Establishing octopuses as a systems neuroscience model for studying complex cognition
Dr. Yolanda Liu (Post-doctoral Fellow)
[Supervisor: Professor Michael Hӓusser]

Cephalopods, particularly octopuses, possessing large and complex nervous systems, rich behavioural repertoires, and advanced learning capabilities. Diverging from the vertebrate lineage approximately 700 million years ago, coleoid cephalopods nonetheless converged on sophisticated cognitive traits, offering unique opportunities to investigate general principles of brain organization and evolution. Despite this promise, cephalopod neuroscience remains limited by challenges in long-term husbandry, the lack of adapted molecular and neural tools, incomplete neuroanatomical frameworks, and the absence of quantitative behavioural paradigms linking neural activity to cognition. To address these barriers, over the past year our lab has established Hong Kong’s first octopus vivarium and an integrated neuroscience platform. We have developed stable surgical access to the octopus brain, enabling high-density Neuropixels recordings and calcium imaging in vivo. Using whole-brain tissue clearing combined with light-sheet microscopy, we are constructing a digital brain atlas and mesoscale connectome for Amphioctopus fangsiao, our model species. Together, these advances lay the foundation for a systems-level framework to investigate the neural circuits underlying complex cognition in octopuses.

All are welcome.