The reason the US has such a powerful science and innovation ecosystem is simple: decades of public investment (via largely independent agencies, including NIH and NSF). Basic science builds future cures over a timeline too long for the private sector. /3 www.infotimes.us/basic-scienc...

Basic Science Is The Foundation Of Future Cures

Injecting partisan politics into American basic science would be terrible for the US: for the economy, and for development of future treatments for diseases like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's.

infotimes.us

HAHAHAhaha! they're making the world's biggest synthetic scum pond!!! The coating is a polyurea used inside pipes. It gels in about 3 seconds, making it non self-leveling. The texture is like an orange peel, the perfect substrate for biofilms. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/u...

Manager at Trump’s N.J. Golf Club Helped Plan Reflecting Pool Repairs

nytimes.com

Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.

🧠🌟🐭 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🧵

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Evolutionary expansion of the corticospinal system is linked to dexterity in Peromyscus mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682851v1

Pretty tired from a 12km loop yesterday from highland base camp to Hveradalir in Kerlingarfjöll. Worth the pain, though.

Full professor complaining to an assistant professor on how hard it is to get funding nowadays

This will devastate all of my colleagues that do neuroscience in mice. Drugs don't always translate from mouse to human, But 90% of our genes are shared. They allow recordings and manipulations that cannot be done in humans. We will cede discovery to Europe and China with this unnecessary handicap.

NIH announces end to funding for animal-only studies - Drug Discovery and Development

Drug Discovery and Development covers strategies and technologies related to pharmaceutical research and development and drug formulation.

drugdiscoverytrends.com

must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away

Best of Dying Twitter@bestofdyingtwit.bsky.social · last yr.

“In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately”

UK neuroscience graduates! PhD opportunity here at Glasgow SPN: www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Closing date July 4

Converting percepts into actions in the visual cortex and superior colliculus. at University of Glasgow on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Converting percepts into actions in the visual cortex and superior colliculus. at University of Glasgow, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

In late January, I said we were "still exploring" a cool thing we found in RN. Well, we're back, and we've got movement kinematics (thanks to ‪@deeplabcut.bsky.social‬)! (You can find all the details in our updated bioRxiv paper, linked below) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Subcortically generated movements activate motor cortex during sleep and wake in rats through postnatal day 24

During early postnatal life, cortical motor control emerges from complex interactions between cortical and subcortical circuits. Although activity dependent processes are essential for primary motor c...

biorxiv.org

Jimmy Dooley@jimmycdooley.bsky.social · 2y ago

Finally, one more cool thing we found in RN (that we’re still exploring!) In M1, neurons either responded to wake movements or didn’t. But in RN, some neurons showed a “bimodal response” to wake movements. Some wake movements drove the RN neuron, while others inhibited it. What’s going on here?

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...

Neuroscience needs to empower early-career researchers, not fund moon shots

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration.

thetransmitter.org

It is beyond disturbing when the NIH and HHS Directors do not understand that animal models are essential in research www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/a...

There is no replacement (yet) for animal models in medical research

The NIH is “reducing animal use in research.” But there is no replacement for animal models.

statnews.com

Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).

Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · last yr.

Online now:

Bilateral integration in somatosensory cortex is controlled by behavioral relevance 🧠🧪 @scottrpluta.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bilateral integration in somatosensory cortex is controlled by behavioral relevance - Nature Neuroscience

How sensory signals from both sides of the body are integrated into a single percept is not well understood. Park et al. show that callosal signaling supports the integration of bilateral tactile stim...

nature.com

I'm really proud of my two graduate students, Hyein and Hayagreev, for getting this challenging and exciting project across the finish line. We reveal the state-dependent logic that underlies callosal signaling between the somatosensory cortices. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bilateral integration in somatosensory cortex is controlled by behavioral relevance - Nature Neuroscience

How sensory signals from both sides of the body are integrated into a single percept is not well understood. Park et al. show that callosal signaling supports the integration of bilateral tactile stim...

nature.com

The Oldenburg lab is looking for another postdoc! If you want to use holographic optogenetics to answer questions about neural codes let me know. We like shooting lasers and thinking about movement. We're located at Rutgers in Piscataway NJ (its like ~45 min from NYC). oldenburglab.com/positions/

Positions

Join the lab We are looking for curious, motivated, and talented people from all different backgrounds to join our team at all levels. Mentoring is simply one of the best parts of being an academic sc...

oldenburglab.com

May 2021, shortly after we finished building automated boxes for training mice to perform bilateral discrimination using active touch. The first paper is finally dropping soon.

