🚨New paper alert🚨 We built a fully standardized, integrated hardware and software solution for real-time welfare monitoring in mice. We used it to look at pain management after brain surgery. Not much has changed from the preprint (see below). Brief: hold back on opioids! doi.org/10.1038/s416...

Excited to share our new preprint! We explore the link between the locus coeruleus (LC) and arousal for astrocytes, pyramidal cells, interneurons in the hippocampus. A fantastic collaboration with @sianduss.bsky.social @bohaceklab.bsky.social, and many others: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/5

🔵 for all the locus coeruleus lovers: check out our latest work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

I just registered for - exciting!!! The "stress meetings" (alternating between North America and Europe) are my favorites in the conference cycle. #stress2026

Weltschmerz From my collection of powerful (and timely) German words. Literally: World pain. It refers to the suffering and pain one feels because of the state of the world and its inadequacy in relation to one's own desires and expectations.

American colleagues: who of you uses LinkedIn for posting papers and preprints, to chat about research findings and stir the occasional controversy? In Europe LinkedIn seems to gain popularity amongst researchers, I just find it really sterile and all the posts too polished. Opinions?

Preprints of pandemic potential - new historical piece from me on the history of bioRxiv/medRxiv, their role in the pandemic, and the way forward. 1/n journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Day 7: A classic. (the 3 people following this have now realized that there are long delays between my days...)

Day 6 of sharing gems from my personal cartoon collection. Share yours and make my day. I like this one since I did my undergrad in psychology. And I'm Austrian, Sigmund Freud and all that stuff.

I can't use twitter/X anymore, it's become an awful and useless place. On this site here, I don't feel like I'm reaching the same colleagues I used to reach on twitter. Someone just told me the action is on LinkedIn now. Really, LinkedIn!? Can I get some opinions on this? Are some of you there?

Hot off the @nature.com press!! Our A-SOiD behavior library developed specifically for pain to quantify a new chemogenetic gene therapy that targets opioid circuit in ACC without addictive properties @flybottleescape.bsky.social @cmu-neuroscience.bsky.social @cmu.edu www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does your favorite gene respond to stress? Check out our updated “Stressome-app”! In a new @natcomms.nature.com paper we vastly extend our interactive app with loads of bulk and single-cell transcriptomics after acute and chronic stress. www.nature.com/articles/s41... I'll walk you through👇

Extremely excited & proud to share our new preprint - we provide for the first time a single cell map of the mouse brain across sex, the estrous cycle, and peripartum! Data are 🔥 👇 "Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Day 5

Day 4 of sharing my favorite cartoons. I forget who, but someone showed this at a talk on startle behavior in mice and for some weird reason I have to laugh every time I see it.

uff...

Day 3 - the best science cartoon. If you have a better one, please share.

Day 2 from my cartoon collection. I don't know what it says about me that I find this so funny.

The world can feel heavy these days, and holidays aren’t easy for everyone. I’ll share one cartoon from my personal collection every day to lighten things up (and to re-activate myself on this medium). Join me, post a cartoon that makes you laugh!

@bejalab.bsky.social I watched spinal tap 1+2 back-to-back the last two days. I was laughing so much. Thanks for having this image as your icon 😍

After an intense journal-club class, I've decided that this is my favorite neuroscience paper of 2025: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Although we have evidence that this mechanism doesn't exist in the hippocampus, it's an incredible tour-de-force. Overall, the habenula field was dominant this year.

I'm back from social media DETOX. 5 months... what did I miss?

🔵 I'm interrupting my social media hiatus to flag this important preprint from the Bruchas lab (is he not on Bluesky!?) together with @davidweinshenker.bsky.social. Very difficult experiments to show that dopamine release from LC terminals is independent of VTA 🔥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This preprint has been under review >110 days... I think they can't find reviewers. WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO SERVE AS A REVIEWER? If you're keen, I'd propose your name to the editor... Please re-post

I'd have so much to complain about these days. But given the state of affairs in the world, it feels inappropriate to whine about daily hassles. So let me just say this on behalf of everyone who is struggling but otherwise safe: fucking hell.

