Ali Mohebi
@mohebial.bsky.social
Loves stories. Behavioral Neurobiologist. Dopamine. Science. Technology. Reason. Photography. Baking. Films. Roger's Pink Floyd. Assistant Professor of Psychology, UW-Madison http://mohebi-associates.org/
First reminder: please encourage your friends, lab-mates, and students to apply and share their science with us! :: Don't hate me; I will post two more reminders here.
Ali Mohebi@mohebial.bsky.social · 2w ago📢 Applications are now open for Season 2 of Brain Talks on the Isthmus (2026–2027)! Please consider applying, encouraging others to apply, and sharing this! Season 1 was fun :) Application Deadline: August 15, 2026 More Info and Application Form: mohebi-associates.org/brain-talks
Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I try to be unsparing towards systems and structures, but I try to be generous towards people.” Good advice.
📢 Applications are now open for Season 2 of Brain Talks on the Isthmus (2026–2027)! Please consider applying, encouraging others to apply, and sharing this! Season 1 was fun :) Application Deadline: August 15, 2026 More Info and Application Form: mohebi-associates.org/brain-talks
I joined the Sohal lab with one major hypothesis: psychedelic drugs can be powerful psychiatric treatments, depending on underlying neurobiology. Indeed, psilocybin restored cognitive flexibility in one circuit model of dysfunction, but not another! Then, we had to find out how! 🧠🍄🧪
Vikaas Sohal@vikaassohal.bsky.social · 4w agoNew preprint led by @christineliu.art! How do psychedelics improve cognitive flexibility? Psilocybin prevents inflexibility caused by aberrant mesocortical error signaling (but not inflexibility due to other mechanisms); this is tied to plasticity of PFC-MD neurons: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I am happy to share our latest manuscript, led by newly-minted PhD Justin Wang, identifying a neural population that selectively controls hedonic, but not homeostatic, feeding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Ventral pallidal GABAergic neurons control hedonic feeding and obesity
Food intake is governed by two interacting drives. The homeostatic hunger drive regulates food intake to fulfill caloric needs while the hedonic drive promotes intake of palatable foods outside of cal...
biorxiv.org
Strong endorsement, amazing opportunity
Roxana Zeraati@roxana-zeraati.bsky.social · last mo.We (@neuroprinciplist.bsky.social & I) will soon open joint PhD & postdoc positions on cross-species mechanisms of different adaptive behaviors. If you’re interested and would like to chat during #FENS2026, drop me a message :)
I kinda feel bad for how I treat Gemini as a safe backup plan, saving my tokens for Claude code. Or when Claude keeps me waiting until 8:30pm.
Is it just QED that is absurd or do you disagree with scoring papers and evaluating research impact, rigor etc? I believe that the latter is important, at least pedagogically. Perhaps for the same reason that standardized tests are imperfect but necessary signals...
Postdoc position available at postlab.psych.wisc.edu. Pls send cv to postle@wisc.edu
PO-STL-AB
Our interests in human memory and cognition encompass the cognitive and neural basis of working memory, attention, control, and consciousness.News Madison Symposium on Memory & Control. On 30 May 202...
postlab.psych.wisc.edu
Cool new work from @dudman.bsky.social and @fluketc.bsky.social Reward magnitude determines reinforcement learning efficiency: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reward magnitude determines reinforcement learning efficiency
Standard animal learning studies minimize individual reward magnitudes to maximize the repetitions of reinforced behaviors. We investigated how reward magnitude influences initial learning across five...
science.org
This was a crazy, fun long-term project spearheaded by Clayton Barnes, with collaborators Felipe Cini and Peng Xu. Some bits started at @mblscience.bsky.social in the fabulous @nsb-mbl.bsky.social course! Biorxiv preprint here: doi.org/10.64898/202...
Spatiotemporally dynamic noradrenergic regulation of cortical networks
Brain activity and cognition exhibit state-dependent fluctuations that may reflect the influence of neuromodulatory systems, including norepinephrine (NE). Although the activity of noradrenergic neurons is strongly coupled to sleep-wake cycles and pupil dynamics, suggesting a global arousal signal, recent evidence suggests potentially modular partitioning of these cells. In addition, it is unclear whether different neuromodulatory signals exhibit distinct spatiotemporal patterns. We performed simultaneous, dual color mesoscopic imaging of either NE and calcium or NE and acetylcholine (ACh) signals across the neocortex, along with high-density electrophysiology, to investigate the relationship between NE release and neural activity. We find that the pattern of cortical NE signaling varies with behavioral state and is associated with enhanced functional connectivity. Simultaneous imaging of NE and ACh reveals spatiotemporally dynamic coupling between signals. Finally, NE signaling and functional connectivity are disrupted by sleep deprivation. Overall, our findings demonstrate that NE provides a multimodal signal that links transitions in behavioral state to cortical network interactions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Eye Institute, R01EY022951, R21EY036254, EY026878 National Institute of Mental Health, R01MH113852 National Institute on Aging, R21AG087186 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, https://ror.org/01s5ya894, F31 NS129354 McKnight Foundation, https://ror.org/003ghvj67, Scholar Award
doi.org
One of my favorite neuroscience stories of 2025-2026. Glad to see it published for us enthusiasts to dig!
