If you have not left a public comment on the draconian OMB-2026-0034, here's a quick thread to make it easy. #standupforscience #neuroskyence Click here: www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

Top story on the @nytimes.com app. A big sign that this all-important story is breaking into mainstream consciousness.

It’s mind blowing to me that I haven’t seen this noted in AI journalism until today. When I was in grad school less than 20 years ago, “computer vision” was struggling to differentiate dogs and cats. What would be different had stuck with this less loaded terminology? apple.news/ANaZ8795iTaq...

With help from @standupforscience.net, @jeremymberg.bsky.social, and @elizabethginexi.bsky.social, I just submitted comments to the OMB. I have no idea what it will accomplish. But trading 15 minutes for regaining a modicum of agency was well worth it. www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

Rooster is a great show (Bill Lawrence doesn’t miss), so I can ignore most of the usual misrepresentations of professor life. BUT... Why is the university president, who is apparently a historian, “advising” a STEM grad student? And why does that just amount to “finding her an internship?” 🤦‍♂️

Never forget that Kurt Vonnegut predicted this (and a heck of a lot else) in Player Piano in 1952. “I'm prepared to offer you thirty thousand, Buck.” … “You can't play college football, and go to school. They tried that once, and you know what a silly mess that was."

Inject this Michigan pride straight into my veins. Also I hope this means Colbert’s plan post Late Show is just to do lots of hillarious weird random stuff.

The Boys was great TV because it was flexible in adapting the source material to a new medium. That they made the core of the (awesome/earned) ending from the comics work was a huge bonus. But man, it was still SO much better in its original form, developed over time and even harder hitting.

Lineup, including trainee talks, is all set for this year's Neural Circuits and Behaviour Satellite at @canacn.bsky.social, co-hosted with @franklandlab.bsky.social . One week away, with a few tickets remaining for anyone interested! www.eventbrite.com/e/neural-cir...

Do brain circuits really sit in a 'soup' of neuromodulators? Are neurons like soggy bits of bread soaked in signaling factors? Is the whole brain just squelching around in one big pool of warm modulators?

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

I greatly enjoy when the objective reality matches up with the subjective silliness that says my team is good and my rivals are bad.

Tim Spellman demonstrates his open-source tool, FlexRig. Read the paper for the full instructions and parts list to build the tool. #eNeuro #OpenSourceTools https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0364-24.2024

Help! My oldest friend is a new AI convert and conversations with him are triggering major imposter syndrome. But… I can’t think of any daily research tasks I’d be comfortable using AI for (besides maybe SOME literature searching). Someone help shut down the second guessing overrunning my brain!

Practicing talks with my baby daughter as the audience >>> any other form of practice 😀 I even get to naturally practice dealing with disruptions from the audience! 😂😂😂

Like so much, this argument makes sense in principle but the implementation in practice is troublesome. Grade inflation took place over decades. Trying to fix it in one fell swoop is pulling the rug out from under current students. This problem needs to be solved, but carefully and gradually.

I’d argue that “storytelling”—be it in a written or spoken medium—is perhaps the most important “soft skill” for young/aspiring 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...

🎉 My final PhD paper is out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! We modelled spinal receptive fields to explore how spatiotemporally diverse tactile stimuli are processed, what goes wrong in #allodynia, and how #spinalcordstimulation combats it. 🔗 www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1... 🧵👇

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, DC, Marvel, Disney, Pixar, Spielberg, Cameron, Wachowskis, or Ghibli:

It’s published… the first manuscript from the Rich Lab is officially typeset and published!!! What an absolutely surreal moment… that I’m going to try my best to enjoy while awaiting the results of a study section from last week 😅😅😅 journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Study section for a resubmission is meeting today. Send me good vibes… and suggestions to distract myself ;)

1/n Good news everyone! I'm excited to announce the lab's first manuscript is accepted and (preliminarily) published at @plos.org Computational Biology! This is an absolutely surreal moment as a #NewPI 😀 #neuroskyence #compneuro #AcademicSky 🧪 journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

It’s brutal in academia right now. A lot is out of our control, but it doesn’t cost anything to remember that there are humans behind papers and grants…reviewers, program officials and funders can be more empathetic in the face of unprecedented chaos in the US scientific enterprise.

