Hiring: Neuroscience roles at the International Brain Laboratory. We’re looking for: Neuroscience Community Engineer Neuroscience Research Software Engineer / Data Scientist All applications must be submitted by May 8th. Flexible US/Europe locations. www.internationalbrainlab.com/opportunitie...

For nearly a century, we believed the therapeutic effect of ECT is the seizure. Our latest research suggests we may have been looking at the wrong event. A thread on why cortical spreading depression (CSD) might be the driver of therapeutic benefit. Work led by @therehugolad.bsky.social

New @ucleye.bsky.social & @uclqsion.bsky.social research reveals a unified explanation for how neural activity shapes blood supply across the entire brain. www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc... @carandinilab.net @agnesland.bsky.social

Going from neural activity to blood flow just became easier! Two brainwide populations, each with its neurovascular coupling. (But going backwards... is now a tad more complicated.) By @agnesland.bsky.social & team. Thanks @intlbrainlab.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social @simonsfoundation.org

When it comes to blood flow in the brain, not all neurons are created equal. Rather, only a subset of neurons may be driving vascular changes, a new study finds. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neurovascula...

How does blood flow relate to brain activity? We discovered that it reflects two neural populations affected oppositely by arousal. Together, they explain neurovascular coupling in all brain regions and brain states! Out today in Nature: rdcu.be/fdC2A @uclbrainscience.bsky.social

New preprint, on a very different topic: a mathematical theory of evolution for self-designing AI. AI is increasingly designed by AI. What systems might emerge after generations of self-designing AIs competing for computing resources? ↓ arxiv.org/abs/2604.05142

Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1

Want to explore connectivity & projection patterns yourself, like we do here? We released brain_street_view to let you pick any injection site in the Allen Connectivity Atlas and visualize where it projects in your favorite region of interest: github.com/Julie-Fabre/brain_street_view

Fellow X-scientists! Curious who among you might want human iPSCs stably expressing ASAP-family green fluorescent voltage indicators. Cardiomyocytes and neurons differentiated from these iPSCs can self-report voltage with <1-ms and <1-mV resolution by standard widefield imaging.

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.

How do the basal ganglia turn what you see into what you do? New preprint w/ @kenneth-harris.bsky.social, @flickerfusion.bsky.social & @carandinilab.net: we recorded across striatum, GPe & SNr in a Go/NoGo task. Striatum encodes which stimulus, GPe & SNr encode action. 🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some reports say over 500 schools, 55 libraries, & 25 universities hit. You can debate the numbers, but hitting Sharif University & Beheshti is like hitting MIT & Stanford. I keep wondering: How would the scientific community respond differently if it was those universities? What’s the difference?

Fascinating to learn about how this quirk of the US legal system that dates back to the Civil war is contributing to the battle against scientific fraud, especially in areas like cancer research where falsification is most abominable.

The research is freaking cool. But please, please, journalists and influencers, absorb this sentence: "Functional emotions...do not imply that LLMs have any subjective experience of emotions." We're moving into unfamiliar territory, and it's so important that we think clearly about it.

Wait… localized norepinephrine transients in the awake visual cortex?! Who would have guessed this neuromodulatory signal is that spatially precise, right where visual processing is happening. Brain state control just got a lot more local. @ruedigersarah.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fascinating analysis from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com in today's @financialtimes.com Social media is populist and polarising; AI may be the opposite www.ft.com/content/3880... (Paywalled)

‘The UK is saying the same thing as the Taliban’: the women banned from studying in Britain

How psychedelics push your brain to dream while awake – new study theconversation.com/how-psychede...

Congratulations to Ian Thornton and colleagues who published their Mainz-Linez illusion in i-Perception (@pec-ipe.bsky.social): the red dots appears to wave left and right when one looks at one of the black dots, but they actually move straight journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

PSA: One consequence of AI language models is that you should check your spam folder regularly. LLMs can generate targeted/tailored outputs at scale, resulting in a growing overlap between spam and email meant for you. Filters are failing: more spam in your inbox AND more of your mail in spam.

bombs falling to plant democracy! , but instead fertilising despair and taking lives… writing right after hearing that a few days ago bombs landed some 50 m from my father’s office ….

And they bring that knowledge back to the US. We are watching brain science gradually move outside the US, boosted by the efforts of the Trump White House, Russell Vought, Project 2025, and Jay Bhattacharya.

We gave a tutorial on @nwb.org and DANDI at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social this year. If you couldn't make it (or want a refresher), the full recording is up on YouTube. Covers everything from data standardization to finding and reusing public neurophysiology datasets on DANDI.

Occasionally the internet still delivers

I love this dynamic graph (and its message too!)

Today I received a note from a grad student who lives in Tehran. Her note gives you firsthand experience of what it’s like to live in a city that is being bombed, and what it’s like to be young and feel despair about your future. rezashadmehr.blogspot.com/2026/03/hope...

A heartbreaking message from a brilliant med student in Iran, determined to pursue neuroscience. She graduated only one week before the war started and now is volunteering to care for the injured. What would you tell her? (Part #4, especially). Please share your thoughts and comments. #IranWar

Two articles today with opposite takes (on the @theguardian.com and the @financialtimes.com ). But both show a photo of UCL! A highly photogenic university. (PS I prefer the "UK ready" take)

I tracked every keyword in 22 years of Cosyne abstracts to map how computational neuroscience evolved — from Bayesian brains to neural manifolds to LLMs — and where it's heading next.

Breaking News: The Nobel laureate Richard Axel said he was resigning as co-director of a Columbia brain institute over his friendship with Jeffery Epstein.

This is absolutely crazy. theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

New paper alert! 🚨 We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales 1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks 2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps. Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

📊 Explore updated data on electricity production in Europe— Electricity is one major part of how we use energy, alongside transport and heating.

Uh oh

As we mark LGBT history month, I reflect on how far we have come, but also how hard-won rights & freedoms are now under threat, especially for trans people, and why @stonewalluk.bsky.social & other LGBT rights groups work is more important than ever.

Actually the view from my office just got more interesting, as the official celebrations of the 200th anniversary now include a pirate projection saying "Free Palestine". Regardless of opinions, may UCL enjoy 200 more years of freedom of speech.

UCL looking gorgeous today, 200 years after its opening. Its design was inspired by Thomas Jefferson's plans for the University of Virginia (which in turn had been inspired by a Roman temple in Nimes, France). UCL's values very much echo those of the Enlightenment. May they long continue to do so.

Today, UCL turns 200. 🎉 For two centuries, our community has opened doors, challenged convention and pushed the boundaries of knowledge across every discipline. Thank you to everyone who’s been part of the UCL story, here’s to the next century. ✨ #UCL200 #LoveUCL

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Goddness, there's lots to say about this. Good to see the case pro laid out in detail. I wonder if Nature will be publishing the counter-argument too? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The creativity is still mostly human, writes @kenneth-harris.bsky.social. The AI’s strength is relentless, moderately clever trial-and-error in the space of technical solutions. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...

Some sanity, for a change www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...

Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.

I should be proud of being a Fellow of the Royal Society, and yet I'm not. I wonder why.

I had missed this when it came out, and I think it's great news. Publishing false stuff on *cancer* potentially translates to more people dying, and I'm glad to see it now comes with some accountability for the institutions too.

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

If the deal between Putin and Trump indeed was: "You can have Venezuela, if I can have Ukraine", Europe had better focus on the latter. Although the Trump regime has stopped direct support for Ukraine already, there are still ways it can further harm Ukraine's position.