Patrick Piantadosi
@ppiantad.bsky.social
behavioral neuroscientist @ NIAAA | climber & lover of sport | he / him | not @PiantadosiSean (but close)
🚨 new work from the lab! "Dissociable cortical-hippocampal dopamine dynamics support memory-guided behavior" by @albitc.bsky.social et al. congratulations whole-heartedly to the team and we're excited to hear everyone's thoughts on the work! 👇🏽 www.cell.com/current-biol...
Officially out today! Long-running project, many thanks to give - in particular to my mentors & collaborators, the postbacs who worked so hard on each experiment, and the reviewers. If you love the amygdala, give it a read. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice
Modifying behavior in response to changing environmental conditions is a crucial adaptive function. This capacity is evident when animals curtail the …
sciencedirect.com
Patrick Piantadosi@ppiantad.bsky.social · 12mo agofor anyone interested in the amygdala and risky decision-making, check out our new preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... amygdala neurons track reward-seeking actions, and punishment risk dramatically alters this function. lots of other (BLA-accumbens!) data included.
Instead of analyzing the IBL dataset, use your computational skills to analyze this dataset and your results will be 1,000 times more translationally relevant
Rudebeck Lab@rudebecklab.bsky.social · 6mo agoWant a dataset to test ideas on neural basis of decision making or how areas interact as we make choices? Check out our data published today @rudebecklab.bsky.social. >16,000 single neurons from 22 anatomically confirmed areas in macaques performing a decision task. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excited to share my postdoc work is out in @natneuro.nature.com today! We examined how the brain enables social groups to collectively coordinate their behavior in the face of environmental challenge ❄️🐭🐭🐭🐭❄️ : www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cortical regulation of collective social dynamics during environmental challenge - Nature Neuroscience
Raam, Li, Gu and colleagues identify neural mechanisms underlying group huddling in mice during cold exposure. They find that the prefrontal cortex encodes decisions to huddle and that silencing neura...
nature.com
Monitoring gene expression in the brain with a simple blood test? In collaboration with @jerzyszablowski.bsky.social & his lab we figured out how to do it nonhuman primates using noninvasive neuroengineering of synthetic serum markers. nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.
nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
This is a catastrophic unforced error. It was quite something to hear @ohsunews.bsky.social President Shereef Elnahal equate the shambolic lies of fringe groups (“others”) with the heartfelt & credible testimony of the scientists & veterinarians in his employ. “Teammates” don’t support rivals.
Science Magazine@science.org · 8mo agoBreaking news: One of the largest monkey research centers in the United States has taken the first steps toward converting itself into a primate sanctuary, a seismic change that would affect biomedical research across the country. https://scim.ag/4bH2COV
Where does learning through imitation happen in the brain? In juvenile zebra finches, we pinpoint a synaptic locus of song learning in a cortico-basal ganglia circuit and leverage this localization to measure the timescale of consolidation and make birds learn faster! #neuroskyence (1/14)
A synaptic locus of song learning
Learning by imitation is the foundation for verbal and musical expression, but its underlying neural basis remains obscure. A juvenile male zebra finch imitates the multisyllabic song of an adult tutor in a process that depends on a song-specialized cortico-basal ganglia circuit, affording a powerful system to identify the synaptic substrates of imitative motor learning. Plasticity at a particular set of cortico-basal ganglia synapses is hypothesized to drive rapid learning-related changes in song before these changes are subsequently consolidated in downstream circuits. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is untested and the synaptic locus where learning initially occurs is unknown. By combining a computational framework to quantify song learning with synapse-specific optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations within and directly downstream of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit, we identified the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that drive the acquisition and expression of rapid vocal changes during juvenile song learning and characterized the hours-long timescale over which these changes consolidate. Furthermore, transiently augmenting postsynaptic activity in the basal ganglia briefly accelerates learning rates and persistently alters song, demonstrating a direct link between basal ganglia activity and rapid learning. These results localize the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that enable a juvenile songbird to learn to sing and reveal the circuit logic and behavioral timescales of this imitative learning paradigm. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Institutes of Health, K99 NS144525 (DCS), F32 MH132152 (DCS), F31 HD098772 (SB), R01 NS099288 (RM), RF1 NS118424 (RM and JP)
biorxiv.org
Thrilled to share our new preprint highlighting distinct neurocomputational mechanisms underlying how reward and punishment determine adaptive cognitive control - a massive fMRI study and collaborative team effort with the @shenhavlab.bsky.social 🧠 Link here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control
Human motivation is fundamentally shaped by one's expectations of the reward they could earn for good performance or the punishment they would avoid for poor performance. However, the extent to which ...
