Stoyo Karamihalev

This honestly should be required reading for anyone undertaking (or evaluating) exploratory studies... ⬇️👍 (It's proper funny too 😅)

I saw David (Anderson) present this at a meeting. It's incredible - the idea that we can finally record the neural correlates of emotions like "hanger" in the brain. Congrats to this team!

Exciting new work from former team members Eric Romero, Cwyn Solvi, Fei Peng and colleagues makes the cover of Science: affective contagion in bumblebees! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

True. “Affect” has real gravitas. “Emotion” is right there though - buzzing around optimistically, looking for another place to land.

Correction for multiple comparisons should be ubiquitous - Nature Human Behaviour Nature Human Behaviour - Correction for multiple comparisons should be ubiquitous

Correction for multiple comparisons should be ubiquitous www.nature.com/articles/s41... 👍👏

Really interesting work by Bakhurin and colleagues challenging the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I love this figure which both echoes and undermines the famous figure from Schultz et al. (1997).

Come be my newest colleague! Scripps neuro is an energetic and supportive department, and uniquely benefits from proximity to our intimidatingly awesome chem and drug discovery programs. Happy to chat about my experiences here so far!

Desensitization of opsin responses during all-optical interrogation depends on imaging parameters Significance The combination of two-photon calcium imaging and two-photon optogenetic stimulation, termed all-optical interrogation, provides spatial and temporal precision when recording and manipula...

All-optical experiments are great but @neurorussell.bsky.social found that opsin desensitization due to cross-talk between the imaging laser and the opsin causes major issues. These can be ameleorated with long inter-stimulus intervals & short imaging doses. All here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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.

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain.

A brief rundown...

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

Facial expressions in mice reveal latent cognitive variables and their neural correlates - Nature Neuroscience The face reveals more than just emotion. Cazettes, Reato and colleagues show that subtle facial movements reveal hidden cognitive states, reflecting the brain’s ongoing computations and offering a noninvasive window into unexpressed thoughts and decisions.

Characteristic facial features in mice simultaneously encode not only currently used decision variables but also independent and unexpressed ones, and these features partially originate from neural activity in the secondary motor cortex

@fannycazettes.bsky.social

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

Ann Kennedy explains the theoretical neuroscience of survival behaviors The Scripps neuroscientist calls for a broader theoretical neuroscience approach in her area of research, which focuses on how the subcortex bridges life and cognition.

In this episode of “Brain Inspired,” @braininspired.bsky.social talks to @antihebbiann.bsky.social, who argues that molecular signaling, like protein expression, controls innate brain responses to varying environmental contexts.

#neuroskyence

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

This fallacy has a lovely name: the argument from personal incredulity

https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/MABe-mouse-behavior-detection

And we are live!

Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️

Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

One of the things I really like about Kaggle is that people there are super into sharing their analysis notebooks along the way.
Less than a day online, and already there are eight notebooks to explore!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

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…

@nicolecrust.bsky.social poses fundamental questions about emotions, and the terms we use to describe them, to other experts in this "Big picture" debate. #neuroskyence

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

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧵1/

Excited to share our latest paper - now out in @science.org - we showed how oxytocin modulates maternally-directed behavior in young mice (P15).

We're going to see a lot of bullshit in the coming days and weeks about "causes of autism", and most will be based on flawed, over-interpreted observational studies (1/n)

Kevin wrote the book on this stuff (literally; it’s titled “Innate”). He neither oversimplifies things or overcomplexifies them. Speaking as a brain researcher with decades of experience who has also read and thought about these issues a lot, this thread capture’s what’s what.

New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!

N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!

🧵below

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...

If we demote brain regions, what gets promoted to primary organizational units of function in the brain?

Finding correlates of the same signal in different brain areas is not evidence against specialisation, it is evidence for interconnection.

When I flush my toilet, the level in the tank and the flow rate in the supply pipe become perfectly correlated. Yet these toilet areas have distinct functions.

Excited to share our new preprint on the brain-wide organization of intrinsic timescales at single neuron resolution. Work w/ @roxana-zeraati.bsky.social, @intlbrainlab.bsky.social, Anna Levina, @engeltatiana.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It’s interesting - if a baby hears thunder, cries and reaches for its parent, and is immediately soothed when picked up, it’s reporting something. Would we be better off in neuroscience if the baby had a human notion of “fear” in its conceptual repertoire, pointed at that concept and said so?

Evocative term. May lack specificity though. Can we introduce cardenes, respirenes, nocenes, and intestenes. I suppose digestenes are a viable option, but the word brings thoughts of tea and cookies.

Summary figure for study of psilocybin's effect on cortical network connectivity.

New preprint + thread 🧵

#Psychedelics induce the formation of new synapses, but where do they connect?

Our rabies tracing study reveals that #psilocybin shifts connectivity across specific cortical networks.

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

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Try not to think of the password! 😅

I still get chills

Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts

Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE

see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Eye puffs prompt separable sensory, affective brain responses in mice, people Post-puff brain state might not be an emotion, some researchers caution, but the protocol provides a cross-species approach to study emotions.

A cross-species study captured an emotional brain state characterized by lingering brain activity in higher-order areas. “It’s one of those moments where you’re getting a first glimpse at a vast and complex landscape,” says @deisseroth.bsky.social.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

bit.ly/3U33raF