VTA dopamine neuron activity produces spatially organized value representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.685995v1

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

I first heard Jack DeJohnette as part of the Keith Jarrett trio when I was ~14. I didn’t like his drumming and thought it sounded sloppy. For whatever reason, it clicked with me much later. Here’s a 🔥 clip I discovered recently. RIP JD youtu.be/a3CZHr5uiNM?...

Some great consideration of differences in learning and performance during blocking (the sine qua non of PE phenomena) in sign vs goal trackers here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Nice preprint from Veronica Alvarez's group on cortically-evoked DA mediated by ACh! I We observed something quite similar in birds, and interesting to see the sensory/prefrontal distinction

We have an open NIH-funded postdoc position in the lab to study circuit and neurochemical mechanisms of cognitive and motivational deficits in opioid withdrawal. Apply here: recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09885 or message/email for more information.

I'm recruiting a PhD student to study how enkephalins affect cognitive processing in the rodent frontal cortex. The project uses pharmacology, multi-electrode recordings, and fiber photometry, and is funded by NIDA. Please share with trainees applying this cycle. Thanks!

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A mechanistic theory of planning in prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.23.677709v1

Today 1-2 pm CST bit.ly/3VOJrcy Join us!

🚨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! 🧵

This article is truly impressive, both for the significance of its findings and the enormous amount of work it represents! Briefly, it demonstrates that the gut-brain vagal axis exerts a considerable influence on dopamine-dependent reward-related processes... 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How does the brain decide? 🧠 Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc. After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up. rdcu.be/eGUrv

Though it’s traumatic for me to bring this up, I was targeted by a group allied with Turning Point USA in 2018, with the help of Tucker Carlson on Fox. My home address circulated online and I got death threats. 1/

Director Bhattacharya says there are no banned words at the NIH. The data suggest otherwise.

I am beyond excited to host a stellar group of scientists for the first installation of our series: Brain Talks on The Isthmus. Thank you to everyone who contributed by spreading the news, submitting abstracts, reviewing the submissions, and offering kind words of support. I am grateful and smiling

🚨 We’re hiring a postdoc! 🚨 Excited for our new NiCE grant with @lauerlab.bsky.social @batwoman123.bsky.social 🎉We use a comparative approach, two-photon imaging & optogenetics to identify why bats🦇 and deer mice resist noise but lab mice don't. If you're interested, please DM or e-mail me!

What can *genetic insensitivity to opioids* teach us about endogenous opioid function in humans? Fully funded position in Oslo (PhD student or postdoc) Interested in pain, mu/kappa opioids, behavioural genetics, RCTs, or related? Apply here: 2411.webcruiter.no/Main2/Recrui... Please RT for reach

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.

🚨BREAKING NEWS: RFK Jr. is a danger to this nation. Don’t give in to Trump & his cronies: we are NOT trading innovation for ideology. We demand the immediate IMPEACHMENT and REMOVAL of RFK. Stop the quack. Protect Science. Protect Democracy Sign & share here: zurl.co/PEPyD #StandUpForScience

This op-ed from NIH director Jay Bhattacharya is *infuriating*. He says we have to stop funding mRNA vaccine research because it hasn't "earned public trust." Motherfucker, WHO DID THAT.

I’m excited to share my latest paper, in which we used latent state modeling to reveal how fentanyl shapes decision-making dynamics in rats. Here’s a summary of what we found (thread). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A landmark volume, The Handbook of Dopamine, is now online: www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/han... Big kudos to the editors, Stephanie Cragg and Mark Walton, for putting this together.

The NIH budget will INCREASE by $400 million — not slashed by 40%, as Trump proposed — according to a proposal by Senate appropriators, says Sen Murray. "Some have asked if there will even be an NIH by [2029]. The commmittee's resounding message is yes—Congress has your back", she says.

NIH and FDA hosted a workshop on July 7 on efforts to reduce the use of animal models in research, NIH has formally announced a policy change. The agencies have invited comments through the workshop’s webpage. PLEASE COMMENT. The portal will be open until 5pm ET on Monday, July 14 (TODAY).

Navigating the value space during choice Rhesus macaques represent choices as navigation trajectories in a value space using a grid-like code www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

The sycophantic tone of ChatGPT always sounded familiar, and then I recognized where I'd heard it before: author response letters to reviewer comments. "You're exactly right, that's a great point!" "Thank you so much for this insight!" Also how it always agrees even when it contradicts itself.

I sometimes struggle to identify what my biggest issue is with NIH Director Bhattacharya: his lying, lack of qualification, corruption, sycophancy, or extremism. But this is a big one: He’s so ignorant about how NIH works that it’s completely and totally embarrassing.

My latest: a short review on latent variable models to help uncover trial-to-trial structure in perceptual decision-making strategies authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMiv4sIRv...

Our latest work: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We show that corticostriatal ramping activity can't readily be explained by movements using motion tracking, and that ramping can't readily be explained by reward anticipation in mice performing timing and Pavlovian tasks.

Hiring: Research Technician and Postdoctoral opportunities! My lab is looking for candidates to join or research in systems neuroscience at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago @uofilsystem.bsky.social. See details below. Please share! lujanlabuic.squarespace.com/joinus

Highly recommend!

Just in: NIH staff have been instructed to REINSTATE these ~900 grants to comply with the court order, per sources. This comes after staff were also directed to cease any further terminations. You can see the lists grants to be reinstated in my post below.

A key takeaway from 20+ years of computational RL is: model-free=automatic, model-based=deliberate. My new paper w/ @benedek.bsky.social challenges this view, suggesting that MB algos are more ubiquitous, & automatic processing more sophisticated, than currently thought: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!! PLAINTIFF'S WIN!! Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I wanted to show support for these brave public servants and to allow others, including the scientific community, to join me. In partnership with @standupforscience.bsky.social‬, we have a way for you to do that... www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

Announcing two new lectures in our youtube neuroscience methods course: Lecture 12: experimental design (by Anita Autry) Lecture 13: neuronal population coding (in which I advocate a viewpoint that is... controversial) Please repost to help us spread the word! www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Our work with Pablo Tano, @hyunggoo-kim.bsky.social Athar Malik, Alexandre Pouget and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ASSIGNMENT: COMMENT ON SCHEDULE F 1 week left to comment about Schedule F, potentially making NIH institute and center director essentially political appointees. www.regulations.gov/commenton/OP... 1/n

The influence of nucleus accumbens shell D1 and D2 neurons on outcome-specific Pavlovian instrumental transfer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.26.656228v1

I've pitched versions of this idea to a number of NIH scientists, as well as university researchers over the last six weeks or so. So I decided to put it together into a post.

Impressive study in @nature from my colleague Marcus Stephenson-Jones at UCL in the @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NEW: My latest story is about a surprising turn of events. A handful of scientists had NIH grants terminated by the Trump administration earlier this year — and now those grants are getting *reinstated*. Yes, you read that right. www.chronicle.com/article/thes...

In 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science. This has included terminating more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, and HIV prevention. Will US science survive Trump 2.0? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n

🦇👂🧠Our first bat paper is out! 🧠👂🦇 How do bats tell navigation from social calls? Led by the fearless Dr. Jenni Lawlor, we used 2P imaging to show that the auditory midbrain encodes categorical primitives. Check it out @natneuro.nature.com: rdcu.be/ehEgz

Bridging computation and representation in associative learning: gershmanlab.com/pubs/Gershma...

Breaking news: A new lawsuit seeks to challenge the National Institutes of Health’s decisions to abruptly terminate hundreds of grants, totaling more than $2.4 billion, over the past month. scim.ag/3DZnylL