Bio

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University working at the intersection of machine learning and systems neuroscience. My research focuses on developing interpretable models to understand how distributed neural populations coordinate to generate behavior across contexts and brain regions.

Stanford Advisors

Contact

  • Academic
    rsristi@stanford.edu
    University - Scholar Department: Department of Neurobiology Position: Postdoctoral Scholar

Additional Info

Links

All Publications

  • Complementary cortical and thalamic contributions to cell type-specific striatal activity dynamics during movement SCIENCE ADVANCES Gjoni, E., Sristi, R., Liu, H., Dror, S., Lin, X., O'Neil, K., Arroyo, O. M., Hong, S., Kim, H., Liu, J., Blumenstock, S., Lim, B., Mishne, G., Komiyama, T. 2026; 12 (5): eaea3935

    Abstract

    Coordinated motor behavior emerges from information flow across brain regions. How long-range inputs drive cell type-specific activity within motor circuits remains unclear. The dorsolateral striatum (DLS) contains direct- and indirect-pathway medium spiny neurons (dMSNs and iMSNs) with distinct roles in movement control. In mice performing skilled locomotion, we recorded from dMSNs, iMSNs, and their cortical and thalamic inputs identified by monosynaptic rabies tracing. A recurrent neural network (RNN) classifier and clustering analysis revealed functionally heterogeneous subpopulations in each population, with dMSNs preferentially activated at movement onset and offset, and iMSNs during execution. Cortical and thalamic inputs were preferentially activated during onset/offset and execution, respectively, though dMSN- and iMSN-projecting neurons in each region showed similar patterns. Locomotion phase-specific rhythmic activity was found in a subset of thalamic dMSN-projecting neurons and dMSNs. Cortex or thalamus inactivation reduced MSN activity. These findings suggest that corticostriatal and thalamostriatal inputs convey complementary motor signals via shared and cell type-specific pathways.

    View details for DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aea3935

    View details for Web of Science ID 001673218800018

    View details for PubMedID 41604482

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12851035

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3234-9413