Ciarán Murphy-Royal

What a disaster the single competition would be….

Nice reporting from @thetransmitter.bsky.social on two recent astrocyte papers!

True!

Astrocytes orchestrate oxytocin’s social effects in mice The cells amplify oxytocin—and may be responsible for sex differences in social behavior, two preprints find.

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/ast...

Is it time to honour Montreal’s forgotten giant of neurosurgery? History made a legend of Wilder Penfield’s work but left behind his colleague and friend William Cone, "an unsung hero" who co-founded the Neuro with him.

Great cover story on last Saturday's @mtlgazette.bsky.social about William Cone and Wilder Penfield - montrealgazette.com/news/local-n... Looking forward to hearing more at the 2026 public lectures hosted with @theneuro.bsky.social next May

Classroom with tables organized in a semi circle. Students preparing for their presentations.

Our 3 minute project pitch for the MSc 'Scientific Communication' class is always my favourite of the year. So great to see all the projects presented in such creative ways!

Class with co-organised @esamarut.bsky.social and hype-man @mathiasgua.bsky.social

Now you're talking!! 🤩

Huge congrats !!

I am so proud to share @forrestdrogers.bsky.social’s postdoctoral magnum opus, now out in @nature.com! Forrest discovered a novel role for Agouti in the MPOA of the hypothalamus to integrate socio-environmental information to flexibly tune paternal behavior
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thread! 👇🏻

Ken on stage presenting astrocyte-synapse interactions.

Really great to have Ken-Ichi Dewa from @junnagai.bsky.social ‘s lab present their recent Nature paper to our lab and a several others in the @crchum.bsky.social !
Such rich data on astrocyte-neuron interactions!

GLIA 2025 in Marseille was a highlight of the year.

Looking forward to shaping the next meeting as part of the program committee for 2027! 🧪

CANGlia | 2026 Meeting Home

New event posted: CANGlia 2026 meeting in Montreal
www.canglia.ca/2026meeting
registration and abstract submission are now open!

Astrocytes enable amygdala neural representations supporting memory - Nature Astrocytes in the basolateral amygdala dynamically track fear state and support fear memory retrieval and extinction.

Really nice work from the Holmes lab looking at amygdala astrocytes in fear memory and extinction!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mitochondrial Ca2+ efflux controls neuronal metabolism and long-term memory across species - Nature Metabolism Boosting mitochondrial metabolism in neurons in central memory circuits by enhancing Ca2+ retention in the mitochondrial matrix is shown to improve long-term memory formation in flies and mice.

You invite somebody to give a talk at @researchmar.bsky.social. You had an amazing conversation during lunch. You start a collaboration. A postdoc @carlarduaso.bsky.social got nice results. You end up in an amazing paper. Congrats @jdejuan-sanz.bsky.social et al.!!

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Fluorescence image showing astrocytes labelled with eGFP (green), what appears to be primary blood vessels with GFAP (magenta), and cell nuclei stained with DAPI (cyan)

Couldn't wait for Friday to share this really incredible image from superstar undergraduate student Camila Cabarcas, iInvestigating astrocyte morphology

Fingers crossed for Camila as she's at U Cincinnati this week to interview for grad school!

Save the date for the annual "Neural Circuits and Behaviour" satellite conference at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience annual meeting, cohosted by @franklandlab.bsky.social and myself on May 18, 2026. We have a great speaker lineup and will be selecting 4 trainees talks from our registrants!

Why emotion research is stuck—and how to move it forward Studying how organisms infer indirect threats and understand changing contexts can establish a common framework that bridges species and levels of analysis.

My perspective in @thetransmitter.bsky.social on why emotion research feels stuck and how we might move forward—by focusing on how the brain uses internal brain models to shape emotional processing across species. www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/why-...

Congratulations @cate-cholamine.bsky.social ! Looking forward to giving this a read!

We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867

The cow paper! 🙌

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...

Maturation of hippocampus-medial prefrontal cortex projections defines a pathway-specific sensitive period for cognitive flexibility Cruz-Sanchez et al. show that the maturation trajectory of ventral and intermediate hippocampus-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity displays distinct anatomical and synaptic developmental signatures...

Happy to share the latest from our lab published @cp-cellreports.bsky.social, where we delineated the synaptic maturation trajectory for vCA1 and iCA1 projections to mPFC, and pathway-specific effects of vCA1- and iCA1-mPFC juvenile inhibition on cognitive flexibility

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Registration is filling up fast!

Scientific Director - Biomedical Research Institute in Montreal, Canada - Montréal, Quebec (CA) job with Centre d'innovation biomédicale - Université de Montréal | 12851492 The Courtois Institute for Biomedical Innovation (CI²B) is seeking a distinguished scientist to steer its development.

🌟🫱🏼‍🫲🏻Join the fun & scientific excellence of Montreal and become a primary partner of Centre de recherche du CHUM (CRCHUM) [please repost].

www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Nice work!! Congrats @sejpaton.bsky.social Caroline and team!

Super excited to share this new paper led by @sejpaton.bsky.social that I briefly mentioned at #ACNP2026 yesterday! 🧪🧠🤓

We tested preventive strategies to protect the brain vasculature #BBB during stress exposure, mix of mouse 🐭 and human data

So proud of my team 🤘

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Maximum of 200 participants so do not wait and miss your chance! 🧪🧠

🚨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

Supplementary figure 16

For Canadian scholars, the reality is bleak .
Ottawa is dangling money for American researchers, but what about our own? #academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky