We study how neurons communicate to encode emotional behaviour and support context-dependent decision making. Disrupted neural communication underlies many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, motivating our aim to understand these damaged processes and identify new therapeutic approaches. Our research focuses on the ventral hippocampus, a brain region essential for learning, motivation and mental illness risk, using advanced imaging, genetic, physiological and behavioural methods.

MacAskill Lab

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MacAskill Lab

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Selected publications

Ella Svahn, Yeqing Wang, Hermione Knebelmann, Yang Pan, Nikie Shahab-Dehkordi, Athena Akrami, Andrew F. Macaskill. Acetylcholine reflects uncertainty during hidden state inference. (2025) bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.12.688036

Karyna Mishchanchuk, Gabrielle Gregoriou, Albert J. Qü, Alizee Kastler, Quentin J. M. Huys, Linda Wilbrecht, Andrew F. MacAskill. Hidden state inference requires abstract contextual representations in the ventral hippocampus. Science, Volume 386, Issue 6724, Pages 926–932 (2024) DOI: 10.1126/science.adq5874

Ryan W.S. Wee, Karyna Mishchanchuk, Rawan AlSubaie, Timothy W. Church, Matthew G. Gold, Andrew F. MacAskill. Internal-state-dependent control of feeding behavior via hippocampal ghrelin signaling. Neuron, Volume 112, Issue 2, Pages 288-305 (2024) DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.10.016

Candela Sánchez-Bellot, Rawan AlSubaie, Karyna Mishchanchuk, Ryan W. S. Wee, Andrew F. MacAskill et al. Two opposing hippocampus to prefrontal cortex pathways for the control of approach and avoidance behaviour. Nature Communications 
Volume 13, Article number: 339 (2022) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-27977-7

Rawan AlSubaie, Ryan W. S. Wee, Anne Ritoux, Karyna Mishchanchuk, Jessica Passlack, Daniel Regester, Andrew F. Macaskill. Control of parallel hippocampal output pathways by amygdalar long-range inhibition. eLife 10:e74758 (2021) DOI: 10.1101/2021.03.08.434367

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MacAskill Lab Click to email. a.macaskill@ucl.ac.uk