Will Giardino

Here are the Alcohol GRC awardees-Congrats!

This should work drive.google.com/file/d/1Ut00...

RFK Jr. swims in DC's Rock Creek with grandkids, despite water quality warnings The photos show the 71-year-old fully submerged in the creek.

The sad thing is.. he actually might do that ! katv.com/news/nation-...

definitely an optic fiber track, not to be confused with a white matter axonal fiber tract

I’m so sorry for your loss, Brian. Very saddened to hear this. Natalia was such a positive force in the field.

New preprint from the lab! We identified Vipr2-expressing BNST neurons as a distinct subpopulation of the oval nucleus that promotes feeding, is activated by food restriction, is non-overlapping with appetite-suppressing PKC delta neurons, and projects to PSTN & PVN hypothalamic feeding centers.

A Distinct Subpopulation of Extended Amygdala Neurons Drives Food Intake https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.07.685941v1

Excited to share new research from my lab in final published form! By deleting hypocretin (orexin) receptors from CRF neurons, we uncovered neuropeptide mechanisms linking alcohol drinking and negative emotional hyperarousal through BNST neuronal excitability.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Postdoctoral Research Position University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

🚨 Please RT!
We’re recruiting a motivated postdoc to dissect the neurocircuits of affective pain.
Expertise in behavioral models of pain/SUDs, stereotaxy, microscopy, opto/chemogenetics, or fiber photometry encouraged.
Apply 👉 recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF10647

#Neuroscience #Postdoc

Activity of corticotropin-releasing factor neurons in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis reduces anxiety-potentiated startle in female rats in an estrous phase-dependent manner The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders is higher in women than men. The severity of hallmark symptoms including hypervigilance and fear reactivity to unpredictab...

Our work on mind-boggling CRF-BNST neurons is out! 🥳
🔹Sex & estrous matter: CRF neurons⬇️anxious arousal (yup) after unpredictable fear in diestrus👧not👦
🔹👧show⬆️contextual fear, independent of CRF/estrous
✨Anxiety-potentiated startle🟰👍 readout in🚶‍♀️&🐀
www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...

Congrats Sam!!

Congrats!

congratulations!

Go on the market sooner than later- it can also be a wave (an unexpectedly dynamic wave) that you may end up riding for longer than you think..

Excited to share our new preprint!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Divergent modulation of dopaminergic neurons by hypocretin/orexin receptors-1 and -2 shapes dopaminergic cell activity and socio-emotional behavior
Tzanoulinou et al

Supported by @snsf.ch

thank you Brian! hope the results were magical as well

How did you resolve it? Asking for my postdoc

We’re excited to share our new preprint from the lab! PhD student @armorningstar.bsky.social demonstrated how Early Life Stress shapes sex-specific vulnerability to alcohol behavioral sensitivity, alcohol drinking, and alcohol's effects on social behaviors in mice.

Early life stress modulates behavioral sensitivity to alcohol and promotes escalation of alcohol drinking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.27.661986v1

Effects of acute alcohol withdrawal on nest building in mice selectively bred for alcohol withdrawal severity - PubMed Nest building has been used to assess thermoregulatory behavior and positive motivational states in mice. There are known genetic influences on ethanol withdrawal severity as well as individual/thermo...

yep, another vote for nest-building. It's even sensitive to alcohol withdrawal... pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27503811/

Very sad news, I'm so sorry for your losses, Jessica.

Honored to give a seminar at NIH/NIDA IRP in Baltimore this week and learn about the incredible research being done there by so many brilliant, diverse people to advance neuroscience and addiction treatment. Immense respect for all the NIH scientists & staff, working under such unfair circumstances

Developing a reverse translational model of low-intensity rTMS in alcohol use disorder: The influence of theta burst stimulation protocols on binge alcohol drinking in mice Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is a promising treatment tool for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). A challenge facing the field is that…

new paper out in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: a ‘reverse translational‘ model of TMS for Alcohol Use Disorder — we know so little about which TMS parameters will be best to reduce drinking — so, why not leverage mice to test things out rapidly & cheaply? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thrilled to contribute to this collaboration with the McNerney lab, @danmccalley.bsky.social, Claudia Padula, and team - where we used distinct TMS neuromodulation protocols to observe sex-specific impacts on binge alcohol drinking in mice! #TranscranialMagneticStimulation

Great capture! Hard to tell..

congratulations!!

Hadn’t seen this yet! Very cool work

Midbrain ghrelin receptor signalling regulates binge drinking in a sex specific manner - Nature Communications Binge drinking is a rising issue in women, yet the underlying neurobiology remains underexplored. Here authors show the Edinger-Westphal (EWcp) peptidergic neurons as a critical regulator of binge dri...

Check out our new paper lead by superstars Amy Pearl and Xavier Maddern in @naturecomms.bsky.social . We show a sex specific role for ghrelin signalling in the Edinger Westphal nucleus driving binge drinking. Thanks to all those involved www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Incredibly sad to hear. Me and so many others wouldn’t be in this field at all if it weren’t for AA-4