Kepecs Lab @ WashU

The labor market may resolve the instability fast

How quickly you think we're moving toward that new equilibrium? Are what will be the leading indicators?

or credential signal collapses and accelerates stratification because employers need cheap sorting signals (less optimistic unbundling)

Interesting take!
Agree AI kills homework-as-proof and take-home exams. But I don't see how that leads to optimistic unbundling. Schools could pivot to authentic assessment/competency transcripts...

My department @WashUMedNeuro is recruiting Assistant or Associate Professor of neuroscience. Join us for great science and a collegial environment! facultyopportunities.wustl.edu/Posting/Deta... Please repost.

Why do you say that the number of grants will be 34% below FY24?
The bill caps the *amount* NIH can obligate in FY2026 as "more than one year of a multiyear award" at the FY2025 level, and not the *number* of awards. So NIH cannot further expand this practice ie there should be MORE awards.

This is not my interpretation. What the bill language does is cap the *amount* NIH can obligate in FY2026 as "more than one year of a multiyear award" at the FY2025 level, and not the *number* of awards. Seems like they are limiting this so that there will be MORE new awards.

Congrats, @analog-ashley.bsky.social and Victor Magdaleno-Garcia on publishing nwb4edu in JOSE! 🎉 This interactive textbook teaches how to access, analyze, and visualize NWB data from @dandiarchive.org, w/ lessons recreating classic neuroscience figures

nwb4edu.github.io
doi.org/10.21105/jose.00309

shockingly objective take 😉

Congrats, amazing! Well deserved, and no surprise :-)

Be my neighbor! @rwjms.bsky.social Neuroscience is hiring!
jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258...

Important topic, high potency THC is a different game.

Interesting proposal. How about editors using LLMs not to generate reviews, but to flag those that look generic and light on insight? And also use LLMs to cross-check reviews for factual errors, since some reviews can be confidently wrong.

Chairs and vice chairs for the Psychedelics GRC

We worked so well as a team for the #GRCPsychedelics @vyazovskiy.bsky.social @viditavaidya.bsky.social @melissaherman.bsky.social

and congrats to @theborislab.bsky.social and @mikaelpalner.bsky.social, who will be the future vice-chairs!

Meet Area Postrema!

I will fly to anywhere in the United States on my own dime to talk to people about basic science! I encourage all of you, particularly senior scientists to make this commitment. If you are looking for material ask @karalmarshall.bsky.social She has put together an amazing basic talk!

We'll miss you here Ilya! Exciting opportunity, congrats! Wishing you all the best for this next chapter!

Given all that is going on consider this quote from Bertram Russell's 1930 book The conquest of Happiness:
“The man who can be interested in the structure of atoms or the way in which a beetle navigates, is likely to get a joy in life which no amount of success in the pursuit of power can give. ”

💔 that’s really tough, so sorry

Thanks CJ!

14/ Finally, this work wouldn’t have been possible without generous support from many funders. Special thanks to the NIH, especially NIMH, NIDA, and the NIH Pioneer Award—for making long-term, high-risk neuroscience like this possible.
🧵🔚

13/ This builds on decades of work linking inflammation to fatigue, depression, and motivation loss. We’re picking up that thread, now with a defined brain circuit in play, a step toward circuit neuro-immunology.
#Inflammation #Depression #IL6 #Cancer #Cachexia #NeuroImmunology

12/ This project took a *huge* team, spanning neuroscience, immunology, and cancer. Grateful to co–first authors Aelita Zhu, Sarah Starosta, co–senior authors Marco Pignatelli & Tobias Janowitz & ours labs & all our amazing collaborators including @kravitzlab.com & Pavel Osten.

11/ We’re also excited about our effort-based tasks to measure motivation. Grounded in behavioral economics, they’re designed for cross-species computational psychiatry. We’re now adapting them for humans to bridge physical disease and psychiatric symptoms.

10/ Our work reframes cachexia: it’s not just body wasting, it inherently involves the brain. Chronic inflammation activates a neural circuit that suppresses motivation—likely
adaptive in acute illness but harmful when chronic, showing how physical disease directly causes psychiatric symptoms.

9/ We also used an IL-6–blocking antibody in mice—similar to FDA-approved drugs for rheumatoid arthritis. Given early, it improved survival. Given late, it still rescued apathy-like behavior. This points to a promising, translatable way to treat apathy in advanced disease.

8/ The circuit insights let us reverse apathy without stopping cancer:
— Knockdown of IL-6 receptors in area postrema
— Ablation of ArP→PBN neurons
— Boosting dopamine via optogenetics or dopamine agonist cocktail injected in nucleus accumbens.
Motivation was rescued even in late-stage disease.

7/ We used a patch foraging task with depleting rewards designed to measure effort sensitivity—grounded in behavioral economics. As cachexia progressed and IL-6 rose, dopamine in the nucleus accumbens fell. Mice gave up faster, even when rewards were still available.

6/ We mapped fill the circuit: IL-6 activates the area postrema neurons that project parabrachial nucleus and then to substanta nigra pr, which inhibits dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. Optogenetic activation of ArP→PBN mimicked inflammation, rapidly suppressing motivation.

5/ To find the cause, we ran a cytokine screen and brainwide cFos mapping. The cytokine IL6 increased with cachexia. Most brain regions were suppressed, but a few lit up—most notably the area postrema, a circumventricular organ outside the BBB that could sense circulating IL-6.