New paper! Congrats to @markplitt.bsky.social, Konstantin and team! The brain’s spatial map isn’t static but for hippocampus CA1 maps to change with experience, they need postsynaptic membrane fusion. A new link between synaptic machinery and flexible coding! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My final paper from grad school is out! Thank you to @marisosa.bsky.social @ellasay.bsky.social and my co-first author Konstantin Kaganovsky! We show that reward and novelty coding in the hippocampus requires a specific membrane fusion protein implicated in activity-dependent AMPAR mobilization!

What are the systems in neuroscience that we really have something that we can call “explanation” at all relevant levels, other than reflexive feed-forward like circuits. Here are a few that I would argue are getting there. Obviously not complete explanations but genuinely satisfying.

We’re looking for a new Research Tech! Our research tech is heading to graduate school (very exciting!), which means we’re recruiting someone new to join our team. The position involves hands-on neuroscience research in a collaborative environment. brandeis.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Jobs/job/Bra...

🚨🚨New Preprint Alert!🚨🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Animal learning is painfully slow (at least initially). Yet, well trained animals can learn very fast, sometimes displaying few-shot inference. How does this transition occur?

I am incredibly excited and proud to share my first preprint from my postdoc! Thank you to all of the co-authors for all your hard work! Check out the paper for big insights into plasticity mechanisms in navigation circuits! And surprising motifs for inhibitory synaptic plasticity!

New paper alert!!...🤩 Led by @blogeman.bsky.social, we identify how cell type-specific hormonal responses in the hypothalamus tunes parenting behavior in males and females 🐭🧠🍼. Highlights in thread 👇 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am thrilled to share our latest work led by @zurisullivan.bsky.social in collaboration with @moffittlab.bsky.social ! We find that the brain encodes distinct, pathogen-specific sickness states across behavior, physiology, neural activity, and gene expression 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is insane

Congratulations to my wonderful colleague Nao Uchida @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social now Jeff C. Tarr Professor! 👏🤩🧠🎉

"Postdoc in the job market"

Heading to San Diego for #sfn25 today! I’ll be presenting a poster on this work Monday afternoon! looking forward to meeting neuroscientists! please stop by my poster or reach out if you’re going and want to talk motor neuro/behavior, evolution, neuroethology…or whatever else! 🧠🥳 #neuroskyence

I'll be presenting a poster on this at SFN on Monday morning, poster QQ5. Come say hi! Looking forward to hearing about all the great science everyone's been doing!

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

How does the brain balance learning new things without overwriting what it already knows? Our new paper tackles this long-standing stability–plasticity dilemma during active navigation. With Tony Drinnenberg from the Deisseroth Lab (@deisseroth.bsky.social) doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧠🌟🐭 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🧵

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain. A brief rundown... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Had a blast writing about this new @currentbiology.bsky.social study from @leo-perrier.bsky.social, Lény Lego et al. on African striped mice The paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... Dispatch with some context about why it's so cool: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luVG3QW8S... #bioacoustics #neuroskyence

Did you know that facial expressions reveal more than meets the eye? 🤯 Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions! We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉 🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵

Our paper on foraging is now published in Neuron! Read it here: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... This project was co-led by Michael Bukwich (not on Bluesky) and me, with major contributions from all co-authors. Huge thanks to the whole team!