Stoyo

Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning - Nature Neuroscience Cue–reward learning rate scales proportionally with the time between rewards. Consequently, learning over a fixed duration is independent of the number of trials. This challenges trial-based dopamine ...

Very excited to post our paper led by @daburke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... where we uncover a simple mathematical rule underlying how brains learn that a cue predicts a reward. 1/26

🐭🧠 Can fUSI truly map canonical mouse resting-state networks — and how does it compare to fMRI?

I’m excited to share the work of my PhD in our new preprint!👉 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Go check it out — it’s time to expand your neuroimaging toolkit 🧠🚀

Arteries are red, veins are blue,
“Strong coupling” seemed solid and true;
Yet blood runs high when spikes are few—
A troubled bond comes into view.

😬

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🔬🧠 Releasing the 1.0 version of #Suite2p and THE PAPER w/ @marius10p.bsky.social! Now with GPU acceleration. Want to use Suite2p but don’t have 100,000 neuron recordings? We show you how to get those with a standard 2p microscope #neuroscience #imaging #neuroAI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our work with @georgkeller.bsky.social on testing predictive processing (PP) models in cortex is out on biorvix now! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short thread on our findings and thoughts on where we should move on from PP below.

Explicit and implicit modularity that emerges in simple neural network models even in the absence of anatomical constraints. Whether modularity emerges or not strongly depends on the geometry of the inputs and other factors. Extensively revised article with many new results. With @wjj.bsky.social

Facial expressions less reflexive than previously thought A countenance such as a grimace activates many of the same cortical pathways as voluntary facial movements.

Facial expressions may involve an “everything, everywhere, all at once” type of coding in the brain, a new study suggests.

By @natmesanash.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/emotion-proc...

They’ve found the dangerous parts uninteresting. Spending time in the wild likely enhances exploratory drive, and that seems like the more probable explanation for the results that the paper (and article about it) interpret, in my view unjustifiably, as reduced “fear”.

The elevated plus maze captures the compromise between two drives: the desire to stay it out of danger (“anxiety”) and the desire to explore a novel environment. When mice are returned to the EPM and spend more time in the safe areas they haven’t “developed a fear” /1

Facial expressions less reflexive than previously thought A countenance such as a grimace activates many of the same cortical pathways as voluntary facial movements.

Emotionally driven behaviors may engage broader neuronal activity than previously thought—challenging the idea that facial expressions are largely reflexive and involuntary, a new study finds.

By @natmesanash.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/emotion-proc...

It’s behind a paywall for some - text me if you’re curious

The Study of Emotion in Other Animals (Chapter 8) - The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience - October 2025

Recently published: The Study of Emotion in Other Animals - a primer on affective neuroscience in “nonhumans”. Framework and case studies for probing emotions in the brain. Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience. Thanks to @gogolla.bsky.social!

www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

But really I’m confused and waiting for Ralph Adolphs’ new book to resolve this once and for all

Neuropeptide-dependent scaling/persistence of a valenced, (probably) generalizable internal state. It lets the organism compare otherwise incommensurable motivational concerns (hunger and pain). Certainly seems biomarker-ish, and emotion-like. Tempting to require subjective self-report, but why

Great! Does one bite the bullet and call this an emotion? It walks and quacks. Or is the framework too capacious, forcing us to use a conventional term in a confusing way. Like “valence”/chemistry and “stress”/physics, maybe we should port a new term into neuro, smth evocative that isn’t overloaded

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain Much effort has been spent clustering neurons into transcriptomic or functional cell types and characterizing the differences between them. Beyond sub…

"My New Year's Resolution is to find a principled way to think about all those cell types in the brain"

Why friend, you are in luck, because @rgast.bsky.social has just the perspective for you: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

One interesting thing about this finding: People with ADHD commonly experience issues with time perception, which Ritalin is able to restore. Notably, the networks observed here are the same ones we see in timing studies (including insula!)

Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization Nature Neuroscience - Parcellation of the cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to neuroscience. Here, Hayden, Heilbronner and Yoo question the central status of brain areas...

New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵

rdcu.be/eVZ1A

Oh, no reference, was just trying to start a cortico-cortical feud. Brain areas that compete for glory with the area that I work on need to be shamed, ridiculed, suppressed. Insular chauvinism. In our aggressive frontostriatal expansion campaign the ACC will be one of the first areas we annex

“Anterior cingulate cortex”. As if that’s a real place. You can tell it’s fake because neurons aren’t red. #ThereIsOnlyInsula

Insular cortex predictions regulate glucose homeostasis Brain-body interactions are essential for physical and emotional homeostasis. The brain uses information from the external world to predict upcoming bodily changes. This process involves interoceptive...

lab preprint! Interopceptive predictions are central to many brain-body interactions theories, but it's unclear if/how they affect bodily physiology. We (fearless Einav Litvak et al) show that insular cortex predictions are essential for glucose homeostasis-THREAD.. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We could try, but we would fail. I just don’t think that’s how brains work. Others will no doubt disagree.

The neuronal circuits and cellular encoding of thermosensation - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The thermosensory system across insects and mammals has shared principles of neuronal wiring and encoding. In this Review, Carta, Vestergaard and Poulet discuss how the nervous systems of insects and ...

New review out! 🔥🧊
We break down how rodents, primates & insects encode temperature in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

View-only: rdcu.be/eThU1

Tatiana Engel explains how to connect high-dimensional neural circuitry with low-dimensional cognitive functions Neuroscientists have long sought to understand the relationship between structure and function in the vast connectivity and activity patterns in the brain. Engel discusses her modeling approach to…

In this episode of @braininspired.bsky.social, @engeltatiana.bsky.social discusses her modeling approach to discovering the connections between structure and function in the vast connectivity and activity patterns in the brain.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...

Shaping that behavior would probably be tricky, but it’s conceivable that that some temporary top-down control could be accomplished by reusing the circuits that naturally suppress hunger at times of more urgent competing needs

A parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain - Nature Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.

They can certainly turn the off temporarily. Recent example here: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Likewise hunger/thirst/fear can temporarily turn off pain: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Can they learn to turn these neurons through some act of volition? I would guess so

Going against the gut: Q&A with Kevin Mitchell A new review of 15 years of studies on the connection between the microbiome and autism reveals widespread statistical and conceptual errors.

Going against the gut: Q&A with yours truly on the autism-microbiome theory www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/goi...

Caught your chat on DTG today - really great intro to the problems that can befall fields when they stumble on technology that offers very high-dimensional data. Thank you!

Incidentally, you cite Jaqueline Crawley’s 20 year review in support of a point about the poor validity of such models, which is belied by the major takeaway she derives that review. Shank3 and BTBR KO models, as an example, have shown reliable profiles on tests of social behavior

Very impressive work! Really appreciate the effort that it takes to do this kind of critical review.
One small point in defense of rodent models of autistic-like traits: single gene mutations creating heterogeneous outcomes for a highly polygenic disorder is no surprise - not evidence against tests