Brian Wiltgen
@wiltgenlab.bsky.social
Psychology Professor at UC Davis in the Center for Neuroscience. Interested in neurobiological mechanisms of learning and memory in the hippocampus.
Important paper! In the dorsal hippocampus, we had to do a series of lesion/inactivation studies to convince ourselves that our sensors were in fact picking up DA or NE. Took a couple years, but worth it 🧪
Anthony Ramnauth@philoneurosci.bsky.social · 8h agoThis seems super important for in vivo experiments #Norepinephrine and #dopamine #sensor crosstalk depends on local innervation density doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Really cool finding about the mechanisms of forgetting 🧪
FMI science@fmiscience.bsky.social · 7d agoToday in @natneuro.nature.com, researchers led by @felsenberg.bsky.social report that memories can persist as silent traces, recoverable with the right reminder. But misleading cues can distort recall and create false memories—showing how remembering can rewrite the past. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...
Ecological Visual Processing in the Mouse - with @michaelgoard.bsky.social @crisniell.bsky.social @mbeyeler.bsky.social Visual computations that are engaged in ecological contexts: active sensing, motion processing, scene analysis, distance estimation, and spatial perception. doi.org/10.1146/annu...
Cool work on the HPC and activation of context representations in the prefrontal cortex 🧪
Hugo Spiers@hugospiers.bsky.social · 3w agoHippocampal engrams configure prefrontal context representations to guide flexible decisions Impressive combo of methods to manipulate and record this process: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We have a new preprint! By studying neuronal heterogeneity in CA3, we found a weird but powerful new feature in the hippocampal circuitry! 🧠 #neuroskyence 🧵.. Morse-Mora et al. | Hippocampal CA3 forms a two-layer network of molecularly distinct cell types in mice and humans doi.org/10.64898/202...
I’m excited to share our latest preprint, and the main work from my PhD, on the role of the direct entorhinal input in hippocampus CA1 spatial coding. 1/9
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 4w agoThe emergence of a novel CA1 spatial map requires direct entorhinal input https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.02.736055v1
Interesting discussion about studying agency in non-human animals 🧪
Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 4w agoReactions so far range from "you mean some people deny that living things have agency?" to "this is an intentionally unscientific concept". Glad to see it is causing some discussion. (And I just recorded a Quanta podcast with more - coming soon). www.quantamagazine.org/is-life-just...
Researchers turned a friendly mouse into a bully to study how the brain updates an animal’s emotions about a social interaction. #neuroskyence By @natmesanash.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/social-behav...
Friend to foe: How the brain updates feelings toward others
A specific pathway reassigns emotional valence to a known mouse, while the hippocampus’s own representation of that animal’s identity remains stable.
thetransmitter.org
Very cool work - bridging the temporal gap in taste aversion learning! 🧪
westonfleming.bsky.social@westonfleming.bsky.social · last mo.How does the brain link a novel food to illness that happens later? We found that acetylcholine, released in part by parabrachial Calca neurons, can work through GPCRs in central amygdala to bridge the gap. New preprint from Stuber+ Palmiter labs: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Just how goal-directed are hippocampal theta sweeps, anyway? Great News & Views from @adredish.bsky.social Lab on recent theta goal papers: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
Just how goal-directed are hippocampal theta sweeps, anyway? - Nature Neuroscience
Planning is a cognitive process that is thought to be grounded in hippocampal sequences, but recent studies have suggested that a simpler mechanism, fundamentally incompatible with those planning hypo...
nature.com
Is spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Very excited for our new paper, now out in @cellcellpress.bsky.social! /🧵 The protein Tau forms intracellular toxic tangles in neurons in Alzheimer’s disease and Tauopathies. Tau pathology slowly spreads from cell-to-cell but the mechanisms are not clear /1 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
Arc mediates intercellular tau transmission via extracellular vesicles
Tau pathology spreads cell to cell, but the mechanisms of intercellular tau transmission remain unclear. We find that the neuronal gene Arc is critica…
authors.elsevier.com
Hillscape cells: Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior #neuroskyence @roddy-grieves.bsky.social Eleonore Duvelle and Jeff Taube: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior
Place cells map terrain geometry, not behavior, revealing a surface-based brain code for real-world navigation.
