🔬 On April 28th, Prof. Giuseppe Gangarossa (@peppeganga.bsky.social) from the Université Paris Cité will share his research on how #interoceptive signals shape #reward processing. As always, everyone is welcome, no registration necessary!

🔗 All information: www.psych.mpg.de/seminars

Point of View: An easy way to improve lab meetings Sharing positive and negative experiences at lab meetings can make a career in science a little less hard, a little more pleasant, and a little more human.

Point of View: An easy way to improve lab meetings doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

I'm really happy to see this one out @elife.bsky.social. Awesome Cara Glynn and I describe and reflect on a year-long, low-cost practice that transformed our group meetings.

#researchculture #ECR #labmeetings

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

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

Corticotropin-releasing factor and somatostatin neurons in the central amygdala mediate dynamic defensive behaviors during fear extinction - PubMed Traumatic experiences can result in heightened fear responses to trauma-associated stimuli. These symptoms can be difficult to extinguish, so identifying neuronal targets for facilitating fear extinction is critical. Many studies investigating fear learning in mice measure conditioned fear via freez …

New CeA work from the Fadok lab!

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41786605/

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...

Chemical Reaction Networks Learn Better than Spiking Neural Networks We mathematically prove that chemical reaction networks without hidden layers can solve tasks for which spiking neural networks require hidden layers. Our proof uses the deterministic mass-action kine...

This is satisfyingly niche. Shots fired by the chemical reaction networks community.

arxiv.org/abs/2603.12060

1/
🚨 New preprint! 🚨

Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇

📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩

#neuroskyence

1/8 New preprint alert!

How are signals from the heart encoded in the brain?
What could be the functional implications of cardioception?

We found that neurons in the posterior insular cortex are precisely tuned to heartbeats, and that this cardio-insular coupling supports emotion coding in mice.

Next-generation multicolor indicators for in vivo imaging of norepinephrine - Nature Methods Improved red and green indicators for norepinephrine and their characterization are reported. These indicators allow detection of norepinephrine release in awake behaving mice in dual-color fiber phot...

Read the article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Robust Reinforcement Learning via Leveraging Historically Optimal Policy With Regulation of Performance Most existing adversarial training methods in reinforcement learning (RL) offer limited robustness and remain vulnerable to novel attacks. To address this limitation, an approach that enhances policy ...

Robust Reinforcement Learning via Leveraging Historically Optimal Policy With Regulation of Performance

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/114...

#MLSky

Our new study in Nature Communications uncovers a neural circuit mechanism by which serotonin counteracts dopamine's rewarding effects:

the two neuromodulators exert push-pull control over the activity of D2-MSNs, a key cell-type in the brain's striatum reward hub

🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tap here to learn more about our recent study uncovering neural mechanisms of dopamine-serotonin opponency 🧠

Download our database of free database of postdoc fellowships.

276 funding opportunities. For entry, we provide eligibility/requirements, amount, deadline, link, description, etc.

Download database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

Our back-translation of value-modulated attentional capture to rats and mice is now published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, and it's open access! Yay.

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Intestinal interoceptive dysfunction drives age-associated cognitive decline - Nature Age-related microbiome changes increase medium-chain fatty acid-producing bacteria, driving GPR84-mediated myeloid inflammation, impaired vagal signalling and hippocampal dysfunction; targeting this g...

Intestinal interoceptive dysfunction drives age-associated cognitive decline www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/7 🧠 My journey into development begins with this work and question: how does the brain's spatial navigation system develop? We found that the neural networks for spatial navigation (tori and rings) are preconfigured and only later anchor gradually to the world with experience! 🧵

Where does learning through imitation happen in the brain?

In juvenile zebra finches, we pinpoint a synaptic locus of song learning in a cortico-basal ganglia circuit and leverage this localization to measure the timescale of consolidation and make birds learn faster! #neuroskyence (1/14)

‘Hey’ came before ‘hi,’ and ‘hi' came before ‘hello.’

‘Hi’ is most likely a variant of ‘hey.’

‘Hello’ is not related to either.

Goodbye.

'A dual-function framework of interoception: the information and coordination modes of interoceptive signaling'

by Catherine Tallon-Baudry, Marie Loescher (@marieloescher.bsky.social) & Anthony Clément

www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Dual reinforcement-learning network modules for modeling decision-making with multiple strategies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Check out our latest research drop! We show BLA dopamine signaling encodes the emotional weight of sensory transitions, but not the associative strength or value of stimuli. These signals dynamically rescale when the learning context changes: "this matters most!" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am totally pumped about this new work . "Task-trained RNNs" are a powerful and influential framework in neuroscience, but have lacked a firm theoretical footing. This work provides one, and makes direct contact with the classical theory of random RNNs:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint out!
In this study, we introduce NanoFLex, a strategy that combines #HaloTag variants with #nanobodies -based immunolabeling to enable rapid, OneStep-IF #lifetime #multiplexing. Possible due to SmartSecondaries fused to #HaloTag from @nanotag.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway for reformatting aversive memories during recall Tan et al. identify a neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway in rats that updates aversive memories when they are recalled. Noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus triggers synapse-to-nuclear tra...

Excited to share our new paper:
We uncover a locus coeruleus→amygdala circuit linking β-adrenergic signaling to transcription regulation in defined amygdala cells during memory reconsolidation—+ stress or elevated noradrenergic signaling at recall can strengthen memory.
www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

Combined assembloid modeling and 3D whole-organ mapping captures the microanatomy and function of the human fallopian tube Tunable assembloid modeling and CODA tissue mapping, in tandem, design a tissue-validated in vitro model of the fallopian tube.

I think there is a need for a complete re-think for organoid modeling.

As long as the architecture of organoids that you produce is not directly compared to a 3D map of the organ (say, a fallopian tube) or disease to be modeled, it will be approximate.

More here: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Photo of Dr. Zachary Pennington and Dr. Milan Valyear

We're thrilled to welcome Dr. @zachtpennington.bsky.social and Dr. @milanium.bsky.social as Assistant Professors in our Behavioural Neuroscience area and members of the @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social.

Read their Q&As: psych.ubc.ca/news

Place cells in CA1 lack topographical organization of firing locations | PNAS Topography is a well-described and well-known concept for cortical organization in primary sensory and motor cortices of mammalian brains. Similar ...

A half-century old question may have its final answer. Using high-resolution #Mini2P microscopes, we find no evidence of local topography in #PlaceCells. Place fields of neighbouring cells are no more similar than those of randomly selected cells. 🧠🗺️ Out now in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Applications for our Next Generation Leaders program are open!

For 3 years, accepted early career scientists will join a supportive network and contribute to our research initiatives.

Apply by Mar. 31: https://bit.ly/3OjzdRa

📸 Photo by NGL Alum @bjmarlin.bsky.social

🔬🧠 Releasing the 1.0 version of #Suite2p and THE PAPER w/ @marius10p.bsky.social! Now with GPU acceleration. Want to use Suite2p but don’t have 100,000 neuron recordings? We show you how to get those with a standard 2p microscope #neuroscience #imaging #neuroAI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...