I’ll be presenting my work at #COSYNE2026. Stop by our poster to come learn about how the geometry of neural population activity shapes communication between brain areas during learned behavior 🐦⬛🧠🎶
Soon hiring a lab manager! Looking for someone who is really interested in language neuroscience, who is organised, motivated, a great communicator, and who works well in a research team. Express interest by submitting this form: tinyurl.com/glysn-labman...
Reposts appreciated!
I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening.
The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning To cope in uncertain environments, animals must balance their actions between using current resources and searching for new ones1. This exploration–exploitation dilemma has been studied extensively in paradigms involving positive outcomes, and neural correlates have been identified in frontal cortices and subcortical structures2–11, including the amygdala12. Importantly, exploration is just as essential for survival or well-being when trying to avoid negative outcomes, yet we do not know whether the single-neuron mechanisms that drive exploration are shared across positive and negative environments. Here we examined the dynamics of exploration when human participants engaged in a probabilistic learning task with intermixed loss and gain trials, while simultaneously recording single-neuron activity. We show that neurons of the amygdala and temporal cortex modulate their activity before a decision to explore in both loss and gain. Moreover, we find that humans exhibit more exploration when trying to avoid losses, and that an increase in the levels of noise in amygdala neurons contributes to this behaviour. Overall, we report that human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal. The results suggest a link between the heightened amygdala activity observed in mood disorders13,14 and higher exploration rates15–17 that underlie maladaptive and even pathological behaviours.
35. Ölveczky, B. P., Andalman, A. S. & Fee, M. S. Vocal experimentation in the juvenile songbird requires a basal ganglia circuit. PLoS Biol. 3, e153 (2005). 36. Mandelblat-Cerf, Y., Paz, R. & Vaadia, E. Trial-to-trial variability of single cells in motor cortices is dynamically modified during visuomotor adaptation. J. Neurosci. 29, 15053–15062 (2009). 37. Maimon, G. & Assad, J. A. Beyond Poisson: increased spike-time regularity across primate parietal cortex. Neuron 62, 426–440 (2009). 38. Stein, R. B., Gossen, E. R. & Jones, K. E. Neuronal variability: noise or part of the signal? Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6, 389–397 (2005). 39. Faisal, A. A., Selen, L. P. & Wolpert, D. M. Noise in the nervous system. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 9, 292–303 (2008).
Basic research matters!
This paper came up in a convo with the terrific @jcgorman.bsky.social. Paz described its back story in his SFN talk.
A link between the amygdala and pathological exploratory behaviors was inspired by: ⚡findings in babbling baby birds⚡.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40866711/
This #GivingTuesday, consider making a tax-deductible donation to @colorsofthebrain.bsky.social ! All funds are invested directly into research funding support for the 2025 cohort and the incoming 2026 cohort of scholars donorbox.org/cob-kibm-sch...
Extremely grateful for the opportunity to attend the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego last week. I had the chance to serve on an amazing panel at this year’s ENDURE meeting alongside incredible neuroscientists, and I also presented a poster on our MDMA-assisted therapy work.
at ABRCMS 2025? Stop by our Colors of the Brain scholar posters!
I'll be presenting my work on the social, neural, and hormonal effects of shared stress Sunday 8-12. Come check it out! #SFN25
I’ll be presenting my work on species-specific differences in neural population dynamics during singing, multi-region models of HVC and RA, and how population geometry and coupling relates to vocal flexibility. Come check it out Saturday from 1-5!
worth noting this is the exact approach you get a lot of flak from other scientists for trying
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, social insects reveal another surprise.” https://scim.ag/47sVFyS
Neurociencias Para Todos brings neuroscience education to remote communities in Mexico. @analog-ashley.bsky.social talked with founder Monica López-Hidalgo about the program’s efforts and the importance of making neuroscience accessible to all.
www.thetransmitter.org/community/br...
Bad news for the species, to be sure, but the upside pedagogically is that the data seem to suggest that if you want to know whether a student actually wrote their paper, a fairly effective assessment is simply to ask them to talk about it and to walk you through their arguments.
The "just learn to code" approach to society turned into "just make your own cancer medicine" faster than anyone anticipated I think
We'll be having our 3rd annual MINDS Symposium this August 29th, 1-5 pm Bonner Hall 2130! The CoB scholars will highlight their research, along with a keynote from Dr. Anne Beatty-Martinez from UCSD, special thanks to @ibroorg.bsky.social for supporting Aisha Cinar and Sasha Bikkina this summer!
I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it!
Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This happened right down the street from my house, at the place where my kids went to after-school care. He originally came on a student visa, is employed as a doctor, married a US citizen, has a young child, and has applied for a green card.
WTF.
www.opb.org/article/2025...
A photo shows Ashley, smiling, holding up an announcement that says University of California San Diego school of Biological Sciences EDI committee advancing EDI Group award is awarded to STARTNEURO Ashley Juavinett for the 2024-2025 academic year
Six months ago: get attacked in multiple executive orders that declare everything you work on in STEM education "illegal", funding pulled from your field
Now: get EDI award as you continue to do the work anyway, as you always have and always will
You absolute badass @analog-ashley.bsky.social
Already a huge accomplishment having written one! Wishing you lots of luck!
New STAT story about NIH rescinding the institution-wide anti-DEI term and condition that had been added to Notices of Award.
www.statnews.com/2025/06/09/n...
1/n
“In an unusual act of public protest, more than 340 scientists and staff at the National Institutes of Health today released a statement charging NIH officials and their superiors with politicizing science.”
www.science.org/content/arti...
#StandUpForScience
#BethesdaDeclaration
Very proud of my latest article with @network-alba.bsky.social! I encourage all STEM researchers to check it out, we try to give practical tips whether you're working with human participants, animals, or just collecting diversity data for e.g. a conference. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Stoked to share our new review on why neuroendocrinology needs a systems lens and why hormones should matter to systems neuroscience. It’s time for serious cross-talk!
Trump’s cuts to research programs directly harms scientists from working class backgrounds.
Bridges built between the blue collar and ivory tower are collapsing in front of us.
You are a brilliant scientist and have done so much for your community. I am so angry for you and for every other talented people who have had their D-SPAN illegally terminated
Just got the notice for termination of my K00! add it to the pile of illegal contract termination, now if only our leaders gave a shit I'd be more hopeful
DM if you'd like to be part of our panel! Looking for a few more, if you have experience in communicating science in Spanish or other languages for your community, and believe you have lessons learned that you'd like to share to the audience, let me know!
My PhD student's NSF grant was terminated today. Her dissertation investigates why air pollution monitoring, metrics, and regulations don't properly capture the harms experienced by marginalized communities--esp in the most polluted Detroit neighborhoods. She and I are happy to talk with press etc.
RFK Jr. has me irritated for several reasons, but the premise that the sole purpose of life is to work (pay taxes) and date (procreate) demonstrates how people with disabilities are seen as defective in an extractive, exploitive, and capitalist society. #Eugenics #Ableism #Disabilism
Always inspired by fellow trainees like @fleabrained.bsky.social creating opportunities for the next generation.
Feeling powerless lately in the context of national news but focusing on the power that I DO have to continue opening doors for undergrads
www.thetransmitter.org/community/as...
