This is one of the most outstanding examples of circuit understanding I've seen in a long time. The unification of theory and experiment is beautiful. When Malcolm presented this in my lab, the audience was cheering at the end, and one person shouted (non-ironically) "You did it!"

Waiting for Godot featuring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters was outstanding. Highly recommend and try to get orchestra seats with a direct view of the stage for the full effect of the set and lighting.

This was a really fantastic collaboration! Congratulations @mictott.bsky.social Rita Cervera Juanes, @svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧪🧬💻🧠

Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations to @mictott.bsky.social, Rita Cervera Juanes and @svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! Really fun collaboration w/labs of @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social and @stephaniehicks.bsky.social to better understand cell type and spatial heterogeneity across amygdala in primate 🧠!

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!

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!

I bombed my first faculty job interview by riffing in my chalk talk about how the NAc shell/core distinction was a weak organizing principle in primates. I feel vindicated. bsky.app/profile/pras...

Really proud of huge collaborative efforts from several teams in Translational Neuroscience Division @lieberinstitute.bsky.social w/ labs of @stephaniehicks.bsky.social and @alexisbattle.bsky.social to provide this resource on cell types and spatial organization in nucleus accumbens of human 🧠

Now out in JEP: General, "How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently" psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... Preprint with final version: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/n

Excited to share that my PhD work has been published! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠🧪

Nice paper from @superkash.bsky.social and team in @npp-journal.bsky.social comparing the contribution of CRF and GABA release from the same BNST neurons to ethanol self-administration. Tom you know I am obsessed with co-transmitter release this is really elegant work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I think the church of everything is everywhere should check tumor removal surgeries. They all start by making sure they won't remove a specific function when removing a specific region. Can you guess how they do it? @benhayden.bsky.social @pessoabrain.bsky.social hint: it is not with decoders

Big, if true. Most neurosurgeons I’ve interacted with are less flippant when discussing patient care…but that’s just my opinion & I’m not a professor in the neurosurgery department of a major medical center, seeking informed consent from participants to fuel my career. bsky.app/profile/benh...

Let's recap: Everything* is everywhere** * Except language, motor, memory, facial recognition, spatial perception, ... ** Except white matter, human brains, or anything else that is not a mouse brain

This is an exquisite demonstration of using intracranial recordings in humans to validate our findings that amygdala neurons encode the value of exploring in NHPs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'll be reviewing computational/cognitive and clinical psychology applications this year for the Translational Lab at Emory 💭🔬 Please share broadly and send applicants my way! 🔄 docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Prompted by a question from a colleague I just did a YouTube search on the default mode network and HOLY SHIT it is crazy out there people

Super excited to share this new collaborative work - marmosets use diverse and highly flexible strategies when they cooperate. These strategies are powerfully determined by both social factors (sex, dominance, familiarity) & individual partner identity. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Apropos of absolutely nothing www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Now it’s time for vision on vision on vision. “Shown here is plot of a freely moving macaques’ eye movements, plotted over the gaze shifts of a head fixed mouse, with each datapoint colored by the duration of fixation while a marmoset watches a tree leak sap.”

Proud of Amy and Nick, who review technical and theoretical gaps in timescales of dopamine fluctuations. We argue that DA fluctuations are hierarchical control signals, and “tonic” DA relays goal alignment across planning horizons and C-BG hierarchy. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very timely and insightful OpEd by Prof. Cory Miller on WSJ. It lays out an important point - Advanced AI cannot be developed in a vacuum without understanding the sophisticated machines we have in our brains. www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ok what alternatives are people using for shipping tissue on dry ice? FedEx just let a whole bunch of invaluable macaque brain tissue melt like butter in their Memphis facility because a label tore. I am never using them ever again.

My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .

🚨 I’m excited to say that my CIHR Project Grant was funded! My NHP lab is now full-speed-ahead, and I’m hiring experimentalists (postdoc, PhD student, and/or a tech/manager). We’ll do multi-region ephys during reaching/grasping in macaques, with behavioral and spinal perturbations.

"...researchers may lose connection with their data. The field risks creating a generation of neuroscientists capable of executing sophisticated analyses but unable to critically evaluate their results."

