Anthony Zador
Professor
The Alle Davis and Maxine Harrison Professor of Neurosciences
M.D., Ph.D., Yale University, 1994
zador@cshl.edu | 516-367-6950
My lab studies how circuitry in the brain gives rise to complex behaviors, one of nature’s great mysteries. We study how the auditory cortex processes sound, and how this is interrupted in autism. We also seek to obtain a wiring diagram of the mouse brain at the resolution of individual neurons. Our unusual approach exploits cheap and rapid “next-gen” gene sequencing technology.
Anthony Zador and colleagues study how brain circuitry gives rise to complex behavior. Work in the lab is focused on two main areas. First, they ask how the cortex processes sound, how that processing is modulated by attention, and how it is disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism. Recently, the lab found that when a rat makes a decision about a sound, the information needed to make the decision is passed to a particular subset of neurons in the auditory cortex whose axons project to a structure called the striatum. In the second major line of work in the Zador lab, they are developing new methods for determining the complete wiring instructions of the mouse brain at single-neuron resolution, which they term the “Connectome.” In contrast to previous methods, which make use of microscopy, these methods exploit high-throughput DNA sequencing. Because the costs of DNA sequencing are plummeting so rapidly, these methods have the potential to yield the complete wiring diagram of an entire brain for just thousands of dollars.
Mapping the mind with BARseq
June 3, 2024
CSHL Professor Anthony Zador’s powerful brain-mapping tool has received a major upgrade. Instead of thousands of neurons, it can now map millions.
President’s essay: The continuous cycle of discovery
May 30, 2024
CSHL President & CEO Bruce Stillman discusses our institution’s societal impacts and global connections as forces for further scientific progress.
The CSHL School of Biological Sciences’ class of 2024
May 5, 2024
The School of Biological Sciences awarded Ph.D. degrees to 11 students this year. Here are some stories and reflections from their time at CSHL.
Zador wins maiden NIH BRAIN CONNECTS grant
October 24, 2023
Zador and collaborators have been awarded over $2 million to fine-tune a new brain mapping technique—one that might help transform the field.
Is today’s AI actually intelligent or just acting?
June 1, 2023
Before it can change the world, AI must learn to walk. To help get it there, Professor Anthony Zador has proposed a new ‘embodied’ Turing test.
President’s essay: Bringing bold visions to life
May 26, 2023
CSHL President & CEO Bruce Stillman sees the Laboratory as a global hub for scientific expertise and a powerful launchpad for early-career scientists.
A bridge to the future of autism research
May 18, 2023
With access to premier technology and expertise, CSHL primes early-career scientists for breakthrough studies of autism spectrum disorder.
From Her to Here: CSHL talks AI at Cinema Arts Centre
May 11, 2023
June 3: The Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, NY presents a screening of sci-fi romance Her with a talk on AI by CSHL neuroscientist Anthony Zador.
Follow your nose: Tracking the brain’s smell circuits
February 27, 2023
Take this 8-bit trip along the brain’s olfactory circuits to see what happens up there when you smell something.
Can you outsmart this AI quiz?
February 6, 2023
Think you’re plugged into the latest artificial intelligence advancements? Test your tech knowledge with this quiz on AI and computational biology.
All Publications
Whole-cortex in situ sequencing reveals input-dependent area identity
24 Apr 2024 | Nature
Chen, Xiaoyin; Fischer, Stephan; Rue, Mara; Zhang, Aixin; Mukherjee, Didhiti; Kanold, Patrick; Gillis, Jesse; Zador, Anthony;
The origins of COSYNE: Building a community
27 Feb 2024 | The Transmitter
Zador, Anthony;
Neurons in the primary visual cortex of freely moving rats encode both sensory and non-sensory task variables
Dec 2023 | PLoS Biology | 21(12):e3002384
Zhang, Anqi; Zador, Anthony; Klausberger, Thomas;
Stable sound decoding despite modulated sound representation in the auditory cortex
23 Oct 2023 | Current Biology | 33(20):4470-4483.e7
Funamizu, A; Marbach, F; Zador, A;
Stable sound decoding despite modulated sound representation in the auditory cortex
15 Sep 2023 | bioRxiv
Funamizu, Akihiro; Marbach, Fred; Zador, Anthony;
Neuroscience Needs Network Science
23 Aug 2023 | Journal of Neuroscience | 43(34):5989-5995
Barabási, Dániel; Bianconi, Ginestra; Bullmore, Ed; Burgess, Mark; Chung, SueYeon; Eliassi-Rad, Tina; George, Dileep; Kovács, István; Makse, Hernán; Nichols, Thomas; Papadimitriou, Christos; Sporns, Olaf; Stachenfeld, Kim; Toroczkai, Zoltán; Towlson, Emma; Zador, Anthony; Zeng, Hongkui; Barabási, Albert-László; Bernard, Amy; Buzsáki, György;
Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making
4 Jul 2023 | bioRxiv
Findling, Charles; Hubert, Felix; Acerbi, Luigi; Benson, Brandon; Benson, Julius; Birman, Daniel; Bonacchi, Niccolò; Carandini, Matteo; Catarino, Joana; Chapuis, Gaelle; Churchland, Anne; Dan, Yang; DeWitt, Eric; Engel, Tatiana; Fabbri, Michele; Faulkner, Mayo; Fiete, Ila; Freitas-Silva, Laura; Gerçek, Berk; Harris, Kenneth; Häusser, Michael; Hofer, Sonja; Hu, Fei; Huntenburg, Julia; Khanal, Anup; Krasniak, Chris; Langdon, Christopher; Latham, Peter; P Lau, Petrina; Mainen, Zach; Meijer, Guido; Miska, Nathaniel; Mrsic-Flogel, Thomas; Noel, Jean-Paul; Nylund, Kai; Pan-Vazquez, Alejandro; Paninski, Liam; Pillow, Jonathan; Rossant, Cyrille; Roth, Noam; Schaeffer, Rylan; Schartner, Michael; Shi, Yanliang; Socha, Karolina; Steinmetz, Nicholas; Svoboda, Karel; Tessereau, Charline; Urai, Anne; Wells, Miles; West, Steven; Whiteway, Matthew; Winter, Olivier; Witten, Ilana; Zador, Anthony; Dayan, Peter; Pouget, Alexandre;
Catalyzing next-generation Artificial Intelligence through NeuroAI
22 Mar 2023 | Nature Communications | 14(1):1597
Zador, Anthony; Escola, Sean; Richards, Blake; Ölveczky, Bence; Bengio, Yoshua; Boahen, Kwabena; Botvinick, Matthew; Chklovskii, Dmitri; Churchland, Anne; Clopath, Claudia; DiCarlo, James; Ganguli, Surya; Hawkins, Jeff; Körding, Konrad; Koulakov, Alexei; LeCun, Yann; Lillicrap, Timothy; Marblestone, Adam; Olshausen, Bruno; Pouget, Alexandre; Savin, Cristina; Sejnowski, Terrence; Simoncelli, Eero; Solla, Sara; Sussillo, David; Tolias, Andreas; Tsao, Doris;
Massive Multiplexing of Spatially Resolved Single Neuron Projections with Axonal BARseq
18 Feb 2023 | bioRxiv
Yuan, Li; Chen, Xiaoyin; Zhan, Huiqing; Gilbert, Henry; Zador, Anthony;
Charles F. Stevens (1934-2022).
Feb 2023 | Nature Neuroscience | 26(2):176-177
Zador, Anthony;