The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal! www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

Happy New Year from London. Let’s see how 2026 starts off…maybe we’ll just stay awhile longer….

Admin at UC have claimed various reasons why they aren’t fighting in court, but they simply are afraid to take on the Feds, believing antagonism will somehow make a terrible situation worse. Thing is, it can’t be much worse, and you can’t placate a bully.

WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)

If you’re interested in the roles of glia in stroke and TBI, kick off #SfN2025 with a minisymposium on Saturday afternoon in room 6B! @droligo.bsky.social and I are also hosting a glia get-together Monday night, sponsored by Avantor and @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social - all glia-inclined are welcome!

In a major win for UC faculty groups and unions that sued, a federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Very happy to have contributed to this new review on Lewy body dementia in @thelancetneuro.bsky.social led by Sonja W. Scholz. We highlight the latest advances in genetics and pathology. @liddelowsa.bsky.social Check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Anyone out there have any first hand experience with NIH reviews of an R01 with mostly mouse experiments? Curious to know how the guidance emphasizing NAMs is being implemented.

New finding from the lab. This surprised us since it went against the common assumption that increasing peri-infarct blood flow is best for stroke recovery. Congrats to Kamal and the team! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thrilled to share this work from my postdoc with Tom Carmichael, available online @ Neuron! Long story short: we find even more evidence that all reactive astrocytes are not equal, and we can take advantage of those differences to improve repair after stroke. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🎇 Excited to finally share JL Romero Sosa’s publication! Results are from single-cell imaging in different subregions of rat frontal cortex during ✨de novo learning. Spoiler: everything is not everywhere all at once www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Anyone else get anxiety on Sundays just thinking about what you meant to accomplish and what you need to do during the upcoming week?

Here is the formal letter the NIH sent today to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk. “These projects are fully reinstated, and the letter dated July 31, 2025 is rescinded without conditions. Funds will be made available immediately and are no longer suspended, terminated, or restricted.”

In the early years of my PhD I remember being asked if we'd ever treat or cure diseases like HIV or Huntington's. I remember saying maybe, but not knowing if I believed. Seeing research pay off as real impact on human lives is - incredible. www.bbc.com/news/article... www.bbc.com/news/article...

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA NIH grants. The same judge, Rita F. Lin, previously ordered all UCLA NSF grants reinstated. Lin has now nearly entirely reversed Trump's July de-funding of UCLA research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

We shared research about things affecting us all: addiction, autism, brain injury, dementia, mental illness. This work has been arbitrarily cut or delayed. Thats a human brain on cafeteria tray. UCLA fair shows off science cuts. @sfn.org @standupforscience.bsky.social www.latimes.com/california/s...

More coverage of suspended science outreach efforts this week at UCLA. laist.com/news/educati...

“Supporters of the proposal said it would effectively create a state version of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, two of the nation’s largest institutional funders of scientific and public health research.” 🧪 #giftarticle

This was a great event I was happy to help organize it. It was so heartening to see so many folks put their time and effort into making it happen. At the same time, it is eye opening to realize how little most folks out in the public, including our own backyard, know about what is going on.

You can also learn more about this important research in this press release from UCLA: newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucl... #neurorehabilitation #rehabilitation #stroke #drugdiscovery #drugdevelopment #therapeutics #research #science #neurology #neuroscience #UCLA @ucalgary.bsky.social

After a #stroke, patients typically undergo extensive #rehabilitation and a slow journey to recover the ability to do everyday tasks. However, ASNR Past President Dr. Tom Carmichael is developing a drug to produce the same effects as rehabilitation and could augment or replace rehab after a stroke.

join us for our Science Fair for Suspended Research, sponsored by the UCLA Faculty Association and the UCLA Brain Research Institute! We are reaching out to the public to show the life-saving research that is at stake in the Trump admin's attack on UCLA research!

#StandUpforScience #SaveOurScience @saveourscience.bsky.social

A little hesitant to post this on here, as I wrote it specifically for the Jewish community in Detroit...but maybe it'll inspire other scientists to write articles in their hometown papers. www.thejewishnews.com/opinion/biom...

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed? Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7 🧵1/18

🚨 150 University of California law professors (and counting) have now signed this open letter to the UC Regents and other officials, explaining the flagrant illegality of the Trump Administration’s UCLA funding cut offs, and urging the UC to fight back. sites.google.com/view/uclawfa...

NEW: @danielnmiller.bsky.social and I report on how $584 million in grant fund freezes are hitting UCLA researchers looking into Lyme disease, pancreatic cancer and cryptography in financial markets: www.latimes.com/california/s...

The federal government’s $1B dollar demand is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to devastate @UCLA and its critical mission. #StandUpForUC to defend America’s greatest public university system and support this life-saving work. ucal.us/standupforuc

Rye manhattan with Mexican chocolate bitters and luxardo cherries. Totally unrelated to events of the last 48 hours, I’m sure.

My lab’s major NIH grant was among those blocked in the attack on UCLA. Because our lab website discusses inclusivity? Because this grant had a diversity-based supplement? Simply because I work at UCLA? Who knows. Feeling a strange mix of unsurprised, furious, and numb.

On the same day we posted this manuscript describing our work on the circuit mechanisms of cognitive impairment in PD, the grant funding the research was suspended. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cutting funding for life-saving research has nothing to do with attacking antisemitism. It has everything to do with attacking science, universities, and California. And sadly, it is our health, our knowledge and our economy that will pay the price.

Cortical α-synuclein pathology induces cell autonomous neuronal hypoactivity and compensatory circuit changes in a model of early Lewy Body Dementia https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.668024v1

A tough day for UCLA. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Legislators and non-scientists need to understand the limits of what philanthropy / disease foundations can do to protect science. They cannot be a big enough lifeboat (even if they would like to be!)

3/n

Does everyone know there is a comment period re: changes in animal research at NIH? I didn't. Closes July 14. The scientific community need to respond en masse. I asked university leadership to distribute to reach our colleagues not on social media, you can too go.pardot.com/e/858023/duc...

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.

A field that would be uniquely harmed if all grants needed a non-animal component is neuroscience. Brains inherently interact with other organ systems and are constantly changing (this is how learning occurs!). Even simple neural systems like reflexes are hard to model via chip.

Happy Independence Day from Dodger Stadium!

Dynamic recruitment of PV interneurons in the somatosensory cortex induced by experience dependent plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.27.662081v1

www.americanscientist.org/article/%E2%... Know any non-scientists who think GLP-1 agonists were a big breakthrough? Or anyone who benefits from optimized data flow on the internet? These breakthroughs came from what many would call “silly” or “wasteful” basic science

Just wrapped up a great GRC. Wonderful to meet so many amazing scientists working to advance our understanding of #parkinson’s.

PLEASE WATCH Video via the AP, with Jenna Norton NIDDK Program Officer, Ian Morgan NIGMS post doc fellow, Anna Culbertson, fmr NIAID Scientific Program Specialist regarding the Bethesda Declaration of dissent that made the news. 300 NIH staff members signed the letter. 🧪 youtu.be/uF1xi19zoMg?...

Happy to share new paper from MSc grads Myrthe and Jenna. We asked the question, when part of the brain dies during stroke, what happens to local and distant cortical neurons that innervate the stroke site (in S1 cortex) or those that receive outputs? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Really cool new science from the Portera-Cailliau lab on the neural circuit basis of social touch avoidance in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

☀️THE SUMMER FIGHT FOR SCIENCE☀️ 🫵 WHO: You + all our friends 🧪 WHAT: Share science with your neighbors and tell them about the impact of proposed budget cuts. 🇺🇸 WHERE: Your local community 🏖️ WHEN: Now to Sept 30th 🔬 WHY: The 9/30 budget vote will determine the future of science in America.

Functional neurological disorder (#FND) remains a research orphan at NIH. FND is among the costliest and least funded sources of neurological disability (see graph). The latest NIH review cycle was no exception: zero FND-based grants were funded. www.neurology.org/doi/abs/10.1...