Ben Saunders

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

New preprint 🚨🧠🔬
@sophiepeterson.bsky.social + @margole.bsky.social dissect the roles of 2 major OFC subcortical pathways in context-dependent reward prediction.
TLDR:
OFC→CDS: critical for hierarchical gating of predictions.
OFC→MDT: more modest role, possibly limiting non-hierarchical predictions

Orbitofrontal circuits for context-gated reward predictions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.05.709962v1

kill the imposter syndrome in you head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they're also using chat gpt to do it

Anyways.

So rad

Nancy Youssef, ..guil @ X.com @nancyayoussef The preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day, a congressional official told me. 12:20 PM • 3/4/26 • 44K Views

Preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 BILLION a day. So far.

Slow Release Of Federal Science Funds Holds Up Research Some money allocated for scientific research has been restored to the federal budget, but the White House OMB has been slow to release it.

This is why simply passing a budget that isn't a 37% cut is not sufficient. This is why "the extent to which funding was restored" cannot be the measure of success.

www.sciencefriday.com/segments/slo...

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/...

A neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway for reformatting aversive memories during recall Tan et al. identify a neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway in rats that updates aversive memories when they are recalled. Noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus triggers synapse-to-nuclear tra...

Excited to share our new paper:
We uncover a locus coeruleus→amygdala circuit linking β-adrenergic signaling to transcription regulation in defined amygdala cells during memory reconsolidation—+ stress or elevated noradrenergic signaling at recall can strengthen memory.
www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

Ok, thanks

Yeah I guess that’s what people are concerned about. Not that never before has a well scored grant not been funded.

Brutal

Bernie Sander’s 2028 litmus test would strangle America’s golden goose

Surprise! The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is against my 5% billionaire wealth tax. I wonder why?

If enacted, Bezos would owe $12 billion in taxes, and an average family of 4 would receive a $12,000 direct payment.

Poor Jeff would be left with just $224 billion to survive.

Is there a report on ignoring study sections for funding decisions so far?

UAB is recruiting neuroscience faculty at two different levels - come join our vibrant neuroscience community!

The US is broadly a country that likes to invest in science. Even among Republicans this is true. But we are governed by an administration that is opposed to science, and is using procedural tools to limit spending and increase political control over the process.

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. 🧵👇

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?

Great paper congrats y'all!

Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper 📃🚨

Out today, Melissa Malvaez, Nick Griffin, Andrea Suarez & team discovered that dopamine can enable reward predictions to shape how we pursue reward.

Surprisingly, we find that dopamine can constrain instrumental reward seeking.

www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8...

🧵👇🏻

America needs a Surgeon General who follows the science, not trending conspiracies and pseudoscience. Tell your Senator to vote against Casey Means as our nation’s doctor!

Frontiers | Regional heterogeneity of striatal cholinergic interneurons: setting the stage for diverse behavioral repertoires Cholinergic interneurons (ChIs) constitute only a small fraction of striatal neurons, yet their dense axonal arborizations and widespread acetylcholine relea...

As promised at the #GRC Basal Ganglia, here is our recent review on striatal cholinergic heterogeneity. I hope people find it useful and inspiring.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/cel...

Legendary

One of the greatest bollard walks in history.
#WorldBollardAssociation

This is more than 10.5 NIH budgets.

Absolutely outrageous when they gutted NSF and destroyed USAID.

For what?

Awesome additions!!!

I have, just over a month out

New Special Issue out in #AddictionNeuroscience edited by @talialerner.bsky.social on dopamine circuitry and heterogeneity in addiction with articles by @daylab.bsky.social, Tom Hnasko, @mtorregrossa1.bsky.social, and Awatramani Rajeshwar check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

@niallw.bsky.social pointed out an error in a preprint of ours that contained a fabricated citation. The cause: we used Claude to fix an arxiv upload / compile error. It decided the best way to do that was to remove an actual citation and replace it with a fabricated one.

bsky.app/profile/ben....