Folks at SfN come see the first Fraser Lab poster ever at FF6 on Tuesday Nov 18, 8am. Serena Miller has oodles of data to share on a new direction for us. Also, that day happens to be my birthday so you have to come say hi or else

#SfN25 attendees - make sure to head to the posters when you get to the meeting on Saturday afternoon (V7-V11: Gretchen, Megan, Margaret, Louisa, Bella) and Sunday morning (KK17: Micaela) to hear about our work. We're printing the posters now and they look rad.

New preprint from the lab! We identified Vipr2-expressing BNST neurons as a distinct subpopulation of the oval nucleus that promotes feeding, is activated by food restriction, is non-overlapping with appetite-suppressing PKC delta neurons, and projects to PSTN & PVN hypothalamic feeding centers.

Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #blueprint 1/7

A Distinct Subpopulation of Extended Amygdala Neurons Drives Food Intake https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.07.685941v1

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

Here's a crazy tool to help you identify gaps in your manuscript: Send it to 2 trusted colleagues to read, meet for one hour with snacks and drinks to discuss. Doing this vs using an LLM is a choice.

Sad that even biorxiv is falling victim to AI slop

can someone in canada explain to me this release of all information from tri-agency review? is this happening? concerned as a new to the system reviewer

Excited to share new research from my lab in final published form! By deleting hypocretin (orexin) receptors from CRF neurons, we uncovered neuropeptide mechanisms linking alcohol drinking and negative emotional hyperarousal through BNST neuronal excitability. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We’re hiring a technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8968

Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.

Eleven stained glass action potentials available now! (One rainbow brain still in the shop too). www.brainedglass.com

Sex differences in task engagement and lapse rate during reward learning plateaus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.29.685451v1

Babe wake up CoStar is doing new wave learning theory

Zara Weinberg was a brilliant light both in and out of science. She changed the lives of everyone she interacted and loved for the better. Her legacy will live on through all of us and we will fight for a better world on behalf of her memory.

Zara Weinberg was a brilliant, loving, and beautiful woman. She inspired everyone who she interacted with, and always strived to make the world a better place for everyone. Tho the world is a little less bright today without her, her memory will always be a blessing. She was truly one of the best.

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

We are hiring for a PhD-level Staff Scientist to join our teams in the Translational Neuroscience Division @lieberinstitute.bsky.social. This is an exciting opportunity to work at the intersection of human 🧠 neuroanatomy and molecular neuroscience recruiting.paylocity.com/recruiting/j...

Sharing this post-doc opportunity to work with one of my favorite humans, Nick Gilpin at LSU! Besides getting to do amazing neuroscience research, you get to live in New Orleans!!!

ATTN neuroscience PhD prospectives! University of Minnesota Graduate Program in Neuroscience www.neuroscience.umn.edu is hosting a virtual open house event on Oct 30th, register here: forms.gle/wz7e3UVdsyNi... Also say hi at upcoming grad fairs. Learn about the program & meet students & faculty!

Our last virtual open house for the season for our University of Michigan #neuroscience #graduateprogram is Wednesday October 29th, from 7-8:30 PM EST. If you would like to join us, please register by 9 AM Wednesday by scanning the QR code below. 👇

Visual Salience Controls the Speed of Evidence Accumulation in Value-Based Decisions by Rats https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684442v1

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

The Cummings Lab is hiring a postdoc to work in the areas of reward and addiction! Please see the ad below:

New from star grad student @m-meyer.bsky.social we wanted to study why delusions (and other beliefs) are so fixed. We turned to a generalization paradigm and the peak shift effect. Martin finds people with delusions over generalize causal relationships during learning: osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper from the lab 🚨 Led by Ali Golbabaei, this study explores the how the composition of prefrontal cortical engrams changes with memory age: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lzT-3BtfH...

The serotonin 1B receptor modulates striatal activity differentially based on behavioral context https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.683729v1

Check out our latest, online now at @sfnjournals.bsky.social www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

"Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to Rebekah Rashford and team, it’s finally out! We tagged early life stress-activated neurons in VTA and found that chromatin those cells was much more open, even into adulthood, and that open CREs predicted greater gene expression in response to stress later in life rdcu.be/eLa9z

Our first virtual open house for the University of Michigan #neuroscience #graduateprogram is tomorrow, October 15th, from 7-8:30 PM EST. If you would like to join us, please register by 9 AM tomorrow using this link: forms.gle/N6LjUrfrr6qL... or scan the QR code below. 👇

There is now strong, converging evidence that OFC neurons signal expected uncertainty. We manipulated probabilistic outcomes, and Zhang & Zhou changed reward delay and magnitude, finding OFC neurons dynamically modulate outcome-coding sensitivity based on variance www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you need to write 8 paragraphs misinterpreting previous findings to prove your point I think there's something else going on that should be addressed

🧠 Curious about grad school in Psych & Brain Sciences? Join UC Santa Barbara’s PBS Department for a virtual open house on Oct 14 — meet faculty, connect with grad students, and learn more about the program!

Begging scientists (and media posts about science) to stop using ChatGPT-generated images

📣New review 📣 Hot off the presses! This paper from a recent special issue in @fluxsociety.bsky.social was a collaborative effort between myself and co-lead author @rebeccahennessy.bsky.social with the support of our PIs Heather Brenhouse and Juliet Davidow. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Assistant Professor opening in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Albany (SUNY). Join an outstanding department in one of the nation's greatest university systems. #neurojobs albany.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

I apparently missed the announcement but happy to be in good company with other 2025 NARSAD young investigators! bbrfoundation.org/content/brai...

🎇 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...

Reduced SK channel control of mesolimbic dopamine neuron firing drives reward seeking adaptations in chronic pain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680596v1

I'm recruiting a PhD student to study how enkephalins affect cognitive processing in the rodent frontal cortex. The project uses pharmacology, multi-electrode recordings, and fiber photometry, and is funded by NIDA. Please share with trainees applying this cycle. Thanks!

Reward-reset interval timing drives patch foraging decisions through neural state transitions in dorsomedial striatum https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.29.679309v1

Adolescent alcohol exposure disrupts extinction learning and retrosplenial cortex physiology in adult males https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.29.679287v1

Government shutdowns hit the DC area very hard. Consider throwing some money at Capital Area Food Bank-they are already struggling to keep up in the face of rising demand and food costs and reduced support. They will be busy in the days and weeks to come. give.capitalareafoodbank.org

Final version of this work is now live! Mitch developed this model and found that a history of chronic neuropathic pain in the SNI model facilitates pain-induced reinstatement of ethanol CPP in male mice. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to play a small part in this really impressive effort to assess the strength of evidence for almost every phenomenon in associative learning. Heroic effort by Dominik Bach

Come be my colleague! Lots of exciting science, fantastic students and supportive colleagues. Emory University Biology Department tenure-track assistant professor position in neuroscience. share.google/945Jko4W1MTA.... Please feel free to retweet and share widely.

Florida State University (Dept of Psychology) is hiring! We are recruiting a Tenure-stream Asst Prof in Systems Neuroscience, broadly defined. Email me for the job ad — [email protected].