New preprint from the lab. @markgergues.bsky.social and crew show that the PVT gates ventral hippocampal salience coding, shifting output between threat- and reward-weighted representations during associative learning and anxiety-related behavior. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Proposed structures/ mechanisms for magnetic sensing in bird (so far): 1) In the beak/ trigeminal Nerve (biogenic magnetite) 2) radical pair-Cryptochrome mediated reaction in the retina 3) The lagena 4) Vestibular canals (electromagnetic induction) 5) Supermagnetic macrophages in the liver.

Feeling energized after hearing this year’s Rising Stars in Neuroscience speak about their science. It has been a real pleasure getting to know this talented group over the last three days.

Excited to share the upcoming 6th Annual Rising Stars in Neuroscience Symposium @utah.edu! great lineup of graduate students presenting exciting neuroscience research. Looking forward to a fun couple days of science and discussion with a fantastic group of early career scientists.

I am so proud to share @gritz122.bsky.social my first PhD student's first preprint! This #compneurosky #neuroscience study tackles a controversial question in hippocampal place cell research – do place fields require spatially tuned synaptic inhibition? (1/5) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

To accompany my textbook (Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience) and the class I taught this semester, I'm open-sourcing my lectures slides: gershmanlab.com/lectures.html I'll continue to update these as I improve them.

My main postdoc work is now published: www.nature.com/articles/s41...! We (myself, Isabel Low, Frances Cho, and @lgiocomo.bsky.social) discovered task-relevant remote representations in entorhinal cortex independent of CA1. #paperthread below! 1/13

My mom represents many people who haven’t typically been as politically active but recognize that this is such a critical moment for everyone to speak up. Go mom! #NoKings

Thrilled to share our new paper, which shows that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release dynamically gates whether dopamine acts as an RPE for in vivo plasticity and reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I had the wonderful opportunity to be part of Rising Stars Symposium this year and it was amazing! Great science, great people and a great place!! It was one of my highlights of this year! If you are a neuro grad student, I highly encourage you to apply! ✨

New preprint from the lab! A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.

Neuro grad students! Applications for the 6th annual - Rising Stars in Neuroscience - due Jan 9! Don’t miss this chance to present research, sharpen science communication skills and connect with peers & faculty. Plus you’ll get to experience stunning Utah! medicine.utah.edu/neurobiology...

“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”

Highly recommend checking out Thomas’ lab! Perfect for students and postdocs looking for rigorous training and a chance to help shape the next wave of the field.

That’s a wrap on #SfN2025 for our lab. Feeling grateful to do neuroscience with such an outstanding group — and to catch up with friends and colleagues across the community. SfN always reminds me how lucky we are to be part of this field.

Today’s the day—our lab presents this afternoon at #SfN2025! Stop by and check out the new work.

Excited to share new work from our lab at #SfN2025! @sfn.org Posters on how the brain learns about time and space—from foraging and MEC dynamics, to RNN + hippocampus in curriculum learning, to MTL vs striatal activity across learning, and cognitive aging in social isolation stress. Check them out!

thanks for speaking out @markhisted.org

How does the brain decide? 🧠 Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc. After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up. rdcu.be/eGUrv

Congratulations to the Rising Stars in Neuroscience – Class of 2025! This is one of my favorite events each year, and this year was no exception. Keep an eye on this incredible group of scientists—they’re doing amazing things!

Heading to #COSYNE2025? Don't miss our latest work, led by Jack Bowler, on curriculum learning! We've uncovered how recurrent networks in the entorhinal cortex and RNNs develop specific dynamical mechanisms for abstract learning, depending on how they are trained. Poster #1-058| Thursday Eve

Perfect day on the mountain with my little shredder! ❄️⛷️ Fresh snow, big smiles, and a well-earned après—hot chocolate for him, a beer for me. #DadLife #ApresSki

Just spent 30 hours reviewing for an NIH study section set for Thursday—now postponed indefinitely. 20 other scientists did the same. This is happening across multiple sections. A huge waste of time, resources, and funding, with real costs for science and economy. Trump admin is bad for everyone.

Being a scientist in the U.S. feels especially stressful right now. Here’s a bit of early morning backcountry ski zen to share with you.

BREAKING: Federal judge extends the restraining order on NIH capping indirect costs to 15% www.statnews.com/2025/02/21/t...

NIH indirects case update: Hearing ongoing now, and I'll try to live tweet some notable exchanges. Prior to more detailed arguments, Judge Kelley starts off with a few point questions to both sides: (I'm paraphrasing here)