Happy to have some good science news - our new study with @aqperkins.bsky.social is out in @plosbiology.org! dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

The University of Arizona is holding an open-rank neuroscience faculty search, multiple tenure-track positions available! Positions will be in the new Department of Translational Neurosciences at the College of Medicine in Phoenix. tinyurl.com/42t8tcey

#JNeurosci | Hwang, Murray, and colleagues discovered that the orbitofrontal cortex is pivotal to the arousal of the autonomic system in macaque monkeys when they view reward-predictive cues. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0619-25.2025

Molecular biologists attending Pavlovian Society meeting for the first time in Sydney “Interesting technique. Have you conditioned a stimulus before?” www.reddit.com/r/StupidFood...

We're looking for a research assistant to work in our neuroscience lab at @princetonneuro.bsky.social @hhmi.org where we study learning and decision-making circuitry. Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21001/r... Pls share w/ anyone who might be interested!

A landmark volume, The Handbook of Dopamine, is now online: www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/han... Big kudos to the editors, Stephanie Cragg and Mark Walton, for putting this together.

Thinking of applying to US-based Ph.D. programs in neuroscience, psychology, or cognitive science? We’ve got your back! NYU’s Application Support Group is a student-led, free mentorship program offering 1-on-1 support and guidance. Apply now! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Great resource, out today in @natneuro.nature.com: An integrated single-nucleus and spatial transcriptomics atlas reveals the molecular landscape of the human hippocampus @stephaniehicks.bsky.social @martinowk.bsky.social & colleagues 🧪🧠🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out our new review/perspective (w/ @juangallego.bsky.social & Devika Narain) on neural manifolds in the brain! It was a lot of fun to think through these ideas over the past couple of years, and I'm excited it's finally out in the world! 🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 📄: rdcu.be/ex8hW

If I may pause our science doom & gloom posts with an important ketamine paper: well designed clinical study out in @natmed.nature.com by Luke Jelen & team at KCL/London (funded by NIHR/MRC) shows convincingly that antidepressant effects of ketamine are opioid related www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Please repost! We're hiring a postdoc to work with me and @salagapan.bsky.social on an exciting interdisciplinary project in human neuroscience and brain-body interactions underlying effortful behavior in health and mood disorders. siplab.gatech.edu/postdoc_ad_2...

This is an absolute masterpiece and a must read if you care at all about amygdala function bsky.app/profile/flyb...

Very pleased to say we have an Assistant Professor job opening (tenure track) in the Department of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin! 😀 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOA399/a... - deadline is August 19th! Please repost!

Really proud of @jhubiostat.bsky.social PhD student @kinnaryshah.bsky.social for leading this project, which I am so excited to get to share with the community.

Said preprint is now live! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Calling out to #neuroskyence: Pomona College is hiring! This is a position for a tenure-track assistant professor in systems-level neuroscience. We are eager to hear from candidates with a commitment to teaching and research excellence with undergraduates academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30265

This is a nice new study showing the mechanisms why CBV fMRI is so specific to cortical layers: The somatostatin neurons are driving the hemodynamic response at fMRI-typical time scales. By Vo et al, from Seong-Gi Kim's lab. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Another #GRCAmygdala in the books! Kudos to @katewassum.bsky.social for chairing an inspiring meeting. When I passed by Sagrada Familia yesterday evening it looked like @joserodroma.bsky.social & @anna-beyeler.bsky.social were already hard at work planning the next one.

Maybe it isn’t clear to everyone that the goal is not some Greek god statue ideal of a perfect grant application document.

I don’t care how good your grant prep is, nor whether the panel has 100 or 80 R01 proposals to review, the less common idea (methods, etc) struggles. By definition the majority of the panel leans a different way. You don’t beat this by grantsmithing. You beat it with numbers.

Time to revisit the probability of at least one NIH grant award given relevant success rates. It has been ~20% overall success in recent completed FY. Many ICs have *paylines* around 10%ish.

Amygdala GRC fed my soul in a time of doom and gloom. Ready to keep climbing knowing that there’s such a fantastic community with me.