This paper is an absolutely beautiful combination of a deep set of cognitive ideas, a super creative task, a surprisingly impressive behaviour, and an elegant modelling framework. One of my favourite things in the last year.

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

This shift comes at a large cost to be borne primarily by young investigators at Janelia, at a time when scientific environment is exceptionally uncertain. How innovative it is to repeat, in fish, what was done in flies remains an open question tbd. Not an open question: immediate cost and who pays

Excited to move to the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota in the fall. We will continue our work on neuromodulators and behavior. Positions available in the lab. Please get in touch if interested, and share broadly! hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/374... hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/374...

Excellent and thought-provoking essay by Ted Chiang. [gift link] www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...

Incredible! Scientists receive a rare standing ovation after announcing that a new treatment can double the survival time for pancreatic cancer, the deadliest cancer which was once considered “undruggable.” When we fund and support science, we can achieve anything! (Video: Dr. Wish Dhillon)

Neuropixels + Optogenetics = Neuropixels Opto Combining high-resolution electrophysiology and optogenetics. 960 sites, 28 emitters, 2 colors. Today in @natmethods.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415... Thanks to @wellcometrust.bsky.social, @alleninstitute.org, @hhmijanelia.bsky.social & team.

OMB just published 412 pages in the Federal Register (Docket OMB-2026-0034) giving political appointees authority to terminate any NIH grant, override peer review scores, and block you from publishing with federal funds. Comment period closes ~July 13. Thread 🧵

@fluketc.bsky.social and @dudman.bsky.social have hit it out the park again. In my (perhaps biased) opinion this - along with their previous papers - is field-defining work. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cool new work from @dudman.bsky.social and @fluketc.bsky.social Reward magnitude determines reinforcement learning efficiency: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great new paper from @dudman.bsky.social and @fluketc.bsky.social. It’s going to immediately change how we train our animals and make us think hard 🤔https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb0813

Awesome results from @fluketc.bsky.social @dudman.bsky.social and team, both for dopamine field and for all that train animals in tasks www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨 Ever wanted a simple way to control the activity of thousands of neurons? We introduce an all-optical raster photostimulation method to do just that! w/ @computingnature.bsky.social @marius10p.bsky.social #FluorescenceFriday #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Really pleased that this work with @dudman.bsky.social is now out in Neuron: A global dopaminergic learning rate enables adaptive foraging across many options

Reminder that it's possible to set up a free personal website using GitHub pages: docs.github.com/en/pages Really straightforward to then use Jekyll to make something relatively nice (with the aid of your chosen LLM, of course...) Just updated my own using this approach: lauralgrima.github.io

Posting for Vibhu Sahni: Due to unforeseen circumstances the Burke Neurological Institute will have to terminate its research operations 5/22. There are international postdocs on visas who are looking for new homes. Please reach out to Vibhu if you can help

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects. Story by Ben Mueller & @irenatfh.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/4ctOSqM

Fascinating and really well explained in thread

Scientists just discovered new "controllers" of the brain's most elite security checkpoint. Jiefu Li & team at our Janelia Research Campus have ID'd proteins that help open & close the blood-brain barrier — a step toward treating Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, & more: hhmi.news/4mkrDT2.

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

No-cost workshop opportunities for grad students, postdocs, & trainees! Our Janelia Research Campus is accepting applications for 3 specialized, intensive workshops with presentation & networking opportunities. Accommodations, meals, & travel expenses covered: bit.ly/4roghP6. 🧪

New paper hot off the (pre-)press! We dig into the evolutionary origins of neural computations for behavioral control across mice, monkeys, and humans: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... As our lab's first foray into comparative analysis of neural dynamics, I’m super excited about this work! 1/18

Excited to be co-organising a #cosyne2026 workshop with Alison Comrie on 'algorithms for learning from scratch'! With a great line-up of speakers, we'll be tackling the question of what processes enable naive biological & artificial agents to adapt to new situations. Info here: tinyurl.com/4u8enf7k

News from central Jersey: I'm running to represent New Jersey's 12th Congressional District. By entering the fray, I hope to bring ideas of repairing our frayed republic. Not only to defend it in 2026, but to build something stronger, for generations to come! samwang.substack.com/p/entering-t...

Full survey results show American public have high levels of confidence in scientists while revealing some partisan differences (including on how to fund science), but statements asserting lost trust should be read instead as intentional efforts to degrade trust. www.pewresearch.org/science/2026...

NIH funding underlies all of these advances--support fundamental science, and the bridge from there to the clinic 🧪

I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this

Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

🧠 New year, new preprint! Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

NYE fireworks < neurons expressing iGluSnFR3! Developed at our Janelia Research Campus, iGluSnFR3 is a fluorescent sensor designed to rapidly detect & image glutamate — our brains' main chemical messenger — allowing researchers to observe (dazzling) neural communication as it happens. 🎆

“Basic neuroscience hasn’t produced new drugs.” 💊 Not true - zuranolone (PPD), suzetrigine (pain), gepants (migraine), and more... were born out of a long arc of studies in the lab. I wrote a Perspective on why this matters. @thetransmitter.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/drug-develop...

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️

Adam Kampff’s passion for understanding and explaining the world was unmatched. Living by example and not ever compromising on his dreams, Adam was uncanny in making people realize they can learn and understand anything and everything. Keep his dream alive! In his own words: tinyurl.com/ye29csw3

An awesome figure illustrating key aspects of hippocampal encoding and replay during continuous behavior ; from great work by Brian Lustig and co www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 Last chance to apply for participation for BonnBrain 2026! 🚨 We have very few slots left (attending with or without presentation) and will select the last participants early next week. Apply before December 15th to be considered! bonnbrain.de

Happy birthday Tom Waits ♥️

Join us for Fall 2026. In our group, you can run studies from human behavior and neuroimaging, to large-scale NHP ephys, and join them up with a robust computational foundation. Bonus: you can help build the reading list.

Major reductions in science funding across the board - important to have detailed data. Includes big cuts in fellowships that are a critical mechanism for developing young talent in US graduate school programs. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins is inviting applications for 3 open-rank tenured/tenure-track positions in (1) Behavioral Neuroscience, (2) Cognitive Neuroscience, and (3) Cognitive Psychology. pbs.jhu.edu/about/jobs/

A touching piece by Tatiana Schlossberg www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

To study how animals understand the physical world (and the rules that govern its dynamics), @jinyao-y.bsky.social trains rats to play fetch with robots 🐀🤖🎾 To learn more, come to our poster Tuesday morning! [Board W11] Rats learn and use intuitive physics knowledge to solve fetch tasks. #SfN2025

Important new analysis identifying the scope of clinical trials disrupted because of NIH shenanigans. > 74 thousand trial participants affected jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... 1/4

Just had a fantastic visit to GA Tech a couple weeks ago. Highly recommend.

Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this! #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition

🚨Job alert🚨 The lab has up to *3 postdoc openings* for comp systems neuroscientists interested in describing and manipulating neural population dynamics mediating behaviour This is part of a collaborative ARIA grant "4D precision control of cortical dynamics" euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/383909

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🌟 Apply to lead a lab at Janelia 🌟 We’re #hiring Group Leaders in our Computation & Theory research area. 🔹 5-year renewable appointment 🔹 Internal funding + generous resources 🔹 Collaboration across disciplines 📅 Apply by Nov. 4 👉 https://janelia.link/groupleader

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