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.

Nothing is scarier than Reviewer #2

ATTN: Two faculty positions are available in my department (neuroscience) at the University of Minnesota. This is a general search with no topic focus. November 20th application deadline. Apply here: hr.umn.edu/jobs/Find-Job Assistant Prof job code: 364920 Associate/Full Prof job code: 364921

Your donation is tax deductible and supports the young scientists who are being lost due to the federal funding crisis. #WCBR2026 nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

We've extended the deadline for #WCBR2026 posters! New due date is Oct 16th! www.winterbrain.org please share!

Excited to share the Special Issue on "Stress and Addiction" in Addiction Neuroscience is now available. Huge kudos to guest editors Karl Schmidt and Anushree Karkhanis and all the authors who contributed. www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

October 9th is the deadline for poster submissions for #WCBR2026 please share! www.winterbrain.org

The fiscal year is over. So how was the NIH appropriation committed? A long thread with institute by institute results about where the money went.

On the nature of a NSF (or NIH) graduate training fellowship drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/o...

Sometimes you hear a bump in the night. Sometimes that bump is your ceiling crashing down due to an AC drain leak. This wasn’t on my bingo card for today

🔵 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...

We showed previously that chemogenetic activation of the LC rescues spatial reversal learning in the TgF344-AD rat. New paper follows up and reports that optogenetic stimulation of LC terminals in CA1 also rescues cognitive deficits in 3xTg mouse model of AD. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We're hiring 2 faculty in Behavioral and Cellular Neuroscience at the Assistant Professor level -- come join our amazing department at Texas A&M! apply.interfolio.com/172286 Apply by Oct 1 for highest priority.

It's been a busy time for NIH grants staff — the agency seems on track to spend its budget this fiscal year But, because of multi-year funding, fewer projects are being funded than in previous years. The number of R grants has fallen from 5,633 to 3,758 analysis by @jaspar.bsky.social

Adding up the NIH R01s lost to Multi-Year Funding drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/09/09/a...

Excited to share this update to our paper investigating the role of superior colliculus inputs to the ventral midbrain in learning and movement. Studies led by the amazing Dr. @carlipoisson.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Here ye, here ye!!! #WCBR2026 #WinterConfrenceonBrainResearch will be extending the panel deadline one week for submission (new deadline 9/18/2025)! Official announcement coming soon so check your emails! please reskeet!

Florida: Come for the beaches and stay for the preventable diseases. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Congratulations to Kristen Harris and Amy Hauck Newman the Pioneer Award Winners for #WCBR2026 ! Registration is now open and panel submissions are due Sept 11, 2025; posters are due October 9, 2025

#eNeuro: @mattjwanat.bsky.social‬ et al. show that the cue-evoked dopamine response in rats signals the duration of the trace period between cue and reward, and relates to the response latency. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0016-25.2025

A single stress exposure alters reward learning in ♀️ 🐀 depending on estrous cycle: ⬆️ responding in non-estrus, but ⬇️ in estrus. Repeated prior stress, however, ⬆️ cue-driven responding regardless of cycle stage

TL;DR: 5 justices say Trump doesn't have to immediately restore the funding, but 5 *also* signal that the underlying directives are unlawful. That sends a fairly strong (if mixed) message that Trump will lose these cases *eventually,* but only once they're brought in the Court of Federal Claims.

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview. cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

My greatest accomplishment this week was coming up with this dad joke What does a gen alpha Thor call his brother? Low key Loki

Review now out in @npp-journal.bsky.social! Epigenetic regulation of brain development, plasticity, and response to early life stress rdcu.be/ezzYq

Dopamine dynamics in the nucleus accumbens core reflected decision confidence during evaluation of decisions in an economic foraging task in mice, as well as both past and future value during re-evaluation and change-of-mind @perothwell.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yeah dopamine encodes reward but what about when contingencies shift and behavior needs to be flexible? Turns out VTA GABA neuron activity plays a role, check it out in my first postdoctoral research article here!👇

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧪 Senate appropriators say: NIH's budget gets a... boost! Rather than 40% cut, NIH gets a $400M *increase* in the Senate committee bill for FY26 (about +1%). "Congress has your back," said @murray.senate.gov. ADVOCACY MATTERS! There's still a long road (esp in the House), so keep up pressure.

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim. He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease. He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States. And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

The NIH can’t award ANY grants to outside researchers under new WH restriction, reports @wsj.com. The pause came in the form of a footnote from OMB Director Vought, in a document that doles out federal funds to the NIH. Prelude to rescissions, especially after his comments over the weekend?

STAT Story www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/t... 1/n

Largest genetic study of cocaine self-administration The results replicate previous loci associated with human cocaine use disorder and provide novel biological insights, including the potential of pharmacological treatment strategies targeting carboxylesterases www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...