Nathan Insel
@networksunknown.bsky.social
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Exploring social neuroscience and animal behavior. Based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario
On the Nobel Prize winner, Camillo Golgi (from Cani and Mazzarello, 2016)
about 1 month ago
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New preprint: There are some decent tools for multi-animal tracking, but it can still be difficult to track interacting animals without mixing them up. Isaac Robinson (with
@wheelerlab.org
and others) have developed a software solution that we are now using full time:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
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DIPLOMAT: multi-animal tracking with efficient manual editing
Recent advances in computer vision have enabled the development of automated animal behavior observation tools. Several software packages currently exist for concurrently tracking pose in multiple ani...
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.11.669786
3 months ago
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More biomed in Canada
add a skeleton here at some point
3 months ago
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New strategy for grant and paper rejections
add a skeleton here at some point
6 months ago
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Notable paper on sleep aid lemborexant (putting aside caveats of mouse models of Alzheimer's). I have collected 2 1/2 years of data on myself and can confirm even small (2 mg) doses add sleep hours.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Lemborexant ameliorates tau-mediated sleep loss and neurodegeneration in males in a mouse model of tauopathy - Nature Neuroscience
Parhizkar et al. show that lemborexant, an orexin receptor antagonist, protects against neurodegeneration in male tau transgenic mice by preventing tau protein build-up and inflammation, highlighting ...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01966-7
6 months ago
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
Tristan A.F. Long
8 months ago
My university is accepting applications for the Visiting Researcher - Scholars at Risk Program, established to support scholars who are facing threats to their life, liberty or academic career, &/or have been forced to leave their academic position because of such threats.
www.wlu.ca/academics/re...
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Visiting Researcher-Scholars at Risk | Wilfrid Laurier University
https://www.wlu.ca/academics/research/research-services/assets/resources/visiting-researcher-scholars-at-risk.html
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I appreciate the debates about machine intelligence, and how LLMs are forcing us to review our constructs. But I also think it's fun to think of LLMs as a mirror we've put in front of animals that don't have a concept of mirrors (image from
@theonion.com
)
10 months ago
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My 12 yo after I told him that "datum" is singular for data: "Once my generation gets into the Miriam-Webster office, there are going to be a lot of changes"
11 months ago
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www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
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Norepinephrine-mediated slow vasomotion drives glymphatic clearance during sleep
Norepinephrine oscillations during NREM sleep drive synchronized changes in cerebral blood volume and cerebrospinal fluid, promoting glymphatic clearance. Optogenetic and pharmacological manipulations confirm that vasomotion, regulated by norepinephrine, acts as a pump for brain fluid transport.
https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01343-6
11 months ago
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
Marlene Cohen
11 months ago
New results for a new year! “Linking neural population formatting to function” describes our modern take on an old question: how can we understand the contribution of a brain area to behavior?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧠👩🏻🔬🧪🧵
#neuroskyence
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Linking neural population formatting to function
Animals capable of complex behaviors tend to have more distinct brain areas than simpler organisms, and artificial networks that perform many tasks tend to self-organize into modules (1-3). This sugge...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.03.631242v1
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@neuroai.bsky.social
: years ago you tweeted about a thought expmnt that toyed with whether a conscious system depends on connections (like "lab records brain, also stimulates unconnected cells in synchrony w/recording--is the collection of cells conscious?") Do you know where this is published?
about 1 year ago
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Journal article abstracts should include "<SPOILER ALERT>" immediately before the results of the study are revealed.
about 1 year ago
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This hurts my brain. But I've also had a long term dependence on ATP
almost 2 years ago
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Cool paper digging into circuitry of the median raphe
add a skeleton here at some point
almost 2 years ago
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Fans are often surprised to learn that the most deadly species in the Star Trek universe is the hippopotamus.
almost 2 years ago
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www.cell.com/current-biol...
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Hierarchical organization of social action features along the lateral visual pathway
McMahon et al. find that features of naturalistic social actions become increasingly abstract along the posterior to anterior axis in the lateral visual pathway. They find that communicative actions ...
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01373-8
about 2 years ago
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
MadScientist
about 2 years ago
Please be sure to check you kid's candy this year. I just found another project I have no time for in a Reese's cup
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
Carl T. Bergstrom
about 2 years ago
1. Imagine we land a space probe on one of Jupiters’ moons, take up a sample of material, and find it is full of organic molecules. How can we tell whether those molecules are just randomly assembled goo or the outcome of some evolutionary process taking place there? 🧪
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
bioRxivpreprint
about 2 years ago
Social bond dynamics and the evolution of helping https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.11.561838v1
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Social bond dynamics and the evolution of helping https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.11.561838v1
Empiricists often struggle to apply game theory models to real-life cases of animal cooperation. One
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.11.561838v1
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
bioRxivpreprint
about 2 years ago
Lateral entorhinal cortex subpopulations represent experiential epochs surrounding reward https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.09.561557v1
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Lateral entorhinal cortex subpopulations represent experiential epochs surrounding reward https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.09.561557v1
During goal-directed navigation, 'what' information, which describes the experiences occurring in pe
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.09.561557v1
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MIT’s New Desalination System Produces Freshwater That Is “Cheaper Than Tap Water”
scitechdaily.com/mits-new-des...
about 2 years ago
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
bioRxiv Neuroscience
about 2 years ago
Light affects the prefrontal cortex via intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.22.556752v1
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Light affects the prefrontal cortex via intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.22.556752v1
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a part of the limbic system engaged in the regulation
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.22.556752v1
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Best part of the Lumen festival in Waterloo was the photonics. I wouldn't call the installations controversial, but some were definitely polarizing. (Yes, I am licensed for terrible dad jokes.)
about 2 years ago
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What are the neural correlates of drivers who respond to a blinker by cutting the other car off, versus opening up space to merge?
about 2 years ago
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Naive question: can long covid be passed inter-generationally, through gametes? Mitochondrial dysfunction (if that's accurate) sounds like it could be insidious, no?
about 2 years ago
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When not posting on bluesky you can find me working on my book _Marine Murines: How the Water Mouse Keeps its Water House_. So far I only have the title and some AI art of underwater mutant rodents.
about 2 years ago
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reposted by
Nathan Insel
bioRxivpreprint
about 2 years ago
Neural and behavioral organization of rapid eye movement sleep in zebrafish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.28.555077v1
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Neural and behavioral organization of rapid eye movement sleep in zebrafish https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.28.555077v1
Sleep is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom. However, the definition for sleep varies significantl
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.28.555077v1
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about 2 years ago
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Was at the hardware store today looking for special tape to seal air ducts. Really happy when, in the HVAC aisle, I found something called "duct tape". Took me several seconds before I realized what had just happened.
about 2 years ago
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Many are convinced that drosophila have limited abstract thought. Here we show that by leaving corn flakes and a small piece of fruit in the sink stopper, flies develop a system of shared governance and, with time, enter a golden age of art and literature.
over 2 years ago
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