I remember Tractor Traylor. I remember irrelevance. I remember John Beilein winning with 0* recruits Zak Novak and Stu Douglass. I remember Spike Albrecht nearly becoming a legend. I remember Captain Hook. Now, for the first time in my lifetime… Michigan Basketball are NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!

To my all the amazing @uconn.bsky.social students, some friendly advice: Generally speaking, it’s never good to imitate Buckeyes ;) Oh, and GO BLUE!!!

A friend is an engineer in Silicon Valley. Unsurprisingly, AI is integral to his day-to-day. Somewhat surprisingly, he’s fully on board. I believe relying on AI undermines the creative thought required for research. But now I’m thinking, what tasks, if any, WOULD be an appropriate use of AI for us?

Second desk rejection in 48ish hours arrives at 7 pm on a Friday night, and with it the realization that my skin is not nearly as thick as I thought it was 2 years into being a PI. 🫠🫠🫠

At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

1/5 Big news: the pre-print for my final postdoc paper is (finally) out! Why did it take so long? We significantly expanded the manuscript thanks largely to the incredible work of one of my first undergraduates here at @uconn.bsky.social @uconnresearch.bsky.social 😀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Since the Scrubs reboot was actually enjoyable, my lizard millennial brain reverted to thinking maybe I should’ve been a medical doctor. Then I finally started The Pitt… and I’m pretty sure I made the right choice. Balance 😅😂

Coming soon: The Mohegan Sun Rich Lab presented by Dr. Pepper.

I built a bluesky labeler for neuroscience methods. 1️⃣ follow/subscribe to: @neuromethods.bsky.social 2️⃣ like the post with your favorite method ➡️ get a shiny methods label in your profile/posts. 🌟

www.science.org/content/arti... Cool time to start a science career. As a grad student in the early 2010’s I thought I was lucky because I didn’t have to worry about funding at the time and things would be better when I was trying to start my lab

WHAT. A. GOAL. Sorry Canadian friends and family 😅😅😅

Hear me out… maybe putting an athlete who toils in relative obscurity for 99% of their life under a two week international microscope that defines their entire career doesn’t do them any good.

I will always be proud to be (half) Canadian.

I wish more senior academics would explicitly say this to their peers. The traditional trajectory of building a lab and getting tenure has been completely upended. Validating the anxieties that stem from this new reality means so much more than (even well meaning) “back in my day” advice.

Being interdisciplinary mostly means everyone agrees your work is interesting but not for their journal.

I’ve always been proud to be an alumnus of the Duke Chronicle (even though I was in the Sports section, hahaha). The Chronicle has always been a bastion for quality, independent student journalism. Seeing that recognized is such a boost 😀😀😀

If you parent a college student, could you pretty please with sugar on top ask them to stop using ChatGPT to email their professors? These emails are driving us slowly bananas.

Today I learned I am at the “perturbed rather than excited by back-to-back snow days” stage of being a professor. A small part of me has died.

Have had this happen to me a couple times over the last year, including on a re-review of a manuscript I had serious concerns about (so they really should’ve wanted my input!). This is very low on the priority list of things to fix with peer review, but it is disproportionately irritating 😡😡😡

Remember that week on the Old Site where we all put our thesis/paper titles in a very early AI image generator for shits and giggles? I miss those simple times… of about 5 years ago.

Revision of the lab’s first manuscript submitted! Now the (anxious) waiting begins…

Realizing that Futurama perfectly predicted AI in scientific research 15 years ago: youtu.be/LCPhbN1l024

Ok I forgot how brilliant John Noble is… I’m back fully hooked. Also the cow.

On one hand, I’m so excited that FRINGE is finally streaming somewhere for a nostalgic rewatch. On the other hand, I’m 20 minutes in I’ve scoffed at the pseudoscientific nonsense that used to entertain me a half dozen times. And yet…

Why can I NEVER spell the word analagous right on the first try? Damn it, I did it again!

I’m reminded of recent stories in @theatlantic.com on grade inflation. The common thread? The idea that educators are now evaluated on student “satisfaction” rather than, you know, whether students actually learn what they are supposed to. We’ve got work to do. apple.news/AY76JVMD-SWe...