Basolateral amygdala astrocytes encode anxiety states Ghenissa et al. provide evidence that basolateral amygdala astrocytes reliably encode anxiety states. Using simultaneous in vivo calcium recordings across an array of behavioral tasks, combined with g...

Incredibly proud of this paper led by @ossamaghenissa.bsky.social and @mathiasgua.bsky.social titled Basolateral 'Amygdala Astrocytes Encode Anxiety States'.
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
🧵 below

Screenshot of email that says “new preprint finds that in the basolateral amygdala, "astrocytic activity provides a stable and scalable representation of threat-induced anxiety across an array of behavioral tasks."

Nice surprise today in @thetransmitter.bsky.social daily email linking our preprint!
Thank you! 😍

mailchi.mp/thetransmitt...

🚨Registration for the N American stress meeting is now open!!🚨

Really excited to be part of it and host the event in the @crchum.bsky.social in Montréal this June!

www.stress2026.com/registration

Astrocytic Encoding of Threat in the Basolateral Amygdala The basolateral amygdala (BLA) has long been implicated in threat detection and the generation of anxiety states. While previous experiments have demonstrated the important role of BLA principal neuro...

Delighted to share our first preprint of the year!

A project that we're all really proud of in the lab led by @ossamaghenissa.bsky.social with @mathiasgua.bsky.social in which we set out to test the role of basolateral amygdala astrocytes in anxiety behaviour.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear responses to a visual looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms How does the brain balance innate responses with adaptive learning when reacting to threats? This study shows that repeated exposure to looming stimuli reduces innate defensive responses via hippocamp...

Starting 2026 with a thread a very recent manuscripts at Ryan Lab @tcddublin.bsky.social @tbsi-tcd.bsky.social

"Extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear responses to a visual looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms"
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

@PLOSBiology

Mathias giving his presentation in an amphitheatre

Fantastic presentation from @mathiasgua.bsky.social at @umontreal.ca Neuro department research day.

Showing all his cool new data!

Fish keratocytes isolated from a fish scale crawling around. Technique: DIC microscopy. #CellBiology.
Another #NikonSmallWorldReject

Reproducibility is a team sport Building reproducible systems across labs is possible, even in large-scale neuroscience—with rigor and collaboration.

"Reproducibility isn’t glamorous, but it’s essential."

@annechurchland.bsky.social speaks candidly in @thetransmitter.bsky.social about the obstacles to reproducibility and shares practical advice for other neuroscience labs.

🧠📈 www.thetransmitter.org/reproducibil...

Thrilled to have received my first ever poster prize last week at EBBS2025 in Bordeaux 🏄‍♂️! Cherry on top was that I actually did my master’s in Bordeaux a few years ago and saw many friendly faces during that (VERY) hot week.

4 scientists posing on a boat

Part 2 of France trip done.
Fantastic @ebbsociety.bsky.social meeting with PhD students from the lab! Topping it off with a presentation prize for @mathiasgua.bsky.social !! 🥳

#fluorescencefriday
picture I took a few months ago with our 2P of pyramidal neurons in the lateral amygdala expressing a lactate sensor 👽

title: Paths of fear

Screenshot of article summary of: Toward Science-Led Publishing by Damian Pattinson, George Currie published as an opinion piece, in Learned Publishing Summary The current dynamic of scholarly publishing prioritises the wants of the publishing industry over the needs of the research community. This article explores this theme through the lens of ‘publisher-led science’ as a description of our current status quo, and through ‘science-led publishing’ as an improved future state. We argue that financial motivations central to most publishing distort how research is presented, how it is assessed and even what research is undertaken, leading to a system that hinders, rather than facilitates, scientific progress. We propose three elements of a science-led publishing approach that would accelerate research communication, incentivise collaboration between authors, editors and reviewers, and create a more transparent and equitable research landscape. We believe that research funding and research assessment are two of the primary levers for wider change in research and research culture and consider the future purpose of scholarly publishing in a world where these proposals have been widely adopted.

Does publishing serve science or is science serving publishing?

Damian Pattinson and I (@elife.bsky.social) argue scientific publishing has evolved into a system that, rather than facilitate scholarly communication, distorts and dictates it.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

#OpenScience

Norepinephrine signals through astrocytes to modulate synapses Locus ceruleus (LC)–derived norepinephrine (NE) drives network and behavioral adaptations to environmental saliencies by reconfiguring circuit functional connectivity, but the underlying synapse-level...

Thought this would be a nice way to enter the bsky community👇Delighted for Katie (now in Chris Dulla's lab at Tufts). Thank you to our collaborators, to the reviewers and to Cagla Eroglu for the highlight!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is a new image from #JWST.

The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way.

Everything else is a galaxy.

Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.

Great seminar from @lewisholt.bsky.social today at the @crchum.bsky.social !
Part of the ‘exit seminar’ as he closes in on the finish line of his PhD 🥲

Astrocytic CREB: The Hidden Driver of Stress Susceptibility

Happy to share the commentary "Astrocytic CREB: The Hidden Driver of Stress Susceptibility" @mathiasgua.bsky.social and I put together for Biological Psychiatry www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Program for the "Neural Circuits and Behaviour" CAN 2025 satellite is now available! We have a great day planned, and are especially looking for trainees to join the event - we'll select four trainees for talks, with a prize for best trainee talk. Details: www.eventbrite.ca/e/neural-cir...

Thank you!!! This is from a wildtype c57/b6 that we injected with a lckGCaMP6 viral vector.

Thank you!!!! This is a calcium sensor so all the flashes we see are calcium events. This is in an acute brain slice :)

#FluorescenceFriday
Title: Solar Flare

Lateral amygdala astrocyte going about its daily routine

SUPER happy that the newest version of our preprint is finally sailing the seas on biorxiv 🤩
Quite a journey where we explored the impact of early-life-stress on fear memory specificity, neuronal circuits in the lateral amygdala and the astrocytes that regulate them 🌟

I was wondering about the absence of glasses!

iBiology is a REMARKABLE and under-utilized resource for learning from some of the pioneers of microscopy--these videos are suitable for undergraduate classes or experts 🧪

#FluorescenceFriday
2-photon calcium imaging recording from a magestic astrocyte.
Title: twinkle twinkle little star