Excited to announce that I'll be moving to the Univ of California Irvine @ucirvine.bsky.social next Spring!🌴 Happily, this is not goodbye to Japan as I'll continue my lab @RIKEN_CBS for some time. Help spread the word: the new UCI lab will be hiring, DM or email ([email protected]) if interested!

Excited to share that I landed my dream job!🎉🎉🎉 The Pennington Lab will be opening at the University of British Columbia in January 2026! @ubcpsych.bsky.social @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social

A spatially resolved transcriptomic atlas of the primate amygdala (human, macaque, and baboon) now out in Science Advances (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). The amygdala contains 32 types of neurons with many neuron types specific to particular subdivisions. Lots of updates from the preprint!

Excited to share our latest paper - now out in @science.org - we showed how oxytocin modulates maternally-directed behavior in young mice (P15).

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight. These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them. www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Please RP. We are thrilled to announce that our lab’s first preprint is out! ”Whole-genome single-cell multimodal history tracing to reveal cell identity transition” We report HisTrac-seq, a multiomic single-cell molecular recording platform. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Finally it's out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... How flexible are essential innate behaviours and their underlying neural circuits? @felixbaier.bsky.social & I, with Hopi Hoekstra and @farrowlab.bsky.social, addressed this by studying the #evolution of threat avoidance in Peromyscus mice.

We have an open position for a Scientist I at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. Come join our exciting research environment @alleninstitute.org. Please share! alleninstitute.org/careers/jobs...

(more news) New paper just published! Prefrontal representations of social and emotional information generalize across contexts (even though ensembles for socioemotional + contextual information are highly overlapping): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Noradrenaline and microglia maintain plasticity-rigidity balance to safeguard rapid emotional learning in the prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.16.659241v1

Our work with Pablo Tano, @hyunggoo-kim.bsky.social Athar Malik, Alexandre Pouget and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to our Human Neural Circuitry team; bit.ly/4dEyX7Z publishes today in Science! This was the hardest challenge of my career, but one of the most rewarding, after years of rebuilding– & expanding my inpatient neuropsychiatry in the service of basic discovery bsky.app/profile/deis...

📣 #SfN25 abstract submission is now open! Share your research with the global neuroscience community. Start now to avoid the last-minute rush! 🔗 bit.ly/3G5vEde #NeuroSky #AcademicChatter

Sharing a new paper from the lab. This paper, led by Sangyoon Ko, represents a merging of two longstanding research themes in the lab-- adult neurogenesis and systems consolidation. rdcu.be/el18q A short thread follows for those interested. 1/n

I’m excited to share a new paper from the lab. The study led by Xiaowei Gu reveals how the mPFC encodes complex emotional memories, using an internal model to infer emotional associations and memories via projections to the amygdala. a🧵(1/8) rdcu.be/el19t

Our paper is out in Nature. By examining various inputs to the motor cortex during learning, we found that thalamic inputs learn to activate the cortical neurons encoding the movement being learned. Tour de force by Assaf in collab with Felix and Marcus. Congrats! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pleased to share the final published version of @glopez.bsky.social's work in @currentbiology.bsky.social! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "Region-specific nucleus accumbens dopamine signals encode distinct aspects of avoidance learning" Congrats, Gaby!!!

Our new paper is out in Science. What is the synaptic plasticity rule in the brain, we asked. It turns out there are multiple, even within individual neurons. Congrats Jake! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks to all who contributed to the special issue of Cerebral Cortex honoring my career academic.oup.com/cercor/issue...

How do we associate the flavors we experience during a meal 🍽️😋 with postingestive effects like food poisoning 🤢🤮 that arise much later? Our answer in @nature.com this week: Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavor representations in the amygdala. 📄: nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new paper. Prospective contingency explains behavior and dopamine signals during associative learning. Collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social , @gershbrain.bsky.social rdcu.be/ed1na

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "Advances in neurotechnologies... are transforming neuroscience... A recent meeting highlighted the resulting challenges in global collaboration ... emphasizing the need for ... diagnosing and treating brain disorders." - co-authored by yours truly 🧠📈 🧠💻

Check out a new lab paper from Mayumi Watanabe's thesis work showing how different subregions of medial prefrontal cortex differentially regulate extinction of aversive memories through projections to the locus-coeruleus-noradrenaline system: doi.org/10.1038/s413...

The first paper from Akira Uematsu's lab (first author @moon240.bsky.social)!: molecularbrain.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... And check out his lab website: www.uematsu-lab.com/research/

Groundbreaking work by Dr. Soohyun Lee from the National Institute of Mental Health at NIH The brilliant young scientist faces termination. Science like this leads to discoveries that can revolutionize how we understand the brain. doi.org/10.1038/s415... #neuroscience #neuroskyence

Calling all amygdaloids!!! The #AmygdalaGRC is coming up this summer in Barcelona. We’ve got talks, posters, networking, power hour, and tons of fun planned. 👀 the program 👇🏻 We’re accepting folks on a rolling basis, apply soon to make sure you get a spot: www.grc.org/amygdala-fun...

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper📃🚨 Out today, @jackiegio.bsky.social discovered brain pathways that support agency and habit and how chronic stress disrupts them to rob of us our agency and cause us to form rigid habits 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free full text: rdcu.be/eaxEv

Japan can be a science heavyweight once more — if it rethinks funding Research leaders call for an end to substantial underfunding of interdisciplinary research in Japan. On my current visit to 🇯🇵 I can see the country is ready for a change #japan #academicSky 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We are happy to have contributed to this exciting paper from Yoshi Saito and Masa Murayama on a distributed circuit mechanism for emotional enhancement of perceptual memory www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

An interesting review proposing a model in which amygdala intercalated cells form a key system for integrating divergent inputs and orchestrating brain-wide circuits to generate behavioral states attuned to current environmental circumstances and internal needs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm struck by how grad students in psych and neuro programs aren't generally expected to know basic facts about animal learning. For the psychologists, it has an odor of behaviorism, and for the neuroscientists it has an odor of psychology. Yet it's so fundamental (in my view).

Check out our pre-print from Xiaowei Gu! It shows how the medial prefrontal cortex encodes an internal model of emotional associations which can be used for inference biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our new paper out now @natureportfolio.bsky.social, where we identified neural signatures of stress susceptibility and resilience in the amygdala-ventral hippocampal network to enable control of anhedonia! <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08241-y> Thread below: