After completing undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Professor Murthy undertook graduate work in physiology and biophysics. His doctoral dissertation with Eberhard Fetz was on sensorimotor processing in awake behaving primates.

His post-doctoral work was conducted at the Salk Institute with Charles Stevens and Terrence Sejnowski, where he became interested in understanding how synaptic connections give rise to the collective behaviour of circuits.

Professor Murthy has co-authored over 50 published articles and currently investigates neural circuits and their plasticity in the rodent olfactory system.