To truly understand the neurobiological basis of complex behaviors - the real 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 - we must overcome the limitations of traditional, short-term behavioral tests.

The Eno (Durham, left) and the Neckar (Tuebingen, right) rivers taken ~12 hrs apart

Shared cognitive biases influence numerical judgments in macaques and crows @PNAS.org

How do VTA DA neurons sculpt downstream representations to reinforce actions? VERY excited about our new preprint (by Alex Pan Vazquez & @czimmerman.bsky.social )

NINDS was going to host a get together for K99/R00 fellows that I was really looking forward to. We could try to re-create it if enough folks are interested? Feel free to reach out to me

Imagine if someone recursively trained LLMs to write, review, and edit papers. What would scientific papers look like after ~1000 epochs? How bad would the model collapse be? How much new input would be needed to avoid it?

Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit

FYI! #bioacoustics #neuroskyence

Our Behavioural Brain Research special issue on Ultrasonic Communication in Rodents is growing, rapidly – and actually a lot faster than I manage to post about it. Nine new manuscripts got accepted since my last post. Quite impressive work. Check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Still think brain regions don’t exist? That everything is everywhere? That cell types don’t matter and that everything is a dynamical phase portrait? Wrong. Interconnected brain modules exist at the level of fine grained transcriptomics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What other seemingly obligatory phrases do you notice in neuro papers?

The published version of our study on the early-life transition from isolation USVs to adult-like USVs in juvenile mice is out in Animal Behaviour! authors.elsevier.com/a/1m1YDmjMA4GP bsky.app/profile/kati...

Magical fall sunrise in the woods

misty morning

Magical fall sunrise in the woods

Babe wake up CoStar is doing new wave learning theory

My partner works at one of these food banks (foodbankcenc.org/give). Demand for food ALREADY far exceeds supply (less funding, fewer donations from companies/individuals due to...everything). If you are able, please donate to a local food bank

Woolly bear gang (Isabella Tiger Moth) Look at those teeny feet! Also, there is folklore that the length of the black band predicts how harsh of a winter it will be - looks like a mild one

Sad to have missed the talks today! But also good to know for the basal ganglia heads that @swebags.bsky.social is on here

Very happy to see this collaboration with @babeheim.bsky.social published in Animal Cognition: 'Vocal mimicry in corvids'. Since posting the first preprint, we have identified evidence for vocal mimicry in 8 more species, thanks to the community highlighting additional sources #communityscience

More than two decades have passed since we discovered that rare disruptions of the FOXP2 gene disturb development of proficient speech/language skills. Today we know of multiple FOXP genes that are directly implicated in distinct brain-related conditions with differences in symptoms & severity.🧪 1/n

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Two states diverged in the cortex - I took the one less occupied

As NSF GRFP is in the news, PLEASE spread the word about the new EGFP program they have for past GRFP honorable mentions. Universities in eligible states can apply to get funding for HMs in the same amount as GRFP. My impression is that many depts don't know this exists and so don't apply.

Rats when they heard bats called "rats with wings"

I'm thrilled to share our new preprint, in which we've found that neurotransmitters can be chemically "marked" as a way to incorporate metabolic history - such as diet or life stage. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Led by Porhathai "Un" Malaiwong, Allen Schroeder and Tia Brown. (1/6) 🧵

Rats when they heard bats called "rats with wings"

What a time to be alive

We're excited to announce the official lineup for our in-person event! 🎉 There's one week left to sign up - registration closes Nov. 1st. You don't want to miss this! #StoriesOfWiN #SfN #WomenInNeuroscience

Hypersaline ecosystems display remarkable consistency across the world, but how do they change over time? Our new preprint shows off our first foray into investigating this with 16S seq and hydrodynamic modeling in Great Salt Lake during an especially variable water year. tinyurl.com/hc3zkvrf

Drawings for Algernon

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans." -Douglas Adams

Synapses may get all the glory, but join us cilia-philes for our @sfn.org Nanosymposium to learn about the role of cilia in modulating brain activity, behavior, and development. Sunday November 16th 1-4pm SDCC Room 25A. Thrilled to chair with @konjikusicmia.bsky.social - we'll see you there!

This looks quite exciting!

Congrats to lead authors @alexattinger.bsky.social and Tony Drinnenberg and all our amazing collaborators! Check out the thread below for new work from the lab on plasticity, cortex and spatial representations for navigation!

All we're saying is Gibbon a chance

Evidence from 14 research funding programmes confirms that early winners tend to keep winning (Matthew effect). But the idea that an early setback makes you stronger later doesn’t replicate widely. buff.ly/UEtcRd4

Exciting new work from former team members Eric Romero, Cwyn Solvi, Fei Peng and colleagues makes the cover of Science: affective contagion in bumblebees! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New/majorly overhauled Fraser Lab website is live: fraserlab.psych.umn.edu Working on RSS feed for pubs so ignore that page for now :)

FIRST PAPER OUT OF MY LAB!! Here, we examined the polymorphic Gouldian finch brain and found that the regulatory gene coding for head color, follistatin, exhibits morph and sex-specific differences in key areas known to regulate social behaviors! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🧠🌟🐭 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🧵

Check out this exciting new tool from @ajboender.bsky.social - An aav based CRISPR-Cas9 strategy to knockdown dopamine receptors. Works in mice, voles and hamsters. It was a fun collaboration. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ended up getting The Annotated Hodgkin and Huxley, The Voices of Nature from @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social, and a book on Ravenna. Can also recommend: How Birds Evolve and When the Sahara was Green

Don't let the dopamine fasting people learn this one weird trick to enhance your speaking

Ostrich range map, plotted from the perspective of an ostrich with his head in the sand

Congrats to a legend of neuroanatomy! Her findings are foundational and her figures (or those inspired by them) are fixtures of basal ganglia talks

updated preprint from @loganjames.bsky.social @themusiclab.org: humans share acoustic preferences with a variety of other species I love this finding—in call/song/noise/etc pairs where we know (from prior work) that animals have a preference, humans reliably identify the more-attractive sound

The Tschida Lab is recruiting a new PhD student this cycle! We have ongoing projects related to (1) neural circuits that regulate vocal communication across behavioral contexts and/or development and (2) motor control of different vocalization types. Please RT! Strong neuro background a plus.

I would love to crowd source suggestions for the 70% off sale at Princeton Uni Press: press.princeton.edu/sale/70-off I can start: Great Adaptations from Ken Catania. Amazing well-written neuroethology on weird animals, from star nosed mole to tentacled snake press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...