New preprint from the lab "Contingency degradation overwrites initial learning and depends on lateral orbitofrontal cortex": url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/pos5CjZ1N7... Highlights: * Degradation reduces responding that does not spontaneously reover * Degradation does not reinstate and... 1/2

Here's a cool study I played a small part in: lnkd.in/g8YC7QFX Take home message (IMO): eating a healthy diet after eating a high fat, high sugar diet can improve (but not entirely reverse) memory deficits. No such effects on anxiety, motivation, or depression-like behaviour. If you're a rat 😉

In case anyone is interested in me or my science, give this a listen. Some highlights include: * My love of karaoke * Talking about the work we are doing in the lab - e.g. trying to build better animal models of compulsivity and, most recently, relapse-resistant behavioural protocols 1/3

This is really cool!

And also the NHMRC

“A complete joke” After the starting gun fires, Australian researchers have to wait 2–3 years before even starting the race. Really clear article explaining the impossibly long new time-frames for Australian Research Council grants. By @liammannix.bsky.social

New in #JNeurosci: Rat study from van Mourik et al. suggests that the anterior insula may be involved in biasing decision-making processes to favor alcohol over social rewards. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1180-25.2026

🚨📃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... 🧵👇🏻

As promised at the #GRC Basal Ganglia, here is our recent review on striatal cholinergic heterogeneity. I hope people find it useful and inspiring. www.frontiersin.org/journals/cel...

Discovery Projects are now a complete joke: EoIs were due 12 Dec last year. Full apps are due 22 April this year. Results won't be out until next year: 15 Jan – 15 Apr 2027. That’s up to 16 MONTHS!

Our back-translation of value-modulated attentional capture to rats and mice is now published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, and it's open access! Yay. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

New paper from lab on how VTA dopamine neurons + GABA inhibition contribute to punishment learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Astrocytes are where it is at!

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

New preprint from the lab looking at the role of astrocytes in the nucleus accumbens core in incentive value-driven actions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy 2026 everyone! Here's a nice write up of our recent work published in Neuropsychopharmacology, on the balance of habits and goal-directed actions in compulsive disorders: lnkd.in/g84fYnD5

I wish I was as busy as I was the first time I felt like I was busy.

Got an invitation to provide an article for a journal called "Nature, Cell, and Science" and was wondering if it was predatory. Google gave me this reddit thread, funny: www.reddit.com/r/labrats/co...

First alcohol lab paper out today! Neurotoxic effects of chronic ethanol on cholinergic interneurons in the dorsomedial striatum. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... Many thanks to all contributors!

rdcu.be/eIyQB Now published in Neuropsychopharmacology, here we mimicked the striatal neuroinflammation seen in the brains of individuals with compulsive disorders and found that this facilitated goal-directed action, whereas activating the Gi pathway in astrocytes prevented it

Latest lab preprint! Astrocytes are a brain cell type vulnerable to the effects of stress and the development of psychiatric-like phenotypes in animals, yet how this translates to humans is unclear... so we dived in: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic review of #SexxAndImmunity! @soniasharma.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Position open for a neuroimaging focused postdoc to come work with us in Sydney Feel free to get in touch for a chat if you have any questions about it :) usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E...

New preprint from the lab, produced in collaboration with Simon Killcross' lab: Modelling compulsive actions in rats and mice: The back-translation of value-modulated attentional capture from humans to rodents doi.org/10.31234/osf... I will be presenting some of this work at Pavlovian next week!

Now on bioRxiv! Astrocytes in one brain region (cyan) communicate in expansive networks (magenta). Through tool development, tissue clearing, and many hours on our @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social Z1, we now know these networks are repeatable across mice, plastic, and specific. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New paper out! Here we show that attentional biases induced by reward history depend on awareness of such reward history (w/ @jlupiane.bsky.social and @mavadillo.bsky.social). link.springer.com/article/10.3... 👇🧵

I would add to this that journals are increasingly asking more of reviewers (e.g. format reviews in a specific way, long consults on top of reviewing) which I understand the reasoning for, but it does increase burden, and increase difficulty to find reviewers. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

doing Concur reports

Couldn't be more proud of these two who graduated today, Drs Abiero and Ganesan.

💥GIF THREAD ALERT – pleased to share our latest paper @sfnjournals.bsky.social in J Neurosci- an epic over 5 years in the making examining amygdala and prefrontal interactions with the medial OFC in risk/reward decisions by Nicole Jenni and Deb Bercovici www.jneurosci.org/content/45/1...

It's gonna be epic!

Don’t forget to submit your data blitz or poster abstracts for PAVLOVIAN in SYDNEY!🧪🧠 Due April 11th, including 5 x travel awards to help our buddies from the 🇺🇸 and elsewhere get to 🇦🇺 Our line up is 🔥 Check out our website, registration, and hotel block below 👇

👀 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Exciting new science from the lab led by @melcooperphd.bsky.social. More to come soon!

For those hurting after DP EOI outcomes today, courtesy of ChatGPT (I prompted with the first line, it will have to go over 2 posts as it's too long): Oh ARC, why won't you fund me? I’ve written papers, set them free, With research deep and insights bright, Yet still, no grant, no guiding light.

The ARC have tweeted that they will released Discovery Projects Expression of Interest outcomes tomorrow.

Jon Stewart's take on DOGE, in case you feel like laughing and crying at the same time 🫤: www.youtube.com/watch?v=utl2...

Diversity is our greatest asset, even if the government disagrees… They not like us! POC in STEM are here to stay. They tried to rig the game but you can’t fake influence! Mustard on the [Be][At] bro. Happy Black History Month!

🚨📃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

I know everything is falling apart so this may not be the best time to post this, but know that we are watching on in horror in Australia and will do what we can to help. Anyway, Psy post wrote an article about our article: www.psypost.org/brain-inflam... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to share the latest finding on anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and information choices from @vgonzalez.bsky.social ! #neuroscience 1/n www.eneuro.org/content/earl...

Enjoyed the use of the word "bollocks"in the first paragraph 😆

In short, there are actual data showing that in extramural NIH grant competition, Black PIs have to work twice* as hard to be considered half** as good. DESPITE all of the NIH DEI efforts that were in place at the time. *much more than twice **about 60.5% of the success rate

#ARCschedule Feb25 Outcomes expected for Discovery Projects EOIs. Other events: 🔹Applications close for Discovery Indigenous 🔹Rejoinders for Industry Fellowships & Industrial Transformation Hubs & Centres 🔹Selection meeting for Laureate Fellowships Data ▶️ docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

New paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social with the inestimable @kurtfraser.bsky.social and @janaklab.bsky.social. We think this work illuminates an important way the brain dynamically orchestrates motivation, and look forward to testing new hypotheses this inspires in disease models.

Neural signatures of model-based and model-free reinforcement learning across prefrontal cortex and striatum https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.11.632388v1

You can put people in jail for trying to discredit your research? 🤔🤣

....and @bita137.bsky.social to the rescue with the facts on why measuring estrous cycle isn't necessary 🤩

2025 Laura is going to hate 2024 Laura, who is putting a bunch of things off until January 🤣

Our latest empirical paper! In a female mouse model of Alzheimer’s, a novel highly selective estrogen receptor beta agonist enhances memory and alleviates a hot flash in an APOE-specific manner without negative effects on anxiety, body or uterine weights! www.frontiersin.org/journals/agi...