Excited to share this new work from the lab, in collaboration with @jtuscher.bsky.social & Rob Sorge! Here, we used single cell transcriptional profiling to define molecular adaptations induced by chronic pain and opioid experience, which often occur in conjunction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What a great retreat! Thanks to the entire UAB neuroscience community for contributing their science, and to @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social for an awesome keynote lecture!

Ed Kravitz passed away yesterday. He was a remarkable scientist and mentor- brilliant, curious, creative, and kind. I am grateful to have learned from him. His legacy will endure through his science and through the many people he inspired. We will miss you, Ed.

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social. Deadline to apply September 30. Reach out if you have questions. apply.interfolio.com/172496

So proud of Jess Jones, an HHMI Gilliam Fellow, for defending her PhD today in @tuthill.bsky.social's lab! Jess was one of my lab's 1st hires in 2018. She was also 1st author of one of our first papers: elifesciences.org/articles/57258. I wouldn’t be where I am today without her contributions.

Very cool. A new mechanism found an ants to ensure the one-receptor-one olfactory neuron rule.

New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

One of my favorite events that we @uabneuro.bsky.social host each year, and excited to have @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social here for the keynote!

Prefrontal Network Mechanisms of Psychiatric Deep Brain Stimulation www.jneurosci.org/content/45/3... #neuroscience

Deeply enjoyed reading this paper from Lindsey Salay, Doris Tsao, and David Anderson. Discovery of a neural circuit that integrates social touch and sexual drive for proper timing of mating behaviors.

Major Medical Prizes Given to Cell Biology and Cystic Fibrosis Pioneers www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/h...

Thanks @nicolecrust.bsky.social! Hanging out and talking about the past and future of neuroscience with you was also a highlight of my week. And these kind words you signed in my book were also memorable:

New review on how changes in cell type composition in and outside the brain contribute to the evolution of behavior. 🧪 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lihM,LqAZ...

mind blowing! congrats @mishaahrens.bsky.social and team

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s...

Extremely excited to share that I’m joining Columbia University @columbiauniversity.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor! We will explore how the mobile genome works—how transposons shape us, our DNA and how they can be harnessed to build useful technologies. #NewPI #RNAsky #TEsky thawanilab.org

Congratulations to @bendeskylab.com on being awarded a @hypothesisfund.bsky.social seed grant! He’s asking why some of an animal’s genes are switched on and others off, depending on which parent the genes came from. And how evolution shapes this phenomenon, called genetic imprinting. 🧠🧬

Rest in peace, Jim. The father of mechanotransduction. This photo is from the April @hhmi.org meeting. Despite battling aggressive cancer, all he wanted to do was talk about science.

Come be my colleague! The Department of Psychology at Princeton and @princetonneuro.bsky.social‬ are jointly searching for an Assistant Prof in Cog Neuro. puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

🍂 Applications are now open for our ML-for-Behavior 5-day course at Jackson Labs in Bar Harbor, ME. Talks and hands-on workshops cover pose estimation, supervised/unsupervised behavior quantification, and downstream behavior analyses. Financial aid is available! www.jax.org/education-an...

🚨New Marlin Lab publication✨ app.jove.com/v/67112/prof... In this #JoVE, we share a method for extracting meaningful, uninstructed behavioral readouts from constrained video recording environments (🧵1/2) Led @brimcr.bsky.social & @AmirLawen, a @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social collab w/ @ItamarKahn.

Sad news for Jim’s family, Rockefeller, and neuroscience. Legendary scientist and science communicator.

Phil Knight, a co-founder of Nike, and his wife, Penny Knight, will give $2 billion to the cancer research center at Oregon Health & Science University, a gift the institution billed as the largest single donation to a university in the U.S.

Very excited to announce our latest paper uncovering circuit, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of social hierarchy, another terrific collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social, Vic Kapoor and Adam Nelson (not on bsky) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulations @doudna-lab.bsky.social !! History will position her name alongside the likes of Darwin, Einstein, and Hodgkin.

