Jimmy Dooley

They did more than compare these two species - they crossed them!

Super super cool sounding paper that must've been an unimaginable amount of work

I've got to say this is one of the COOLEST sounding papers I've seen in over a year! I skimmed the figures last night and can't wait for a proper read through soon

What an amazingly cool project!

I think the fact that this post is resonating so strongly says something very important about present-day academia.

Just had a DM convo with Mike about it - we've both had people tell us "your postdoc is your best stage in academia" - an idea we agree with (but wish wasn't the case...)

An argument always worth repeating.

@marksblumberg.bsky.social

I read this entire thread in your voice.

guess they're pulling out everything to get to 100% of spending

If you are funded by NIMH and only received 85% of your budget this year (like we did), check era commons to see if you have a new award notice. We just got the remaining 15% today.

Two years of (non-federal!) funding for the lab! Should be able to fund science and (nearly) all salaries in that time. I guess people weren't lying - you need at least 10 rejections before the funding gods give you a win.

Done!

Look what just moved to the top of our labs summer journal club reading list.

Can't wait to take a look! So far, gorgeous visuals!

We argue that instead of focusing on when in development "REM sleep" can be unambiguously called REM sleep, we should focus on how these REM sleep features map onto REM sleep functions. Understanding the relationships of features to functions is a key part of the next decade of sleep science.

Basically, REM sleep (as it's defined in adults) has a bunch of components, or features, that all develop at their own rate. Gao et al.'s recent publication (Ontogenetic development of PGO waves during paradoxical sleep in kittens) shows us that PGO waves are the last of these features to show up

Building the dream: uncovering the development of REM sleep’s features Imagine a factory that builds cars. Raw materials come in one end, the individual components are progressively assembled, and complete cars come out the ot

An editorial from the lab was published today about a recent paper published in the journal Sleep that characterizes the development of PGO waves. It's short, so if you have ~5 minutes, go ahead and click through. Still, a quick summary in the 🧵 that follows.

academic.oup.com/sleep/articl...

Part of me thinks a piece of the problem is data analysis is so (relatively) easy now

I know some of this is survivor bias but I'm amazed at the depth of the theory (given the limited data) in the 60s and 70s classics

If analysis was still done by hand we'd think a lot more deeply before analyzing

Sky's are likely turning colors tonight. If you're in the Midwest, you should have cloudless sky's tonight - take a look at 10-11pm. And even if you can't see anything, point your phone to the northern skies, just in case

There's a very decent case to be made for no AI overviews for medical searches.

Someone is going to search for this and panic...

If you rely on Federal funding, read this. And read it again next week, when it's updated to reflect today's budget requests

Just pre-ordered! So glad you did an audiobook. Otherwise with a 16 month old at home I don't stand a chance

To recap:

RN neurons are excited by some movements, inhibited by others
Their responses are kinematically precise
M1 shows no directional tuning at P24

So in P24 rats:
Motor cortex? Still learning
Red nucleus? Still doing

M1 isn’t motor yet, but it’s close.
What happens after P24? Stay tuned...

RN neurons showed way more variability in their wake responses than M1 neurons.

So we asked: Which neurons encode movement trajectory?

Answer: RN wins again.

“Tuned” M1 neurons only care about how big the movement was. But RN neurons? Nearly all the tuned ones cared about both size and direction.

We tracked limb trajectories and matched them to neural spikes from both M1 and RN in P24 rats. The results?

RN neurons weren’t just responsive. They were selective.

Take one RN neuron: Some wake movements (bilateral facial grooming) made it fire like crazy. Others suppressed it.

What about M1?

In late January, I said we were "still exploring" a cool thing we found in RN.

Well, we're back, and we've got movement kinematics (thanks to ‪@deeplabcut.bsky.social‬)!

(You can find all the details in our updated bioRxiv paper, linked below)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Another paper showing that circuits are never as straightforward as we'd assume...

From the abstract:
"The data suggest Purkinje cell spike activity changes cannot accurately predict nuclei cell changes"

If it can't be straightforward, at least it's endlessly fascinating.

I think i saw someone else post this same idea a little while ago...

A huge majority of Americans (77%) oppose the cuts to medical research that the current administration has made.

(Source: Wash. Post/ABC/Ipsos poll)

I've had 3 times I've done an analysis that gave me goosebumps - and I go to lab every day for the 4th.

Excited to see what's coming!

If we get a few more papers like this, saying "we pay too much attention to cortex" is going to stop being a hot take...

I think this is an important message (and an underappreciated one).

It's hard to do, but ignoring the framing (that this is a reduction in spending) ignores the larger point that all of the "savings" are being offset by other increases.

How very little we know about brain activity throughout infancy/early development, and how critical that early activity is for.... well... damn near everything in adolescence and adulthood.

I should also say, if you have someone in lab willing to put in the time, power-point based "the price is right" and safety jeopardy are a great way to cover otherwise boring material