1/4 With scorching temperatures outside, it feels timely to think about those especially vulnerable to heat — including people living with neurological disorders such as MS, epilepsy, and others.
Jan Siemens
@jansiemens.bsky.social
Heat, cold, brain - viva sensory science and the hypothalamus https://siemenslab.de/
1/3 A real highlight of the International Symposium on Regulation of Cell Functions by Transient Receptor Potential Channels was a beautiful talk by Frank Zufall, who presented his life’s work on olfaction and its signalling mechanisms. 👃🧠
The latest version of our collaboration with Katalin Torok and her lab is up. We report some new glutamate sensors. Great work from Sara Bertelli in Berlin and the whole team in London (Holly & Oanh particularly). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/6
iGlu3Fast and iGlu3Slow, improved fluorescent reporters for detection of spontaneous glutamate activity in the brain
The genetically-encoded fluorescent glutamate sensor, iGluSnFR3, characterised by a high dynamic range and rapid on-kinetics, is an attractive sensor for glutamate imaging in the central nervous syste...
biorxiv.org
🌶️ Why does spicy food make you feel hot—but actually cool you down? 👇 (thread)
🧠🌡️ New Comment in Nature Reviews Neuroscience: Neural adaptation to climate change: mechanisms, limits and opportunities (with Patrick Haggard, UCL). 🔗 [ rdcu.be/e8BEJ ]
📣 Postdoc position in Heidelberg (Neurobiology × Engineering): neuromodulation of thermoregulatory brain circuits to improve health. Deadline: March 31, 2026.
Outside temperature affects our eating habits: when it’s warm, many of us eat less. How does the brain link thermal state to appetite — and prevent overheating? ☀️🧠
I just did an interview in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung about how we detect cold temperatures — the journalist, Felix Hütten, did a nice job to make it accessible also for non-scientists. www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/m...
Warum manche Menschen schneller frieren als andere - selbst die Wissenschaft tut sich schwer
Temperaturwahrnehmung ist einer der ursprünglichsten Sinne des Menschen. Warum ist das so? Fragen an den Pharmakologen Jan-Erik Siemens.
sueddeutsche.de
It was really one of the best conferences I have ever attended: great science in a friendly atmosphere and a gorgeous setting.
Jan Siemens@jansiemens.bsky.social · 11mo agoWhat a great Titisee Conference! “Warm, cold, and life” brought together brilliant minds exploring how temperature shapes the brain, physiology, and behaviour — from mice, wild animals to humans. Thanks to Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds for the support!
It was great having you all there! Excellent discussions and fun! I hope all of you made it home safely.
Felix Viana@neuroviana.bsky.social · 11mo agoThank you to @jansiemens.bsky.social @uniheidelberg.bsky.social and James Poulet @mdc-berlin.bsky.social for the invitation and bringing together an amazing group of scientist working 🥵 and 🥶 temperature sensing and thermoregulation
What a great Titisee Conference! “Warm, cold, and life” brought together brilliant minds exploring how temperature shapes the brain, physiology, and behaviour — from mice, wild animals to humans. Thanks to Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds for the support!
How does temperature interact with the brain? This coming Wednesday Eve Marder, Laura Duvall and I will talk about thermally-induced neural activity, plasticity and the like.
Society for Neuroscience@sfn.org · last yr.Claim your spot now for the next webinar in partnership with @kavlifoundation.bsky.social! Join the conversation as experts discuss mechanisms of neural adaptation in changing environments and recent advances in the field. Register now: bit.ly/4k7h3MX #NeuroSky
How do mice decide which ambient temperature they prefer? Our new eLife paper by Muad (@hummuscience.bsky.social) explores how TRPV1 and TRPM2 channels shape temperature preference. A quick breakdown 👇 🔗 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215103/
Diverging roles of TRPV1 and TRPM2 in warm-temperature detection - PubMed
The perception of innocuous temperatures is crucial for thermoregulation. The TRP ion channels TRPV1 and TRPM2 have been implicated in warmth detection, yet their precise roles remain unclear. A key c...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Amid the Trump admin's dismantling of the US scientific ecosystem, Nobel Prize-winner @ardemp.bskyverified.social writes on @cnn.com: "I’ve already been approached with an offer to relocate my lab to China, complete with a promise of 20 years of stable research funding." www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/h...
Nobel laureate: I owe America my success. Today, its scientific future is in danger | CNN
Dr. Ardem Patapoutian says he watches “with deep sadness as the United States’ remarkable scientific enterprise, which took generations of hard work and national investment to build, faces a concerted...
cnn.com
This was a great meeting to mix and mingle with scientists of diverse fields broadly interested in how long-term environmental changes modulate neurobiology - thank you @kavlifoundation.bsky.social and @alleninstitute.bsky.social !
