A new study led by Gautam Agarwal, an alum of our Neuroscience PhD Program, has found that common, weak theta brain waves can indicate a rat’s location within its environment, opening the door to new avenues of research about how the brain carries information.
UC Berkeley Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) Adjunct Professor Friedrich Sommer is the senior author on the paper, which was published on February 13, 2026 in Nature Communications. Agarwal worked with Sommer first as a postdoctoral fellow, and then later as a research scientist, after earning his PhD with Neuroscience faculty member Ehud Isacoff. Agarwal is now an assistant professor of neuroscience in the Department of Natural Sciences at Pitzer and Scripps Colleges.
Read HWNI’s Q&A with Agarwal and Sommer to learn more about the study and how it could impact the fields of both neuroscience and artificial intelligence. To learn more about Agarwal’s career path and experiences in the Berkeley Neuroscience PhD Program, read our profile of Agarwal.
