Andrew MacAskill

Yep I have increasingly been using text to speech apps and listening to my writing on the commute - amazingly effective at catching my drivel!

Super cool paper on human hippocampus in a non spatial planning task - congrats!

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

New preprint from the lab on synapse development in the nascent neocortical hierarchy!

Using mice that label MAGUK proteins developed by Seth Grant we find key differences in the laminar maturation of association and sensory motor cortices, including delayed, cortex-wide maturation of L1 synapses.

Kinesin-1 is highly flexible and adopts an open conformation in the absence of cargo Kinesin-1 is an essential anterograde microtubule motor protein. The core kinesin motor is a homodimer of two heavy chains; N-terminal motor domains hydrolyse ATP and walk along microtubules, whilst a...

I'm a bit late with this, but awesome to see it out in the wild! A real tour de force from @dozenoaks.bsky.social @timcraggs.bsky.social An amazing example of why we need to think more about flexibility in our biological questions! www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

I really hope at the very least they let unsuccessful applications this round reapply...!

currently trying this... feeling the burn! as i picked the semester with all the grant deadlines!

Some initial reactions to the 'published on a Sunday afternoon' letter from the CEO of UKRI. 🧵

www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

i answer my phone as 'bouquet residence'... wow that is an old reference...

we already know that LMB and crick are covered - i just hope there is some left for the rest of us. i think we need to shout louder that these places dont do anything that much better than universities, despite having tons more cash

Open letter from Ian Chapman to research and innovation community UKRI Chief Executive outlines changes to UKRI investment approach, addressing concerns about research funding and the financial position of STFC.

hmm. not much reassurance here - other than the full new system will be up by the '2027 to 2028 financial period' and 'To repeat the point: levels of funding for curiosity-driven research will remain stable across this SR period and are reflective of recent years'. lets hope we can hold out...

I think we should make a bigger fuss about this. It is as existential as Trump's cuts and could not come at a worst moment for UK science, beaten by Brexit through visa costs, fewer students, and inflation.

Plus: these top-down approaches NEVER WORK. NEVER. Haven't they learned anything?

MRC instructs grant review boards to slash funding rates - Research Professional News Boards asked to recommend just three applications for funding, as BBSRC also suspends calls

Both MRC and BBSRC responsive modes now withdrawn until further notice. Existing applications unlikely to succeed (late 2025 round expecting 1-5% success rate).

Listen, I get that UKRI wants to pivot. But killing both at once is devastating.

Let's hope at least one opens by summer... #AcademicSky

anyone know how to get a job at the crick of youre an old fogey like me?! 😅

does anyone know anything more about this... im searching the ukri website for info and cant find anything other than the fact that none of the calls are open...

personally i just sit around all day drinking irn bru - dont know about anyone else

as long as they fund the crick and the LMB it totally fine, like is there any other science going on in the UK?

Is this even a question?

Heard the same.. too many apps? My last one got trashed at review so maybe I'm the problem 😅

Great opportunity here! For amazing science as well as proximity to the calanques 😅

Yup!

A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions Flexible behaviour requires transforming abstract cognitive representations, such as value preferences, into concrete motor actions. During economic decision-making, individuals evaluate options to gu...

New preprint from the lab!
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.

what do people actually put here? like number of student in the current cohort? (~100) or ever taught (ive no idea? ~infinity?)

Ill be talking about this at our symposium at SfN on Monday at 2, along with an amazing array of other ventral hippocampus investigations! See you there!

Acetylcholine reflects uncertainty during hidden state inference To act adaptively, animals must infer features of the environment that cannot be observed directly, such as which option is currently rewarding, or which context they are in. These internal estimates,...

Congrats to Ella for her new paper! She asked a really interesting question about how the brain represents uncertainty during hidden state inference, and in a lovely crossover with theoretical work, she shows that in mice, acetylcholine dynamics play a crucial role. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

come join our dept as a fellow - and join a fantastic crew of people using interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the brain across scales - from molecules to behaviour. reach out if you have any Qs!

Today is the 89th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street when the people of the East End of London halted the march of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through Stepney.

Yay! Congrats!!

In London, hate will never win.