Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Mot sure I understand. Excising bits of my Mac would lead to degraded behaviour, but surely it’s still computing? Or maybe you mean something else? Hofstenia is unusual among animals because it’s so robust to major damage, and because its brain seems so different. We’d like to understand this 100
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I’m looking for a senior research scientist to lead a transgenics engineering project in Hofstenia with scope to build related projects, and to help with lab management. Feel free to get in touch for more detail. Deadline: Oct 13th crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.comSenior Laboratory Research ScientistSalary for this Role: From £47,080 with benefits, subject to skills and experience. Job Title: Senior Laboratory Research Scientist Reports to: Vikram Chandra [C] Closing Date: 13/Oct/2026 23.59 GMT J... 042
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I’m hiring! I’m looking for postdocs to lead multiple systems neuroscience projects - to identify organising principles for Hofstenia’s distributed brain, and to understand how it computes and how it generates coherent behaviour. Deadline: Oct 11th crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.comPostdoctoral FellowSalary for this Role: From £47,500 with benefits, subject to skills and experience. Job Title: Postdoctoral Fellow Reports to: Vikram Chandra [C] Closing Date: 11/Oct/2026 23.59 GMT Job Description: J... 142
Reposted by Vikram ChandraMatt Lovett-Barron @mlovettbarron.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social 1011861
Reposted by Vikram ChandraLeah Houri-Zeevi @leahhouri.bsky.social · 25/09/2026🩸🩸🩸TODAY WE SHARE TWO MAJOR DISCOVERIES🩸🩸🩸 1. We peered into genomes and brains of the rare mosquitoes that QUIT feeding on blood and found what biting is built from 2. Humans got rid of isoleucine in their blood, malaria suffers from it, and mosquito proteomes budget for it THREADS> 58246
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026A bit. From coarse anatomy, several have a subepidermal brain seemingly like Hofstenia’s, and both lack features of convolutid brains, consistent with a primitive diffuse brain. But we need higher res. And I think we can learn things about brain evolution here regardless of how the tree turns out! 010
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Structurally and functionally, Hofstenia has something that diffuse nets don’t, so it can help us understand what has to change for rich behaviour to evolve. So we need to figure out how this diffuse brain is organised, and we can then compare both within xenacoels and across the whole tree 110
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 15/09/20262. Hofstenia specifically is an early-branching acoel with a special diffuse brain: no internal regionalisation, uniquely robust to damage, but still capable of sophisticated behaviour. I argue this represents a plausible intermediate between nets and typical brains (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)biorxiv.orgDistributed neural computation and the evolution of the first brainsThe origin of brains in the Precambrian was a landmark in animal evolution, enabling new behavior and life histories. Brains likely evolved from diffuse nerve nets, but we do not know what the first b... 110
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Good q. I do aim to compare across xenacoels! I think it’s a great ‘model clade’ within which brains have changed extensively. Why acoels first: 1. Xenoturbella is supposed to have only a diffuse nerve net. Assuming this is true, I’d bet this is probably not very different from other diffuse nets 110
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I will be hiring at all levels soon - I’m looking for systems neuroscientists, molecular biologists, genomics experts, physicists, and more. If you’re interested in distributed computation, brain evolution, or the behaviour of marine invertebrates, get in touch! www.crick.ac.uk/research/lab...crick.ac.ukVikram Chandra 1169
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I’m especially glad to be starting alongside an incredible set of group leaders, in an environment that is collaborative, ambitious, and fun. 120
Vikram Chandra @vchandra.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I am excited to announce that I will start the Brain Origins Lab at the Crick in March 2027! Using acoels as a model system, the lab will study how animal brains evolve, and how innovations in brain organisation enable new computational abilities and the evolution of complex behaviour. 1111326