To study how animals understand the physical world (and the rules that govern its dynamics), @jinyao-y.bsky.social trains rats to play fetch with robots 🐀🤖🎾 To learn more, come to our poster Tuesday morning! [Board W11] Rats learn and use intuitive physics knowledge to solve fetch tasks. #SfN2025

Sigh. NIH normally sends several hundred scientists to the SFN annual meeting to learn, exchange info, come up with new ideas, and advance science. (The exchange of ideas is the very core of the scientific enterprise.) This year, no one from NIH will attend due to the gov't implosion.

Abstract submissions are now OPEN for the Dopamine 2026 meeting! Share your latest discoveries and join the global dopamine community in advancing the science of motivation, movement, and reward. Submit here: dopaminesociety.org/abstracts/ #Dopamine2026

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

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.

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways. I could write a whole article about this, but as one example: “To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…” No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

🚨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! 🧵

WE ARE... hiring! Penn State Biology & the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences is recruiting a tenure track or tenured neurobiologist (Assistant or Associate Professor rank), and the committee is open to a broad scope of scientific questions. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

Co-discoverer of reverse transcriptase at 32, Nobel Prize at 37, played a key role at the 1975 Asilomar comference.

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight. These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them. www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

The mouse brain lights up during decision making, showing widespread activity across both predictable as well as unexpected areas. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/decision-mak...

Come join our new Department of Neuroscience @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05041

We are deeply saddened to share that our friend and colleague Jim Hudspeth passed away on Saturday. We will remember and continue to be inspired by Jim’s integrity, his humility, and his unwavering commitment to discovery.

Rigorous dissection of the signaling mechanisms and circuits underlying GLP1R agonist weight loss effects mice. Huge achievement by Claire Gao and team @mikekrashes.bsky.social. Potential avenues for harnessing complexity of signaling to create novel treatments. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"why [would] anyone intelligent enough to be a scientist choose to be one [given] the unfavorable risk-to-reward ratio "? One of the most intelligent people you could meet offers some answers: having ideas, watching them develop, and sharing them journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

1/ Excited to share a new preprint! Our latest study uncovers how serotonin precisely controls the “time window” for fear learning, ensuring that our brains link cues (CS) & threats (US) only when it’s adaptive. #Neuroscience #FearLearning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are looking for a postdoc fellow to join the group. Focus on studying feeding-relevant slow dynamics in the brain using invivo microscopy approaches. Please share with anyone interested. Thank you. www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-inf...

"The peril of preconceived narratives" in @cp-cellmetabolism.bsky.social with @vdarcey.bsky.social in response to the fall out from our recent study that failed to show significant brain dopamine responses to UPF milkshakes similar to highly addictive drugs. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lYiE5WXUl...

The Neuroscience Dept at American University is hiring for a tenure-track position at the Assistant level with expertise in Computational Neuroscience. Apply by Sep 15: american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-... #FacultyJobs #AcademicJob #Neuroscience #CompNeuro #AI #ComputationalPsychiatry

Sinner is looking strong. Entertaining Wimbledon final so far

3 years ago today was my last day at Beth Israel.

Sunday morning tennis before it gets unbearably hot.

First preprint from our lab: How might the brain override fullness signals to allow feeding after you’re full? We set out to test how central amygdala inhibitory neurons gate satiation/satiety signals in the pons.

I am excited to share our preprint on how hypothalamic dopamine neurons govern slow changes in motivation over days! Below are our findings: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits a nonassociative emotional salience signal https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.654323v1

An amazing talk today by @ardemp.bskyverified.social with precious advice on science and survival! Thanks Ardem for having @harvardmcb.bsky.social as the first stop of your seminar tour 🙏👏

I’m so excited to share our preprint on how brainstem neurons sense and integrate multiple body signals during food consumption. We imaged 1000s of neurons across the lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPBN) in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An example of what we in the NIH Intramural program can accomplish. Excited to share our latest paper in close collaboration with Nick Ryba's group. We examined how inflammation transforms representation in somatosensory neurons to cause pain. Lots of surprises here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

My favorite ion channel is truly ancient.

At least it was a beautiful weekend of cherry blossoms before the coming week.

This cure for sickle cell anemia was made possible by NIH-funded research to turn the gene for fetal hemoglobin back on. It was done predominantly by NIH researchers, including intramural researchers on the NIH campus. irp.nih.gov/catalyst/33/...

Parental origin of transgene determines recombination efficiency in GFAP-creERT2 mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.27.640655v1

Bluetorial: The path to a new pain medication with little potential for addiction Perhaps a good story to share with folks who want to learn about how biomedical research works and where advances come from.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... very excited to share our latest work, out now in Science. Congratulations to Marielle who led our studies! And, all other authors - this was a wonderful collaborative effort

I’m thrilled to share our preprint presenting MORSE: a new way to simultaneously & quantitatively track patterns of neuromodulators/neuropeptides in vitro & in vivo using spatially multiplexed 3D imaging of 10+ green optical sensors on a microendoscope biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634931v1

Thrilled to share our latest research published in Nature Communications! Our new GRAB sensor of SNPF promotes discoveries in the dynamics and molecular regulation between neuropeptide and neurotransmitter release in vivo. Check out the full paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rethinking Brain Mechanisms in the Light of Evolution with Paul Cisek youtu.be/CnT7jaQX4X8?... - if you want to understand what brains are for (and their functional organisation), this is the way... 👍👏

Absolute measurement of fast and slow neuronal signals with fluorescence lifetime photometry at high temporal resolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.10.632162v1

I’m excited to share my latest paper @cp-cellmetabolism.bsky.social. HakanK and I recorded from AgRP neurons continuously for 1 month and found some exciting things during ad lib feeding, fasting and on circadian timescales www.cell.com/cell-metabol....

'But that’s not the only reason Science has named lenacapavir its 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. The off-the-charts success of the drug as PrEP sprang from a basic research advance: a new understanding of the structure and function of HIV’s capsid protein, which lenacapavir targets'

Cutting it a bit fine, but here’s my review of the year in neuroscience for 2024 The eighth of these, would you believe? We’ve got dark neurons, tiny monkeys, the most complete brain wiring diagram ever constructed, and much more… Published on The Spike Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...

BREAKING: Jimmy Carter has died at 100. The 39th president of the United States, who served from 1977 to 1981, was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office — as an advocate for peace and human rights. Read about his lasting legacy.

Just watched Conclave. Surprisingly good movie

I wrote about a scientific paper called “The Unbearable Slowness of Being” which finds that the human brain’s throughput is just 10 bits per second. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/s... 🧪

Human cortical pyramidal neurons are larger, with more elaborate branching, and distinct nonlinear biophysical properties compared to rat cortical pyramidal neurons. Are they more functionally complex? Could that boost the human brain’s computational power? and is that what makes us human? (1/11)

Happy holidays! For those interested in brain body communication, the Keystone Symposium abstract deadline is approaching. I hope to see some of you soon!

Congratulations to @amdouglass.bsky.social and to the whole team, great work!...and glad to see our main findings were confirmed. "Acute and circadian feedforward regulation of agouti-related peptide hunger neurons" www.cell.com/cell-metabol...