New preprint from my lab! We study how reinforcement learning & selective attention interact. To do so, we built a set of models describing different ways that value & reward prediction error can modulate top-down attention. We compare model outcomes to monkey data from a color value learning task

Linguist Marlyse Baptista, neuroscientist Nacho Sanguinetti, and humanities scholar Fritz Breithaupt were hired through MindCORE for research that fits into the theme of "interconnected minds." @pennmindcore.bsky.social

Read More: https://bit.ly/4tDDM86

Less recent when I was much younger: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Like every human on the planet I had heard snatches but one day I realized I had to know what it was. Today I could probably hum both of these songs into my phone and get the answer but back then it was (rewarding) work

Recent: "The Stable Song" by Gregory Alan Isakof. I was in an echo-y bike shop and when I asked the mechanic for the title I heard her say "steeple song" so then I frantically tried to google the lyrics and got only nauseating religious crap.

Just hatched: the first egg-cellent paper from @carvalhosantosz.bsky.social lab! 🥚🪰

A beautiful ovaries-to-behavior axis: Stalled egg production = a drop in Dilp8. This releases the protein appetite brake, driving the fly to eat yeast to unblock the system.

biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am excited to share our latest paper, Uniform bacterial genetic diversity along the gut, now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41.... (1/n)

I’m so honoured to be featured in Stories of WIN this month - sharing my career journey and how storytelling changed everything for me! 🧪🎙️

Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens!

Read it in Science
dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie...

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi-science.bsky.social

Aging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not?
In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death.
This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan.
🧵

Man pointing at screen that read Pi Day is a fake holiday created by math companies to sell more math.

Happy Pi Day to all who celebrate.

Our paper is out in @Science! The Atlantic silverside spans Earth's steepest latitudinal gradient in coastal sea-surface temperature. Despite high gene flow, populations show clinal genetic variation in multiple locally adapted traits. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Another preprint is out from the Neal Lab! 🎉

Excited to share the first systematic side-by-side comparison of ERAD Derlin paralogs, revealing distinct cellular functions for Derlin-1, Derlin-2, and Derlin-3.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).

A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

As Paralympics approach, U.S. skier Sydney Peterson balances training and research Sydney Peterson is among the U.S. athletes heading to the 2026 Winter Paralympics. A neuroscientist in training, Peterson is studying movement disorders, similar to her own condition.

Sydney Peterson is among the U.S. athletes heading to the 2026 Winter Paralympics. A neuroscientist in training, Peterson is studying movement disorders, similar to her own condition. n.pr/3P0q28t

Full dopamine coding of basic economic subjective value: Utility and weighted probability Behavioral choices of uncertain rewards suggest that agents construct subjective reward value by combining the basic value components of utility and w…

I like to think about brain areas as well behaved (b/c they do what you tell them too, like V1) vs naughty (b/c 🤷, like PFC).

I'm delighted to learn that midbrain dopamine neurons are well behaved machines that convert objective value into subjective value.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪

I hear that the best way to xeno-learn something is to xeno-teach it. I was going to take the next step and mangle an Alanis song but I'll spare you for now.

How does the strength of genetic drift evolve over long times?

New preprint out 👇

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

You may laugh, but the Macbeths are a much better role model for a marriage than Romeo and Juliet. They discuss their problems (killing the king of Scotland), share their hobbies (killing the king of Scotland), and resolve their conflicts (by killing the king of Scotland).

A magnum opus indeed! A sample of its fascinating brilliance:

"In contrast to standard laboratory rodents, ... striped mice show that the capacity for male caregiving is broadly present and that individual differences arise from context-dependent suppression of melanocortin signalling."

Doting male mouse dads share a genetic signature, new study finds New research on African striped mice found that the caregiving instinct may be rooted in a specific gene

New research on African striped mice found that the caregiving instinct may be rooted in a specific gene

Is the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection of any use? Abstract. There have been many recent discussions of the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, with an emphasis on its mathematical accuracy. It is arg

"There is still life in the old dog."

Brian Charlesworth on Fisher's Fundamental Theorem in @journal-evo.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

We deleted a rhomboid protease… and regeneration went into overdrive.

New preprint from the Neal Lab!
Rhbdl2 restrains macrophage-driven regeneration in zebrafish. 🐟🔥 #Regeneration #InnateImmunity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Promoting cooperation in the public goods game using artificial intelligent agents - npj Complexity npj Complexity - Promoting cooperation in the public goods game using artificial intelligent agents

Can AI be programmed to make others play nice? Evolutionary Game Theory says you can! But not how you might think. Paper out at npj Complexity www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Blog post about the paper: adamilab.blogspot.com/2024/12/can-...

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

From doing science to saving science Science and scientists are under assault. From denial of vaccines to climate change, political leaders are increasingly sacrificing democracy as well as science on the altar of populism and authoritar...

From doing science to saving science

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Universal paralogs provide a window into evolution before the last universal common ancestor Universal paralog protein families form due to gene duplications that occurred prior to the last universal common ancestor of life. This perspective describes how these protein families offer valuable...

What happened before the last universal common ancestor? Pre-LUCA evolution is hard to study. In our new Cell Genomics Perspective we spotlight how paralogous proteins open a window onto the deepest chapters of evolution. 🧬🌍

Out today!

--> www.cell.com/cell-genomic... @cellpress.bsky.social

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

For anyone teaching/studying/researching the evolution of language, we wrote a framework paper especially for you!
It lays out how bridging diverse fields can give new insights into this most mysterious of human traits.
There's a link for free access on MPI website here:
www.mpi.nl/publications...
🧪

Help us amplify underrepresented voices in science! LSEF is producing a 6-episode podcast series (Mar–Aug 2026) featuring JEDI Awardees + LSEF leadership, hosted by Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social .

Donate/share: secure.givelively.org/donate/life-...

#DEIinSTEM #SciComm

I’m very excited about this new work describing the specific cortical-striatal circuits that are altered in Parkinson’s Disease and that should be targeted for optimal PD treatment.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...