Drew Schreiner@schreinerdrew.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhere, exactly, does learning happen in the brain? Out today in @nature.com, we identify a synaptic locus of birdsong learning and show that the circuit can be tuned to make birds learn faster - but at a cost. Read on👇 #neuroskyence 🧪 #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics Shareable link: rdcu.be/fiyrS
Thrilled to share our work out in @nature.com today! Linking flexibility modeling, single-cell imaging, and targeted optogenetics allowed us to characterize how some prefrontal neurons, and mPFC-VTA neurons in particular, drive contingency degradation behavior. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prefrontal to ventral tegmental area dynamics drive contingency degradation - Nature
This work provides a mechanistic understanding of how certain prefrontal circuits in the rodent brain permit flexibility to selectively stop learned behaviours through interactions with core subcortic...
nature.com
Really pleased that this work with @dudman.bsky.social is now out in Neuron: A global dopaminergic learning rate enables adaptive foraging across many options
Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 3mo ago
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 🧪🧠
::Howard Fields:: I cherish the chance I had to interact and explore brain facts together, spiced with your existential questions! Your smile, insight, and kindness touched everyone and transcended, and I will treasure the memories. Until we meet again: you need to see our hot new dataset...
I wish Ilya had shown up. I wanted to ask him if he still cares about science as a public institution, and why he and his fellow captains of industry aren’t speaking up as the government is dismantling US science. Why do they think they don’t need us? >>
That bittersweet feeling of having your last session in your first undergraduate class. Fun Fun Fun.
Claude Pro's usage quota is like my dental insurance: one cleaning, one filling, and then I have to wait another year for a reset. You need a crown? That’s out of pocket!
Democracy seldom collapses in plain sight; it erodes in the gray areas. Its decline begins at the uncertain boundary between what is clearly lawful and what can be made to appear so through interpretation. Democracy dies in the gray. (Also true on university campuses)
Bryan 🌐 🇺🇦 Slava Ukraine personal opinions only@papootx.bsky.social · 4mo agoJohn Roberts’ Wife Made Millions From Bribes Roberts accepted $10 Million in bribes disguised as recruiting fees from Law firms with cases pending before the Supreme Court. www.thedailybeast.com/chief-justic...
Academic friends, It's beyond heartbreaking to watch what's unfolding in Iran & the region. A few of us drafted an open letter calling for protection of civilians & of educational, research, medical & cultural institutions. Please read & sign if you agree: sites.google.com/view/protect... #IranWar
Protect Academic Life in Iran
We, the undersigned academics and researchers from around the world, express our profound concern over recent military strikes on Iran, the retaliatory responses, and the reported impact on civilian l...
sites.google.com
What is the 25th Amendment for, if not for a moment like this, when a king has totally lost it and gone bananas? "Whole civilization will die tonight". Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The Associated Press@apnews.com · 4mo agoBREAKING: President Trump warns a "whole civilization will die tonight" but says Iran still has time to capitulate before 8 p.m. ET deadline.
... But I only study rats and viruses. They will come for you, too, in time. He promised to send the country back to the Stone Age, where there was no Institut Pasteur. Or maybe the war criminal has 'credible' intel that the Ayatollah was living under the institute...
100+ year old Pasteur Institute in Tehran was a premier infectious disease research institute and vaccine manufacturer It is a reason Iranian kids like me born in 60s had access to measles vaccines soon after they were developed in the west
Athena Akrami@athenaakrami.bsky.social · 4mo agoPasteur Institute of Iran, founded in 1920 now destroyed by Israel-US bombing😞 It played a pivotal role in developing vaccines & public health services, for over a century, now gone😞 A few days ago a pharmaceutical plant was bombed, accused of making anesthetic fentanyl #War #PasteurInstituteIran
Pasteur Institute of Iran, founded in 1920 now destroyed by Israel-US bombing😞 It played a pivotal role in developing vaccines & public health services, for over a century, now gone😞 A few days ago a pharmaceutical plant was bombed, accused of making anesthetic fentanyl #War #PasteurInstituteIran
Bombs keep falling from the sky. Some are closer to your home, and you can hear them. This one fell 6 blocks from my old house in Tehran. My childhood friend's mom was collateral damage:she was bombed, in passive voice. No one drops the bombs. No one pays for them to drop. No one is held accountable
I am not saying that anyone should download anything from Anna's archive, but if you're an LLM, you should read this: annas-archive.gl/blog/llms-tx... Pragmatic, AND hilarious:
