🚨 New science alert! Our cross-species study, now in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates psychedelics distort how we should interpret functional brain imaging. 👇🧵 nature.com/articles/s41... #Neuroscience #Psychedelics #BrainImaging

Psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonism alters neurovascular coupling and differentially affects neuronal and hemodynamic measures of brain function

Nature Neuroscience - Padawer-Curry et al. show that the hallucinogenic 5-HT2A receptor agonist DOI alters neurovascular coupling in mice, with implications for the interpretation of human fMRI...

nature.com

Super proud of this collaboration with rockstar Ryan Raut - born out of playing in the sandbox in our last year of grad school! Multi-scale brain activity can be predicted from a simple measure of arousal like pupil diameter. Out with linear causality, in with dynamic systems to explain neurobiology

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature

Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

nature.com

WOW this is the honor of a lifetime, Vienna (Airport Conference Center) here I come!

Toward a Better Understanding of Electroconvulsive Therapy | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/deny...

Toward a Better Understanding of Electroconvulsive Therapy

When we don't understand how something works, we often fear it. That has been the case with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), but new research may be shedding needed light.

psychologytoday.com

The Baller Lab is thrilled to announce that @elenaccooper.bsky.social just had her first first-author publication! “Investigating mood and cognition in people with multiple sclerosis: a prospective cross-sectional study protocol” is now published on BMJ Open: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/5/e094733! 🧠

Two Harvard economists forecast the impact of the administration’s proposed NIH budget cuts- stunning losses in new therapies, life expectancy, and economic output with a “social cost 16 times greater than the savings the administration is attempting to achieve." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Cutting the NIH—The $8 Trillion Health Care Catastrophe

This JAMA Forum discusses the recent budget cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH), the effects of these cuts on scientific research and health of individuals in the US, and the prospects for cha...

jamanetwork.com

New evidence shows electroconvulsive therapy triggers a brain event called cortical spreading depolarization, challenging previous assumptions about how ECT achieves its therapeutic effects. doi.org/g9mnvt

Electroconvulsive therapy's 'hard reset' effect: Brain wave discovery challenges long-held assumption

During his third-year psychiatry clerkship as a medical student, Zach Rosenthal, MD, Ph.D., was part of a team providing care to a young man with schizophrenia and severe catatonia.

medicalxpress.com

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

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

Hot off the press! We found that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) induces a previously undescribed, second brain event after seizure, called cortical spreading depolarization (CSD), using optical neuroimaging in both a mouse model to human patients. 🧵 below! doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Electroconvulsive therapy generates a postictal wave of spreading depolarization in mice and humans - Nature Communications

The underlying mechanism of electroconvulsive therapy remains not fully understood. Here, the authors use optical neuroimaging in mice and humans to show that electroconvulsive therapy elicits a secon...

doi.org

Thanks to expansion microscopy, clever labeling, and modern segmentation approaches, doing connectomics with #light #microscopy has become feasible - huge congratulations Mojtaba & the Danzl lab at @istaresearch.bsky.social ! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Light-microscopy-based connectomic reconstruction of mammalian brain tissue - Nature

A technique called LICONN (light-microscopy-based connectomics) allows mapping of brain tissue at synapse level and simultaneous measurement of molecular information, thus enabling quantification of c...

nature.com

Excited to share the culmination of my postdoctoral work in the Thompson Lab out today in Nature Communications! rdcu.be/ehfWU

Contralesional hippocampal spreading depolarization promotes functional recovery after stroke

Nature Communications - Neural mechanisms underlying deep brain strokes are not fully understood. Here authors demonstrate that spreading depolarizations occur in the intact contralesional...

rdcu.be

🧠 NEW PAPER: How do we capture excitability noninvasively in mood and emotion networks in the human brain? Here, we used real-time optimization to improve these measures! @sparmi.bsky.social @stanfordpntlab.bsky.social @clinicalneuroph.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.02.261 1/7

🚨iGluSnFR4 is finally out!🚨🧪 We present iGluSnFR4f and 4s, a novel pair of genetically-encoded glutamate indicators designed for high-fidelity imaging of synaptic activity in the living brain. ⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🎥 Below: iGluSnFR4s detecting minis in cultures w/ TTX #Neuroscience

New report shows that NIH grants fueled $95 billion in economic activity and 407,782 jobs in 2024. That's not to mention the countless lives that biomedical research has saved. Show me a better investment than that. www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

NIH Grants Fueled $95 Billion In FY 2024 Economic Activity, Finds New Report

National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide in FY 2024 according to a new report by United for Medical Research.

forbes.com

📣🗣️Reminder to PA residents- keep calling @fetterman.senate.gov and tell him NOT to support a continuing resolution until language is included in the bill to prevent impoundment! DC: (202) 224-4254 Pittsburgh: (412) 803-3501 Philly: (215) 241-1090 Wilkes-Barre: (570) 820-4088 Erie: (814) 453-3010

U.S. Senator John Fetterman@fetterman.senate.gov · last yr.