The Kavli Foundation@kavlifoundation.org · last yr.Welcome to the Neurobiology in Changing Environments symposium! We’re thrilled to begin this important gathering exploring how nervous systems respond to our rapidly shifting world. #KavliNeuro #FrontierScience #NiCE
Very interesting study by Lin Yuan & Co in the Julius lab, explaining how sensory neurons can adapt to exitotoxicity and calcium challenges e.g. by Trpv1 activation. Spoiler alert: the electron transport chain is involved - we enjoyed discussing it in Journal club. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Metabolic tuning facilitates nociceptor resilience to excitotoxicity
The capsaicin receptor, TRPV1, mediates the detection of harmful chemical and thermal stimuli. Overactivation of TRPV1 can lead to cellular damage or death through excitotoxicity, a phenomenon associa...
biorxiv.org
Bodo Ramelow übt sehr nachvollziehbare Kritik auch an der Rolle der Medien beim Wahlerfolg der AfD, weil alle über kein anderes Thema als „kriminelle Ausländer“ mehr gesprochen haben. www.deutschlandfunk.de/interview-mi...
Interview mit Bodo Ramelow, Linke, Ex-Ministerpräsident Thüringen, zur Wahl
deutschlandfunk.de
Can we perform genome-wide screens in any cell type in the body?! Excited to share our roadmap for leveraging advances in sgRNA delivery, library design, and phenotypic selection to enable unprecedented genetic dissection of organismal physiology and disease. www.cell.com/cell-genomic...
A roadmap toward genome-wide CRISPR screening throughout the organism
Genome-wide CRISPR screening in the organism has tremendous potential to answer long-standing questions of physiology and disease; however, technical limitations have prevented its broad application. ...
cell.com
On February 12, shortly before “High noon”, scientists at German research campuses, including here in Heidelberg, will stand up for Democracy: “facts, not fake news are needed for democracy”. See aufstehenfuerdemokratie.de/englisch/ – there is also find a Petition related to the cause. Get involved.
This is true. LA County has a population greater than that of 40 individual U.S. states.
Matt Shipman (he/him)@shiplives.bsky.social · 2y agoLos Angeles County is 4,751 square miles -- almost twice as large as Delaware. It is home to more than 9.5M people. Larger than Virginia or Arizona; more than twice the population of Louisiana or Kentucky. It has a larger GDP than Ohio or Georgia. These fires are a truly national crisis.
Just finished the book "Transformer" by Nick Lane, great inspiration to evolutionary biologists, bochemists and, yes, also neuroscientists - its all about transformation of organic molecules and energy flow and not (only) about genes. Highly recommended nick-lane.net/books/transf...
Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death — Nick Lane
What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end? Nick Lane turns the standard view upside down, focusing on Krebs cycle
nick-lane.net
A short, personal account how our recent heat acclimation study came to life -- paywall-free version can be found here rdcu.be/d38Xr
Heat acclimation induces hypothalamic temperature sensitivity that promotes heat tolerance
Nature Neuroscience - After long-term heat exposure, a discrete group of hypothalamic neurons in the anterior ventromedial preoptic area become hyperactive and acquire temperature sensitivity. This...
rdcu.be
Interesting thoughts on the type of biological problems AI research can help with, the complexity of biology that requires human intellect (and cannot be replaced by AI -- at least not currently, but I think it never will...), and human language that connects it all.
Sam Rodriques@sgrodriques.bsky.social · 2y agoThe essential role of natural language in representing biology --AI-Science community all-in on bio foundation models, will no-doubt be awesome --However, the representation spaces in those models are too structured for most phenomena --Language will be essential, currently largely underappreciated
Many academics point to bioRxiv as “the one thing improving science publishing”. If so, the one thing you all can do is persuade colleagues to submit and make this a norm. 1/2
Pain research: Exciting insight into "silent" (or "sleeping") pain-sensing neurons from the Lampert Lab!
Angelika Lampert@lampertlab.bsky.social · 2y agoPreprint alert: Using human microneurography protocols in PatchSeq experiments on pig DRGs we identify the molecular identity of human dermal CMi-fibers (sleeping nociceptors). We provide an integrated pig-human-more transcriptomic atlas and identify OSMR and SST as marker, backed by human expts.
A strong, long-lasting sensory stimulus—be it visual, auditory, olfactory or tactile—triggers plasticity in the neurons that respond to it. But @jansiemens.bsky.social wondered: Does the same principle apply to prolonged heat? By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/thermoregula...
To beat the heat, hypothalamus neurons in mice ramp up their firing
The uptick may help the rodents acclimate to temperature hikes and keep their cool.
thetransmitter.org
My inaugural post on Bluesky - quite fittingly, I'm thrilled to share our first study on heat acclimation, which identifies a neuronal mechanism that drives heat tolerance in mice. (www.nature.com/articles/s41... ) Here is the gist 🧵 (1/n):
Thermally induced neuronal plasticity in the hypothalamus mediates heat tolerance - Nature Neuroscience
Ambroziak, Nencini, Pohle and colleagues identify a slowly emerging plasticity mechanism in a discrete set of hypothalamic preoptic neurons that is triggered by long-term heat exposure and that drives...
nature.com
I applaud this initiative to try to break the fascination with journal name prestige. As long as I remember to do it, I put only the PMID for my papers in the slides for my talks. If @ardemp.bsky.social can do it, so can you!
Leslie B Vosshall PhD@leslievosshall.bsky.social · 2y agoI love my job @hhmi.bsky.social This week we hosted 164 scientists and heard 30 amazing 15-minute talks, dove into 70 posters, ate many fancy meals, and saw zero journal names.
