Ben S. Huang

News from central Jersey: I'm running to represent New Jersey's 12th Congressional District.

By entering the fray, I hope to bring ideas of repairing our frayed republic. Not only to defend it in 2026, but to build something stronger, for generations to come!

samwang.substack.com/p/entering-t...

Neuroscientists around the world use Brain Map to accelerate their research.

🧠📈 Explore the massive, free library of datasets, protocols, computational tools, and more at portal.brain-map.org

#OpenScienceWeek

Should neuroscientists ‘vibe code’? Researchers are developing software entirely through natural language conversations with advanced large language models. The trend is transforming how research gets done—but it also presents new…

An in-depth perspective piece discussing the transformative impact of AI coding tools in neuroscience research, featuring my work on SpikeAgent and AI interfaces for neural data analysis. @zuwan-lin.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...

LLM breakdown 1/6: Tokenization (words to integers) Large language models can't read; instead, they are given numbers that come from text.

Dear bluesky neuroscientists: You should pay attention to the field of LLM mechanistic interpretability.

Not because LLMs are like real brains (they are absolutely nothing alike), but because mech interp analysis methods would be useful in neuroscience.

Start learning here: tinyurl.com/48pum4pb

Spatially distributed and regionally unbound cellular resolution brain-wide processing loops in mice Until recently, it has been possible to examine activity in the brain globally through regional averaging or locally at cellular resolution. These studies characterized regions as functionally homogen...

𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝘄𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
Spatially distributed and regionally unbound cellular resolution brain-wide processing loops in mice
𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀?
Dynamical processing winding through most brain regions.
Looks like a must read.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroskyence

blog.addgene.org "Hall of Fame" AAV Enhancers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science

Science is a team effort, and the @alleninstitute.org has put in a lot of effort! They screened thousands of AAV enhancers to find the best and brightest, culminating in the AAV Enhancer Collection at Addgene. Learn more about all of the details in our newest blog post!

7 Reasons to post a preprint 1 Accelerate science. Papers are rapidly online and freely accessible. 2 Retain control. Share your research fast when you want to 3 Get early recognition. Preprints get a DOI on posting and can be cited. 4 Advance your career. Cite your preprints in grant and job applications. 5 Improve your paper. Get feedback and update your preprint. 6 Build your community. Increase your network and collaboration. 7 Speed up journal submission. Easily transfer your manuscript to many journals. openRxiv

You're in research because you want to advance science, share your results with others, grow in your career & connect with the community.

Here are 7 reasons why posting preprints on bioRxiv & medRxiv can help you meet those goals. 💚

#OpenScience #Preprints #ScienceCommunication #bioRxiv #medRxiv

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...

flight risk

Thrilled to share our new study showing microglia prune astrocyte processes in adult brain, to regulate synaptic transmission, hypothalamic neuron activity, and salt-induced hypertension in🐀. Huge team effort - congratulations to all🥂🍾🎉

This is an airyscan confocal movie of mitochondria (white) moving around in a mouse astrocyte. Actin filaments are in orange and microtubules are in blue.

FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

VIVIT: Resolving trans-scale volumetric biological architectures via ionic glassy tissue @cellcellpress.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Stand Up for UC We must stand together to protect our students, staff, faculty and our mission.

Let’s do this www.universityofcalifornia.edu/get-involved...

Multiplexed subspaces route neural activity across brain-wide networks - Nature Communications How the brain flexibly engages different networks of regions to perform different cognitive processes remains unknown. Here, the authors show changing the geometry of a neural representation to align ...

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

The synaptic architecture of layer 5 thick tufted excitatory neurons in mouse visual cortex - Nature Neuroscience This study maps the connections of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse cortex, revealing distinct local and intercortical wiring patterns, and provides an open framework for exploring the connectiv...

New electron microscopy study in @nature.com Neuroscience finds that layer 5 ET neurons mostly connect to inhibitory cells locally, esp. those suppressing other excitatory cells, suggesting a "winner-take-all" system.

