Thrilled to share our work out in @nature.com today! Linking flexibility modeling, single-cell imaging, and targeted optogenetics allowed us to characterize how some prefrontal neurons, and mPFC-VTA neurons in particular, drive contingency degradation behavior. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you're interested in emerging ideas in neural interfaces, I humbly suggest my lab's latest: www.nature.com/articles/s42... Neural interfaces create dynamic interactions between the brain & devices. This means mean we need new engineering approaches beyond typical ML to "decode" a static brain

Check out our latest research drop! We show BLA dopamine signaling encodes the emotional weight of sensory transitions, but not the associative strength or value of stimuli. These signals dynamically rescale when the learning context changes: "this matters most!" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How does the brain generalize past experiences without confusing memories? 🧠 Our lab's newest preprint reveals a fundamental division of labor between the cortex and cerebellum that solves this problem. (Check out the cortex-cerebellum video below! 👇) 🧵

The most sensitive green and red #norepinephrine #sensors engineered to date are out in #naturemethods! Deeply grateful to all our funders and contributors who made this work possible. A true team effort. @erc.europa.eu @snsf.ch doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Thrilled this is out, led by former PD Cameron Ogg (now with her own lab at @rhodescollege.bsky.social!). It was a driven by a desire to see, in real-time, how LC activity/NE release influences downstream targets in behaving animals. SO hard to do, but Cameron did it! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This new ERC study uses an overlapping set of human 🧠 donors as our just dropped locus coeruleus preprint. Availability of data from both regions in the same donor facilitates our current efforts to analyze molecular signaling across the circuit, which is highly vulnerable in Alzheimer's disease.

Happy to share our study “Noradrenergic tuning of arousal is coupled to movement transitions” from my time at Michael Bruchas' lab. www.cell.com/cell-reports... Highlights: 1. Anesthetic emergence dissociates arousal components; LC-NE activation is coupled to the return of organized behavior.

The Gowrishankar lab will be opening its doors @neuro_MUSC on Dec 1, 2025! We will be hiring at all levels. I will also be at @SfNtweets presenting my lab's vision on Wednesday, Nov 19, 8AM-12PM at poster board GG7. If you're interested, please reach out! www.raajgowrishankarlab.org

I’m extremely honored to be a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award!

🔵 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...

Reposting this as a reminder that we have an open Research Assistant position - appreciate reposts and passing along to colleagues who may know people who are interested! Details and link to apply are in the second post!

Far from being a passive neighbor to the locus coeruleus, the pericoeruleus appears to act as a kind of micromanager of arousal, selectively inhibiting different subgroups of locus coeruleus neurons, writes @macshine.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/attention/th...

NIH's work saves lives—& Trump is gutting it. Straight from D.C. I headed to Seattle Children's to hear from researchers & patients alike about the importance of NIH funding—it's not just about lines in a budget, it's about lifesaving discoveries. We ALL need to speak up to save it.

It finally happened, the Castro lab's first paper! Congrats to @katybraden.bsky.social !! In this review we examine what we know, and more importantly, what we DON'T know about neuropeptides in the dorsal raphe/ventromedial PAG. Here we go! www.frontiersin.org/journals/beh...

Our latest study identifies a specific cell type and receptor essential for psilocybin’s long-lasting neural and behavioral effects 🍄🔬🧠🧪 Led by Ling-Xiao Shao and @ItsClaraLiao Funded by @NIH @NIMHgov 📄 Read in @nature.com - www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/12

Wanted to share this story about my colleague Bryant Lin. We’re working together on bringing art and science together but his story runs much deeper. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/u...

Call to End Freeze on Federal Grants The White House's pause on federal grants threatens our nation’s scientific progress. Read SfN's full statement urging this Administration to lift the freeze to protect the health and security of our nation: bit.ly/4gq9i2I

If you are still at #ACNP2024 and are interested in the locus coeruleus and/or the amygdala, please stop by my poster from the @mbruchas lab examining how both nodes of this circuit mediate stress-induced anxiety-like behavior tonight (W169)!

The Juarez lab at University of Maryland, Baltimore is hiring a PD! We combine gene editing, neurophysiology and behavior to understand the basis of disordered behaviors 🧠🧬✂️🔬🐭. Check us out and apply at thejuarezlab.com .