Snowstorm walk to heal the soul

I don’t need to buy a house, I need to buy a cottage

A shared ensemble in the prelimbic cortex links impulsivity and anxiety-like behavior. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.25.696439v1

It's been quite a year for hypothalamic development. With this heroic analysis of developmental cell lineage, coupled with earlier multimode-based gene regulatory network analysis, the prosomere model looks like it has passed into history. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I love my two blackout drunk Minnesota sons

Horrifying news being confirmed about the state of NSF at the NSF IOS/BIO webinar

We recently posted a new review preprint: “Ventral hippocampus and the contextual control of Pavlovian and instrumental behavior”, written with fantastic collaborators Samantha Moriarty (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Travis Todd (University of Vermont). lnkd.in/dJ5ydAaZ

*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 ⬇️

Thrilled this is out, led by former PD Cameron Ogg (now with her own lab at @rhodescollege.bsky.social!). It was a driven by a desire to see, in real-time, how LC activity/NE release influences downstream targets in behaving animals. SO hard to do, but Cameron did it! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

VGF in the Nucleus Accumbens Regulates Synaptic and Opioid-Evoked Plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.693464v1

🚨New Kutlu Lab preprint! Excited to share our latest work led by Oyku Dinckol and Noah Wenger. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We find that ACh shapes DLS neural ensembles for outcome learning but is biased toward signaling threats over rewards 👇

PULL THE TRIGGER ON Mu5C1M0L ITS OVER @bobgreybeard

very excited to share some of the final bits of work from my PhD! 🎉 we find that phasic DA in the accumbens simultaneously tracks persistent motivation towards reward cues in addition to new learning (but maybe not RPE?!) in sign-tracking rats. check out the preprint below!

Oh I have a comment: “Loss of promising talent supported by these [DEI] programmes will substantially weaken our research capacity, limit innovation and substantially reduce discoveries important for driving scientific advancements.” pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41131402/

Delighted to share our latest article on brain mechanisms of pain, appetitive & aversive learning, led by @yilizhao.bsky.social & In-seon Lee, out now in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show that brain mechanisms of expectancy are domain general, not unique to pain! www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

There is simply too much snow already and it’s only Dec 10

NMDA receptor ablation in medial prefrontal cortex disrupts value updating and reward history integration https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.06.692679v1

Excited to share our new GLP-1 receptor agonist study! Chronic semaglutide potentiates motivation for small food rewards and associated cues, but reduces intake when food is freely available—surprising twist! #GLP-1, #behavior #neuroscience #pharmacology 1/ 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Grateful for the outstanding efforts of THE TEAM, led by Steve Chang, and generous support from the University of Michigan Research Scouts Program (OORRS033123) and NIH (T32DA060142: Christopher Turner, T32DA007281: Daniela Pereira, R25GM086262: Natalia Morales Pagán).

weight down, less food consumed, learning normal, but motivation up!

Chronic semaglutide treatment enhances the incentive motivational value of a small food reward and associated cue in male and female rats https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.06.692775v1

Lecturer position in Neurobiology at UMass Amherst. Come join a great group of instructors teaching in the Biology, Psych & Brain Sci, and Neuroscience majors. Review starts Jan 5, 2026. Please forward/apply! careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u... #NeuroJobs #Neuroscience #AcademicJobs #HigherEd

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

Great news! We are looking for an NHP neuroscientist as the assistant professor level. We have no preconceived ideas -- looking for the most exciting research going. If you have any questions, please reach out. universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...

🧠 We're hiring! 🧠 Are you passionate about neuroscience and education? Join our faculty at UNC Chapel Hill to inspire and teach the next generation of neuroscientists. Apply now: 🔗​​https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/308455 #Neuroscience #TeachingJobs #AcademicJobs #HigherEd

Welcome ECR Fellows to the Oxford Open Neuroscience editorial team! I‘m happy to be working with @kurtfraser.bsky.social on some exciting topics in Behavioral Neuroscience! #neuroscience academic.oup.com/oons/pages/e...

anyway managed to snag some amazing vintage finds today including some Pendleton shirts from the 60s and that is really the gift that keeps on giving

scientist men on bluesky i promise you can exist on this platform without everything you post trying to argue about how the brain works (consciousness, waves, whatever the fuck). it will be okay

omg

All our work on replicability in the last decade has taught me that it's not a good use of resources to try and predict replicability in the first place since it's neither a good goal to achieve nor diagnostic of specific problems. It's a search for shortcuts, easy answers to complex questions.

There's no rationale, no theory, no evidence that connects chasing replicability to actual scientific progress or discovery. We're looking for ways to bypass the laborious scientific process of exploration. It's a pity that we waste our increasingly limited research resources on futile searches.

As a result, it's a great marriage imo, replicability and AI. Pot meeting kettle. Shortcuts in search for shortcuts.

Imagine: If we had a crystal ball that tells us what are the discoveries to be made, we wouldn't have to do science in the first place. Apparently that's some scientists' scientific ideal. Rather than doing science. So many weird ontological and epistemic assumptions to unpack.

The first one is not a test of replicability. It is a test of generalization. It is important to stop conflating these.

Gwyneth Paltrow I received the message you sent me last night in my dream and will proceed with the plan

Hi, rat here. Has anybody invented an infinite dopamine button?

Attn all human MRI/fMRI folks! The Dept of Psychology at Northeastern University is hiring a new Director of the NU Biomedical Imaging Center at the level of Associate or Full Professor. Bonus: you'll have the best Chair EVER 😉 Full ad here: northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

Congratulations to Sophia Vinogradov, M.D. on being awarded the 2025 Julius Axelrod Mentorship Award! #ACNP2026 Please click here ➡️ tinyurl.com/3b7jdtcy#ACNP2026to watch the acceptance video by Sophia Vinogradov, M.D.

So excited to see our latest paper out today in @natcomms.nature.com! Studies led by the amazing @margestelzner.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... VTA GABA neurons have a unique role in economic decision making - they integrate reward seeking motivation and the current cost of seeking

We gotta bring back shame in a big way

Check out my new study, out now open access(!), with my fantastic colleague @lydiaharimahn.bsky.social. We developed a new scale to measure internalized misogyny in women and its associations with poor mental health. link.growkudos.com/1pn1hwap534

Congratulations to Harriet De Wit, Ph.D., for being awarded the Barbara Fish Memorial Award! ☺️ #ACNP2026 Please click here ➡️tinyurl.com/2ndexz5k#ACNP2026to watch the nominator video by Abraham Palmer, Ph.D.

Congratulations to Ian Maze, Ph.D. and Erin Calipari, Ph.D. for being awarded the Daniel H. Efron Research Award. 🎉#ACNP2026

ATTN: Two faculty positions are available in my department (neuroscience) at the University of Minnesota. This is a general search with no topic focus. November 20th application deadline. Apply here: hr.umn.edu/jobs/Find-Job Assistant Prof job code: 364920 Associate/Full Prof job code: 364921

Re-upping this - Neuropeeps! We have a TT Job in my wonderful department at Brandeis! First consideration to applications received by Dec 15 (but why wait?) www.nature.com/naturecareer...

@accumbenshelley.bsky.social re-writing the textbook on neural circuit function

So stoked to have our image on the cover of this week's issue of Journal of Neuroscience!! @sfnjournals.bsky.social #JNeurosci #SfN25. Check out the final version of the paper here www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...