The final challenge in this show is making a meal for ten toddlers. But you can’t make mac&cheese, chicken nuggets, or pizza. Each meal has to have a starch, a protein, and a vegetable. Most food eaten decides the winner.

Meike van der Heijden@meikeesther.bsky.social · last wk.

A cooking show but instead of a mystery ingredient you have two children crawling around in the kitchen trying to open all the kabinets and climb on the stove.

A cooking show but instead of a mystery ingredient you have two children crawling around in the kitchen trying to open all the kabinets and climb on the stove.

This description is the most accurate description of my feelings after my miscarriages. Five years and two babies later, I still sometimes mourn the loss of that initial potential.

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 3w ago

I attempted to put words to what's been going on in my life:

Journals: Submit your initial manuscript in any format - yay. Also journals - enter what each author ate for breakfast today, enter names of all the pets they have ever had, and also enter all the other information in the manuscript paragraph by paragraph.

So when will we see all the ads for jobs for experimentalists that can generate a lot of high quality data? All those AI/ML experts ultimately will need some kind of new data to train different models, right?

How soon after a paper was sent out for review is too soon to see whether the reviewer’s comments are in? Asking for a friend.

Very proud of Viviana Hernández-Castañón, postdoc in my lab, for receiving a @dystoniafoundation.bsky.social fellowship. She studies how brain signals evolve in dystonia, a debilitating movement disorder. @fralinbiomed.bsky.social @vtneuroscience.bsky.social news.vt.edu/articles/202...

Predicting the onset of a debilitating neurological disorder

Viviana Hernández-Castañón, a postdoctoral associate at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, will use a fellowship from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation to investigate brain activi...

news.vt.edu

Looking forward to presenting our new work at the Hopkins Cerebellum Seminar. DM me for a link if you want to join.

👀 when connectivity doesn't predict activity news.vt.edu/articles/202...

‘A cautionary tale’: Study challenges assumption about brain activity in movement disorders

Meike van der Heijden found that studying activity in Purkinje cells in the cerebellum is not a reliable substitute for understanding activity in connected but less accessible deep cerebellar nuclei c...

news.vt.edu

The Journal of Physiology@jphysiol.bsky.social · 4mo ago

In this recent study, Alyssa M Lyon from @fralinbiomed.bsky.social and colleagues found that steady-state #Purkinje cell activity has limited predictive power for #cerebellar output in disease 🧠 🔎 Read the research 👇️ physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...

10 colour palettes I reach for in research charts — curated, and most are colourblind-safe. Categorical + sequential: Okabe-Ito, Paul Tol, Tableau 10, viridis, cividis, magma. Skip default tab10 and rainbow/jet. Which do you swear by? Anything I'm missing? #DataViz #ColorPalette #SciComm

New Preprint: Competitive Olivocerebellar Input Selection Promotes Resilient Circuit Formation -- Join the ride for some developmental neuroscience, stay for some pretty pictures. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Competitive Olivocerebellar Input Selection Promotes Resilient Circuit Formation

Many neural circuits undergo competitive input selection, a process in which supernumerary connections compete for innervation territory on target cells. This process can create atypical circuits when...

doi.org

Ataxia affects balance, coordination, and mobility. 🧠 @virginiatech.bsky.social researcher Alyssa Lyon is studying whether targeted brain stimulation can improve symptoms by restoring neural communication. See how this work out of @meikeesther.bsky.social's lab could advance ataxia treatment 👇

We are thrilled to announce the 2026 Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Fellows! 40 remarkable postdocs pursuing transformative research in biological/biomedical sciences. This is the 7th Leading Edge cohort and we are so excited to welcome them! www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows/

Now here’s a useful study 👀

Daniel Gorelick@danielgorelick.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Paying peer reviewers works. Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social: • 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews • ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript • no reduction in editor-assessed review quality • similar acceptance rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In this recent study, Alyssa M Lyon from @fralinbiomed.bsky.social and colleagues found that steady-state #Purkinje cell activity has limited predictive power for #cerebellar output in disease 🧠 🔎 Read the research 👇️ physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...

Incredibly proud of Alyssa Lyon, the first grad student in my lab, for receiving a fellowship from the @ataxiafoundation.bsky.social. Alyssa will record and modulate neurons to investigate how we can make a sick brain better. Read more about Alyssa and her project: news.vt.edu/articles/202...

