Nick Audette (He/His)

@njaudette.bsky.social

Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at UConn Storrs. We study how the brain uses context and experience to make sense of the sensory world. I like music, birds, tacos, my cats, cycling, frisbees, and some other stuff too. www.AudetteLab.com

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!

Astrocytes connect specific brain regions through plastic networks - Nature

Communication between distant brain regions is mediated by plastic networks of gap junction-coupled astrocytes.

nature.com

First preprint from the lab! Using intracellular recordings & analysis of 2-photon imaging data, we show that spiking & neuromodulatory input during experience drive a reorganization of visuomotor inputs in V1 layer 2/3 neurons, consistent with enhanced visuomotor cancellation - bioRxiv link below.

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Who are we? The truth is, it shouldn’t even matter that Alex was a peaceful and upstanding citizen behaving exactly how Americans should act. We were a nation of laws. A people governed by self-determination and overseen by facts and reason, equally applied. That was our greatness. Who are we now?

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 6mo ago

The Minneapolis protester fatally shot by a federal officer was 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti, his parents say.

Thrilled to share our new Adesnik lab paper!! Using holography in excitatory & inhibitory neurons, we reveal how a single cortical circuit can both complete and cancel predictable sensory activity, sharpening representations 📄https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.02.668307v1 🧵

The lab is growing! Our team is seeking talented scientists to study flexible sensory processing. We design freely-moving and head-fixed acoustic behaviors alongside acute and wireless neural recordings. PD and grad roles available Please help spread the word 🙏🧠🎵🐭 neurojobs.sfn.org/job/38911/po...

Postdoctoral Neuroscience Researcher - Storrs Mansfield, Connecticut job with Audette Lab, University of Connecticut | 38911

Fully funded postdoctoral research position studying context-dependent sensory processing in the mouse motor and auditory thalamus and cortex.

neurojobs.sfn.org

It’s finally happening 🥹 save the date for our very first in-person event!! Fill out our interest form if you’ll be in SD for #sfn25 or otherwise, or fill it out even if you won’t be able to make it - we’re also gathering interest in a virtual streaming option!! Stay tuned for more details to come!!

Stories of WiN@storiesofwin.bsky.social · last yr.

✨EXCITING NEWS!✨We're hosting our first ever, in-person event! Join us immediately before #SFN for a keynote, panel discussions, networking & more! Interested in attending? Fill out the form below: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Nov 15 | 9am-1pm | Tata Hall at UCSD Help us spread the word!

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Cutting $20 billion to NIH over 25 years may save $500 billion on paper, but it’d end up costing $8.2 trillion in lost human health. But NIH isn't the only thing being cut. The budget also slashes all NSF-funded science by 73 percent. NASA faces “the biggest single-year cut to NASA in history."

Donald Trump’s proposed budget would gut American science

It would slash cancer research, drug trials, space exploration, and so much more.

motherjones.com

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...

(Plz repost) I’ve been receiving some good news lately and will be hiring at all levels to expand the lab. Please get in contact if you are interested in reinforcement learning, neural plasticity, neural circuit dynamics, and/or hearing rehabilitation. pierre.apostolides @ umich .edu Tyvm

Proud to have been a small part of this massive undertaking! This project brought together an array of expertise and perspectives to connect our knowledge of predictive processing in the brain.

Jérôme Lecoq@jeromelecoq.bsky.social · last yr.

How does our brain predict the future? Our review of predictive processing + research program is now on arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2504.09614 50+ neuroscientists distributed across the world worked together to create this unique community project.

Now there's a memorable stat! "Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined." wapo.st/3EvzMCI

Opinion | Trump is killing one of our strongest exports

The president wants to balance U.S. trade deficits? He can’t do it without this industry he hates.

wapo.st

Excited to share my latest work just out in @pnas.org! This NIH MOSAIC K99-funded project identifies a top-down cortical circuit—from cingulate to auditory cortex—that supports auditory perceptual performance in challenging listening conditions: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cingulate cortex facilitates auditory perception under challenging listening conditions | PNAS

We often exert greater cognitive resources (i.e., listening effort) to understand speech under challenging acoustic conditions. This mechanism can ...

pnas.org