Bilal Haider

In case you missed it... here's how we train mice to become experts in a visual spatial attention task (in 17 days!) PLUS new findings: contrast sensitivity improves at relevant spatial locations 👁️🧠 Tons of work from the team (700+ days of data from 36 🐭and 11 👩‍🔬 👨‍🔬) led by Kayla Peelman 💪

10+ years of vision 👁️research in mice 🐭recasts our ideas about the brain 🧠and sharing data 🧪📈... a brief guide 👇 Thanks to many colleagues and @gtresearch.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social for connecting us w @us.theconversation.com

Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale Image display by cell-by-cell retina stimulation, enabling colors impossible to see under natural viewing.

This paper is the result of >20 yrs of hard work by talented students, postdocs and collaborators, but none more than my co-author Ren Ng and his team in EECS.
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Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are looking for an outstanding postdoctoral researcher to join our team at McGill University. The Sjöström lab studies neocortical circuits, with a focus on synaptic plasticity, NMDA receptor signaling, 2-photon optogenetics, and advanced 2-photon imaging. We are particularly interested in candidates with strong expertise in whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology and/or 2-photon imaging, and a solid track record of relevant publications. Applicants should be experienced with whole-cell recordings and/or cutting-edge imaging approaches. Responsibilities will include performing experiments, analyzing and presenting data locally and internationally, writing manuscripts, and occasionally mentoring junior lab members. Our lab is based at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, in vibrant, multicultural Montreal—a city that offers exceptional quality of life. McGill and its neighbouring universities form one of the most dynamic neuroscience communities in the world. For examples of our current directions, see: • Chou et al The Innovation 2025, www.cell.com/the-innovation/fulltext/S2666-6758(24)00173-5 • Wong et al Neuron 2024, www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(23)00767-5 The position is fully funded with a competitive salary. Candidates are also expected to apply for external funding, for which we provide strong support. Opportunities are available for both Canadian and international applicants. To apply, please send a Letter of Intent, CV, brief research statement, and contact information for three referees to Dr. Jesper Sjöström (jesper.sjostrom@mcgill.ca). In the subject line, include "Postdoc" followed by your name. Application deadline: July 31, 2025. Website: http://plasticity.muhc.mcgill.ca McGill University is committed to diversity and equity in employment.

🧪 The Sjöström Lab in Montreal is looking for a postdoc! We study cortical circuits, synaptic plasticity, and NMDAR signalling using custom 2-photon microscopy and optogenetics. We seek candidates with strong patch-clamp and/or 2-photon imaging expertise, and a relevant publication track record.

Systems Neuroscience PhD at UCL at University College London on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Systems Neuroscience PhD at UCL at University College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

2. Systems Neuroscience PhD position, supervised jointly with Sarah Ruediger @ruedigersarah.bsky.social

This is to investigate the differential circuits involved in habitual and goal-directed behaviours.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Computational Neuroscience, NeuroAI PhD at UCL at University College London on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Computational Neuroscience, NeuroAI PhD at UCL at University College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

Anyone looking for a PhD in NeuroAI (models of the visual system to spatial system)? @amansaleem.bsky.social and I are looking for someone to start in October. More details here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Get in touch with either of us if you’ve got questions!

FDA Announces Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing Requirement for Monoclonal Antibodies and Other Drugs FDA Plans to Phase Out Animal Testing Requirement

FDA plans to phase out animal testing requirement for drug testing and replace it with “AI-based computational models of toxicity” and organoid toxicity testing www.fda.gov/news-events/...

Check out our latest paper today in Nature: “Goal specific hippocampal inhibition gates learning” www.nature.com/articles/s41...
By Nuri Jeong, Xiao Zheng, Abby Paulson, Steph Prince and colleagues.

How does the brain work?

Scientists are closer to the answer with the largest wiring diagram and functional map of a mammalian brain to date. 🧵

🧠📈

a canadian flag with a red maple leaf in the middle ALT: a canadian flag with a red maple leaf in the middle

Brain gain? Toronto's @UHN hospital system will announce a strategy to attract U.S. health scientists - plan to be unveiled Monday.
Website isn't up yet, but U.S scientists interested check here Monday. Hopefully other hospitals & universities follow UHNCanadaleads.ca

This was a difficult thread to write..