Examining a debilitating neurological disease with brain stimulation

Alyssa Lyon, a doctoral candidate in the Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program, will explore how neuromodulation changes communication between neurons in ataxia, a condition tha...

news.vt.edu

Oh like this one: - mentoring students and working with them to make new discoveries - thoroughly thinking about complex problems so we can make a difference for patients health - communicating science within and outside the field in a way that boost understanding of complex ideas

Siegenthaler Lab@siegenthalerlab.bsky.social · 4mo ago

what’s something you still enjoy doing in your academic job? -mentorship of the next generation of scientists -joyful, unfettered collaboration with my peers to advance my field -making unexpected discoveries that upend prior models -getting paid to just think (aka 'an intellectual')

🚨🧪🧵URGENT INPUT NEEDED: NIH asks input for next strategic plan-including emphasis on non-animal models (NAMs) to replace animals. Per NIH insider, anti-animal responses now outnumber scientists 200-700x. Please please provide input. Deadline: May 26, 11:59 PM ET. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Alien: And how did you run out of water? Earthling: Machines drank it. Alien: Machines. Earthling: We had to feed machines the water. Aliens: So the machines were holding your planet hostage for water. Earthling: No, we made the thirsty machines. They worked for us. Alien: End communication.

Very excited that Viviana, post-doc extraordinaire in my lab, is an awardee of a DMRF fellowship 🤩

Dystonia Medical Research Foundation@dystoniafoundation.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The DMRF has awarded six grants and fellowships for basic and clinical dystonia research projects, which will support scientists investigating the underlying causes and mechanisms of dystonia and developing new treatment strategies. https://bit.ly/4cVUcU4 #dystonia #dmrf #dystoniafoundation

Hey y’all 👋 repost magic appreciated. The Solecki lab is recruiting multiple postdocs at St. Jude for a chromatin imaging project at the edge of live-cell imaging, neuronal cell biology, chromatin regulation, and quantitative image analysis. Ever dreamed of touring chromatin like this? We CAN 🔥

Reminds me of an old piece we wrote on how to avoid spreading falsehoods. Lead with the truth, don't repeat the falsehood, and make sure there's something to fill the void. The neuroscience is all still same enough that it holds true today: www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/o...

Opinion | Your Brain Lies to You (Published 2008)

nytimes.com

Linda Holmes@lindaholmes.bsky.social · 4mo ago

When you acknowledge that something has been said “without evidence,” you don’t have to spend multiple paragraphs repeating it. You really don’t.

Our daughter’s favorite plushy is a duck. Terrified we’d ever loose duck, we bought back-up duck for 3X market price. Today our daughter saw 1 cm of back-up duck’s orange foot, recognized it as duck, and demanded to play with it. Needless to say, back-up duck needs to hide better.

Our 2 year old daughter is very confused their her 3 months old brother’s clothes has pockets but hers don’t. So here I’m teaching a 2yo about the patriarchy.

Sleep deprived. Married to a Brian and mother to an Oliver, I now study brian cells in the inferior oliver.

So if you ever run into a nursing mom at a conference. Get her something nice: A coffee A water A glass of wine A cookie with lots of chocolate Tell her her hair looks nice and her outfit looks fire Thank you

Shortly after posting this my pump broke. Everyone at this meeting now knows I’m a nursing mom. I found a pump. It’s okay. But also everyone I’m talking to tomorrow is going to think about my milk producing qualities…

Meike van der Heijden@meikeesther.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Whispering a quiet prayer for the milk I pumped and dumped in the airport nursing station.

Whispering a quiet prayer for the milk I pumped and dumped in the airport nursing station.

a man in a suit is holding a container and says sorry to interrupt dairy queen

ALT: a man in a suit is holding a container and says sorry to interrupt dairy queen

media.tenor.com

Whispering a quiet prayer for the milk I pumped and dumped in the airport nursing station.

a man in a suit is holding a container and says sorry to interrupt dairy queen

ALT: a man in a suit is holding a container and says sorry to interrupt dairy queen

media.tenor.com

Truly amazing paper Those reviewer comments 👀

Melissa Cooper, PhD@melcooperphd.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Astrocytes do so much more than any of us thought - they even communicate among specific brain regions across hemispheres! The journey to this paper spanned nearly a decade, but I'm most excited to see what everyone else does with the tools we've built. There's so much for all of us to explore!