🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper 📃🚨 Out today, Melissa Malvaez, Nick Griffin, Andrea Suarez & team discovered that dopamine can enable reward predictions to shape how we pursue reward. Surprisingly, we find that dopamine can constrain instrumental reward seeking. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8... 🧵👇🏻

Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy

Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...

jneurosci.org

We’re hiring a technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8968

Submissions for #WCBR2026 open today! Please go to www.winterbrain.org Big Sky is my absolute favorite venue for this meeting. The science is top notch, the people are great, the meaning is inclusive, and I learned to ski as a 35 year old! Please repost!

Calling all amygdaloids!!! The #AmygdalaGRC is coming up this summer in Barcelona. We’ve got talks, posters, networking, power hour, and tons of fun planned. 👀 the program 👇🏻 We’re accepting folks on a rolling basis, apply soon to make sure you get a spot: www.grc.org/amygdala-fun...

New preprint! We untangle glutamatergic and dopaminergic subpopulations in the ventral tegmental area. Long thread incoming, buckle up friends. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Untangling dopamine and glutamate in the ventral tegmental area

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons are of great interest for their central roles in motivation, learning, and psychiatric disorders. While hypotheses of VTA dopamine neuron function posit a...

biorxiv.org

HEY SOCAL & LA FRIENDS! We’ve gotten a TON of questions about how to get involved in SoCal/LA—and here’s the answer! ☀️🌎⬇️ Spread the word & tag someone in LA that should check it out!

Darby Saxbe@darbysaxbe.bsky.social · last yr.

Los Angeles people: join us 12pm March 7 for a rally for science at the Federal Building in Westwood, and please spread the word to any pro-science folks you know. @standupforscience.bsky.social @latimes.com @ktla.com @abc7.bsky.social @kcrw.com @laist.com @crooked.com @nbcla.com @foxla.bsky.social

Scientists have found two ‘dials’ in the brain that help to explain how chronic stress hijacks decision-making https://go.nature.com/41nrC88

How chronic stress warps decision-making

Nerve-cell ‘highways’ identified in mice suggest that stress pushes the brain towards rigid habit and away from thoughtful choices.

go.nature.com

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper📃🚨 Out today, @jackiegio.bsky.social discovered brain pathways that support agency and habit and how chronic stress disrupts them to rob of us our agency and cause us to form rigid habits 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free full text: rdcu.be/eaxEv

A dual-pathway architecture for stress to disrupt agency and promote habit - Nature

Adaptive decision-making often requires an understanding of our agency in a situation; however, chronic stress can disrupt agency and promote inflexible, habitual behaviour by turning off a brain path...

nature.com

It felt like the time to return to my pocket community. Glad to have found you again. Will post about my life, discoveries, and challenges as a 🧠👩🏼‍🔬.

a woman is standing in front of a door with the words i 'm here written in red

Alt: a woman is standing in front of a door with the words i 'm here written in red

media.tenor.com