About

Yvette Fisher is an Assistant Professor (Affiliated) of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is involved in research within the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, with her work accessible through her faculty webpage at https://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/cdp/fishery and her lab at https://www.fisherlab.science/. Her research focuses on cell biology, development, and physiology, contributing to the understanding of these fundamental biological processes. She is based at 131 Weill Hall, Berkeley, CA, and can be contacted via email at yfisher@berkeley.edu or by phone at (510) 664-4339.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive science
• Cell biology
• Communication
• Psychology
• Human–computer interaction
• Geography
• Computational biology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Navigation circuits: Calcium spikes know which way the wind blows

  Current Biology · 2026-02-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-12-15

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Many plasticity rules rely on adjusting the strength of synapses between pairs of cells based on their coincident activity. We uncovered a new mechanism for coincidence detection in the Drosophila head direction network. To maintain an accurate sense of direction, head direction neurons that signal orientation during navigation must learn to anchor to relevant external sensory cues in novel environments. Yet the synaptic mechanism for this form of unsupervised learning is unknown in any organism. In Drosophila , GABAergic visual inputs converge onto head direction neurons, and these inhibitory synapses change strength with experience to learn the relationship between visual landmarks and head direction. However, how coincident pre- and postsynaptic activity is detected across this inhibitory synapse is not understood. We discovered that neurons which release the monoamine octopamine close a feedback loop that conveys postsynaptic head direction activity onto presynaptic terminals of visual inputs. This octopamine pathway is required for anchoring the head direction network to visual cues. Furthermore, pairing structured activation of octopamine neurons with a visual cue is sufficient to drive rapid plasticity, even without postsynaptic head direction cell activity. Previous work has extensively characterized coincidence detection mechanisms at excitatory synapses; our work defines a novel mechanism for coincidence detection at an inhibitory synapse, in which postsynaptic activity is relayed via a neuromodulatory neuron onto presynaptic terminals.

  PublisherDOI

• Octopamine enhances learning

  National Science Review · 2024-05-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author Correction: Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Nature · 2023-05-24

  erratumOpen access1st author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-08-16

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis code used in Fisher, Y.E., Marquis, M., <em>et al</em>. Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements. <em>Nature </em>2022.

  PublisherDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-08-16

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis code used in Fisher, Y.E., Marquis, M., <em>et al</em>. Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements. <em>Nature </em>2022.

  PublisherDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-08-16

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis code used in Fisher, Y.E., Marquis, M., <em>et al</em>. Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements. <em>Nature </em>2022.

  PublisherDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-08-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis code used in Fisher, Y.E., Marquis, M., and Wilson, R. I. Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements. <em>Nature </em>2022.

  PublisherDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-08-16 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis code used in Fisher, Y.E., Marquis, M., <em>et al</em>. Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements. <em>Nature </em>2022.

  PublisherDOI

• Dopamine promotes head direction plasticity during orienting movements

  Nature · 2022-11-30 · 70 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In neural networks that store information in their connection weights, there is a tradeoff between sensitivity and stability 1,2 . Connections must be plastic to incorporate new information, but if they are too plastic, stored information can be corrupted. A potential solution is to allow plasticity only during epochs when task-specific information is rich, on the basis of a ‘when-to-learn’ signal 3 . We reasoned that dopamine provides a when-to-learn signal that allows the brain’s spatial maps to update when new spatial information is available—that is, when an animal is moving. Here we show that the dopamine neurons innervating the Drosophila head direction network are specifically active when the fly turns to change its head direction. Moreover, their activity scales with moment-to-moment fluctuations in rotational speed. Pairing dopamine release with a visual cue persistently strengthens the cue’s influence on head direction cells. Conversely, inhibiting these dopamine neurons decreases the influence of the cue. This mechanism should accelerate learning during moments when orienting movements are providing a rich stream of head direction information, allowing learning rates to be low at other times to protect stored information. Our results show how spatial learning in the brain can be compressed into discrete epochs in which high learning rates are matched to high rates of information intake.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rachel I. Wilson

  Harvard University

  20 shared

• Yusuke Toyama

  14 shared

• William D Constance

  King's College London

  14 shared

• Michael Marquis

  National Energy Technology Laboratory

  10 shared

• Isabel D’Alessandro

  Harvard University

  10 shared

• Thomas R. Clandinin

  Stanford University

  10 shared

• Helen H. Yang

  Harvard University

  9 shared

• Itzel G. Ishida

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  8 shared