Excited to share a new review by @kocherlab.bsky.social and me:

Nature-inspired neuroscience

We discuss diverse sensory systems and behaviors across the animal kingdom and argue for their integration into neuroscience. New tools in diverse systems are making this possible ✨

tinyurl.com/y5y9du27

For U.S. medical researchers, shrinking labs and bare budgets are the new reality The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

American science is shrinking.

A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

Frontal Cortex Peeps: The full program for the 2026 GRC Frontal Cortex is now available! Applications are due July 12, 2026 - don't delay! Spots are starting to fill up! Check out the complete program and register here --> www.grc.org/frontal-cort...

Why neural foundation models work, and what they might—and might not—teach us about the brain These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity. But will we be able to understand them?

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity, writes @juangallego.bsky.social. But will we be able to understand them? #neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/why-...

Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1

Functional synaptic connectivity shapes spine stability in the hippocampus - Nature Communications In this study, the authors find that synaptic strength predicts spine size and long-term stability via in vivo imaging together with optogenetic stimulation in awake mice. While individual synapses sh...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Two-author papers are always special.
Using optogenetic stimulation of hippocampal synapses in awake mice and tracking them over approx. 2 weeks, we link synaptic strength, spine volume and their stability. It's confirmed: bigger spines are stronger and more stable 😅

The American Psychiatric Association is ambivalent on the issue of addiction to social media use

The DSM does not include a social-media use disorder (SMUD). Yet the APA’s website has educational information on “social media addiction”…

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How do the basal ganglia turn what you see into what you do?
New preprint w/ @kenneth-harris.bsky.social, @flickerfusion.bsky.social & @carandinilab.net: we recorded across striatum, GPe & SNr in a Go/NoGo task. Striatum encodes which stimulus, GPe & SNr encode action. 🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 Rats and mice drink alcohol, sometimes heavily, but are the rewards they derive from it comparable to those of people with alcohol use disorder? How can we know?

1/3

www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

GNW theoretical framework and the “adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness” A recent publication in Nature (Cogitate et al. 2025) aimed at enriching the progressive build-up of a valid theory of conscious processing using valuable

who is "Xia-Jing Wang"?

if it is Xiao-Jing Wang, i'm a bit shocked that he's on this paper.

if it is someone else (w/ the same affiliation), it may be more puzzling still.

anyway, this field is really full of surprises.

academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

iGABASnFR2 is an improved genetically encoded protein sensor of GABA An improved genetically encoded GABA sensor enables the most effective direct optical measurement of inhibitory neurotransmission to date.

iGABASnFR2 is an improved genetically encoded protein sensor of GABA

MMiN 2026 - MMiN

Submit your abstract until May 15 for the "Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience" conference in Amsterdam (Sept 7-10, 2026) to get the latest update on in-vivo neuro-methods from a brilliant lineup of keynote and panel speakers: monitoringmolecules.org/invited-spea... Please repost!

(1/2) Comprehensive statistics about the use of #AnimalResearch in the EU in 2023 have just been published by the EU Commission. #FELASA
The total number of animals used was 6,419,916 – a 8.2% decrease from 2022.
🔗 More: shorturl.at/bk1ZT
Follow us and #EUAnimalStats for a breakdown of the figures.

The System That Decides What Science Gets Published Is Breaking Down The peer review system that validates scientific research is trapped in a self-defeating cycle. A new mathematical model shows why—and what comes next.

Some first-rate science writing: For this story, @jdrakephd.bsky.social carefully read our recent paper and then we spent a very fun 90 minutes or so talking on zoom. His article that gets right to the heart of our model, explains it clearly, and then explores why it will matter in the future.

The duration of chronic restraint stress protocols is a poor predictor of behaviour effect size: a meta-analysis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Formation of task representations and replay in mouse medial prefrontal cortex Longitudinal calcium imaging in the medial prefrontal cortex reveals the emergence of de novo task representations and reward-associated replay.

Formation of task representations and replay in mouse medial prefrontal cortex

@jhennig.bsky.social has shown that dopamine exerts a real-time effect on conditioned responding, beyond its role in learning:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Another indication that dopamine is more than a learning signal!

A joint effort with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social and @mhburrell.bsky.social.

Senior Director – Scientific Program Officer Primary Work Address: 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) advances the disco...

Join us in shaping the future of science! @hhmi-science.bsky.social is hiring a new Scientific Program Officer to support the #HannaGrayFellows #FHScholar programs

hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Mechanistic insights into the therapeutic properties of delta opioid receptor Integrated structural and dynamic analyses uncover strategies to target the δ-opioid receptor for improved analgesic efficacy.

Mechanistic insights into the therapeutic properties of delta opioid receptor | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New @pnas.org publication from the Saez lab! Graduate student Christina Maher reveals meditation-associated changes in neural oscillations in the amygdala and hippocampus of first-time meditators using iEEG: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to @ericjnestler.bsky.social on being named Interim Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine! As we express great enthusiasm for Dr. Nestler becoming Dean & the exciting time ahead, please join us in thanking Dean Charney for his extraordinary service & commitment to Mount Sinai.

#eNeuro: Computational neuroscientists often attempt to understand the brain using analyses that assume stronger neural signals are more important to the system. This work challenges that core assumption.
https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0461-25.2026

Excited to share our new J Neurosci paper showing how subcortical inputs are routed through ventromedial (VM) thalamus to layer 1 interneurons in the medial PFC, all done by my graduate student Sanne Casello:
sannemcasello.bsky.social
www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Introducing ggauto: automating better charts – Nicola Rennie The ggauto package is an opinionated ggplot2 extension package that aims to help people make better charts by default. This blog post explains why it exists and how it works.

🎉 ggauto is now on CRAN 🎉

An #RStats package that selects better chart types, and provides more accessible styling for #ggplot2 plots 📊

Blog post explaining why I made it and how it works: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/introdu...

#DataViz

Prefrontal cortex encodes behavior states decoupled from motor execution By tracking the natural actions of freely moving rats, Välikangas et al. show that prefrontal cortex encodes abstract behavioral states rather than low-level physical aspects of movement. Prefrontal a...

Some argue that prefrontal cortex is just premotor cortex— but how does it relate to actions we make, really? We dug into this in work led by @idavrautio.bsky.social: unlike most of cortex, PFC is weakly connected to motor behavior and operates at longer timescales.

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving Nature Neuroscience - Jang et al. measured dopamine and acetylcholine release in the striatum of rats performing a decision-making task and found that the relative timing of cholinergic and...

Thrilled to share our new paper, which shows that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release dynamically gates whether dopamine acts as an RPE for in vivo plasticity and reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Xin Jin Named 2026 Peter Gruss Young Investigator - Scripps Research Magazine Xin Jin, an associate professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research, has been named the 2026 Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award recipient by the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI).

🚀 Congrats to Assoc. Prof. Xin Jin! @xinjin.bsky.social has been named the 2026 Peter Gruss Young Investigator by @mpfneuro.bsky.social, recognized for pioneering high-throughput in vivo Perturb-seq and illuminating how mutations shape the brain development and circuit function!

Their field of research

"The Brain Prize winners 2026 have redefined how we think about somatosensation. Their work addresses very current, timely, and urgent questions that we encounter in the clinic", Prof. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Chair of The Brain Prize selection committee

youtu.be/j9RlGjObXfw

#Somatosensation