Cherish Ardinger, PhD

NIH Office of Extramural Research announcements of feedback sessions for NIH-wide strategic plan for March 16 and April 8.

IMPORTANT---IMPORTANT---IMPORTANT

NIH is seeking input for the NIH-wide Strategic Plan. Open to everyone but Registration is Required!

Your chance to listen and get your 2 or more cents in.

grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Back in the lab and reflecting on all of the amazing science at last week’s Alcohol and the Nervous System GRS and GRC! So excited to co-chair the 2028 GRS with @katiegbry.bsky.social!

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain No two neurons are the same, yet models often treat neural populations as pools of identical and interchangeable elements. Here, Dahmen et al. highlight recent theoretical advances that reveal the imp...

At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

How do we balance external attention to the outside world and internal attention to our thoughts & memories?

We review evidence that external and internal attention can compete, unfold concurrently, or cooperate!

Loved working on this with @samversc.bsky.social & @tobiasegner.bsky.social!

Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

N.I.H. Director Will Temporarily Run C.D.C. in Leadership Shake-Up

N.I.H. Director Will Temporarily Run C.D.C.: Looks like they do not want anyone running the CDC. Even if Dr. Bhattacharya had the administrative experience to help an agency in crisis (no) he has a full time job: he's director of NIH. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/u... via @sherylnyt.bsky.social

Calling all PFC and PFC-adjacent neuroscientists--registration for the GRC Frontal Cortex - "Frontal Cortex in Function, Dysfunction, & Therapies" is open! Check out the amazing lineup of speakers for this year's program, feat. keynotes by Geoff Schoenbaum & Helen Mayberg
www.grc.org/frontal-cort...

Wow AI is so amazing we should use it for all our scientific diagrams

Please share: I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab in Oslo!

For this project, we will investigate the role of striatal interneurons during action selection, using a combination of behavior, in vivo voltage imaging, and slice ephys.

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

#NeuroJobs #NeuroSkyence

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...

Come be my post doc colleague at Rutgers! See great opportunity to check it out:

I am SO incredibly excited to announce the launch of a global list of Inspiring Black Scientists. You can use this list to nominate and connect with researchers. Please share and join us in highlighting these outstanding scientists for #BlackHistoryMonth and beyond!

www.wiley.com/en-us/resear...

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

I took data like this informally in a notebook at weekly seminars in the Caltech SeismoLab for 2 years during my PhD.

I tracked if interruptions were questions or comments by whether they had a question word (how, what...) in them. Women were statistically significantly more likely to get comments.

Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocytes Turn Out To Be in Charge | Quanta Magazine New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial la...

Astrocytes have complex and varied shapes, and sometimes tendrils, that can reach millions of synapses, the junctions where neurons exchange molecular signals. This anatomical arrangement perfectly positions astrocytes to affect information flow.

www.quantamagazine.org/once-thought...

A Common Iba1 Antibody Labels Vasopressin Neurons in Mice There are a wide variety of commercially available antibodies for labeling microglial cells based on different protein targets, as well as antibodies for the same protein target made in different spec...

PSA for all #microglia lovers: certain Iba1 antibodies (see our new paper below for details) label not only microglia, but also vasopressin neurons, at least in mice. Brain region and species matter. A friendly reminder to always validate your antibodies! 🔬

www.eneuro.org/content/13/2...

Working with rats, & not happy w MRI based brain atlases from adult males? We've got you! High resolution (2photon), 3D atlases (female rats) are now available in @brainglobe.info. Plz start using these atlases & let us know your feedback for the official release!
brainglobe.info/blog/swc-fem...

🐭🧠

In the emotional rollercoaster that was the last year, writing up this manuscript with @ewhizabeth.bsky.social has been a bright spot. I'm thrilled to share the bulk of my postdoctoral work in this preprint.

If you are a PhD student or post-doc who wants to learn everything about #electrophysiology or #imaging, consider registering to the Paris Spring school in optical imaging and electrophysiology, that will take place in the center of Paris 11-23 May 2026. Application deadline Feb 2nd
parisneuro.ovh

Due to the winter storms the RSA Executive Committee has EXTENDED Submissions and ALL Award Nominations and Applications to February 4th at 11:59 pm ET.
🔗https://bit.ly/4qOwGwv

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

Wow. This is devastating.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Don't forget: Science still matters.

Indiana University Cancels MLK Celebration Dinner Indiana University in Indianapolis canceled a dinner in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. hosted annually in January by the Black Student Union, Mirror Indy reported.

America has tried to be a real multiracial democracy for just over 60 years and that attempt has been contested at every step along the way.

The dinner has been held every year, without fail, since 1969.

www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

As we head into the new year, a reminder that if you're recruiting or looking for a job in Neuroscience (or adjacent) add #NeuroJobs to your post to appear on the NeuroJobs feed.

bsky.app/profile/did:...

#NeuroSkyence

I am recruiting a Postdoc to join my lab at UMN. If you or someone you know is interested in studying individual differences in brain and cognitive aging, check out the listing and my website in my bio and apply!

I appreciate RTs to help get the word out as well :)

Extremely excited & proud to share our new preprint - we provide for the first time a single cell map of the mouse brain across sex, the estrous cycle, and peripartum! Data are 🔥 👇

"Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions"

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Neural representations of visual memory in inferotemporal cortex reveal a generalizable framework for translating between spikes and field potentials Translating neurophysiological findings requires understanding the relationship between common measures of brain activity in animals (spiking activity) and humans (local field potentials, LFP). Prior ...

🚨 New preprint!

Why do some insights from spikes translate to field potentials while others don't? In this paper we compare visual memory representations in spikes and LFPs to propose a general framework that answers this question.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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An attack on public health. A repudiation of science.