Neuroscientists long ignored variability in animals’ behavior in favor of studying differences across groups. But now researchers are studying the brain differences that underlie that variability—and their efforts are beginning to pay off. www.thetransmitter.org/animal-behav...

This looks super interesting!

A blatant assault on academic freedom

We got a message from the university to remove any use of the "DEI", "diversity", "equity", or "inclusion" from all public-facing documents. They said that even "biodiversity" is being flagged by the federal government. We live in the dumbest timeline.

Cognitive maps for hierarchical spaces in the human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.05.636580v1

@drberry.bsky.social testing his new VR anxiety and exploration paradigm on an unsuspecting @kavishinia.bsky.social!

Nature Episodic and associative memory from spatial scaffolds in the hippocampus www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great video from Led By Donkeys laying it all out youtu.be/NjWl_RNDMSA?...

Happy 30th birthday year to SPM!! 🎈🍰 To get the party started, we are delighted to announce SPM 25.01, a major new version of the open-source neuroimaging software. Read the preprint to discover what's new arxiv.org/pdf/2501.12081 and download SPM for free from Github github.com/spm/spm/rele...

Coverage of our recent project in an Italian newspaper Always sounds more evocative in Italian! www.ilsole24ore.com/art/neurosci... (see below advert for a PhD scholarship (internationally open) to come work with us)

New ep! 🎊 this week, @gemmarides.bsky.social & Gaia are joined by Dr Vanita Chamdal, a Teaching Fellow at @royalholloway.bsky.social & therapist. Listen in for advice on how to balance productivity with wellbeing as a PhD student, & what unis & supervisors should be doing to support their students.

A few months ago I read @philipncohen.com's Citizen Scholar in proof. It's now available in print. To restore public trust in expertise, professors can’t just profess—they need to engage. Citizen Scholar explores how contemporary academics can do this, and why they might choose to.

Struck by how many reflections here and offline focus on how Eleanor encouraged and supported their science and careers. A reminder that we distinguish ourselves by our kindness to others. Today, before the mayhem of the new year takes over, take a moment to do something kind for someone if you can.

An online tribute page has been set up to remember Eleanor Maguire: www.online-tribute.com/EleanorMaguire

"Rather than avoiding this type of research, our best path forward is to proceed with caution and humility, using the flawed tools we have. Two crucial guide rails can steady our journey: close adherence to the scientific method and a proactive stance against bias." tinyurl.com/5b6nbezv

We're excited to join BlueSky! Make sure to follow us for the latest news from the UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences! We'll be posting about our cutting edge research, Faculty events and opportunities!

I've always struggled to get this properly in my head - happy to read it doesn't, in the end, matter that much (don't kill me statisticians).

Our department @rhulpsychology.bsky.social has a starter pack for you all go.bsky.app/9en5Po4

Wow this looks interesting! I will add it to my ever expanding list of papers to read.

Hey #neuroskyence #compneurosky, et al., I am looking for code examples of reinforcement learning modeling in Python 🐍 I am mainly interested in *code organization* here. Thanks for any pointers to your favorite examples! 💫

Rare picture of my dog Archie in his bed. He gets into it about once a month for no longer than 10 minutes at a time.

I keep saying i'm korean but it's moments like this that remind me im a korean american. I simply have no idea what the fuck is happening here

the rapid transition of academics off x (despite temporarily reducing reach/followers) makes you wonder what’s stopping us from ending the for-profit, closed access publishing industry. it’s, like…. we can just do it? or if not, interesting to consider what the inertial differences are.

Why you should talk to people you disagree with about politics @us.theconversation.com theconversation.com/why-you-shou...

Welcome @nilearn.bsky.social to Bluesky! Nilearn is an amazing package for neuroimaging analysis in Python - certainly one of the most heavily used packages in our lab.

Data management plan. More like data spanagement ham am I right?

This is a great start for those scientists new to Bluesky

I built a starter back or whatever for staff at Royal Holloway. Let me know who I've missed and I will add them. Tagging with #RHUL and #AcademicSky. Thanks to the people who did this at other unis and made me think 'okay fine I'll do one'. go.bsky.app/NFKx1U8

Nature Human Behaviour The role of the human hippocampus in decision-making under uncertainty www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My lab University College London is looking for an experimental postdoc to join our team. Interested in circuits underlying visually guided behavior, chronic #Neuropixel recordings or 2-photon imaging (Benchtop, #Mini2p)? Then check out our lab homepage www.ruedigerlab.com, apply & spread the word

The perils of a postdoc #AcademicMentalHealth What people might be struggling with behind the scenes

**We are recruiting** Seeking a postdoc to work on a Wellcome-funded cohort study focusing on social-cognitive processing in typically developing children and adolescents (aged 8-18 years) and children and adolescents with 22q11.1 deletion syndrome. www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49291/

No one laughs at my jokes on here, must be something wrong with my feed.

Huge influx of neuroscientists to BlueSky! 😊 www.thetransmitter.org/community/hu... #neuroscience #neuroskyence

If anyone is interested in 18th/19th c. anxiety, its connections to other emotions such as love/grief/anger, relationships, familial politics, George Canning, gender, lifecycle, check out my PhD (currently working on turning into a book) researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/16302/ #skystorians #18c #19c

I always try to avoid using acronyms in my papers. I call this the Avoiding Acronyms Wherever Humanly Possible Unless It's Strictly Necessary Method, or AAWHPUISNM.

You asked for it...

Only 10 days left to send us submissions 🌶️ 🔥Join us in Philly for a unique opportunity to cross disciplinary boundaries to define and understand theory of mind ! sites.google.com/view/theory-...

Expanding the bounds of a fear memory or linking it to a neutral memory can shape a mouse’s fear response, two new studies show. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/memory/stres...

Happy to share an updated version of our paper, which explores how everyday variability in social and spatial experiences influences how we perceive events. In collab w/ @drberry.bsky.social, Mark Postans, and Angharad Williams. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky

The Transmitter turns 1 today 🎂! "It takes a village to build something beautiful—and useful," said editor-in-chief Ivan Oransky: bit.ly/4hJXMAZ. To our staff, freelancers, contributing editors and the entire neuroscience community, thank you for your support!

One of the most interesting debates in #neuroscience in recent years is whether phasic dopamine is about reward prediction errors (as in TD-learning) or movement initiation. This paper seems to provide pretty convincing evidence for the former (prediction errors): www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪

My dept (UCL Experimental Psychology) has 12 funded PhD studentships for next academic year (Sept 2025 start)! These are only for UK citizens or with right to remain. I would be happy to support applications from students who would like to join my lab. See: www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/researc...

Episodic memory is often operationalized as memory for *what* happened, *where* it happened, and *when* it happened. But equally important is *why* that event matters enough to be encoded. Check out this comprehensive review paper by Morales-Calva & Leal, adding "why" into what-where-when memory.

⚡ I recently did a podcast about Intolerance of Uncertainty for Anxiety UK, a leading national charity helping to support people living with anxiety-related conditions. Link to the podcast on the Anxiety UK website below: www.anxietyuk.org.uk/get-involved...

New paper! Increased threat learning after social isolation in human adolescents Very proud of @emilyanntowner @KirstenThomas64 @livia_tomova who ran this mammoth study during the pandemic Emily Towner’s thread on X copied below (with permission) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

This paper may be very important: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... tl;dr: if you repeatedly give an animal a stimulus sequence XXXY, then throw in the occasional XXXX, there are large responses to the Y in XXXY, but not to the final X in XXXX, even though that's statistically "unexpected". 🧠📈 🧪