Brian Wandell

In the past year and a half, we have been intensively protesting and fighting the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the war, secure the release of all hostages, and prevent the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Until now, our protests have primarily been focused internally.

Reading papers from 100 years ago is so much better.

Here is a cartoon for the modern age. Bullet to Text to Bullet

Abundance by Klein and Thompson

“The market cannot … distinguish between the riches that flow from burning coal and the wealth … created by bettering battery storage. … The market will not … fund the risky technologies whose payoff is social rather than economic. Government must.”

NSF and NIH.

bsky.app/profile/newr...

You know Trump-Vance are wrong. Another case of eating your pets nonsense.

Framing it as a question is doing harm. Fix your headline.

Sorry. Haven’t been here in a while. Minor health issues.

I am interested to see your notebook.

We Sign On to Uphold the Paris Agreement! The Paris Agreement represents a global promise by governments to fulfill their moral obligation by restoring and preserving our most foundational right—the right to a livable planet. As the leader of...

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: sign.moveon.org/petitions/we...

Everybody would like the war to stop and the hostages be returned. And Hamas to leave.

These two have failed to get it done after saying they would. Repeatedly.

1K people in Palo Alto at the Hands Off rally. Signs, cars passing by waving in support.

The image is a heatmap titled "Measles," showing measles cases across U.S. states from 1928 to 2003. States listed on the y-axis include Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The x-axis spans years from 1928 to 2003. A vertical line marks the introduction of the measles vaccine around 1963. The color scale at the bottom ranges from blue (0 cases) to red (4,000+ cases), with shades of green, yellow, and orange indicating intermediate values (1,000, 2,000, 3,000 cases). Before 1963, many states show frequent high case numbers (yellow to red), while after 1963, cases drop significantly, with mostly blue indicating near-zero cases.

And yet Joe Rogan puts guests on who say "Vaccines aren't actually responsible for the reduction in infectious diseases.”

Witkoff struggled to name the five regions of Ukraine that are either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces. He mentioned "the so-called four regions. Furthermore, his statements echo Russian propaganda. So, not great.

Also, 3 long range rockets from Gaza to Tel Aviv yesterday.

Understanding learning at 2 timescales (e.g., fast neuron-neuron and slower neuron-glia-neuron) seems important. We learn much over long time periods.

One learning mechanism, synaptic strength, might be possible. But ould mechanisms at 2 timescales have some value?

Right. But the hippocampus is unusual in many ways.

Modeling these types of circuits, even with a simplified basic model, seems like a real need. Something beyond the single scalar neural network.

If differentiable, it could immediately be a target to explore in applications.

Thanks. Very helpful. I see your point and am grateful for the link.

These are the doubts, in this case about gliotransmitters.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliotra...

The authors make a point I find quite interesting. The energy consumption is very different in these regions. Hence the molecular signaling and neural-glial circuitry are also likely to be very different.

If so, the principle of a canonical cortical circuit is unlikely. #neuroskyence

Thanks. Should I take your comment as suggesting that current measurements are not yet convincing to the cellular signals community? I am reading reviews about the tripartite synapse (e.g., A conceptual framework for astrocyte function, Nat. Neuro) and many related. Are there doubts?

In sensorimotor neuroscience, it is a given that one needs to know the input and/or output to understand the neural signals.

A good principle, but harder to operationalize in cognitive and affective neuroscience. Surely worth the effort, IMHO.

A question for cellular neuroscientists.

In my teaching, I include the tripartite synapse. Has research evolved to the point where I should lead with the concept?

And what about transmission from the Nodes to glia in the white matter? Fully established or speculative? #neuroskyence

GitHub - cvnlab/GLMsingle: A toolbox for accurate single-trial estimates in fMRI time-series data A toolbox for accurate single-trial estimates in fMRI time-series data - cvnlab/GLMsingle

Another tool for noise correction has been developed by Kendrick Kay. Largely for task-based fMRI. Originally, GLMDenoise and now extended to GLMSingle. Kendrick used to maintain a table comparing different methods, but I haven't seen that lately.
github.com/cvnlab/GLMsi...

A Decade of Cuts in a Matter of Days The Trump administration’s rapid terminations of NIH grants is its most aggressive attempt yet to control American science.

Excellent coverage of NIH activities. The reporting reveals no principles of the cuts, just buzzword thinking and directed animus.
#neuroskyence
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Republicans have hated universities for years. Anti-war protests gave them a reason to punish them. The White House is casting elite universities as hotbeds of hate as the diploma divide reaches an all-time high.

The administration is stopping federal funding of basic research in health, climate, and science. Why? Stopping antisemitism is not the goal. Cutting waste is not the goal. It is a culture war. Vance in a 2021 speech, "The Universities are the Enemy".

www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

Standing up for Science: Palo Alto edition

“Science, to succeed, needs free speech,” Bhattacharya told the committee during the hearing (the Atlantic)." But the article shows his papers and the GB Declaration are widely known, just not widely accepted.

So, he means: 'Agree with me, or you're silencing science.' Worrisome.

NIH reels with fear, uncertainty about future of scientific research The Trump administration’s orders have created more turmoil and damage at the National Institutes of Health than was previously known.

This type of sentence is appearing in many WaPo and NYT stories. “Memoli and the White House did not respond to questions for this story.”

www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

Strategic corruption reserve President Trump is hawking a memecoin and collecting most of the revenue from the sale of a separate coin from a company called World Liberty Financial.

The grift and waste. DOGE could save taxpayers more here than anything they have done.

Strategic corruption reserve
popular.info/p/strategic-...

It was odd that he kept referring to them as raw earth minerals rather than rare earth minerals. Small point, but it was weird.

Stop Trump’s cuts to cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s research! As the world’s largest funder of cancer research, NIH research grants have made it possible to extend countless lives and notably reduce cancer development and death. We can also thank NIH-funded rese...

Sometimes the best we can, at any moment, is sign a petition. Here is one.

sign.moveon.org/petitions/st...

Hitler wanted to kill me because I'm Jewish. Putin wants to kill me because I'm Ukrainian Editor’s Note: The following is a translated transcript of the address delivered by Roman Shvartsman, the chairman of the Odesa Association of Jews and a Holocaust survivor, at the Yalta European Stra...

“Never again” demands action — Ukraine is fighting for all of us, writes Odesa Association of Jews Chairman Roman Shvartsman in his op-ed.

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives tells @gregsargent.bsky.social. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy."