5️⃣ What do you wish more people knew about science? "I wish more people would come to the lab and look down a microscope. Science starts with fascination, followed by questions."

And, of course, Eb Fetz was the prophet of this whole direction, with this paper from 1992, but that reads like it was written 30 years later: depts.washington.edu/fetzweb/asse...

All neuromodulators are more spatially and temporally specific than was often believed!

How neurons sense bacteria in the gut: To understsand the mechanisms that enable the bacterial microbiome to influence brain function, a new study examines the mechanisms at work in a model “bacterial specialist,” C. elegans. picower.mit.edu/news/how-neu... #neuroscience @mitbcs.bsky.social

Early morning meal for this Cooper's hawk

A detailed mapping of olfactory navigation. Pleased to have contributed to this landmark study led by Talya Kramer!

The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT@picowerinstitute.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Open access study in @natneuro.nature.com by the lab of Steve Flavell: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do nervous systems produce behaviors? A new MIT study provides a detailed mechanistic mapping of exactly what happens in the brains of C. elegans worms when they “follow their nose” to savor attractive odors or avoid unappealing ones. picower.mit.edu/news/navigat... #neuroscience

Another paper from our awesome lab out today @nature.com. Led by 🌟 PD Jihye Yeon with fantastic collaborators. We show how an ionotropic receptor (related to insect sensory IRs) in a single pharyngeal enteric neuron senses ingested salts and protects the worm from high salt stress. rdcu.be/fbd4a

How does an animal choose between exploring for a better food source and taking advantage of a known one? Our recent work in Current Biology demonstrates how recent feeding and metabolic state dynamically influence fly local search. bit.ly/3PfrIv3 #Science #Neurosky #Foraging #Drosophila

Organization of neuropeptide systems in the human brain | doi.org/10.1038/s415... Neuropeptides are functionally diverse signaling molecules in the brain and body. @cebric.bsky.social curates an atlas of neuropeptide receptors and relates it to brain function @natneuro.nature.com 🧩 🧠 ⤵️

The MIT BCS Postdoc Association is looking for a Rising Star 🌟 Showcase your work and meet folks in the department! Deadline 31st May 2026! @picowerinstitute.bsky.social

Our first 2026 paper is out @currentbiology.bsky.social! 👏 to @nathancsharris.bsky.social (now Asst Prof, GA State) and PD Priya Dutta. Here we show how transcriptional and trafficking pathways coordinate thermoreceptor levels to precisely modulate response plasticity www.cell.com/current-biol...

Experience-dependent reconfiguration of thermoreceptors regulates neuronal response plasticity

Harris, Dutta, et al. find that experience-dependent plasticity in the activation threshold of the AFD thermosensory neurons is mediated by modulating warm and cold thermoreceptor levels at the sensor...

cell.com

How does a predator sense its prey? 🪱The nematode Pristionchus pacificus preys on other nematodes, but how it detects them in its environment? That is what we have been exploring : www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Friends! I am so happy to share our new preprint! Hydrogen peroxide has been the most common reactive chemical threat to life forms since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago. How do animals like C. elegans sense it fast and escape? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread 1/

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill? Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes. Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature

Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

nature.com

Circadian timing shapes infection outcomes. In our new paper, we show that baseline inflammatory state—measurable before infection—strongly predicts which individuals will survive a bacterial challenge. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Circadian-shaped immune variability predicts infection outcome

Basal immune state under circadian control predicts infection outcome, and clock gene perturbation shifts survival patterns.

science.org

Interested in the latest advances in neuroscience (neural dynamics and internal models) and how they can be leveraged to build smarter, adaptive AI? ➡️ My first real solo piece 🖤🫶 @natneuro.nature.com rdcu.be/eWVmA

Leveraging insights from neuroscience to build adaptive artificial intelligence

Nature Neuroscience - Adaptive intelligence envisions AI that, like animals, learns online, generalizes and adapts quickly. This Perspective reviews biological foundations, progress in AI and...

rdcu.be

Moments that brought joy in this otherwise rollercoaster of a year. All spotted in the greater Boston area.

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature

Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

nature.com

Ive seen this work from Prof Liqun Luo’s presented a few times now and its stunning and heroic.

Nature@nature.com · 9mo ago

Nature research paper: Rewiring an olfactory circuit by altering cell-surface combinatorial code go.nature.com/3MbCoZT

What a gem from @dudinlab.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @centriolelab.bsky.social in Cell! Expansion microscopy atlas of >200 eukaryotes comparing cytoskeletal architectures revealing structures not seen before. Stunning visualisation! Exactly the kind of transformative cell biology we need.

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

Our group at the Allen Institute is recruiting a technician and postdoc to work on light microscopy-based connectomics. Please DM me or share with anyone you think may be interested in this NIH BRAIN CONNECTS funded project.

Roseate spoonbills will splash their wings through the water as part of their beauty routine. Here's one doing so mid-splash, facing straight ahead towards the camera. I really love this shot. #birds

Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

Very excited to share this finding from my postdoctoral work that is now published in #ScienceAdvances. We show how the gut’s epithelium modifies enteric behaviors during nutritional adversity via distinct peptidergic signaling axes. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Thread ⬇️ (1/n)

Gut epithelium modifies enteric behaviors during nutritional adversity via distinct peptidergic signaling axes

Gut epithelium modulates output from distinct enteric circuits by altering secretion of insulin and noninsulin peptides.

science.org

Such a "cheesy" story!

Benjamin Wolfe@benwolfe.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Such a delight to share our work on the evolution of a cheese rind fungus in @currentbiology.bsky.social. This is the fantastic PhD work of @nicolasleonlouw.bsky.social and resulted from amazing collaborations, a wedding proposal(!), an undergrad course, & more! 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Please help me to celebrate Mei Zhen, an innovator and tremendous collaborator, named to the Royal Society of Canada Academy of Science on September 4, 2025