Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Are these overlooked brain cells the key to treating trauma and anxiety? A growing body of research suggests astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells once dismissed as support players, may lead the way to more precise and effective psychiatric drugs.

www.nationalgeographic.com/health/artic...

We really need to critically examine this narrative that modern technology is more convenient. Turning on my old analog oven was one turn of a dial. The new one is click to turn on > click to select mode > click to select temperature > click to start.

Neurobiologists Hack Brain Circuits Tied to Placebo Pain Relief Scientists have identified the brain circuits tied to placebo pain relief. Researchers have known that placebo effects can be a powerful treatment, yet the underlying neurological mechanisms have not ...

Excited to share our new study on how the brain generates placebo pain relief!

We developed a mouse model that recapitulates key features of human placebo analgesia, then used it to identify causal circuitry.

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

today.ucsd.edu/story/neurob...

1/n

Opportunity to work in a fantastic lab! 🧠🧠🧠

People are asking ChatGPT things I would normally just ask a friend, parent, mentor, therapist or medical professional for or about. It takes work to build and maintain those relationships, and figure out who is the right person to ask, but the alternative is a digital tool known for lying to users.

I’ve always said that submitting a grant proposal is an exercise in hope—not just in terms of being funded, but as a symbol of what it means to dream big and ask exciting questions. Despite everything happening to federal science over the last year, I’m holding on to that hope.

Proposal submitted.

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

we’ve talked a lot about how AI might con people into believing bad things, but it is sad to think of how it will also make us stop believing in wondrous things too

Science is good. We should fund it.

Humanity did that. Science did that. Publicly-funded research did that. Excellent universities did that. Diversity did that. International cooperation did that.

Artemis II is a perfect example of what we can do at our best.

Welcome home, Integrity crew!

Virally labeled neuron in red in the medial prefrontal cortex of a section of mouse brain in a sea of blue (DAPI labeled cells)

For #FluorescenceFriday - really pretty neuron in the medial prefrontal cortex that projects to locus coeruleus. Image credit to @rehg-j.bsky.social, with a big round of congratulations on acceptance/matriculation to the Hopkins Neuro PhD program this Fall - we are so happy for you!! 🧠🔬

🧠🐭🍻

UW graduate student deported through SEA as protesters demand answers A union representing University of Washington graduate student workers says Kennedy Orwa’s student visa was rescinded without explanation.

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel.

King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

Cannabinerds 🗣️ Assemble! Let’s help Leslie find a grad student!

Want a dataset to test ideas on neural basis of decision making or how areas interact as we make choices? Check out our data published today @rudebecklab.bsky.social. >16,000 single neurons from 22 anatomically confirmed areas in macaques performing a decision task. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Trump’s Immigration Policy Sidelines Foreign Doctors Amid Shortage

“Ezequiel Veliz, a family physician from Venezuela who was named resident of the year in 2025 at UT Health, Rio Grande Valley, has been unable to work for months.

“I am stuck in processing purgatory,” said Dr. Veliz, 32. “The saddest part is that my patients are being affected.”

The Future of Sex as a Biological Variable in Health Research An executive order upended an NIH policy requiring researchers to account for both sexes in preclinical animal studies.

Wondering what happened to NIH’s Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV) policy?

This article reveals a lot about where NIH is and how it got there, starting from politicization of NIH, through fear leading to staff over compliance, ending in harm to science.

undark.org/2026/03/30/s...

Highlights:

Our NIAAA funded Post-DoctT32 has received its NoA (non competing renewal). Are you looking for a post-doc and interested in joining our amazing center? If so, reach out! Here is a convenient form that you can use to upload CV and a cover letter!

unc.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

A transcriptomic microglia taxonomy across mouse and human pathologies @natimmunol.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

Trading places: What happens when neuroscience turns into machine learning, and machine learning turns into neuroscience? Neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with prediction, and machine learning with causal explanation, with each field adopting methods from the other. I asked eight experts to weigh in on what...

Neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with prediction, and machine learning with causal explanation, with each field adopting methods from the other, writes @gershbrain.bsky.social. Will this bring us closer to understanding neural systems?

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

My lab is hiring a technician at @UFNeuroscience! 🧠🐭 We use in vivo ephys, optogenetics & machine learning to study how the brain controls social behavior.

Looking for rodent research & mentorship experience — please repost & share!

Apply here: forms.gle/VACAMuoaRbWR...

A block of text that says "Scientists at the University of Miami are carrying out a research study on trends in the field of science communication. For this survey we are defining science communication as work that is done: • by a technical subject area expert in some field related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, • outside of classroom settings • aimed at the public If you are 18 years of age or older and work or recently worked in this field (full-time, part-time, or as a side project), please click the link below to complete a short survey. If you are interested in learning more about this research study, please e-mail us at Julia.wester@miami.edu. In the body of your email please provide your full name, and if you would prefer to be contacted by phone, your phone number and the best time to reach you. Contacting us for more information does not commit you to participating, and should you decide to participate you may terminate your participation at any time."

Attention Science Communicators!

We are conducting a survey on the landscape of science communication & need your help gathering experiences.

Please send this to #SciComm ppl you know. We want to get as thorough a sense of the state of the field as we can.

umiami.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Yay! Congrats to all! 🐟

@tcpotts.bsky.social paper is live. Happy to share #FishNAP, a new, non-invasive way to measure #BBB permeability in 96-well format with #zebrafish www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Colorful brain made out of legos on a flat surface.

Lego brain! Very relaxing spring break activity!

This is an important one. That soma-targeting interneurons can do background subtraction and gain modulation is well understood. But the roles of dendrite-targeting interneurons in normalizing top-down learning signals have not been studied in detail.

Cosyne 2026 - Cosyne Tutorial: Comparative Analysis of Neural Population Codes YouTube video by Cosyne Talks

Cosyne invited me to give a long tutorial (4 hours!) on methods to quantify differences high-d neural recordings across animals, brain regions, deep neural nets, etc.

The recording is up on youtube. I hope it inspires more research on this fundamental topic!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n44x...

You've seen place cells, grid cells, mirror neurons,
now...
huddle cells!

Neurons in the rodent frontal cortex (dorsomedial region) appear to track huddling from the cold

and much more detail in this impressive Nature study:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...