Elnaz Alikarami

This is me now. My former students, my colleagues, my mentees… and I can’t know if they are fine…
#Iran

#science community, if you speak about #open_science remember that things are much harder than ever in Iran for researchers. This is what counts as democratizing science...

bsky.app/profile/elna...

And let’s read the results. The communication necessity is what makes the most sense to me, exactly related to what we talk about. I think PIs not only should learn it, but also actively teach it to their trainees on a basic routine

I didn’t pose any question 😅 And I opposed that it’s unlikely to happen.
I am more skeptical of your view of “hype-driven” , “power” and “influence”
Isn’t it the other way round? Scientists will have an opportunity to lower the hype a bit. No?

And with all due respect, why hype-driven? I moved from academia to startup. The fund issue is real. No fund means you have to sell to survive. Public fund means you get a bit of security to do actual applied research. And of course a great help to economy and society with creating more real jobs.

This was filled by neuroscientists! Mostly early graduates.This means current academic neuroscience has some severe weak points.This is actually a good thing.Research funds shouldn’t be exclusive to academia.It moves the trend better! Innovation is not always power and startups are opposite of power

#Science-community, please read this and try to support your colleagues
#Iran

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

We're already in the phase that each of us (Iranians) by now know someone killed/injured in our circle of friends/family. And this is despite the continued internet blackout, when millions haven't still managed to hear from their family/friends since Thursday, January 8th. This tells a lot ... 😥😥

It’s becoming almost a year that I started looking for a job. Yes, I’ll never forgive my former employer for what he did to me.
But what was harder is the prejudice and discriminationI face here everyday to get my life in back in order. I was thinking of moving back home. Now where is home?
#iran

Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals Nature Neuroscience - Bergel et al. show that an infraslow rhythm connecting the brain and body during sleep is shared by lizards, mammals and birds, revealing an ancestral process and reshaping...

⚠️ New paper alert and what a way to end 2025! 🎉
Happy to share our story “Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals.” published today in Nature Neuroscience.

Sleeping dragons 🦎 and functional ultrasound!
Read the full paper here: rdcu.be/eWJHb 1/8

2. Every mistake we make, has an effect on others. It might change someone’s life and finding their way back might cost them too much, even with a simple paper rejection. It’s important to know that and I admire @kordinglab.bsky.social for knowing/publicly owning it. Hope for more of this from all

1. My take away from this is
A good scientist and a professor should have accountability: Konrad says sorry! Doesn’t say we all make mistakes but the paper found its way anyways… he took the responsibility and apologized. Something that academics should learn.

The Electric Motor and the Drill - we use AI in the wrong way Power tools are better than general purpose tools for most applications, my science planning app planyourscience.com is a result of this philosophy

New post: The Electric Motor and the Drill
LLM chat bots are like electric motors: can do anything, bad at everything. The problem is UI/UX. AI should be more like power tools. I built a science planner around this philosophy. 10,000 scientists use it now. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

☝️

I have never registered for sfn ever and I have been receiving emails trying to sell me a booth! One email and three follow ups: Elnaz, did you give my proposition a thought?? :/

6. Recognizing that reality isn’t anti-science; it’s acknowledging privilege and accountability.
If my uncle asks: why I had to make my small business with blood sweat instead of a seed money w/o expectation of return w interest and scientists already have it and feel being under attack,I will be 🤐

5. When the economy tightens, it’s natural for citizens to expect that money to go first to healthcare, wages, and education.

Scientists can and should diversify how they fund their work — through philanthropy, industry, or private partnerships — the same way others invest in their own careers.

4. Many early scientists were self-funded, or backed by philanthropic patrons and industry labs. Public funding made science more stable and accessible — and that’s a good thing.
But it also created a system very few professions enjoy: job security, pensions, and recurring public grants.

3. These go back to mid-20th-century discoveries, made during the golden age of public expansion, not timeless proof that every curiosity changes the world.
Most early universities were built by private donors or religious endowment, long before governments began funding research.

2. Take those 7 “basic science” discoveries everyone is citing — if you dig deeply, you’ll see that the funding behind them were mixed of private public funds, the flat TV was fully funded privately. And of course non of them led to applied tech with public funds, only private R&D made them useful.

1.Ok, If I say something like this to my uncle/MP, I’ll probably hear:
“Sure, science is important —but when unemployment kills and families can’t pay rent, why should taxpayers cover lifetime salaries, and multi-million-dollar labs for basic research?” honestly, that’s not an unreasonable question.

As a person transitioning from research to clinic/industry back and forth, I only wish that researchers could understand that science is not under attack, scientists aren't under attack, not even their approach, their manner of practice is…, only if they understood this and improved themselves…

Thanks! I’ll check it out!

Thrilled to announce I'll be joining the Division of Neuroscience at @manchester.ac.uk as a Lecturer in Feb '26!

The DuLab will explore how the brain integrates sensory streams into internal maps 🌐 using the rodent head-direction circuit, the 'neural compass', as a starting point for the journey 🧭

Which book btw? (I hardly come across English resources for this so I have nothing to recommend to others as a Persian 🙈)

Yes it can be true! The word is a combine word of «دول آب» in Persian which means wheel of water (the name for the water apparatus thingy). The combination word is formed over time. So it is Persian in roots and transferred in both languages.

And the Achaemenid empire! Nice choice ;)

Huh, do we still call them ‘tweet’?

Congrats! Looking forward to see your amazing works!

This is also a loan word in Farsi! (Though with a slight change in pronunciation )

The postsubiculum as a head-direction cortex The organisation of thalamocortical networks follows a conserved structure. Traditionally, these are divided into primary sensory systems that receive…

Really excited to share this Opinion piece we've been working on with fellow head-direction cell geeks @apeyrache.bsky.social @desdemonafricker.bsky.social and (bsky-less?) Andrea Burgalossi! While head-direction cells pop up in many cortical regions, we think that one of them is quite unique (1/8)