"Researchers with Oregon Health & Science University [Laurence Trussell, former grantee] and Anhui University in China found in a mouse model that elevated levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain also resulted in elevated behavioral symptoms of tinnitus." news.ohsu.edu/2026/04/20/r...

Tune it at 1 pm EDT to EARS early career panel! pennmedicine.zoom.us/j/96672201477

Congrats Ruth Anne!!

New paper (with lots of cute animal videos!) Ever watch your dog "run" while asleep and wonder what’s going on in their brain? In Current Bio we suggest that those twitches aren't just leaky dreams—they’re a vital maintenance system for the most precise movements www.cell.com/current-biol...

Staff and administrators saw one final year of pay raises exceeding inflation this year, but that won't happen again for a while. Tenure-line faculty have had raises below inflation every year for the past decade. Tenure and promotion boosts are often modest (3-10%), and only happen twice.

David showed me some of these data about a year ago and all I could respond was “how does it feel to be right?” A milestone in the quest to find synapse-level explanations for brain function and behavior.

🎻✨ Excited to share my journey from music to auditory research at "Beer, Brain, and Arts!" during Brain Awareness Week. Join us tomorrow at the @hetnatuurhistrdam.bsky.social, or a lab tour at Erasmus MC @erasmusmc.bsky.social ! 🔗 www.brain-awareness-week-euc.nl #BrainAwarenessWeek #Neuroscience

Excited to share some new work from my lab, where we rigorously characterize differences between L5 and L6b extratelencephalic neurons in the auditory cortex!

Philly has a Rocky statue, NOLA’s got one of Ignatius Reilly. Only fair Delta City honor a notorious fictional denizen as well. Very happy this statue finally found a home after years of deliberation.

NMDA receptor-dependent presynaptic homeostatic plasticity? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.28.708706v1

Thank you NIDCD for supporting our work on learning-related plasticity in mammalian sound localization circuits.

Call it #ExplainableAI or just making sense of complexity. We establish a direct link between DNNs fit to #AuditoryCortex and more intuitive subspace models from the 2000s. Congrats @jeremewingert.bsky.social @satyaparida.bsky.social & Sam Norman-Haignere! #NeuroAI #SensoryNeuroscience rdcu.be/e5gLY

Reminds me of Philip K Dick’s UBIK

🚀 New preprint from the lab! Our first foray into the subiculum uses in vivo whole-cell recordings to show that dendritic plateaus are a prominent, learning-dependent signaling mode of subicular neurons. Feedback is welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Big if true. Anyone know if human learning curves are also (mostly) trial count independent? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share results from our new PNAS paper. We studied PNIPAM—a shape-shifting polymer that collapses from an extended coil to a compact globule near body temperature — making it a prime candidate for drug delivery systems and soft robotics.

Ok, ok, hear me out. What happens when you make the human-owl hybrids wear prism goggles?!

Lotta cool 😎 people on this

Thrilled to share that I’ll be starting my lab at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute, Dept of Otolaryngology University of Michigan in May! We study how the brain turns gravity signals into stable movement → zhulab.fish (yup, proudly a #zebrafish lab🐟) If you're interested, get in touch! #newPI

Presynaptic control of top-down signaling in neocortical layer 1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.31.703032v1

In Cambridge in the 1970s, my dad, Colin Blakemore, worked and lectured on sensitive periods of sensory development. In my Cambridge undergrad lectures on this topic, I show a clip from one of his TV shows, which describes sensitive periods for sound categorisation, and features Prof Janet Werker:

Finally, Gary Larson’s “cow tools” comic is cited in a scientific paper. Job well done

Another classic for the textbooks from the Marty lab

Coolest kids in Santa Clara County

Listened to the single this afternoon, it rules. Excited for the full release.

Can’t wait to do an olivocochlear project myself. but until then I’m pretty satisfied reading the great work others are doing on the topic.

I love this approach of looking at the same ensembles across a variety of behavioral tasks. Requires careful experimenters though. Great work Travis and team.

Axons. They do things they don’t just axe

Probably the most important declassification since project blue book.

I’m going to be the “old man yells at cloud” meme right now but this issue is a particular nuisance in modern restaurants and public indoor spaces. Ya can’t hear a thing in there these days.

Btw, I still have open positions available for post-docs. Esp if you’re interested in applying modern dimensionality reduction approaches to in vivo Ca2+ imaging or ephys datasets. Please get in touch [email protected]

Almost 20 years old now, this album aged remarkably well en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souveni...

No more pre-auth for >500k budgets. Curious if we’ll see a much needed revision of modular budget policy as well, or if modular will go the way of the Dodo given the decreasing purchasing power of 250k/year

A computational model of the mammalian auditory periphery with a multichannel, energy-driven, medial olivocochlear reflex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.690762v1

Feeling spicy this morning so I’ll just say: it comes as no surprise that certain “reputable” journals now masquerade nonsense as peer reviewed versions of record. Alas, I worry this problem will persist until we as a field re-examine our collective values for “prestige”

What space clamp problem?

Interesting counter arguments. I’ll read the paper over break. Just thankful this bluesky thingie promotes scientific discussion rather than shitposts like that other app I deleted a while back

Dissociating the neural codes for multiple pitch perception in humans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.21.689749v1

Haven’t even opened the pdf but this sounds pretty cool. Don’t throw out the low explained variance PCs!

🎵won’t you be my neighbor 🎵

Yessss. Very happy to read this. Cf pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19198604/

Cool paper. love how far the work has come from initial characterization of cellular consequences of SCN2A mutations to roadmap for therapeutic strategies.

Thank you to NIMH for supporting our work. Excited to keep thinking about reinforcement learning in the auditory midbrain.

Coincidence detection supported by electrical synapses is shaped by the D-type K+ current https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.17.676857v1

First day in a new brain region. We’re gonna have so much fun here.

Really excited to share the latest work from my lab, where we identify how distinct cortical projections differentially encode sensory category and choice.

This is cool. Peptide modulation of circuit excitability. Makes me think that peptide release might be a reason why so many of these interneuron types do the retro-axonal barrage firing thing

What a horrible night to have a curse (of dimensionality)

Just asked GPT5 what it thinks about whole-cell voltage clamp

Happy 808 Day B-Girls and B-Boys! Is there honestly a more iconic piece of music tech? Also, bonus points for any nerds that can properly name the electro-baller in the photo. #808day #tr808 #drummachine #electro #hiphop #rap #musictech #analog #musiccommunity #techno #acidhouse