🔵 Interesting new work from @davidweinshenker.bsky.social on why locus coeruleus neurons might be vulnerable to degeneration in humans (Alzheimer's) but not in mice. And a new approach on how this could be modelled in mice through human tyrosinase overexpression: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Impression from the evening panel discussion at #ESC2025. Amazing talks today, wonderfully open and fun atmosphere. After all these years, still my favorite meeting in the conference cycle ❤️

Dopamine and acetylcholine interactions - so hot right now! Tour de force work from Steph Cragg's group out in NN (lead Yan-Feng Zhang). They find Cholinergic Interneurons (ChIs) largely suppress DA release, distinct from what we just reported in songbirds (1/x) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stellar women-only (💪) panel on stress and development, loaded with cutting-edge multiomic data kicking off the European Stress Conference #ESC2025 in Innsbruck, Austria

My lab is hiring 2 postdocs on an NIH-funded grant characterizing molecular & cellular changes in the human brain across menopausal transition. Other neuroepigenomics projects are also available. We plan to hire a wet lab scientist and a bioinformatician. Please RT! kundakoviclab.com More info 👇

How much analgesia is needed to manage pain levels in mice after brain surgeries? A single dose of meloxicam seems to be enough. Even the addition of opioids cannot provide a clear benefit. (in line with recent work from others, see cites in our preprint): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m trilled to release the largest amount of stress profiling data from our (I think any) lab so far. We asked how the molecular response to acute stress adapts as the stressor becomes chronic. Multiomic profiling in the mouse hippocampus, led by Rebecca Waag and co-last author Pierre-Luc Germain 💪

Uuuhh... DANNCE is back! Now social-DANNCE. Looks very cool, taking multi-animal tracking and analysis of social behavior to a whole new level. Just the green-room multiple-camera setup looks quite complex, I wonder how easy this can be replicated in other labs. Will certainly spark excitement!

SAVE THE DATE: #resilience2025 - the 11th International Symposium on Resilience Research - Mainz, Germany - September 24-26, 2025 Satellite methods workshop: September 23 & many opportunities for early-career researchers Meet the stress resilience research community, get latest insights, spur you

Is this still the place to post scientific updates about papers, preprints and cool new data? Asking for a friend.

Amazing work from our colleagues at ETH/UZH answering many unknowns about arousal during sleep. And congrats to their participants for being able to sleep with their eyes taped open! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

First day of the new semester. 5th time I'm teaching this class. Got tenured along the way. And still, I'm nervous before going in... 😅🤷‍♂️

delighted to share our work revealing a new type of excitatory hippocampal neuron we call the "ovoid cell", which has really exquisite properties relative to adjacent pyramidal cells! superb work of first-author @adriennekinman.bsky.social and many others in the lab www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out this cool study by the @markcembrowski.bsky.social lab! They describe a new hippocampus cell population that responds to novel stimuli. But hold on to your seat: they don't if the object is presented again. Even 100 days later! When the behavioral memory has long faded!! 🤯🤯😱🤩

Huh... tumors can have excitable neuron-like cells. And the other tumor cells support them metabolically, akin to the neuron-astrocyte relationship. 🤯

This quote is the reward of agreeing to review a PhD thesis on very short notice. I had exactly the same experience, I just couldn't have phrased it so well. #Psychedelics

It's that time of year, I'm updating my lectures and I have weird questions. BACKGROUND: I've used this graph for many years to joke that sex is more stressful than anything else (and to make the more serious point that CORT levels are a poor readout for stress). ars.els-cdn.com/content/imag...

For LC researchers on BlueSpot Slack but haven't checked it, @mikekelberman.bsky.social and Ellen Rodberg will present their work on LC ephys tomorrow at 11 am EST. Link on General channel. If you are not on BlueSpot and want to attend, email me [email protected]. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🔵 #LocusCoeruleus alert! Holy cow... I'm supposed to do something else, but this paper looks amazing! I mean the concept, the implications... wow. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Join us on Feb 17 in Bern to celebrate the outstanding contributions of Prof. Jim McGaugh, winner of GSRNet Award 2025! Exciting program: talks by Puder, Adamantidis, Tzanoulinou, Ruff, Andreas Luthi & roundtable with @bohaceklab.bsky.social B Kleim & von Känel www.stressnetwork.ch/events/7th-a...

What a year! #DLC3🔥 is up tested by many of you (👀 watch out for a paper in 2025), we hit 750K downloads, and have over 120 contributors to the code! @deeplabcut.bsky.social ❄️⛷just dropped: new human pose models & high perf. models!

Scared to share this after 10 freaking years of waiting, but here we go: We found that temperature *perception* can change the biology of the next generations, even when “it’s just in the parents' head”. Read how C. elegans neurons control epigenetic inheritance! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

All AAVs disproportionally expressed in CA2 of hippocampus!? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

OK, I've made a Starter Pack on Neuroepigenetics, Chromatin, and Gene Regulation! Please share and let me know who else should be added to this list. go.bsky.app/6LWE4dr