratory rodents: a review of the current methods. J Neurophysiol. doi: 10.1152/jn.00708.2017.

Reddy G*, Zak JD*, Vergassola M#, Murthy VN#. 2018. Antagonism in olfactory receptor neurons and its implications for the perception of odor mixtures. eLife 7:e34958 doi: 10.7554/eLife.34958 (* joint first authors; #joint senior authors) [Press: Harvard MCB, UCSD News ]

Galliano E, Franzoni E, Breton M, Chand AN, Byrne DJ, Murthy VN, Grubb, MS. 2018. Embryonic and postnatal neurogenesis produce functionally distinct subclasses of dopaminergic neuron. eLife 7. pii: e32373. doi: 10.7554/eLife.32373.[Press: Harvard MCB, King’s College London]

Wuttke TV, Markopoulos F, Padmanabhan H, Wheeler AP, Murthy VN, Macklis JD. 2018. Developmentally primed cortical neurons maintain fidelity of differentiation and establish appropriate functional connectivity after transplantation. Nat Neurosci. 21:517-529. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0098-0. [Press: The Hindu]

2017

Murthy VN, Rokni, D. 2017. Processing of Odor Mixtures in the Mammalian Olfactory System. J. Indian Inst. Sci. 97:415-421.

Li Y, Mathis, A, Grewe BF, Osterhout JA, Ahanonu GB, Schnitzer, MJ, Murthy VN, Dulac, C. 2017. Neuronal representation of social information in the medial amygdala of awake behaving mice. Cell 171:1176-1190.e17. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.10.015 [Press: HHMI, Science Daily, Harvard MCB]

Wallace JL*, Wienisch M*#, Murthy VN#. 2017. Development and refinement of functional properties of adult-born neurons. Neuron 96:883-896.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.09.039 (* joint first authors; #joint senior authors) [Press: Harvard MCB]

Mazo C, Grimaud J, Shima Y, Murthy VN*, Lau CG*. 2017. Distinct projection patterns of different classes of layer 2 principal neurons in the olfactory cortex. Sci Rep 7:8282 doi:10.1038/s41598-017-08331-0 (*joint senior authors)

2016

Mathis A*, Rokni D*, Kapoor V, Bethge M and Murthy VN. 2016. Reading out olfactory receptors: feedforward circuits detect odors in mixtures without demixing. Neuron. 91:1–14. (* joint first authors) [Press: Harvard Gazette, Harvard MCB, Wissenschaftler]

Wienisch M and Murthy VN. 2016. Population imaging at subcellular resolution supports specific and local inhibition by granule cells in the olfactory bulb. Sci. Rep. 6:29308. doi: 10.1038/srep29308

Gire DH, Kapoor V, Arrighi-Allisan A, Seminara A and Murthy VN. 2016. Mice develop efficient strategies for foraging and navigation using complex natural stimuli. Curr. Biol. 26:1261-1273. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.040 [Press: Harvard MCB]

Kapoor V*, Provost AC*, Agarwal P and Murthy VN. 2016. Activation of raphe nuclei triggers rapid and distinct effects on parallel olfactory bulb output channels. Nat Neurosci, 19:271-282, doi:10.1038/nn.4219. (* joint first authors) [Press: Harvard MCB]

2015

Lorenzon P, Redolfi N, Podolsky MJ, Zamparo I, Franchi SA, Pietra G, Boccaccio A, Menini A, Murthy VN, Lodovichi C. 2015. Circuit formation and function in the olfactory bulb of mice with reduced spontaneous afferent activity. J. Neurosci. 35:146-160. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0613-14.2015

2014

Rokni D, Murthy VN. 2014. Analysis and synthesis in olfaction. ACS Chem. Neurosci. 5:870-872. doi: 10.1021/c500199n

Rokni D, Hemmelder V, Kapoor V, Murthy VN. 2014. An olfactory cocktail party: figure-ground segregation of odorants in rodents. Nat Neurosci. 17:1225-1232. doi: 10.1038/nn.3775.

