Check out the new preprint from the lab led by Brandon Garcia-Castañeda! Huge shout out to NIH/NIDA for initially funding this line of research and continuing to support this work in a new R21/R33 with @asoshnev.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Ventral tegmental area astrocytes regulate drug-cue associations and drug intake

Cocaine use disorder remains a critical public health concern with limited treatment options. Astrocytes are increasingly recognized as active regulators of neurotransmission and are emerging as impor...

biorxiv.org

Our new study ⬇️inspired by the question: does psilocybin influence meta-learning and cortical processing of unexpected uncertainty? Why is this important? Meta-learning may be critical for therapeutic effects of psychedelics and how the trip creates a window that facilitates clinical intervention

Out today! A truly team effort and one of my favorite lab projects The findings connect NMDA/Grin2A malfunction to dopamine dynamics and related behaviors, and provide a futuristic model to develop and test "course altering" treatments for schizophrenia www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Grin2a knockout in adolescent dopamine neurons disrupts prediction error signaling and produces a phenotype relevant to schizophrenia - Molecular Psychiatry

Molecular Psychiatry - Grin2a knockout in adolescent dopamine neurons disrupts prediction error signaling and produces a phenotype relevant to schizophrenia

nature.com

Don't miss this if you are going to #SfN2025 and interested in cross-species psychedelic neuroscience research Looking forward to hearing the talks and the discussions, and excited about presenting some of the lab's unpublished data and how we are thinking about future research

Katharina Schmack @kathaschmack.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Excited to speak in San Diego on Nov 14 at this SfN Sattelite! If you're curious about cross-species approaches to #psychedelics, #hallucinations and #consciousness, join us! 🐀👤🧠 Limited spots, register here: hopkinspsychedelic.org/sfn2025

Congratulations to this year's cohort of travel awardees. The committee had an incredibly hard job with over 100 applications! We look forward to seeing you all in Spain next month. Attendees, the data blitz highlighting the awardee's work is on Day 1 at 15:10. #EBPS2025

Suspension of all grants to UCLA www.latimes.com/california/s...

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism

The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school d...

latimes.com

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Flexible updating of reward and punishment contingencies by VTA GABA neurons

In dynamic environments where stimuli predicting reward or punishment unexpectedly change, it is critical to flexibly update behavior while preserving…

sciencedirect.com

Yeah dopamine encodes reward but what about when contingencies shift and behavior needs to be flexible? Turns out VTA GABA neuron activity plays a role, check it out in my first postdoctoral research article here!👇

Bita Moghaddam@bita137.bsky.social · last yr.

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ever wonder how stress and the estrous cycle affects reward learning? Well we have answers for you in our paper led by @askaneuroscientist.bsky.social published in @npp-journal.bsky.social And huge thanks to the NIH and NSF who supported this research.

Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning

Neuropsychopharmacology - Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning

nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program

In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

spencer.org

Well the NIH has cancelled the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of women in history It has been running continuously since 1991 and has provided massive key knowledge about diseases in women Unreal www.science.org/content/arti...

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

science.org

Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale

Rebekah Tromble@rebekahtromble.bsky.social · last yr.

NSF has posted an “update on priorities.” They’re canceling all “DEI and misinformation/disinformation” grants. And the guidance on how to fulfill the longstanding, legally mandated Broadening Participation requirement is utterly incoherent. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

The Atlantic story on the situation at NIH is sobering. We are so screwed. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Inside the Collapse at NIH

Administration officials pressured NIH to avoid clear advice from the agency’s own lawyers to restart grant funding now.

theatlantic.com

The NIH diversity supplement pages have all been pulled down. What is a diversity supplement and why should the public care? A diversity supplement is funding to help diversify the research workforce. You may be wondering, “so what?”. Let me explain. www.nigms.nih.gov/Pages/PageNo...

National Institute of General Medical Sciences

NIGMS supports basic research to understand biological processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

nigms.nih.gov