A POSTDOCTORAL POSITION ON THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF REPRODUCTION IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: We are recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to work on a Neurobiology in Changing Ecosystems (NiCE) award from NSF and the Kavli Foundation (www.kavlifoundation.org/news/kavli-a...).

The BioE department at the @uoknightcampus.bsky.social is hiring 2 complementary TTF neuroengineering positions! We're looking for someone with expertise in experimental & translational neuroengineering and someone else with expertise in computational & data-science neuroengineering. #neurosky

Fluorescent proteins can now act as qubits 🤯 This opens the door for single cell MRI in vivo and highly localized sensors that map magnetic fields, temperature gradients, etc. Insane. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“If everything is everywhere, why have distinct areas? Here we show that the function of a brain area is more related to how different types of information are combined (formatted) in neural representations than merely whether that information is present.”

“Instead of a joker to occasionally confuse the student of behavior, nonsensory activities appear in every fall of the cards and must make up a large share of the deck. Neurophysiologically, it may even become a problem to account for any consistent effect of a specific stimulus." Donald Hebb (1949)

Speaking with 20+ years of experience, I strongly believe that if these guys had done their experiment in primate instead of mouse, they would have gotten exactly the same results. E.g. www.cell.com/current-biol...

We watched mice follow scent trails drawn on an “endless” treadmill. By manipulating trail geometry/statistics, perturbing mouse nose & brain, and modeling behavior with a Bayesian framework, we show that mice use predictive (rather than reactive) strategies.

We’re searching for a Developmental Neuroscientist! Building on UO’s rich tradition in the field, we’re excited to welcome the next scientist to carry it forward.

Latest from the lab. Beautiful work from Joanna Lau and a fantastic collaboration with James Fitzgerald. www.cell.com/current-biol...

We’re searching for a Developmental Neuroscientist! Building on UO’s rich tradition in the field, we’re excited to welcome the next scientist to carry it forward.

Proud to share Kai Clane Belonio’s latest work in our lab. Kai showed that induced-depression decreases behavioral tolerance of aversive odorants as well as increases in neuroinflammation in sensory affective areas. Also contributing are @nervenkidd.bsky.social and Eyerusalem Haile.

the psychophysicist’s “noise” is an experimental subject’s ________ ?

maybe “noise” isn’t the best word for it?

Hmm: Correlated variability in sensory neurons (how much responses fluctuate together) is related to behavior: it’s modulated by attention, learning, & motivation and related to individual decisions. But because it's low-D, in theory its effect on behavior should be small. What’s up with that? 2/

Ramanujan Srinath collected & analyzed many data sets including Amy Ni’s, Yunlong (Draco) Xu & Brent Doiron modeled, & Doug did a causal experiment. The key is: when noise and signal come from the same circuit (they must!), then smart, flexible decisions have a strong relationship with noise. 4/

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I'm pleased to announce that the Version of Record of our eLife paper, "Pan-cortical 2-photon mesoscopic imaging and neurobehavioral alignment in awake, behaving mice" (Vickers and McCormick, 2024) is now available at: elifesciences.org/articles/94167 (94167.3, VOR).

Psychedelics are serotonergic drugs... Right?!? Well, think again and embrace the complexity revealed by @zenbrainest.bsky.social et al testing 41 compounds in 318 receptors: "psychedelics have potent and efficacious actions at nearly every serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic receptor."

Proposal recommended for funding! Which means we have a fresh, 3-year-funded position available for a computational postdoc interested in studying dynamics of social interactions in rats, with simultaneous Neuropixels data to follow 🐀🐀🐀 Proper job ad pending, but email me if interested!

nothing makes sense in computational modelling, except in the light of these two all-time classic maxims: 1. all models are wrong, some are useful - George Box 2. everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler - Albert Einstein

Program officer Angie Michaiel spoke with The Transmitter about her efforts to shepherd a burgeoning climate neuroscience subfield and the fruit she hopes it will bear. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/community/bu...