Hochbaum DR, Zhao Y, Farhi SL, Klapoetke N, Werley CA, Kapoor V, Zou P, Kralj JM, Maclaurin D, Smedemark-Margulies N, Saulnier JL, Boulting GL, Straub C, Cho YK, Melkonian M, Wong GK, Harrison DJ, Murthy VN, Sabatini BL, Boyden ES, Campbell RE, Cohen AE. 2014. All-optical electrophysiology in mammalian neurons using engineered microbial rhodopsins. Nat Methods. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3000.

2013

Haddad R, Lanjuin A, Madisen L, Zeng H, Murthy VN, Uchida N. 2013. Olfactory cortical neurons read out a relative time code in the olfactory bulb. Nat Neurosci. 16:949-957. doi:10.1038/nn.3407

Blauvelt DG, Sato TF, Wienisch M, Murthy VN. 2013. Distinct spatiotemporal activity in principal neurons of the mouse olfactory bulb in anesthetized and awake states. Front Neural Circuits. 7:46

2012

Markopoulos F*, Rokni D*, Gire DH, Murthy VN. 2012. Functional properties of cortical feedback projections to the olfactory bulb. Neuron 76(6):1175-88. (* – equal first authors)

Spors H, Albeanu DF, Murthy VN, Rinberg D, Uchida N, Wachowiak M, Friedrich RW. 2012. Illuminating vertebrate olfactory processing. J. Neurosci. 32:14102-8.

Sato T, Murthy VN. 2012. Light-emitting diodes for biological microscopy. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2012(12). doi:10.1101/pdb.top072306

Hagiwara A*, Pal SK*, Sato TF, Wienisch M, Murthy VN. 2012. Optophysiological analysis of associational circuits in the olfactory cortex. Front Neural Circuits. 2012;6:18. (* – equal first authors)

Lau CG, Murthy VN. 2012. Activity-dependent regulation of inhibition via GAD67. J. Neurosci. 32:8521-8531.

Wienisch M, Blauvelt DG, Sato TF, Murthy VN. 2012. Two-Photon Imaging of Neural Activity in Awake, Head-Restrained Mice. In: Fellin T, Halassa M Neuronal Network Analysis : Concepts and Experimental Approaches. Humana Press (Springer Protocols) ; 2012. p. pp 45-60.

2011

Isogai Y, Si S, Pont-Lezica L, Tan T, Kapoor V, Murthy VN, Dulac C.2011.  Molecular organization of vomeronasal chemoreception. Nature 478:241-5. doi:10.1038/nature10437.

Murthy VN. 2011. Olfactory maps in the brain. Annu Rev Neurosci. 34:233-58.

Dietz SB, Markopoulos F, Murthy VN. 2011. Postnatal development of dendrodendritic inhibition in the mammalian olfactory bulb. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience 5:10.

Petzold GC, Murthy VN. 2011. Role of astrocytes in neurovascular coupling. Neuron 71:782-797.

2001-2010

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Dhawale AK, Hagiwara A, Bhalla US, Murthy VN*, Albeanu DF*. 2010. Non-redundant odor coding by sister mitral cells revealed by light addressable glomeruli in the mouse. Nat Neurosci. 2010;13:1404-12. (* – joint senior authors)

Qing Q, Pal SK, Tian B, Duan X, Timko BP, Cohen-Karni T, Murthy VN*, Lieber CM*. 2010. Nanowire transistor arrays for mapping neural circuits in acute brain slices. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2010;107:1882-7. (* – joint senior authors)

Petzold GC, Hagiwara A, Murthy VN. 2009. Serotonergic modulation of odor input to the mammalian olfactory bulb. 2009. Nat Neurosci. 12:784-91.

Soucy ER, Albeanu DF, Fantana AL, Murthy VN*, Meister M*. 2009. Precision and diversity in an odor map on the olfactory bulb. Nat Neurosci. 12:210-20. (* – joint senior authors)

Petzold GC, Albeanu DF, Sato TF, Murthy VN. 2008. Coupling of neural activity to blood flow in olfactory glomeruli is mediated by astrocytic pathways. Neuron 2008;58:897-910.

Albeanu DF, Soucy E, Sato TF, Meister M, Murthy VN. 2008. LED arrays as cost effective and efficient light sources for widefield microscopy. PLoS One 3:e2146.

Tyler WJ, Petzold GC, Pal SK, Murthy VN. 2007. Experience-dependent modification of primary sensory synapses in the mammalian olfactory bulb. J Neurosci 27:9427-38.