What has changed in mama bear brain (well, actually mice) to make her risk her life to attack a potential threat and protect her young? Oxytocin is the key! Happy to share our new study led by two awesome postdocs: Takashi Yamaguchi and Rongzhen Yan. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re recruiting! Exciting opportunities in our lab supported by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Discovery Award. • Postdoctoral researchers • Research assistant/PhD students Join us to study how neural circuits drive decision-making. Deadline 26/04 Learn more and Apply here: rezavallab.org

Excited so share our newest study using a single-library HiFi-CiFi approach to generate chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of two vole genomes, identifying putative drivers of divergent pair-bonding behavior, namely a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a gene, led by @mabuelanin.bsky.social

I had a blast working on this paper! This was the first mammalian assembly paper using the new CiFi tech, and we combined multiple lines of evidence to verify a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a. All methods will be open source and reproducible, enabling the community to build on them.

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

Congratulations to @neurozoe.bsky.social of @colorado.edu who has been nominated by Mostafa El-Kalliny & Yurika Watanabe in the #LabHeroes25 Awards! 🏆 Read Zoe's nomination and tell us about the heroes in YOUR lab: ow.ly/6fqS50XuB5B #LabHeroesAwards #labhero #LabHeroes #scienceawards #scienceprize

A real pleasure and honor interviewing @neurozoe.bsky.social. Check out her story!

New paper from @neurozoe.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We uncover a role for nucleus accumbens calcium permeable AMPA receptors (CP-AMPARs) in pair bond formation. Congrats to first author Mostafa and all the other amazing co-authors!

Bit late to the game here, but had a really fun time writing this perspective piece with @neurozoe.bsky.social about a couple of fascinating papers now out in Science. Massive kudos to the Hong and Zhang groups for their work www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A few weeks ago I was asked to write an obituary for my PhD mentor, Larry Young. He was the torchbearer for oxytocin research, a giant in our field. He had a gift for connecting people. His loss has been devastating for many of us. Goodbye Larry. rdcu.be/dE0vD

Excited to share our latest work out in Current Bio led by Dr. Anne Pierce. We found dopamine is required for seeking out social interaction in monogamous voles, and that a pair bonded partner elicits greater accumbal dopamine release than does a stranger. authors.elsevier.com/a/1iPzr3QW8S...

Congratulations to this years Beach Award Winner Deena Walker! A fearless scientist, deep thinker, and lover of Neuroendocrinology!