Our research on antidepressants has been supported by NIMH for 10 years. Until the last moment, their comms team was still trying to put out a press piece about this work for us. I’m so sorry.

OK here it is, the moment you have all been waiting for! Our advert for 5 posts here at Glasgow: Cognitive neuroscience/psychology. Closing date May 12 - please spread the word
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Agreed - most units should be many synapses away from V1, but some still fire as quickly (see S4e: av. latency includes long 'tail' of slower units). Lots to figure out!

Interesting work by Tony Lien & @haiderlab.bsky.social. They reveal how some frontal cortex neurons mirrors V1 neurons. Responses lag visual cortex (VC) by ~25ms, with strikingly similar receptive fields—yet lacking a topographic map. Crucially, silencing VC abolishes these responses. Congrats

Exciting new results from the lab -- *visual* receptive fields in motor and cingulate cortex! Great work from Tony Lien 🧠🧪

Congrats to Kayla Peelman on publishing her paper AND defending her thesis in the same week ✨🎉
Click 👇 to see how the environment shapes the timing and selectivity of vision 👁️🧠🧪
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Compelling pushback from @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) regarding termination of tenure-track investigators driven by DOGE.

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Lateral inhibition in V1 controls neural and perceptual contrast sensitivity - Nature Neuroscience The role of lateral inhibition for perception and neural computation remains unsolved. Del Rosario et al. show that distinct types of cortical interneurons in V1 drive lateral inhibition that causes s...

Lateral inhibition from parvalbumin neurons in mouse primary visual cortex reduces sensitivity to contrast; lateral inhibition from somatostatin neurons changes the gain of contrast sensitivity 🧪🧠

@haiderlab.bsky.social @gtresearchnews.bsky.social s.bsky.social

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

Congratulations to these two outstanding physician-neuroscientists! Many people now are familiar with the fascinating fundamental research of @michellemonje.bsky.social but most people probably don't know she is a truly great physician. I'm fortunate to be inspired by her every day, in every way.

Super interesting... phenotyping social behavior + touch in 7 monogenic rat models of autism

thank you 🙂

just noticed @jdelrosario.bsky.social has joined us here - welcome and congrats on a great study 👇

This study was a huge collaborative effort led by former grad student Joseph Del Rosario in collab w/ Hannah Choi’s group in the GT Math Dept.
All made possible by *four* #NIH awards (training grants, pathway to independence, and R01s) 🙏

(10/10) We think these circuits could be used to adjust “background” visual signals in highly specific ways and improve visual sensitivity in different environments and conditions (like when one part of the visual field becomes the focus of attention while irrelevant locations become suppressed).

(9/10) Finally, we found SST neurons send long-range axons (> 1mm away!) across the V1 retinotopic map, branching from the site we stimulated to the site we recorded. The anatomy supports the subthreshold and spiking effects of cell-type specific lateral inhibition on perceptual sensitivity.

(8/10) Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from excitatory neurons in awake mice showed that activating SST lateral inhibition (~1mm away) caused greater hyperpolarization – and this was because of larger synaptic inhibition from SST neurons!

(7/10) The model showed that a higher probability of SST lateral connections was the key factor.

The model predicts that SST lateral inhibition should be stronger than lateral PV inhibition… is this true in V1?

(6/10) So—why is SST lateral inhibition more effective at decreasing contrast sensitivity? We made a computational model, and asked if effects of SST neurons were due to inhibition of excitatory neuron dendrites, OR due to a higher probability of lateral inhibitory connections...

(5/10) V1 excitatory neurons driven by visual stimuli *during the behavior* showed similar effects: neural contrast sensitivity decreased uniformly with PV inhibition, but SST lateral inhibition changed the slope of contrast sensitivity – just like “division” of perceptual sensitivity!

(4/10) We found something surprising! PV lateral inhibition decreased perceptual sensitivity to all contrasts uniformly – like subtracting a constant.
But SST lateral inhibition scaled ALL contrasts more strongly – exactly like dividing the function by a scaling factor, which changes its slope