Huge turnout at #NoKings in Berkeley today!

mad neuroscientists marching in Berkeley

Led by Kaeli Vandemark in my lab, and in collab with Kevin Bender ‪@neurobender.bsky.social‬ & Nadav Ahituv @nadavahituv.bsky.social.

Degraded sensory coding in a mouse model of Scn2a-related disorder and its rescue by CRISPRa gene activation Heterozygous loss-of-function mutations in SCN2A , a sodium channel gene expressed in cortical pyramidal (PYR) cells, lead to a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by autism, intellectual disabi...

New preprint on sensory cortex dysfunction in Scn2a+/- mouse. Profoundly degraded sensory tuning and maps in S1--most dramatic of any ASD model. And rescued in post-critical period adults with CRISPRa.

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

Congrats to Teresa Puthussery, who is a terrific circuit-systems neuroscientist at Berkeley, on receiving the MacArthur award!

Representing @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social #Neuroscience chair @danfeldman.bsky.social and @standupforscience.bsky.social at annual #BT5k fundraiser for brain tumor research. GO BEARS!

Turns out that the “loudest” neurons are not always the most relevant ones. Great article about a fascinating and important result by @hayleybounds.bsky.social , graduate of @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social neuroscience.

Mouse S1 will be a powerful platform to identify the control circuits for attentional capture.

Deepa will be working on this in her own lab at Univ. of California, Riverside!

S1 pyramidal cells showed increased sensory gain and receptive field shifts toward the attended whisker. We used 2p imaging to measure the topography of the 'attentional spotlight'-- a Gaussian hill of sensory gain, 1.5 cortical columns in radius, that shifted as mice attended different whiskers.

Reward history guides focal attention in whisker somatosensory cortex Nature Communications - Mice flexibly shift attention between specific whiskers on a rapid timescale based on recent stimulus reward history in a detection task. Attention is correlated with a...

New paper from Deepa Ramamurthy in my lab, just out. Mice flexibly shift attention between different whiskers based on the recent history of whisker stimuli and rewards, during a tactile detection task. We saw a strong neural correlate of this attentional capture in S1 cortex.

rdcu.be/euij3

Thousands at #NoKings in Oakland!

About 2000 people at #HandsOff in sleepy North Berkeley!

Hey! Are you an American considering a PhD or a postdoc, and the funding / academic situation just went absolutely bonkers?

Canada's federal funding awards just added eligibility for international applicants if at Cdn institutions.

www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NewsDetail-D...

Proud to be among ~2000 people at SUFS today in San Francisco. Inspiring speakers and great energy! @standupforscience.bsky.social
@mfeller.bsky.social and @adernburg.bsky.social were organizers!

VIP interneurons in sensory cortex encode sensory and action signals but not direct reward signals -... Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) interneurons in sensory cortex modulate sensory responses based on global exploratory behavior and arousal state, but their function during non-exploratory, goal-di...

Haven't yet learned how to make threads on Bluesky... #neuroscience

Degraded tactile coding in the Cntnap2 mouse model of autism - PubMed Atypical sensory processing in autism involves altered neural circuit function and neural coding in sensory cortex, but the nature of coding disruption is poorly understood. We characterized neural co...

We study how neural circuits and coding are affected in mouse models of severe genetic forms of autism.

New from Han Chin Wang in my lab. The Cntnap2 model of autism has a blurry, unstable whisker map. Adds to growing evidence for degraded neural coding in forms of ASD. #neuroskyence

Recent Curr. Biol. paper by Deepa Ramamurthy in my lab. Asks what behavioral signals are encoded by VIP neurons in whisker S1 during goal-directed behavior (beyond locomotion & arousal). Answer: local whisker signals, licking, and expected value of reward. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37499665/

Finally moving to Bluesky! Will be posting papers, lab news, neuroscience at Berkeley. Hope people find it useful. #Neuroskyence #neuroscience