Congratulations 2025 Gilliam Fellows and Advisors! 🎉 The Gilliam Fellows Program launches promising PhD students into impactful scientific research careers while fostering inclusive training environments. Through this program, HHMI supports both graduate students and their faculty thesis advisors.

Awesome news! I'm a huge fan of Camille's work.

New paper from the lab, from Jeremy Biane and team, out today, characterizing the principles of stimulus feature coding in populations of ventral CA1 neurons.

Abdus-Saboor & @vabraira.bsky.social lab joint tenure celebration party. We opened our labs together in 2018 and got tenure together this July. Published papers together and writing up more as we speak.

⚡️🧠A nociceptive amygdala-striatal pathway modulating affective-motivational pain Now published on the cover of Science Advances @science.org Check it out 👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interesting new paper about some of my favorite neurons. "Our results give direct evidence that Mrgprb4-lineage neurons are indispensable to mild stroking, massage, or pressure stimuli and the pleasant sensational transmission of these stimuli." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com! We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments www.nature.com/articles/s41... This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

this is awesome!

I am happy to share that I’ve been awarded tenure here at Columbia University. Alhamdulillah. I thank my wife, parents, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. I thank my lab members, present and past, for entrusting their careers in my hands and making this a thrilling journey.

Hayashi et al. demonstrate that human touch-induced pleasurable tickling promotes affinity between rats and human hands. This is accompanied by increased OTR expression in the VMHvl, and blocking the oxytocin signaling inhibits such affinity. Find out more here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Favorite moment of the day: "Do Genetics" -Nobel Prize Winner Gary Ruvkun #worm25

Congrats to HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars @channyskye.bsky.social , Josefina del Mármol (@delmarmollab.bsky.social), @yvetteefisher.bsky.social and Theanne Griffith (@doctheagrif.bsky.social), named 2025 McKnight Scholars for their demonstrated commitment to neuroscience & mentoring others! 🌟

Just finished this excellent new book from @nicolecrust.bsky.social. Although we have collected lots of facts about the brain, we still don't know how it functions, or how to fix it when it breaks. Nicole provides a Grand Plan, which views the brain as a complex dynamical system. Inspiring!

New collaborative study out with Mark Wu’s group identifies a thalamic reuniens-zona incerta circuit as both responsive to induced sleep deprivation and essential for mediating recovery sleep. Further perspective on this work follows./1 www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Happy Juneteenth, and congrats!

Wow, HHMI and McKnight back-to-back!! Couldn't be any prouder of you @doctheagrif.bsky.social!! Happy Juneteenth

Congrats, what a strong class of McKnight Scholars!

I really enjoyed listening to this interview from force-of-nature postdoc in my group @sashalfulton.bsky.social.

Glad to see this published, big fan of this cool work!

Mindscape 317 | Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders. Or, why Bench to Bedside is harder than it sounds. #MindscapePocast www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

So I open up the NYtimes and there is my pal @ardemp.bskyverified.social saying that despite funding cuts he is staying in this country that he loves. Keep the faith you all!.... www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

Very striking results from Bruce Bean's lab performing ephys on human DRG neurons with the new pain 'blockbuster' drug recently approved by the FDA. These results show that even the most potent blocking of Nav1.8 may not be sufficient to silence pain neurons. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

How do knots of DNA help create our sense of smell? Learn more from new research by Joan Pulupa, Natalie McArthur and Stavros Lomvardas in ‪‪‪@nature.com‬ Read: zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/how-knots-dn... @columbiauniversity.bsky.social #neuroscience

Really enjoyed reading this fascinating review today on the neurobiology of tickle at lunch overlooking the Hudson River.

Another week, another ARM device installed. This time in the lab of HHMI Investigator Richard Palmiter. They are doing cool long-term pain studies and this device is perfect for their needs.