Kate Wassum
@katewassum.bsky.social
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Neuroscientist 🧠👩🏼🔬, UCLA, studying the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habits.
pinned post!
🚨📃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...
🧵👇🏻
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Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy
Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8/e1636252026
about 1 month ago
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🚨📃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...
🧵👇🏻
loading . . .
Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy
Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8/e1636252026
about 1 month ago
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We’re hiring a technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇
wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/
Job posting:
jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8968
5 months ago
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reposted by
Kate Wassum
Zoe McElligott
9 months ago
Submissions for
#WCBR2026
open today! Please go to
www.winterbrain.org
Big Sky is my absolute favorite venue for this meeting. The science is top notch, the people are great, the meaning is inclusive, and I learned to ski as a 35 year old! Please repost!
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Calling all amygdaloids!!! The
#AmygdalaGRC
is coming up this summer in Barcelona. We’ve got talks, posters, networking, power hour, and tons of fun planned. 👀 the program 👇🏻 We’re accepting folks on a rolling basis, apply soon to make sure you get a spot:
www.grc.org/amygdala-fun...
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Kate Wassum
Emily Prevost
about 1 year ago
New preprint! We untangle glutamatergic and dopaminergic subpopulations in the ventral tegmental area. Long thread incoming, buckle up friends. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Untangling dopamine and glutamate in the ventral tegmental area
Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons are of great interest for their central roles in motivation, learning, and psychiatric disorders. While hypotheses of VTA dopamine neuron function posit a...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.25.640201v1
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reposted by
Kate Wassum
Stand Up for Science!
about 1 year ago
HEY SOCAL & LA FRIENDS! We’ve gotten a TON of questions about how to get involved in SoCal/LA—and here’s the answer! ☀️🌎⬇️ Spread the word & tag someone in LA that should check it out!
add a skeleton here at some point
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reposted by
Kate Wassum
Nature
about 1 year ago
Scientists have found two ‘dials’ in the brain that help to explain how chronic stress hijacks decision-making
https://go.nature.com/41nrC88
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How chronic stress warps decision-making
Nerve-cell ‘highways’ identified in mice suggest that stress pushes the brain towards rigid habit and away from thoughtful choices.
https://go.nature.com/41nrC88
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🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper📃🚨 Out today,
@jackiegio.bsky.social
discovered brain pathways that support agency and habit and how chronic stress disrupts them to rob of us our agency and cause us to form rigid habits 🧵👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Free full text:
rdcu.be/eaxEv
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A dual-pathway architecture for stress to disrupt agency and promote habit - Nature
Adaptive decision-making often requires an understanding of our agency in a situation; however, chronic stress can disrupt agency and promote inflexible, habitual behaviour by turning off a brain path...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08580-w
about 1 year ago
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It felt like the time to return to my pocket community. Glad to have found you again. Will post about my life, discoveries, and challenges as a 🧠👩🏼🔬.
about 1 year ago
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