science.org
New preprint from the lab. @markgergues.bsky.social and crew show that the PVT gates ventral hippocampal salience coding, shifting output between threat- and reward-weighted representations during associative learning and anxiety-related behavior. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
The locus coeruleus, which provides norepinephrine to the rest of the brain, is even more spatially and functionally diverse than previously thought, new findings suggest. By Holly Barker www.thetransmitter.org/locus-coerul...
Brain’s blue spot possesses unexpected structure-function ties
The arrangement of locus coeruleus neurons in mice points to how the structure mediates specific effects across the brain, a new study shows.
thetransmitter.org
Sharing the latest from the lab. Led by Yunlong Liu, this work explores how microglia and engram neurons interact during fear extinction in the hippocampus. rdcu.be/fgNH7
Microglia-dependent regulation of fear memory extinction
Nature Neuroscience - Liu et al. show in mice that microglia are recruited to the soma and dendritic processes of fear engram neurons during extinction learning and that they weaken fear memories...
rdcu.be
Uncovering the architecture of aging. Very cool work! 🧪
Claire Bedbrook@clairebedbrook.bsky.social · 5mo agoAging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not? In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death. This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan. 🧵
Is spatial navigation innate? The grid cell code exists before navigation experience 🧪🧠
Edvard I Moser@edvardmoser.bsky.social · 5mo agoIs spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Deconstruction of a memory engram 🧪🧠
Gisella Vetere@gisellavetere.bsky.social · 5mo agoHow does the brain build a memory? A common assumption is that the neurons activated during an experience collectively form the memory engram. In our new Nature Neuroscience paper (finally out!), we show that this is not the case. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Nice work from JJ DYN-O-MITE 🧪🧠
Josh Johansen@jojolab.bsky.social · 5mo agoExcited to share our new paper: We uncover a locus coeruleus→amygdala circuit linking β-adrenergic signaling to transcription regulation in defined amygdala cells during memory reconsolidation—+ stress or elevated noradrenergic signaling at recall can strengthen memory. www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...
Brain cells on a chip learn to play Doom 🤯🧪🧠 youtu.be/yRV8fSw6HaE
Living Human Brain Cells Play DOOM on a CL1
YouTube video by Cortical Labs
youtu.be
Place cells in space 🚀 🧪🧠
DANDI Archive@dandiarchive.org · 5mo agoMission: record hippocampal place cells in zero gravity Crew: 3 rats with electrode arrays Vehicle: Space Shuttle Columbia Status: data now publicly available on DANDI, 28 years later The ratstronauts' mission is finally complete. 🐀🚀 h/t NASA about.dandiarchive.org/blog/2026/02...
Stuff like this blows my mind 🧪🧠
Sam Gershman@gershbrain.bsky.social · 5mo agoAfter several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus). Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Teaching my class about fear behaviors today and found this gem online 😅 🧪🧠 www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZG...
SNOOP DOGG narrating ‘Planet Earth’ is just the best..... #snake #lizard #funnyanimal
YouTube video by BBB( biophile's brain booster)
youtube.com
Place cells exhibit no local topography 🧪🧠
Edvard I Moser@edvardmoser.bsky.social · 6mo agoA half-century old question may have its final answer. Using high-resolution #Mini2P microscopes, we find no evidence of local topography in #PlaceCells. Place fields of neighbouring cells are no more similar than those of randomly selected cells. 🧠🗺️ Out now in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
CA1 is more than just a spatial map with task signals layered on top 🧪🧠
(((Dr Hannah Wirtshafter))) 🔬@aheadofthenerve.bsky.social · 6mo agoNew preprint out 🎉 What happens to the hippocampal “place code” when an animal is actively engaged in a task? The answer surprised us (and might surprise you too!). Let's dive in ⬇️ Link: "Hippocampal trace coding dominates and disrupts place coding" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
