Josien

Let’s teach neuroscientists how to be thoughtful and fair reviewers Blanco-Suárez revamped the traditional journal club by developing a course in which students peer review preprints alongside the published papers that evolved from them.

In the first essay of our new neuro-education series, @eblancosuarez.bsky.social shares how she reimagined the traditional journal club course by developing a class in which students review preprints alongside the published papers that evolved from them.

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/4reKhg8

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...

In a first, researchers film treetops glowing during thunderstorms

A glimmer sparked by electrical fields has been detected in nature for the first time.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/3OGhOlM

AI is rapidly changing how we write code — but how should we use it in research?

To kick off our 2026 “How-To” we welcome Russ Poldrack (@russpoldrack.org; Stanford University):

🧠 Better Code, Better Science

📅 22 April 2026
🔗 Register: forms.gle/WRUdGQEpd5is...

#OHBM #OpenScience

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

I wrote about the Epstein files and what they tell us about men in academia.

In a field where climbing the career ladder is only possible through a combination of luck, mentorship and networking — the files show the ways sexism and misogyny still hold women back.

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

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...

The most sensitive green and red #norepinephrine #sensors engineered to date are out in #naturemethods! Deeply grateful to all our funders and contributors who made this work possible. A true team effort. @erc.europa.eu @snsf.ch doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Astrocyte Cafe - Seminars & 2026 Conference Join the international astrocyte research community. Monthly seminars and the 2026 Pamplona Conference.

Registrations and abstract submissions for #AstrocyteCafe2026 are now OPEN!!!

Spread the word 🤩
We hope to see many of you on June 3-5 in Pamplona!!!

Thanks Kernel Science, for our brand new website and for helping organize this conference!
👇👇👇👇

astrocytecafe.com#/conference-...

A cubic millimetre of the human brain. The whole thing is about 960,000 times this size, giving you some idea of the mind-boggling complexity we have yet to encounter. But you have to start somewhere.

Deadline approaching to apply for a PhD position in Exeter 🧠. 👇 Are you interested in cell-type diversity, glia and neudevelopmental disorders?

Triggering action potentials of a single neuron by multiphoton excitation elicits visually guided behavior

"disruption of a single neuron within the ensemble temporarily paralyzes the entire ensemble and suspends behavioral responses to visual stimuli"

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

The dye in Doritos can make mice transparent (Popular Science)

Roses are red
Vice is inherent

We had a lot of fun doing these experiments! Theta sweeps in MEC and internal direction signals in parasubiculum track moving objects during pursuit and reverse during backward movement. Simultaneously recorded HD cells in other areas remain locked to head direction across behaviors:

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...

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

Super interesting work! Congratulations!🥳

‘Part of our biological toolkit’: newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in music, researchers find Brain activity suggests newborns can detect and predict patterns relating to rhythm, study says Newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in pieces of music, researchers have discovered, offering insights into a fundamental human trait. Babies in the womb begin to respond to music by about eight or nine months, as shown by changes in their heart rate and body movements, said Dr Roberta Bianco, the first author of the research who is based at the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome. Continue reading...

‘Part of our biological toolkit’: newborn babies can anticipate rhythm in music, researchers find

Top left: Experimental paradigm. The authors analyzed EEG data recorded from 49 sleeping human newborns while being exposed to monophonic piano melodies composed by J. S. Bach (real condition) and control stimuli (shuffled condition). Top right: Surprise and entropy. Surprise and entropy associated with each note’s timing (green, St and Et, respectively) and pitch (yellow, Sp and Ep, respectively) were estimated using an unsupervised statistical learning model trained on all stimuli. Dot plots display mean surprise and entropy associated with real and shuffled music, averaged across melodies (left panel), and separately for each melody (right panel). Bottom: Analytical approach. Multivariate Temporal Response Function (mTRF) models were fit to describe the forward relationship between multiple stimulus features and the EEG signal. The full TRF model (leftmost panel) included acoustic low-level features (spectral flux, acoustic onset, IOI, and IPI) and high-level features (surprise and entropy of pitch and timing).

Does our very human ability to anticipate #musical structure exist at birth? @robertabianco.bsky.social @giacomonovembre.bsky.social &co show that #newborns encode #rhythmic (but not melodic) expectations based on statistical regularities in real #music @plosbiology.org plos.io/4kqKVWg

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...

Europe loves to lecture the world about values, but morals without power is just vibes. We regulate AI we don’t build, sell handbags instead of hardware, and rely on others for our security and energy.

If we really believe in liberal democracy, we’d better be willing to back it up.

What's the relation between voltage and calcium in dendrites? Xiang Wu studied this in CA2 hippocampal pyramidal cells in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

Stop de Amerikaanse overname DigiD! Onze privé-gegevens zijn bij overname door een Amerikaans bedrijf niet veilig! Dit lijkt ons niet de veilige manier nu president Trump in Amerika aan het roer staat. Dit kan misgaan! Als de Nederland...

Tekenen, tenzij je gekke Henkie bent.

I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature

Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward.

Full text here:
rdcu.be/eY5nh

Excited to be giving the van Vreeswijk Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar this Wednesday, Jan 14, where I'll talk about "Computation Through Neuronal-Synaptic Dynamics"!
www.wwtns.online

Distinct endocannabinoids specifically signal to astrocytes or neurons in the adult mouse hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience Distinct endocannabinoids signal to either astrocytes or neurons, evoking contrasting regulation of synaptic function. This works reveals the high degree of complexity of neuronal and astrocytic signa...

Distinct endocannabinoids specifically signal to astrocytes or neurons in the adult mouse hippocampus
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ultrafast Frame-Free Imaging of Neural Activity with Event Cameras Frame-based fluorescence imaging has long defined how neural activity is optically measured. This approach requires acquiring all pixels within an image, regardless of whether they carry meaningful ne...

For decades, imaging has forced the same trade-off:
Set a frame rate → sacrifice resolution or field of view to go fast.

We break that rule

Using an EVENT-BASED CAMERA, we record neural activity without frames. Signals are captured only where and when they occur:

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

Astrocytes control oxytocin-based maternal behavior via connexin 30 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.09.698569v1

Violence, death and stolen land: people need to know the true cost of an avocado | Claudia Ignacio Álvarez Behind the west’s huge appetite for the fruit lies the dark reality of environmental destruction and Indigenous exploitation in Mexico

Violence, death and stolen land: people need to know the true cost of an avocado | Claudia Ignacio Álvarez

this is my Oy Division t-shirt

Glutamate indicators with increased sensitivity and tailored deactivation rates - Nature Methods iGluSnFR4f and iGluSnFR4s are the latest generation of genetically encoded glutamate sensors. They are advantageous for detecting rapid dynamics and large population activity, respectively, as demonst...

iGluSnFR4 is now available @natmethods.nature.com

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

Glutamate indicators with increased sensitivity and tailored deactivation rates 🧪