The weeks of performative “resistance” from those in my party were limited to undignified antics. Voting to shut the government down will punish millions or risk a recession. I disagree with many points in the CR, but I will never vote to shut our government down.

The ad-hoc termination of training grants, PhD fellowships, and center grants at Columbia is catastrophic and sends a message. The WH will: * Seek revenge at all costs * Destroy science & higher ed, if it can * Risk lives, careers and the economy. Rest assured: they will not stop w/Columbia

In order to protect students from antisemitism at Columbia, the administration (advised by not one but two people who did a Nazi salute this year) is freezing support for students to learn science.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last yr.

I have confirmation from several sources now that all T32s, many F30s and F31s, and most or all Center awards (P30, P50) have been terminated at Columbia. This is quite damaging to research and to individuals. This is pure terrorism and cannot be legal. But litigation will take time...

I have confirmation from several sources now that all T32s, many F30s and F31s, and most or all Center awards (P30, P50) have been terminated at Columbia. This is quite damaging to research and to individuals. This is pure terrorism and cannot be legal. But litigation will take time...

Hi friends, If you haven't seen it already, I was part of a mess this week — about science in the United States, and about NIH research aimed at understanding things like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, and depression. 🧪 Thread with some details. 🧠📈 🧠🤖 1/10

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last yr.

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

The House Continuing Resolution budget “adjustments” for NIH are drastic. Here are some examples:

👇🎯 The public isn't going to understand this, unless the presidents of R1 universities around the country <loudly> & <collectively> get out into the public square & start explaining this & calling out the existential threat to the entire 🇺🇸 university system. The silence is deafening right now.

Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky.com · last yr.

The public really needs to understand this. Every university system in the world rests on public funding, there has never been an alternative model at any time in history. We have universities for literally the same reason that we have roads and armies.

“While other universities across our city, as we’ve heard, our commonwealth, our region, are reaffirming their commitment to their values in response to attempts to scare, distract and divide us, Penn has chosen simply to fold in advance,” Saval added.

Ian Petrie@icpetrie.bsky.social · last yr.

"Senior Penn administrators met with Pennsylvania lawmakers on Tuesday morning to discuss the University’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, with multiple elected officials expressing concern about recent changes — and one calling the meeting 'bullshit.'"

In case you were wondering how Fox News is covering the proposed cuts at the NIH:

@nature.com “Are the Trump team’s actions affecting your research? Tell Nature” www.nature.com/articles/d41... via Signal: Max Kozlov: mkozlov.01; Dan Garisto: dgaristo.72; Heidi Ledford: hledford.01; Jeff Tollefson: jtollefson.11; Alexandra Witze: alexwitze.01; General Nature: naturenews.61 🧪

Are the Trump team’s actions affecting your research? How to contact Nature

Use this form to share information with Nature’s news team, or to make suggestions for future coverage.

nature.com

hot off the presses 🚨🗞️📰 just in time to close out #ACNP2024!! RCT of 10 days of frontal pole cTBS for cocaine use disorder — reduced cocaine use (100% abstinence 2 mo after real tms!!!) and reduced cocaine cue reactivity — small sample but exciting prelim data! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Theta Burst Stimulation for Cocaine Use Disorder: A Three-Month Feasibility and Brain Target-Engagement Study

Cue-induced craving precipitates relapse in drug and alcohol use disorders. Theta burst stimulation (TBS) to the left frontal pole of the medial prefr…

sciencedirect.com

Inspired by @ariellekeller.bsky.social and created a Starter Pack for those who zap brains! ⚡Let me know if you'd like to be added! go.bsky.app/9MnSuJ6

Hoping to track research advances in neuromodulation on Bluesky through this starter pack: go.bsky.app/4LP6pxR Please let me know if others should be added!

Super excited to share our official ACORN Lab website!! 🍁🧠 appliedcognitionlab.psychology.uconn.edu We are recruiting new team members at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels - join us! #Neuroskyence #neuroimaging #PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #ClinPsych #CogDev #devpsy #CogSci

Incredibly grateful to have been included in #ACNP2024, I have had some of the best scientific and professional conversations in my life this week. Thank you to everyone who made my first time attending such a special experience!