Andrew Lutas

High-fat food reinforces risk taking by suppressing defensive neurons This study by de Araujo Salgado and Krashes reveals how high-fat diets suppress defensive neural circuits, driving riskier foraging in the presence of predation. The findings highlight how high-fat fo...

A high #fat #diet increases risk taking and suppresses escape neurons
in🐁🐁🐁
#neuroscience

www.cell.com/current-biol...

To study how animals understand the physical world (and the rules that govern its dynamics), @jinyao-y.bsky.social trains rats to play fetch with robots 🐀🤖🎾

To learn more, come to our poster Tuesday morning!
[Board W11] Rats learn and use intuitive physics knowledge to solve fetch tasks.
#SfN2025

Sigh. NIH normally sends several hundred scientists to the SFN annual meeting to learn, exchange info, come up with new ideas, and advance science. (The exchange of ideas is the very core of the scientific enterprise.)

This year, no one from NIH will attend due to the gov't implosion.

Abstract submissions are now OPEN for the Dopamine 2026 meeting!

Share your latest discoveries and join the global dopamine community in advancing the science of motivation, movement, and reward.

Submit here: dopaminesociety.org/abstracts/

#Dopamine2026

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience
Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

Ed Kravitz passed away yesterday.
He was a remarkable scientist and mentor- brilliant, curious, creative, and kind. I am grateful to have learned from him. His legacy will endure through his science and through the many people he inspired.

We will miss you, Ed.

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways.

I could write a whole article about this, but as one example:

“To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…”
No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

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

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

WE ARE... hiring!

Penn State Biology & the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences is recruiting a tenure track or tenured neurobiologist (Assistant or Associate Professor rank), and the committee is open to a broad scope of scientific questions.

psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

David Baltimore, Nobel-Winning Molecular Biologist, Dies at 87

Co-discoverer of reverse transcriptase at 32, Nobel Prize at 37, played a key role at the 1975 Asilomar comference.

#NeuroJobs

Emotion research has a communication conundrum In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight.

These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them.

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Everything everywhere all at once: Decision-making signals engage entire brain The findings, gleaned from the most comprehensive map yet of brain activity during decision-making in mice, show that the process is even more distributed than previously thought.

The mouse brain lights up during decision making, showing widespread activity across both predictable as well as unexpected areas.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/decision-mak...

Statistics

xkcd.com/2400/

Assistant Professor - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Neuroscience - Department of Neuroscience University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

Come join our new Department of Neuroscience @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05041

A. James Hudspeth, neuroscientist who unlocked secrets of hearing, has died - News A. James Hudspeth, a Rockefeller neuroscientist who discovered how sound waves are converted into electrical signals in the ear's cochlea, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. A pioneering scientist and dedicated mentor, he was the university's F.M. ...

We are deeply saddened to share that our friend and colleague Jim Hudspeth passed away on Saturday. We will remember and continue to be inspired by Jim’s integrity, his humility, and his unwavering commitment to discovery.

Semaglutide drives weight loss through cAMP-dependent mechanisms in GLP1R-expressing hindbrain neurons Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP1R) agonists like semaglutide drive weight loss through the brain, but insights into their intracellular signaling mechanisms are lacking. Although canonically GLP...

Rigorous dissection of the signaling mechanisms and circuits underlying GLP1R agonist weight loss effects mice. Huge achievement by Claire Gao and team @mikekrashes.bsky.social. Potential avenues for harnessing complexity of signaling to create novel treatments. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why would anyone want to be a scientist? It is difficult to fathom why anyone intelligent enough to be a scientist would actually choose to be one. Doing good science requires the utmost exertion of body, mind and spirit, yet is consistently...

"why [would] anyone intelligent enough to be a scientist choose to be one [given] the unfavorable risk-to-reward ratio "?

One of the most intelligent people you could meet offers some answers: having ideas, watching them develop, and sharing them journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Serotonin shapes the temporal window for associative fear learning Fear learning is a critical adaptive mechanism that enables the association of an environmental cue (the conditioned stimulus, CS) with a potential threat (the unconditioned stimulus, US), even when t...

1/ Excited to share a new preprint!
Our latest study uncovers how serotonin precisely controls the “time window” for fear learning, ensuring that our brains link cues (CS) & threats (US) only when it’s adaptive.
#Neuroscience #FearLearning
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are looking for a postdoc fellow to join the group. Focus on studying feeding-relevant slow dynamics in the brain using invivo microscopy approaches. Please share with anyone interested. Thank you. www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-inf...

"The peril of preconceived narratives" in @cp-cellmetabolism.bsky.social with @vdarcey.bsky.social in response to the fall out from our recent study that failed to show significant brain dopamine responses to UPF milkshakes similar to highly addictive drugs. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lYiE5WXUl...

The Neuroscience Dept at American University is hiring for a tenure-track position at the Assistant level with expertise in Computational Neuroscience. Apply by Sep 15:
american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-...
#FacultyJobs #AcademicJob #Neuroscience #CompNeuro #AI #ComputationalPsychiatry

Sinner is looking strong. Entertaining Wimbledon final so far

3 years ago today was my last day at Beth Israel.

Sunday morning tennis before it gets unbearably hot.

This study would not be possible without the team effort from Danielle Lafferty, Jeremiah Isaac, Joelyz Wolcott, Amy Phan, and Lily Reck and the support of the NIH NIDDK intramural research program.

Coronal section of mouse pons showing central amygdala axons in the parabrachial and supratrigeminal areas. It also show the optic fiber implants above these axons.

Instead of just overriding satiety, this pathway commands a consummatory mode—mice eat pellets, lick air, whatever’s available—suppressing food-seeking in favor of ingestion. We think this is likely mediated by inhibition in the supratrigeminal region and disinhibition of orofacial motor neurons.

First preprint from our lab: How might the brain override fullness signals to allow feeding after you’re full?

We set out to test how central amygdala inhibitory neurons gate satiation/satiety signals in the pons.

Slow-Timescale Regulation of Dopamine Release and Mating Drive over Days The rise and fall of motivational states may take place over timescales as long as many days. We used mouse mating behavior to model how the brain orchestrates slow-timescale changes in motivation. Ma...

I am excited to share our preprint on how hypothalamic dopamine neurons govern slow changes in motivation over days! Below are our findings:

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

Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits a nonassociative emotional salience signal https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.654323v1