Alex Kwan

News from central Jersey: I'm running to represent New Jersey's 12th Congressional District.

By entering the fray, I hope to bring ideas of repairing our frayed republic. Not only to defend it in 2026, but to build something stronger, for generations to come!

samwang.substack.com/p/entering-t...

BG GRC Oath: I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

Taking the #GRCBasalGanglia Oath ✋🏼

I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

Not sure where your pACC sits relative to our coordinates though. The region we targeted for tracing may be more anterior.

Psilocybin triggers an activity-dependent rewiring of large-scale cortical networks - PubMed Psilocybin holds promise as a treatment for mental illnesses. One dose of psilocybin induces structural remodeling of dendritic spines in the medial frontal cortex in mice. The dendritic spines would be innervated by presynaptic neurons, but the sources of these inputs have not been identified. Here …

We saw a fair amount of input cells in AId and AIv with monosynaptic rabies tracing from ACAd in the recent paper.

Those inputs where notably modified after drug administration.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41352354/

🙏🙏🙏

Thanks it is definitely giving us some experiments to try!

Are there variants of these models that include interneuron subtypes?

We may have some data to evaluate the variability aspect of your hypothesis - e.g., signal and noise correlation measurements.

Top-down and button-up inputs can be strictly defined in a model, but it may not be so clear cut in the brain to be testable. Though the idea is certainty enticing.

Important to developing stronger models to understand psychedelic's effects!

It was particularly surprising for me to see that plasticity was elevated at intermediate alpha, given the gating scheme in the architecture. Your explanation makes sense.

cc @tyrellturing.bsky.social

A line grant showing new and competitive renewal awards made by NIH is fiscal year 2026 compared to 2021-2025. The line for fiscal year 2026 is very close to zero.

My (now) weekly update on 2026 NIH funding.

New and competitive renewal awards.

3 new awards (compared to ~100 expected based on recent years).

No new ICs... still just NIA, NINDS, NIDCD, and NIDCR.

1/2

Our paper on the "Oneirogen hypothesis" is now up in its revised form on eLife!

This is the hypothesis that psychedelics induce a dream-like state, which we show via modelling could explain a variety of perceptual and learning effects from such drugs.

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

🧠📈 🧪

Hammock at the beach.

Still working and catching up on emails, but this will be my office today 🇧🇸 #ACNP2026

Important message from Nev Jones to sr people in the field:

Don’t treat young emerging researchers w/ lived experience as a checkbox. Asking them for a grant letter solely because of lived experience puts them in a difficult-to-impossible bind due to power dynamics @acnporg.bsky.social #ACNP2026

Congratulations!!

Tolman's Sunburst Maze 80 Years on: A Meta‐Analysis Reveals Poor Replicability and Little Evidence for Shortcutting In 1946, Tolman et al. reported that rats could take a novel shortcut to a goal after training on an indirect route, supporting the Cognitive Map theory. However, a review of subsequent Sunburst maze...

Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts?

Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze.

Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think.
🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn....

@uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

Been waiting for such a study to relate #psilocybin dose to 5-HT2AR occupancy in the mouse brain.

They found RO₅₀ = 0.88 mg/kg.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thanks for sharing this. Trying to learn more about networks delineated by neuroimaging since our last study, and this video is the clearest explanation yet. 👍

Number of BME faculty job opening is noticeably down this year.

We just had this question at a faculty meeting and @pratted.bsky.social has the visualization for the answer.

Great write-up on the current state of mouse behavioral tests for #psychedelics by @callimcflurry.bsky.social

Can't wait to see those new assays to be developed and validated further.

Tray full of airplane-shaped sugar cookies shaped decorated with red sprinkles

Close-up of one airplane-shaped sugar cookie decorated with red sprinkles

Survivorship Bias Sugar Cookies for the Human Genetics Department Holiday Baking Extravaganza

We just got a De'Longhi Magnifica Start from Black Friday sale too. Wonder how they compare..

I agree there is value in the pursuit of knowledge itself. But it is worth pointing out that not only did the science advance knowledge, it also led to utility.

This is not 'applied neuroscience'. In these examples, the researchers discovered new biology, which turned out to be good drug targets.

I believe the section was from Wikipedia.

I agree "increased current" would result in stronger transmission of pain signals along the nerve.

For sure, DBS is another case where basic research has led to new treatments.

Thank you - and always great to learn about more success stories!

How basic neuroscience has paved the path to new drugs A growing list of medications—such as zuranolone for postpartum depression, suzetrigine for pain, and the gepants class of migraine medicines—exist because of insights from basic research.

“Basic neuroscience hasn’t produced new drugs.” 💊

Not true - zuranolone (PPD), suzetrigine (pain), gepants (migraine), and more... were born out of a long arc of studies in the lab.

I wrote a Perspective on why this matters. @thetransmitter.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/drug-develop...

This new @michellemonje.bsky.social preprint shows that #psilocybin promotes the rapid and persistent growth of... xenografted glioma in mice. 🫠

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Enduring but maladaptive plasticity induced by #psychedelics.

h/t @tylerekins.bsky.social @theborislab.bsky.social

A lot of interest in PET imaging of synaptic markers in humans after psychedelics.

This preprint from Knudsen lab may be the first. People treated in therapeutic-like setting had more intense experiences and greater increases in synaptic density than those dosed in MRI scanner. tinyurl.com/36vv6a9v

Agree some of the cell-type specific transcript levels seen in primates are very different!

We have been sleuths on the mouse databases, and need to dig more into human spatial data.

The methodology is different, so not sure if we can directly compare the readout from rabies and fMRI.

That said, it will be interesting to compare on region by region basis and we have not done that.