Our new Nature paper: A Thalamus–Brainstem Attractor Network Drives History-Biased Decisions
We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first Nature paper is now online, revealing a hierarchical thalamo-hindbrain circuit in zebrafish that maintains recent experience and shapes future decisions through an attractor–integrator architecture.
Abstract: Natural environments often change gradually, making it adaptive to bias decisions based on the recent past—a phenomenon known as serial dependence. Large-scale recordings during behavior have identified serial dependence is a common motif for decision-making, with neural representations of past experiences found throughout the brain. However, it remains unclear whether this bias arises from dedicated neural circuits with history-specific computations. Using whole-brain, cellular-resolution imaging in zebrafish performing memory-guided evasive maneuvers, we identified a hierarchical circuit that maintains past information and biases future choices. Discrete attractors in the dorsal thalamus encoded the most recent obstacle’s position, maintaining a categorical memory via persistent activity lasting 10–20 seconds. Optogenetic manipulation of dorsal thalamus abolished or imposed serial bias. A downstream hindbrain integrator received input from the thalamus and combined it with current sensory cues to produce graded responses reflecting multi-trial history. Leveraging a comprehensive brain atlas in zebrafish, we constructed a whole-brain computational model that recapitulated behavior and also predicted a key role for heterogeneous inhibitory subtypes in enabling flexible state transitions. This attractor–integrator architecture reveals a hierarchical and modular computation that unifies robust memory retention with flexible sensory integration, providing a general principle for history-biased decisions.
Cite us: Zhao, S., Shan, H., Liu, X. et al. A thalamus–brainstem attractor network drives history-biased decisions. Nature (2026).