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory. 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

there's so much going on I almost forgot the telescope project i have worked on for TWENTY YEARS is revealing its first images today! Tune in to watch live:

I assumed this would be "mouse-years" or something but no, this is an actual 10-year-running colony living in a Swiss barn. Also noted: "The barn population underwent a dramatic decline in 2021 following a series of cat predation events"

Microbiomes shape our biology from gut-brain, skin, immunology, and more. Here, Rebecka Sepela et al explores octopus “taste by touch” sensation to ask how environmental microbiomes drive animal behavior. @cellpress.bsky.social, @mblscience.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Animals’ sniffing drives rhythmic input to the olfactory system. How does this timing contribute to perception, especially beyond first steps of olfactory processing? We tested this using simple closed-loop optogenetics in our new paper: www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

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Happy to share some new work on social interactions of zebrafish: using Hidden Markov models, @stednitz.bsky.social and Andrew Leszak show that there are three states of social approach behavior, and they differ in their sensory components. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Congrats to @stednitz.bsky.social and Andrew Lesak on their @currentbiology.bsky.social paper! They use HMM to identify two interaction states in #zebrafish: one visual for long-range interactions and one lateral line for quick, close interactions. Free link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lCYh3QW8S...

I believe a crucial part of being a fully-realized human in 2025 is knowingly and joyfully hiding huge swaths of your life and experiences from the ever-gluttonous eyes of the Internet. It is also a genuinely meaningful act of personal resistance

A very nice article about our research on the octopus visual system, by @callimcflurry.bsky.social @thetransmitter.bsky.social

In June 2001, I arrived in SFO with a suitcase, a student visa, and disproportionate dreams. My life since has been nothing but a dream. My heart is with the international students in the US today.

🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨 Can mice estimate the distance to an odour source? New work led by Cristina Marin and colleagues, jointly supervised by @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social at the @crick.ac.uk and myself. Spoiler alert: Yes, they can! Read the paper here: bit.ly/43A9tF9 Short 🧵 below

There's a fair-sized literature on this (which we all sadly ignore readily). Here's a recent paper:

Together with our collaborators at UNR, my mentor Kathy Nagel and I are happy to announce my first manuscript from the Nagel Lab is on its way to publication! We used Ca2+ imaging and modeling to explore the neural activity patterns that may compute wind direction in flying insects. Take a look ⬇️

Maps are everywhere in the brain...and finally we've discovered one in the nose! Led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social, we uncovered the logic that specifies the positions of each of the 1,000 sensory neuron subtypes in the nose and aligns their projections to the brain.👇👃see more details below👃👇

#preprint: We mapped the structure and function of olfactory bulb circuits with in vivo 2-photon microscopy and synchrotron #Xray holographic nanotomography. doi.org/10.1101/2025... @yuxinzhang.bsky.social @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social @apacureanu.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @esrf.fr

🚨new paper alert Blind mice use stereo olfaction, comparing smells between nostrils, to maintain a stable sense of direction. Blocking this ability disrupts their internal compass. Kudos to @kasumbisa.bsky.social! Another cool chapter of the Trenholm-Peyrache collab😉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey, it's also Eadweard Muybridge's birthday! We love him!

Congrats Michael. I'm putting Supp Video 2 on the title slide for my 1st day of class today 😍🪰🧠

"What are the barriers that prevent us from pursuing an AlphaFold for the brain?: In AlphaFold the underlying true physical premise is that sequence predicts structure. What is the analogous premise for the analogous systems neuroscience project?

Very proud of this paper, which spans three decades of work. (1/17) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My favorite was a Norwegian newspaper, which quoted me as saying that the basic science we do is building a foundation for understanding mammalian brains. I received two emails arguing out that the Mosers had already figured it all out. That's the kind of scientific patriotism we lack in the USA.

We're hiring a Career Instructor with a Neuroscience focus! Are you a #neuroscience postdoc or grad student looking to explore teaching opportunities? Please consider applying, and feel free to get in touch! careers.uoregon.edu/en-us/job/53... @hphyuo.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🧪

Our "rhythm & place" story is now a reviewed preprint at elife: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... We got really helpful feedback from the reviewers and editors, revised version coming soon!