Ben Saunders
@bensaunders.bsky.social
Neuroscientist and gardener Lab site- saunderslab.com
BREAKING NEWS! The Senate has paused the OMB rule that would put Trump appointees in charge of federal spending. Next step - Contact your MoC and tell them to permanently REVOKE THE RULE: zurl.co/1SXEN Article: zurl.co/23mF8
Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul
Language is included to delay the president’s move to put political appointees in charge of grant approval.
zurl.co
And a second new preprint from Lerner Lab on the same day! 👀 🎉 Led by graduate student Nkatha Mwenda! “Dopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking” #neuroskyence🧪
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2d agoDopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.01.742224v1
🚨Happy to share a new preprint from Lerner Lab led by graduate student @nadelneurosci.bsky.social! 🚨 “Adolescent stress recruits a latent amygdala-dopamine circuit to drive punishment-resistant reward-seeking” This has been a wholly impressive effort by Jacob; summary below 👇 #neuroskyence🧪
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2d agoAdolescent stress recruits a latent amygdala-dopamine circuit to drive punishment-resistant reward-seeking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.29.741478v1
The final version of our amygdala dopamine paper is out! BLA dopamine dynamically tracks emotional salience and not value or reward prediction error. Congrats to Dr. Megan Brickner!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits emotional salience - Nature Communications
The basolateral amygdala dopamine system has received little attention. Here, authors show that BLA dopamine plays a unique role in learning, by encoding the emotional salience of sensory cues to supp...
nature.com
📢 Applications are now open for Season 2 of Brain Talks on the Isthmus (2026–2027)! Please consider applying, encouraging others to apply, and sharing this! Season 1 was fun :) Application Deadline: August 15, 2026 More Info and Application Form: mohebi-associates.org/brain-talks
Some good news! Not a done deal, but important step. If you wondered if submitting your comments on the OMB rules change mattered, the answer is a resounding YES
Sam Wang@samwang.bsky.social · 3d agoThis may dramatically slow down the attacks on science. It also provides a template for how to prevent the federal government from becoming a patronage state. It’s a big deal!
message to some people: please, stop using chatgpt to email. it is very obvious, and it is embarassing for you.
Excited to share the lab's latest on leveraging what we're learning from developmental neuroscience about the role of parents in children's anxiety to optimize treatments for youth! Led by Elizabeth Kitt and now out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Our new preprint from @daylab.bsky.social characterizes Chst9-MSNs, a specialized NAc population with high Oprm1 expression and opioid sensitivity that is required for fentanyl reward learning. Excited to share this work! 🧠🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
How does the brain represent the value of knowledge? In our paper--out now at Nature Neuroscience--we identify a representation of intrinsic information value within neural population structures in the orbitofrontal cortex in mice. www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02377-y #neuroskyence 🧠🧪 (1/8)
Representations of the intrinsic value of information in mouse orbitofrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Mice are motivated to seek information of no extrinsic value. Recording neural activity in orbitofrontal cortex reveals a representation of the value of information that is distinct from the value of ...
nature.com
"By the end of 2030," reports NYT, the amount of energy used by data centers"is expected to quadruple, eclipsing the power used by all countries in South America and Africa combined." This is extinctionism.
Huge congrats to @louisakuper.bsky.social on her new NRSA fellowship!!! We are grateful to NIMH for the support.
Check out the new preprint from the lab led by Brandon Garcia-Castañeda! Huge shout out to NIH/NIDA for initially funding this line of research and continuing to support this work in a new R21/R33 with @asoshnev.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Ventral tegmental area astrocytes regulate drug-cue associations and drug intake
Cocaine use disorder remains a critical public health concern with limited treatment options. Astrocytes are increasingly recognized as active regulators of neurotransmission and are emerging as impor...
biorxiv.org
The Trump regime admitted to canceling over $7.5 billion in federal grants for clean energy projects in states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (Gift Article)
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.
nytimes.com
Rapidly decreasing phasic dopamine responses precede a hedonic switch during satiation of sodium appetite https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.16.738888v1
New CBO paper: every $1 of federal R&D returns ~$3–$4 of GDP in present value over 30 years www.nber.org/papers/w35472
My privilege to share some lovely stories from the science community about what Sam Neill's timeless performance as Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park meant to them—and why it will continue to inspire kids to chase their own discoveries for years to come.
