Max Turner

Max Turner

@mhturner.bsky.social

Neurobiologist & Drosophilist

87 Followers 48 Following 2 Posts Joined Oct 2023
1 month ago

I’m very excited to announce that a part of my PhD thesis project is now a preprint! In this paper, we show how spontaneous activity prior to visual experience shapes neural circuits in the retina. (1/11)

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1 month ago

Stopping ICE from terrorizing cities, kidnapping children, and murdering people on the streets is the most important priority. Even if it requires a shutdown or cuts to HHS funding.

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2 months ago

I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!

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2 months ago

worthless

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2 months ago
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We Are the Bad Guys The swaggering threat to global stability is us.

We are the world's bad guys.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/we-are-the...

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3 months ago
Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️

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5 months ago
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Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

We're very proud to be releasing the complete male fly CNS connectome!

It's the product of a huge team effort here at Janelia in partnership with the Cambridge Fly Connectomics group (@jefferis.bsky.social and colleagues), plus invaluable collaborators.

More soon...
www.janelia.org/project-team...

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5 months ago
Agrawal lab logo. A fly in the UBC colors, with dots framing its body.

The Agrawal lab is moving! This January we will be setting up shop at #UBC in Vancouver, in the department of #Zoology! We are actively recruiting at all levels, especially masters and PhD students. These position are #funded! Please send anyone interested my way!

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7 months ago
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Public access to the first fly connectome that spans the whole CNS - BANC!: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc

Different from prior connectomes - it is brain + cord (think spinal cord)

We use it to ‘embody’ the system and find it resembles ‘subsumption architecture’ doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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8 months ago
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Fear and loathing on study section: Reviewing grant proposals while the system is burning As grants are canceled, delayed and subject to general uncertainty, participating in study sections can feel futile. But it’s more important than ever.

i wrote an essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social about what it feels like to serve on an NIH grant review panel (study section) right now

www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...

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8 months ago

Congratulations!

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9 months ago

Wow!

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9 months ago

An American citizen and Los Angeles native, @seiucalifornia @seiuusww President David Huerta was injured and detained when ICE terrorized a working neighborhood. We demand his immediate release!

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11 months ago
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FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in Drosophila A machine learning platform identifies and characterizes the dynamics of microbehaviors during fly sleep.

I am proud to share that our work of 4+ years has finally been published. We wondered if there are distinct behaviors that mark sleep in 🪰, where sleep has been defined as prolonged immobility.
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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11 months ago
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They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don't Stop Them The government is going to destroy unions if we don't fight now.

The worst thing the federal government has done to unions in my lifetime happened last night. The second worst thing was three weeks ago.

The labor movement will either protect ourselves right now or be smashed. That's all there is to it.

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/they-are-g...

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11 months ago
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Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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11 months ago
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Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.

Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system

Looking forward to reading this!
@michaelreiser.bsky.social

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

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11 months ago
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Bubble Trouble An AI bubble threatens Silicon Valley, and all of us.

Some astonishing numbers in here:
-OpenAI loses $2 for every $1 it makes
-OpenAI projects annual losses of $14 billion by 2026
-To break even OpenAI needs to increase revenue 25x in just 5 years
-33% of VC portfolios are committed to AI
-5 AI-heavy stocks account for 29% of the S&P 500's value

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11 months ago
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Opinion | Universities Gave Us the iPhone, the Jet Engine and Gatorade. We’re Tossing That Away. (Gift Article) The postwar compact on research that powered America’s economic and military dominance is under threat.

Columbia’s Capitulation Will Hurt Us All

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/o...

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1 year ago
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🚨 New paper alert! 🚨
We’ve just launched openretina, an open-source framework for collaborative retina modeling across datasets and species.
A 🧵👇 (1/9)

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1 year ago
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Strike, or Else As Trump tosses out the TSA union contract, everything is on the line.

What the Trump administration is doing to unions right now is worse than what Reagan did to PATCO, and if TSA workers allow their union contract to be tossed out without striking, public sector union power in America will soon be decimated.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/strike-or-...

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1 year ago
Columbia’s mission is to teach, create, and advance knowledge. For over 270 years, that mission has been grounded in an enduring and essential commitment to freedom of expression, open inquiry, and generous, respectful debate.

Today, we were notified of federal action from Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Education (ED), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) cancelling $400 million in federal funding to the University. The federal agencies cite “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care.

But let me be very clear: Columbia is taking the government’s action very seriously. I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns. To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus. Post image Post image

Email from Columbia President Armstrong makes clear that admin still has no idea what it’s dealing with. No amount of “serious action to combat antisemitism” (read: punish Palestine activists) will satisfy the Nazis. They see universities as an enemy institution to crush underfoot.

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