About Me

Adithya E. Rajagopalan


I am an experimental and computational neuroscientist studying the rules and algorithms governing decision making. Currently I am a Leon Levy Neuroscience Scholar in Dr. Christine Constantinople's lab at NYU's Center for Neural Science. My present work focuses on understanding how complex cognitive representations necessary for decision-making within orbitofrontal circuits are constructed from simpler inputs.

I graduated from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India with a dual B.S.-M.S. degree in Biology in 2017. I then earned my PhD in Neuroscience in 2023 from Glenn Turner’s lab at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus via a joint graduate program with Johns Hopkins University. During my PhD I used Drosophila melanogaster to study value-based decision-making at the level of behavior, circuits and theory, leveraging the model system’s plethora of genetic tools to expand theories explaining decision-making under uncertainty.

Outside the lab I enjoy football (refuse to call it soccer), board games and live music. I am also an avid science-communicator and write articles aimed at sharing cutting edge science to readers in a non-techincal form. Check out the blog portion of my website as well as other writings for Nautilus and The Wire.

Research

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    Value-based decisions

    How do brains assign value and choose between alternatives

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    Circuit logic

    How are complex cognitive representations constructed

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    Behavioral analysis

    Designing ethological decision-making tasks for animals

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    Comparitive neuroscience

    Understanding the rules by which algorithms change

Publications

Academic Publications

  1. Model Based Inference of Synaptic Plasticity Rules

    bioRxiv, 2023

    Y Mehta, D Tyulmankov, AE Rajagopalan, GC Turner, JE Fitzgerald, J Funke

  2. Reward expectations direct learning and drive operant matching in Drosophila

    Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, 2023

    AE Rajagopalan, R Darshan, KL Hibbard, JE Fitzgerald, GC Turner

  3. Input density tunes Kenyon cell sensory responses in the Drosophila mushroom body

    Current Biology, 2023

    M Ahmed, AE Rajagopalan, Y Pan, Y Li, DL Williams, EA Pedersen, M Thakral, A Previero, KC Close, CP Christoforou, D Cai, GC Turner, EJ Clowney

  4. Flexible specificity of memory in Drosophila depends on a comparison between choices

    eLife, 2023

    MN Modi, AE Rajagopalan, H Rouault, Y Aso, GC Turner

  5. Effect of circuit structure on odor representation in the insect olfactory system

    eNeuro, 2020

    AE Rajagopalan, C Assisi

  6. Stable representations of decision variables for flexible behavior

    Neuron, 2019

    BA Bari, CD Grossman, EE Lubin, AE Rajagopalan, JI Cressy, JY Cohen

CV

Blog : Neuro-Rambler


Published Elsewhere

  1. Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV

    Nautilus, 2020

    AE Rajagopalan

  2. The Brain Cells That Guide Animals

    Nautilus, 2020

    AE Rajagopalan

  3. New Evidence for the Strange Geometry of Thought

    Nautilus, 2019

    AE Rajagopalan

  4. Does a Bigger Brain Mean a Higher IQ? Nope, and This Is Why

    The Wire, 2018

    AE Rajagopalan

  5. The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS

    Nautilus, 2018

    AE Rajagopalan