Our latest editorial in defense of vaccines and vaccination, introduces two Perspectives in this issue on priorities for outbreak vaccination, as well as the important successes of vaccines to date Please read and spread the word 🙏🏻!

Nonia Pariente@npariente.bsky.social · last yr.

Vacciness have saved > 6 lives/min in the last 50 years, yet their importance & safety is often questioned “We should not allow misinformation, disinformation, ignorance and defunding to hinder vaccine development, deployment and use” My latest @plosbiology.org journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

New results! Evidence for an active handoff between cerebral hemispheres during target tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroscience

Evidence for an active handoff between cerebral hemispheres during target tracking

The brain has somewhat separate cognitive resources for the left and right sides of our visual field. Despite this lateralization, we have a smooth and unified perception of our environment. This rais...

biorxiv.org

Thrilled that our paper has been published in @elife.bsky.social doi.org/10.7554/eLif... We ask: how can a neuron integrate information across multiple time scales? Twist: This neuron has extreme properties that helps it work ~300x times faster than neurons in the hippocampus Summary 🧵to follow

My lab @kinshiplab.bsky.social is recruiting a postdoc 🚨 with Sept start date Preference for in-vivo ephys / circuits experience / interest in applying quantitative methods to natural social behaviour. Funding & visa fees for 1-yr with possible extension. Send me your CV & visit kinshiplab.org

Our new paper is out in Science. What is the synaptic plasticity rule in the brain, we asked. It turns out there are multiple, even within individual neurons. Congrats Jake! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Distinct synaptic plasticity rules operate across dendritic compartments in vivo during learning

Synaptic plasticity underlies learning by modifying specific synaptic inputs to reshape neural activity and behavior. However, the rules governing which synapses will undergo different forms of plasti...

science.org

(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

Thrilled to see this part of my PhD work with @rcbagot.bsky.social now out in @natcomms.nature.com! (1/14) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reward integration in prefrontal-cortical and ventral-hippocampal nucleus accumbens inputs cooperatively modulates engagement - Nature Communications

Neural circuit mechanisms underlying integrating information about reward across time are not fully understood. Here, the authors show that common outcome-integration signals from the medial...

nature.com

Neurons just keep mixing their selectivity. Whisking and locomotion are jointly represented in superior colliculus neurons journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... #neuroscience

Whisking and locomotion are jointly represented in superior colliculus neurons

To navigate the world, the brain needs to have internal models of self-motion, for example of whisker movement in mice. This study shows how neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus encode internal...

journals.plos.org

It brings me real satisfaction to see this long overdue piece in the whisker system puzzle come to fruition. Suma Chinta's implementation of the LNP model was incredible. After seeing this data for 3+ years now, it still amazes me how well SC neurons predict movements - past, present, and future! 🐭

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · last yr.

To navigate the world, the brain needs internal models of self-motion. @scottrpluta.bsky.social &co show how #neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus encode internal & external signals to build an accurate representation of #whisker position & locomotion speed @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/42nJIGm

Yes, we were surprised to discover that the sensory map in superior colliculus (SC) is biased by stimulus value, while the map in cortex maintained a faithful representation of receptor space. Bias in the SC map emerged only when the sensory associations had opposite values. Check out the paper!

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · last yr.

Intelligent behavior includes the ability to respond selectively to #stimuli with higher value. @scottrpluta.bsky.social &co reveal where & how in the murine neural hierarchy the transition from a map of stimulus location to a map of stimulus value occurs @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4jgxnKZ

Across the neural hierarchy, sensory maps are thought to transition from a faithful representation of receptor space to a map weighted by learned associations. Where does this transformation occur? In our latest paper, we explore a value-based spatial transformation between cortex and midbrain.

Compelling pushback from @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) regarding termination of tenure-track investigators driven by DOGE. 1/2

This is an attempt to criminalize free speech and suppress dissent. If we don’t take a strong stand against this, it’s the end of our democracy, and not just higher education. Universities are the trial balloon, but it doesn’t end here. Next, it will be employers, cities and towns, and individuals.