Facilities

Our lab develops world-unique technologies and has world-unique experimental facilities

We develop world-unique Neurotechnologies. In particular, we develop tiny wireless-electrophysiology devices (neural loggers), weighing only a few grams – which enable recording > 100 neurons simultaneously from the bat's brain, during natural behaviors: including flight, navigation, and social interactions with multiple individuals. These loggers include also many on-board behavioral sensors – ultrasonic microphone, motion sensor, altimeter, and GPS – allowing us to ask unique experimental questions in freely behaving, unrestrained animals. Our study species, Egyptian fruit bats, are easy to work with, and are excellent navigators and highly-social mammals – making them a great model organism for behavioral neuroscience, learning & memory, and social neuroscience. They are also large bats, weighing ~150–180 gr – allowing them to fly freely and interact naturally while carrying our neural-loggers.

Unique technologies for wireless neural recordings

Our neural loggers feature the following:

  • 64 neural channels (16 tetrodes) – allow recording > 100 neurons simultaneously in flying bats.
  • Ultrasonic microphone – for recording both social communication calls and echolocation sonar calls.
  • Motion sensor – for extracting a variety of behavioral and kinematic variables (wingbeats, head movements, and more). 
  • Magnetometer – for computing the bat's head-direction.
  • GPS – measuring the bat's position outdoors with 70-cm precision !
  • Altimeter – for accurate measurements of altitude outdoors - even more precise than GPS.
  • Ultra-wideband RF localization – for localizing the bat indoors, or in our tunnel and maze - with 5-cm precision !

Unique experimental facilities for behavioral neuroscience

  • Flight Rooms
  • Social Rooms – for recording in socially-ineracting animal groups
  • Flight Tunnel – 700 meters long
  • Flight Maze – 60 x 35 meters in size, with >300 meters of corridors
  • Island near Zanzibar (Tanzania) – for outdoors experiments