🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵

My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .

Come visit Calcutta in the last week of August and see some amazing neuroscientists talk about the neural basis of behaviour at @behaviour2025.bsky.social With @neuroetho.bsky.social @danielavallentin.bsky.social @selmaan.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social and Michael Brecht!

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature! When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️ The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar bit.ly/3HvWSum

So excited to see @hannahpayne.bsky.social‘s paper out today: rdcu.be/eqAd4 It’s a beautiful result, and using a great model species for this question makes it powerfully clear and simple. Scaling up tools in a single model system won’t get you there on its own!

"We will never use this agency to censor scientists who disagree. If scientists are censored, we can't have excellent science." -NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. 9 days ago on Fox and Friends.

My first paper as a senior/corresponding author, had a fantastic experience with the eLife model! Revised manuscript coming soon

Hi friends, If you haven't seen it already, I was part of a mess this week — about science in the United States, and about NIH research aimed at understanding things like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, and depression. 🧪 Thread with some details. 🧠📈 🧠🤖 1/10

How does the brain work in natural scenarios, in multi-animal societies of wild animals? 🧠 🧪 🦇 doi.org/10.1126/scie... (1/n)

Congrats to @maxkozlov.bsky.social and @avaskham.bsky.social for having this story first, and glad the NYT picked it up from them and is sending it out to a broader audience.

Further musings about how food-hoarding titmice and chickadees remember the locations of their caches.... link.springer.com/10.1007/s100...

This includes NY11, ie Staten Island

🔥 take on 🧪 industry silence to NIH changes: '“three levels of corruption” ... Biopharma CEOs: what will protect you then? Speak up, speak up now. Because as it stands, you're forming up on the wrong side of a very important line. Time will not be kind.' www.science.org/content/blog...

Interested in understanding how things work? In particular the tools you use to study the brain? Join us at TENSS 2025 where we brainstorm ideas, build and debug microscopes, electrophysiology and behavior rigs amidst the picturesque Transylvanian hills! tenss.ro Apply by: February 16th!

Who’s calling who funky 😡

my lab (www.tuthill.casa) at UW is hiring a research assistant/tech. basic scope is to apply machine learning/computer vision tools to measure and model 3D animal behavior and mechanics. we are a diverse, collaborative, curiosity-driven group. Apply: uwhires.admin.washington.edu/ENG/Candidat...

in time for the holidays - whether you’re looking for a gift for some else or you are looking to stock up for your own winter break - here are some terrific leads on science authors of all sorts! Recommended browse through & follow. go.bsky.app/2LmKSDN