🧠📈 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A big day for preventing mitochondrial diseases from transmitting to the next generation
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Your sleep pressure is powered by your mitochondria! Sleep, energy, and ageing are all connected through mitochondrial bioenergetics in neurons. Brilliant work from Gero Miesenböck’s lab, just out in Nature @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (with Carl Sagan) : KCET : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Update 6/29/23: Ok, I am pretty sure all the episodes are now accounted for and labeled correctly.Astronomer Carl Sagan's landmark 13-part science series takes...

The complete Cosmos series by Carl Sagan is now available at the Internet Archive.

archive.org/details/Cosm...

h/t @osman@hachyderm.io for spotting this.

@archive.org #cosmology #astronomy #science

Groundbreaking Studies Recreate Human Brain Circuits in a Dish YouTube video by StarTalk

A few weeks ago, I talked to @neildegrassetyson.com on his StarTalk Radio about our efforts to understand human brain disorders with stem cell models including #assembloids. We touched on the promise of these technologies, the challenges & the mission behind the work

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEBj...

Today I learned the @amnh.org is pay-what-you-wish for NY residents, making it easy to dip in for a quick visit with my new pal Apex Stegosaurus 😍

The dynamics and geometry of choice in the premotor cortex - Nature A population code for the dynamics of choice formation in the primate premotor cortex is revealed, with diverse single-neuron tuning to a shared decision variable.

The dynamics and geometry of choice in the premotor cortex 🧠

Nature 2025
#neuroskyence

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

CryoRhodopsins: A comprehensive characterization of a group of microbial rhodopsins from cold environments Spectroscopy, structural, and functional study of microbial rhodopsins with characteristic long-living near–UV-absorbing state.

CryoRhodopsins: A comprehensive characterization of a group of microbial rhodopsins from cold environments www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Your brain learns for you even when you're not actively learning. Maybe. (in mice).

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory.

🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

Nerve-to-cancer transfer of mitochondria during cancer metastasis - Nature A study reports the development of a method to trace intercellular transfer of mitochondria, and demonstrates that cancer cells that receive mitochondria from neurons have enhanced metastatic capabilities.

Nature research paper: Nerve-to-cancer transfer of mitochondria during cancer metastasis

https://go.nature.com/46c474I

Event structure sculpts neural population dynamics in the lateral entorhinal cortex Our experience of the world is a continuous stream of events that must be segmented and organized at multiple timescales. The neural mechanisms underlying this process remain unknown. In this work, we...

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it.
In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2)

👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A large face-on galaxy in a cosmic tapestry of glittering galaxy jewels. The galaxy nearly looks like a ring surrounding a bright core. A few bright stars pepper the scene, and the background is filled with the smudges of distant galaxies of various colors against the black of space.

Holyyyyyy....I am a tired exhausted puddle on the floor. What a day for @vrubinobs.bsky.social! This observatory is incredible.

Highly, HIGHLY recommend joyscolling around Rubin's Skyviewer. I quite like this galaxy - which is your favorite? 🔭🧪

skyviewer.app

Our groundbreaking Dark Sectioning technique is now published in Nature Methods! 🎉 It supercharges existing imaging systems:
🔬 Widefield → Confocal
🔬 Single-photon → Multiphoton
🔬 2D-SIM → 3D-SIM
Now integrated in Airy PolarSIM and #FlexSIM!
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
#Microscopy #Fluorescence

Left–right-alternating theta sweeps in entorhinal–hippocampal maps of space - Nature A study in rats proposes a mechanism for how the brain maps the surrounding environment, including places it has never seen, by alternating left and right forward sweeps in successive theta cycles.

Grid cells have a geometry in time. Thanks to @azvollan.bsky.social l & @rjgardner.bsky.social for this heroic discovery. @ercresearch.bsky.social
#KiloNeurons @m-bmoser.bsky.social @kavlintnu.bsky.social @nature.com
@kavlifoundation.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...