Stoyo Karamihalev

Stoyo studies how emotions and internal states are represented — and acted upon — in the insular cortex, using two-photon calcium imaging and holographic optogenetics to read out and perturb identified ensembles of neurons in the mouse insula. The questions: which neurons carry information about an emotional stimulus, which act on it, and how slower-shifting interoceptive and mood-like states reshape that response.

His route to this question began with individual differences and complex behavior. During doctoral training split between the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Stoyo developed ethologically inspired observational and interventional methods for studying socioemotional behavior in mice, linking signatures of personality and social status to physiological assessment and transcriptomic profiling of the brain to better understand the neural underpinnings of well-being and stress. Motivated to study emotions where they arise, he turned to the circuits themselves.