13% success rates for FY2025 grant awards. NIH finally releases some FY2025 success rate data drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/n...

BREAKING: @delauro.house.gov announces at a House Oversight hearing with NIH director Jay Bhattacharya that OMB approved the agency's apportionment last night. That means the agency should have access to its appropriated funds — 42 days after its spending bill passed.

Here are some of the apportionments that have come in: - NIDDK, 200m for type 1 diabetes - NIEHS, 80m for superfund research - NIMH/NINDS, 115m from Cures Act - Buildings and facilities, 2.5m - ARPA-H's full apportionment (2/2)

Update 3/16: A very small handful of NIH apportionments have come through — with big exceptions. The ones that OMB has approved are all Congressionally mandated/earmarked. The broad discretionary funds that fund most NIH grants not yet been authorized. (1/2)

9/25

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

UAB is recruiting neuroscience faculty at two different levels - come join our vibrant neuroscience community!

Excited to share our new paper: We uncover a locus coeruleus→amygdala circuit linking β-adrenergic signaling to transcription regulation in defined amygdala cells during memory reconsolidation—+ stress or elevated noradrenergic signaling at recall can strengthen memory. www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

For extra reading about this issue, I recommend checking out the @centeronbudget.bsky.social report, "Trump Administration Abused Spending Safeguards to Advance Its Agenda — and Illegally Hid Its Actions" You know it's bad when the whole case study about weaponizing apportionment is about NIH

Um this is not normal. Haven’t ever seen this in 10+ years in San Antonio

$300 Million in jet planes lost to a fuckup. That’s 83 five year NIH R01 grants burned in minutes due to error, aka poor execution of this unnecessary war which serves only to make the world more dangerous.

New and Competitive Renewals Only 803 grants have been made compared to ~2650 in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 through February 20. All institutes and centers (include OD now) have made awards except NIAAA, NLM, NCCIH, and FIC. 3/4

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper 📃🚨 Out today, Melissa Malvaez, Nick Griffin, Andrea Suarez & team discovered that dopamine can enable reward predictions to shape how we pursue reward. Surprisingly, we find that dopamine can constrain instrumental reward seeking. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8... 🧵👇🏻

I am so proud to share @forrestdrogers.bsky.social’s postdoctoral magnum opus, now out in @nature.com! Forrest discovered a novel role for Agouti in the MPOA of the hypothalamus to integrate socio-environmental information to flexibly tune paternal behavior www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thread! 👇🏻

DOG AT THE OLYMPICS FULL COMPETITION HIGHLIGHTS

New paper from lab on how VTA dopamine neurons + GABA inhibition contribute to punishment learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to post our paper led by @daburke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... where we uncover a simple mathematical rule underlying how brains learn that a cue predicts a reward. 1/26

PSA on PMC compliance with accepted manuscripts at journals with a publishing embargo. Apparently you need to upload a version of the manuscript yourself and the paper will get a PMC number. This original PMC will the get overwritten by another PMC number when the embargo is lifted

4,049 and counting. Attrition is real and ongoing. Schedule career / policy, the new pmap rationing, deranging the MSPB, ...

Don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of this organization aligning with the current NIH/HHS “leaders”: kill all the animals you want to eat more and more animal flesh and fat but it is unethical to use animals for life saving medical research

$1.65M per day in DC alone. That’s approximately two NIH R01 Grant *years* burned per day. Ninety *five year* R01s projects burned in the last seven months with no end in sight. Instead of lasting scientific advance we get….what? Civil rights violations and authoritarian replacement of democracy.

No matter who you are cheering for this Super Bowl I hope at this we all can agree that Chris Collinsworth should not be announcing this game

👇New biosketch requirement update. “After evaluating the number and types of recent technical inquiries we received to both the SciENcv and eRA Service Desks, we recognize the difficulties these issues have had on the community’s ability to comply with the original timeline of January 25, 2026.” 👇

We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867

Okay #WCBR2026...this time I'm not messing around, bringing my own karaoke machine to this meeting. Get ready to rock!

The language in the bill restricts the amount of multiyear funding to the level is fiscal year 2025. The Senate bill limited it to that level in fiscal year 2024. This is not good news...better than nothing, but thousands of lost projects. 3/5

Just spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.

I edited a special issue of Addiction Neuroscience on dopamine circuitry & heterogeneity in addiction - now complete!🧠🧪 Check out the full issue & my editorial (all open access) here: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

My (now) weekly update on 2026 NIH funding. New and competitive renewal awards. 3 new awards (compared to ~100 expected based on recent years). No new ICs... still just NIA, NINDS, NIDCD, and NIDCR. 1/2

Reminder for those applying for #NIH grants using the #ScienCV templates. You can format the text sections using html codes: <p> paragraph <br> break line <b>bold</b> <i>italics</i>

Fiscal Year 2026 NIH Funding Update The committed funding for fiscal year 2026 is lagging behind all fiscal years from 2015-2025. More details to follow. 1/6

Excited to share latest study from the lab by an amazing RA, Dylan Flink. We solved a small (important) puzzle while in the trenches of a larger (wavy 🌊) puzzle. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵...

Heads up I will be hiring a postdoc and some techs in the new year! Lots of ephys and fiber photometry. If you've got soon to graduate PhD students or undergrads, send 'em my way!

My first funding curve post for Fiscal Year 2026 FY2026 is off to a slow start. Some of this is due to the government shut down, but some of it is likely due to the new process for "remediating" applications that are deemed not to align with "agency priorities".

It is also real buggy right now and hopefully it gets better when/if it moves out of beta

Hey look, Notice on Implementation of Common Forms Biosketch and Other Support for Due Dates on/after Jan 25, 2026. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

This is the most mind boggling data in this article 47% ⬇️ in NIAAA 43% ⬇️ MH etc 🤯😔

New York Times article on science funding with some depressing but familiar curves with interactive graphics. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

🙏 @sfnjournals.bsky.social now out! & while celltype &ephys are alike across sexes, behavioral functions and axon terminal distribution in NAc and brainwide diverge by sex and #stress. @ladenardo.bsky.social

GIF THREAD ALERT – With pleasure, we present our @SfNJournals #JNeurosci article www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4... by my grad student Jackson Schumacher and former post doc Mieke Van Holstein

So this week I learned that Caprock Canyon state park is pretty sweet

Updated guidance on NIH grant application due dates (10/1/2025-12/5/2025), along with some other Info. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Notice of early expiration of NIH SBIR/STTR funding announcements. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... If anyone knows the backstory, please share.

Thought now was as good a time as ever to join bsky - Excited to share a big part of my PhD work is finally published- 7+ years of experiments from a great team of people. Wishing I could be at #sfn2025 to celebrate with you guys! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Uh, that is some bad news indeed

Awesome work by lead author Lauren Burgeno et al: Dopamine evoked by non-contingent cues increases over cocaine use, producing greater cue reactivity; whereas dopamine evoked by contingent cues decreases over cocaine use, producing escalation of drug consumption. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share new research from my lab in final published form! By deleting hypocretin (orexin) receptors from CRF neurons, we uncovered neuropeptide mechanisms linking alcohol drinking and negative emotional hyperarousal through BNST neuronal excitability. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

At no point can you accurately predict what will happen. I love it.