Sam Neill Inspired a Generation of Scientists
The actor, who died at age 78 on Monday, embodied a passionate approach to research and positive masculinity in his role as paleontologist Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park.
wired.com
This analysis of the public comments suggests overwhelming opposition to the OMB grant making take over plan www.techpolicy.press/the-public-r...
The Public Rejects OMB's Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Tens of thousands of scientists, clinicians, and ordinary citizens warned OMB about putting political appointees in charge of which research gets funded.
techpolicy.press
Yet another Kalshi offering that serves no legitimate economic purpose. It's not possible to make a rational bet on this without material non-public information. It's a market solely for fraud by both regulators and corporate insiders, and everyone connected to it in any way should go to prison.
Kalshi Will Offer Sports-Style Betting on Drug Trial Results
Kalshi Inc. is expanding in biotechnology by offering wagers on the outcomes of clinical trials and regulatory decisions, giving traders a more direct way to bet on key industry catalysts.
bloomberg.com
Researchers increasingly use #AI agents to mine online resources for new insights. New @nature.com, @dalmeet.bsky.social reports on a study that documents how easy it is to 'poison' these datasets to support false conclusions. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Doctored data sets could trick AI agents
Researchers warn that ‘poisoned’ information can undermine the reliability of tools that analyse data autonomously.
nature.com
Basically an ad for a Google product, written by Google employees, presented as a scientific paper in Nature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Accelerating scientific discovery with Co-Scientist - Nature
Co-Scientist is an AI system for structured scientific thinking and generates research hypotheses for experimental verification.
nature.com
There are only a few hours left to comment on the proposed OMB rule that would eviscerate American science. This is the single best summary, and guidance for how to write a comment, that I have seen. PLEASE submit something, even if it is only 2 or 3 paragraphs.
What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB-2026-0034)
What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice
elizabethginexi.substack.com
Ecological Visual Processing in the Mouse - with @michaelgoard.bsky.social @crisniell.bsky.social @mbeyeler.bsky.social Visual computations that are engaged in ecological contexts: active sensing, motion processing, scene analysis, distance estimation, and spatial perception. doi.org/10.1146/annu...
Basal forebrain projections to the lateral habenula sex-dependently regulate ethanol and sucrose consumption https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.02.736151v1
Our labs first paper! Some 😳 surprising effects. Turns out everything comes back to context 🤓
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 4w agoVentral tegmental area acetylcholine generates appetitive and aversive incentive motivation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.09.737546v1
thrilled to share our latest work from the lab, led by the amazing @fernandezpenac.bsky.social (now a PI at @unmc.bsky.social!) where we found a new role for a tiny group of adrenergic neurons in RVLM, the C1 cells. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
This is so ridiculous. If you can't find the time to use your own brain to read, think, and then write words, just decline.
Dr. Cate Peña@cate-cholamine.bsky.social · 4w agoI’m so outrageously mad having realized a bunch of inane reviewer comments are probably AI. I’m also too busy and would rather be compen$ated for my reviews, but 1) who are we as academics if we don’t value reading and thinking about the literature and 2) dont waste my/student’s time with slop!!
“Organizing, editing, and brainstorming are part of writing-while-human. They can be hard, even scary, but that doesn’t mean they could or should be done by machines.” An excellent argument for not using genAI by Dr Surekha Davies. Well worth a read.
Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 4w agoFund schools, universities, public infrastructure. Pay/fund experts: writers, artists, editors, educators. Don't let Silicon Valley diminish the category of the human: what most people can learn; what experts can do; what people enjoy. Don't enable the worst futures. My latest on this: 2/
Fund schools, universities, public infrastructure. Pay/fund experts: writers, artists, editors, educators. Don't let Silicon Valley diminish the category of the human: what most people can learn; what experts can do; what people enjoy. Don't enable the worst futures. My latest on this: 2/
The 'I only use AI for...' fallacy
Hallo friends, and welcome, new readers! I hope you’re managing to navigate safely whatever weather challenges may have come your way this year. In today’s...
buttondown.com