biorxiv.org
for anyone interested in the amygdala and risky decision-making, check out our new preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... amygdala neurons track reward-seeking actions, and punishment risk dramatically alters this function. lots of other (BLA-accumbens!) data included.
Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice
Modifying behavior in response to changing environmental conditions is a crucial adaptive function. This capacity is exemplified when animals curtail pursuit of a valued outcome that risks being punis...
biorxiv.org
1. Media coverage of a new paper by @ryantomm.bsky.social w @brandonforys.com, @dr-stan.bsky.social et al. Building on Stan’s rodent work, Ryan found that > depression levels were associated w reduced capacity to learn to actively button-press to avoid a nasty sound www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...
Depression Curbs Ability to Actively Avoid Unpleasant Events
Depression in young patients is linked to difficulty in taking action to avoid something unpleasant, while the ability to withdraw and not act remains intact.
medscape.com
Please comment. The Administration is trying to turn the NIH IC Directors and program staff roles into political appointees that serve at the whim of the President. Imagine if each change in administration brought sweeping changes in professional NIH staff across your favorite ICs.
@KayTrue (Sarah L. Keller)@kaytrue.bsky.social · last yr.Here are details about OPM-2025-0004. This would replace NIH Directors (non-partisan civil servants) with political appointees. Jeremy Berg has quick text to use: bsky.app/profile/jere.... A direct link for your comments is at: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20.... Cite Docket ID OPM-2025-0004
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is demanding a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele over the detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and says he’ll go to El Salvador himself if the Marylander isn’t returned.
At least four neuroscientists received termination letters this week dismissing them from NIH advisory boards. “This is unusual and unprecedented,” says @thebalelab.bsky.social, one of the terminated board members. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social @avaskham.bsky.social #neuroskyence bit.ly/4hM0Xa3
Acting NIH director dismisses four neuroscientists from advisory boards
The letters they received this week did not include a reason for their termination.
thetransmitter.org
I maxed out my credit card, emptied my savings account, and took out a loan to move from Alabama to Bethesda, MD. I don’t even qualify for unemployment since I’ve only worked at NIH for a month. I will be financially and medically devastated. Seeking suggestions for anywhere that’s hiring!!
Katie Sandlin@kmsandlin.bsky.social · 2y agoToday, along with 2,000 other NIH employees, I had to clear out my office 😭 It was truly the honor of my life to work with such incredibly passionate people focused on improving human health. I’ve never experienced a more positive culture where *everyone* cared about their job and serving others.
To all those saying "shouldn't we root out government inefficiency? What's wrong with DOGE?" a quick background on Constitutional law and why the WAY it is being violated exposes the true motives of the criminals:
Just in case you thought that removing DEI criteria would mean that everyone is competing equally: NIH is removing grad students from underrepresented backgrounds from the applicant pool altogether. Their applications will not be considered. Other students, not from these backgrounds, will be.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro's full post ordering an increase of import tariffs on U.S. goods, says he doesn't really like traveling to the U.S. because it's “a bit boring” and invokes the ancestors
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2y agoBOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombian president orders increase of import tariffs on US goods in retaliation to similar order from President Trump.
My paper is out!! 🎉 "Opponent control of reinforcement by striatal dopamine and serotonin", @Nature Here, we show that dopamine and serotonin signals form a gas-brake system for reward in the mammalian brain THREAD ⬇️ 1/n
