John Tuthill

How is the nervous system organized to coordinate behavior? To approach this massive question, a team led by @asbates.bsky.social, @jasper-tms.bsky.social, @mindyisminsu.bsky.social, & Helen Yang present the BANC: a Brain and Nerve Cord connectome.

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧪#Neuroskyence

The first full central nervous system connectome dataset of an adult fly, with the most comprehensive annotation of sensory and motor neurons to date.

A heroic effort with contributions from many groups, a product of the collaborative spirit of the Drosophila neuroscience community.

Breaking the jar: Why NeuroAI needs embodiment Brain function is inexorably shaped by the body. Embracing this will benefit computational models of real brain function and the design of ANNs.

If #NeuroAI efforts are to provide any insight into biology, they must carefully consider each animal’s body, not just tracked key points and other aggregate measures of behavior, write @bingbrunton.bsky.social and @tuthill.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/brea...

a baby wearing a black space racer shirt ALT: a baby wearing a black space racer shirt

Preprint Alert! Walking mostly feels natural and easy to us - but the neuronal control of walking is actually incredibly complex. We leveraged the fruit fly as a genetically tractable animal model with a compact nervous system to ask how the brain controls walking direction: tinyurl.com/flywalk. 🧵..

Amidst everything, the lab's first preprint is out! It's just a methods paper, no scientific results (yet!), but it's still great to see it all pulled together. We hope that these open-source behavioral tools will be useful for others!

Breaking the jar: Why NeuroAI needs embodiment Brain function is inexorably shaped by the body. Embracing this will benefit computational models of real brain function and the design of ANNs.

Embodiment is the concept that the function of the brain is inexorably shaped by the body, a lens that is often neglected when neuroscientists study specific brain subsystems, write @bingbrunton.bsky.social and @tuthill.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence #neuroai

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/brea...

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.

As grants are canceled, delayed and subject to general uncertainty, participating in study sections can feel futile. But I think it’s more important than ever, writes @tuthill.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

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

good point, "in addition to" would have been more clear.

thanks, vivek.

and tell them i sent you at buen apetito, you might get a free margarita

ill take a "mostly great" review from @drugmonkey.bsky.social any day.

some good points in this thread, which digs deeper into the relative roles of peer reviewers, program officers, and institute directors in our multi-tier system of evaluating and funding NIH grants.

thanks, gina! you once gave me a pep talk (or lecture?) about the importance of service that i often remember. i think i had asked why the hell you volunteered to serve as president of sfn.

thanks to my study section colleagues who provided helpful feedback and shared their own opinions.

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...

a peak into the crater of kulshan (mt baker). one of my favorite places.

The Drosophila proventriculus lacks stem cells but compensates for age-related cell loss via endoreplication-mediated cell growth The Drosophila proventriculus is a bulb-shaped structure at the juncture of the foregut and the midgut, which plays important roles in ingestion, peritrophic membrane synthesis, and the immune respons...

New paper: Ben Ewen-Campen, Weihang Chen, Sudhir Gopal Tattikota, Ying Liu, Yanhui Hu, Norbert Perrimon The Drosophila proventriculus lacks stem cells but compensates for age-related cell loss via endoreplication-mediated cell growth
doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

and that our friend dr. freeman will become the next David Axelrod

A plea for academic decency - Journal of Comparative Physiology A In an internet age when a viral sensationalist story gains far more traction than a nuanced and balanced discussion, we have become used to some politicians, media and web-based influencers bending th...

🚨 In our world riddled with misinformation and sensationalization, we must be cautious about handling accusations of scientific misconduct in our community. Weaponizing a public internet campaign is not the way.

📖 Read "A plea for academic decency"
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? I’m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beautiful work by my lab's first alumnus, Bin Yu, from his PhD thesis in the Komiyama lab.

I remember explaining the action potential to a wide-eyed Bin, who was at that point an electrical engineering MS student who had never taken a biology class.

illustrations of four species of Physalia alongside original drawings and iNaturalist images. Maps of positively identified iNaturalist records show the distribution of each species.

My favorite outcome was validating species descriptions from 18th century scientists who illustrated animals on their voyages. Their descriptions were often rejected as implausible – we found that in many cases they were exactly right. Yet another reason why @biodivlibrary.bsky.social is so valuable

Congrats to the 2025 cohort of McKnight Scholars!

www.mcknight.org/news-ideas/2...

Happy to present a single cell atlas of ALL glia, in BOTH sexes of an animal (in vivo validated!)! Fab work by postdoc @glia-maria.bsky.social, team, & collaboration with @manusetty.bsky.social . Find insights into glia, new analytics and ML models, and browse our companion website (wormglia.org)

ice worms (Mesenchytraeus solifugus) out in full force on the Paradise glacier, Mt Rainier, feasting on snow algae

because they live inside glacial ice, almost nothing is known about these amazing creatures: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worm

Leila Elabbady

Nice profile of Tuthill/Collman lab PhD student (soon to be grad 😭) Leila Elabaddy, who apparently "never set out to become a scientist". So happy we managed to con her into it!

truly a sick pape and brad knows pringle better than anyone

Is it true you use only 10 bits / s of your brain?
@andpru.bsky.social and I provide a motor systems perspective on a proposed speed limit for human information processing. Out today in
@natneuro.nature.com:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

my seminar that was cancelled back in february was just rescheduled for september. i am excited to visit NIH for the first time.

Trump's NIH Director couldn't tell me how many clinical trials had been impacted by grants he’s frozen, terminated, or delayed.

So I told him—he cancelled clinical trials to:
-Develop an HIV vaccine,
-Treat type II diabetes
-Help cure recurrent ovarian cancer.

This is what's happening RIGHT NOW.

a woman in a black and white dress is making a funny face . ALT: a woman in a black and white dress is making a funny face .

This morning, courageous NIH workers shared a document they are calling the “Bethesda Declaration” with Dr. Bhattacharya, urging him to reverse some of the actions that are badly misaligned with progress toward the NIH mission.

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