Excited to share a new preprint from the lab, by @andrewmatheson.bsky.social and team, where we dive into the superpower of newts: plasticity! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Like many good projects, this started with a serendipitous observation... 🧵1/5

Yesterday the US Administration supercharged its explicit effort to bar international students from staying in the US after graduation. All Americans should know: 1/3 of *all* STEM PhDs working in the US are immigrants who graduated from US universities, then stayed. www.piie.com/index%2Ephp/...

Universities in the US are governed now by "liberal autocrats." It's time to bring faculty, students, staff and alumni into leadership. Trustees and presidents are out of touch, unaccountable, and in this moment, selling us out to the Trump administration. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The Higher Education Revolution We Need to Have

Our universities are selling us out. If we want that to change, we have to change the way they’re run.

thenation.com

So excited to announce that I will be starting the Chen Lab at EMBL Rome in September 2026 🎉 ! The Chen Lab will investigate the genetics + evolution of innate behavior w/ high-throughput sequencing + computational methods across diverse rodent species. Stay tuned for upcoming opportunities...

Really excited to see this in print!

Cedric Boeckx@cedricboeckx.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Specific expansion of motor cortical projections in a singing mouse” Great new work by @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social E. Isco @cliffscience.bsky.social @xmikezheng20.bsky.social @tonyzador.bsky.social & colleagues on the neural basis of vocal dexterity, now out in @nature.com 🧪🧠

Posting for Vibhu Sahni: Due to unforeseen circumstances the Burke Neurological Institute will have to terminate its research operations 5/22. There are international postdocs on visas who are looking for new homes. Please reach out to Vibhu if you can help

96% of surveyed early career researchers on NIH K awards reported that federal changes in science funding has impacted their career stability

Timothy McBride@mcbridetd.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Federal Policy Changes and Career Stability Among NIH K-Award Recipients Among NIH K-award recipients, 96% perceived recent federal policy changes as negatively affecting research career stability; 18% report being much less likely to continue research vs 1 year ago jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

thanks, as always, to the deer mouse for teaching us so much! And thanks also to @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social for covering our work! This was a great collaboration with @adamhantman.bsky.social and lab!

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Researchers reveal the neural basis of evolving new capabilities by investigating behavioral and morphological differences between deer mouse subspecies. #neuroskyence By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/evolution/ar...

Researchers reveal the neural basis of evolving new capabilities by investigating behavioral and morphological differences between deer mouse subspecies. #neuroskyence By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/evolution/ar...

Mammals have hundreds of joints and muscles. Controlling them individually would be nearly impossible. How does the nervous system organize such complexity into coherent actions? Our new study explores this question through a natural behavior: jumping.

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

Agouti integrates environmental cues to regulate paternal behaviour - Nature

Expression of agouti signalling protein in neurons in the medial preoptic area is increased by group housing and negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances...

nature.com

Our paper is out in Science Advances! What makes primate hands so dexterous? We show that evolutionarily distinct spinal and cortical pathways work together to balance stability and flexibility, supporting remarkable primate hand control. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Primate dexterous hand movements are controlled by functionally distinct premotoneuronal systems

Distinct spinal and cortical pathways coordinate muscle synergies and fine control to support primate dexterous hand movements.

science.org

Want to come do a postdoc with us? We’re interested in how sensorimotor function is carried out by the cells and circuits of the spinal cord. We have an awesome team, lots of cool techniques, and we’re open to new ideas/approaches/connections. Get in touch!

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill? Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes. Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature

Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

nature.com

1. If the goal is to stop us from doing science, then doing science is more important than ever now. 2. We have radical uncertainty about the future. There is no sense in giving up in advance. 3. We have agency over the future. If you don't like what's happening, work to change what is happening.

Harmit Singh Malik@harmitmalik.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Getting asked about how academics can continue to do science & inspire trainees even in the midst of a continued (escalated) assault on science, reason, truth, & human rights. I don’t have great answers. I would love to hear from mentors about advice they’re giving to trainees/ colleagues.

Excited to share @rbrianroome.bsky.social ‘s beautiful paper on development of the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord @science.org This is how the anatomical organization and cell types that process pain, touch, body position and more are laid down. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Ontogeny of the spinal cord dorsal horn

The dorsal horn of the mammalian spinal cord is organized into laminae where each layer is populated by different neuron types, has distinctive circuit connections, and plays specialized roles in beha...

science.org

"My New Year's Resolution is to find a principled way to think about all those cell types in the brain" Why friend, you are in luck, because @rgast.bsky.social has just the perspective for you: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain

Much effort has been spent clustering neurons into transcriptomic or functional cell types and characterizing the differences between them. Beyond sub…

sciencedirect.com

in non-science announcements: tonight I’ll be participating in the first ever live performance of Ian’s 20-years and counting original Christmas music project. If you’re in the Boston area, join us!

Ian Coss@iancoss.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Just follow the sound of sleigh bells and the smell of fried chicken…

Spinal motor neurons in dazzling detail. ✨ Each green dot is a spinal motor neuron - crucial but rare cells making up just 1% of neurons in the spinal cord. In diseases like ALS, they are selectively damaged, making them of special interest to neuroscientists. #neuroskyence #FluorescenceFriday

This is insane

Sam Gershman@gershbrain.bsky.social · 8mo ago

For one investment manager's compensation, you could hire 50-60 (!!) lecturers. Yet the endowment performance often lags the S&P 500. They could just put the money in index funds and double all the lecturer salaries. cepr.net/publications...

Second this. We need more people saying this: It’s not just US science and cancer cures at risk, it’s the whole US university system top to bottom. CEU and Orban are their model. CEU is now gone from Hungary. And the response needed is public pushback, not quiet go-along-to-get-along.

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Again, there is no plan for running our universities without federal funding, or foreign students, at scale. But the public has no idea about this because no. one. is. telling. them. this. They expect their kids are still going to be able to do all the things at college in the next 4 years, & well:

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature

Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

nature.com

ChaCha wants me to tell everyone she knows she's a different species from wolves because she's obviously a human

jim mallet@wtf-r-species.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Ever wondered whether dogs are a different species from wolves? On an ecological, and behavioral basis, I think so. The Dec 2 issue of PNAS will be interesting! www.pnas.org/toc/pnas/122... and the introductory article to the issue: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... . Here: my daughter, my son, and our dog:

Great @currentbiology.bsky.social study by @xmikezheng20.bsky.social @cliffscience.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social 🧪🧠🐭🎶 Vocal repertoire expansion in singing mice by co-opting a conserved midbrain circuit node www.cell.com/current-biol...

Vocal repertoire expansion in singing mice by co-opting a conserved midbrain circuit node

Zheng and Harpole et al. show that singing mice produce two major vocal modes: ancestral USVs and novel songs that follow a linearly decelerating rhythm. Although acoustically distinct, songs and USVs...

cell.com

My poster is today!

Kelsey Tyssowski@kelseytea.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Heading to San Diego for #sfn25 today! I’ll be presenting a poster on this work Monday afternoon! looking forward to meeting neuroscientists! please stop by my poster or reach out if you’re going and want to talk motor neuro/behavior, evolution, neuroethology…or whatever else! 🧠🥳 #neuroskyence

The Sosa Lab is going to #SfN25 and actively recruiting ✨postdocs✨ with systems neuroscience experience! We study both fundamental memory processes and how memory changes during pregnancy and postpartum. If you are interested in meeting at SfN, please email me! www.sosaneurolab.com/join/postdoc...

Sosa Lab - Postdoctoral Researchers

We are seeking postdocs to start in 2026!

sosaneurolab.com

PSA: it’s gonna rain at #sfn25! @krissylyon.bsky.social tried to warn me, but I’d already left my house without a rain coat 🙀

Heading to San Diego for #sfn25 today! I’ll be presenting a poster on this work Monday afternoon! looking forward to meeting neuroscientists! please stop by my poster or reach out if you’re going and want to talk motor neuro/behavior, evolution, neuroethology…or whatever else! 🧠🥳 #neuroskyence

Kelsey Tyssowski@kelseytea.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

Just channeling Stephen J Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops"

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities? Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation. 🧵(1/n) @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito

Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

science.org