Seungwon (Sebastian) Choi | 최승원

Congrats, Kelsey!

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!

We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

Congrats, Kate!

Gut microbiota and metabolites drive chronic sickle cell disease pain in mice Brandow et al. describe how the gut microbiome drives chronic sickle cell disease (SCD) pain. SCD guts contain excessive heme catabolites, fewer bacteria that metabolize bilirubin, and low levels of A...

1st paper from Sadler Lab is out!! Highlights: 1) A. muciniphila reverses sickle cell (SCD) pain, 2) fecal transplant from SCD mice induces pain via bilirubin-TRPM2 vagal signaling, 3) BilR+ bacteria less abundant in SCD patient poo, 4) RNAseq on HUMAN nodose ganglia! www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Neuroscience Faculty in Psychiatry - Assistant Professor - Dallas, Texas (US) job with The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | 12844379 The Psychiatry Department at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is seeking outstanding neuroscientists.

Our department at UT Southwestern Medical Center has openings for TT faculty position! Our Neuroscience Research Division has diverse research programs, from genes to neural circuits to human brain imaging. UTSW has a vibrant/growing neuroscience community!
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

It was a lot of fun organizing a session (pain and nausea) at the Korean Neuroscience meeting with Hojoon. Thanks to speakers @karalmarshall.bsky.social @chuchuzhang.bsky.social who flew all the way to Korea with us! Great to catch up with old friends and make new ones. And the food was amazing!

It's been 3 years since I started my lab in 2022. What a journey so far! Anxiety and frustration at times, but grateful to be where I am, especially with my fantastic group of trainees. My fourth year officially(?) started with the 3-year renewal approval for animal protocol and biosafety permit!

Decreased KCC2 expression in the human spinal dorsal horn... : PAIN date there is no evidence supporting or opposing this hypothesis in humans. Here, we demonstrate that KCC2 expression is decreased in superficial dorsal horn neurons of organ donors who died with a do...

Our paper showing decreased KCC2 expression in the human spinal cord in people who died with a history of neuropathic pain is now published in PAIN: journals.lww.com/pain/abstrac... Great work from @oliviadavis.bsky.social and the teams of the De Koninck and Hildebrand labs. ❤️ 🇨🇦 collabs!

Do you have any questions about the current understanding and treatment of #migraine? Check out the newest episode of the Pain Beat moderated by @julietmwirigi.bsky.social! bit.ly/3GGjCYu #podcast #newepisode #PRF

Grateful for the opportunity and excited to try out some ideas! @hypothesisfund.bsky.social

Congrats, Chuchu!

Thalamic CGRP neurons define a spinothalamic pathway for affective pain | PNAS Pain is both a sensory and emotional experience caused by various harmful stimuli. While numerous studies have explored peripheral and central pain...

New paper out in @pnas.org Thalamic CGRP neurons form a spinothalamic pain pathway relaying pain signal to the amygdala & insular, but not sensory cortex to encode the affective dimension of pain. Huge congrats to first author Sukjae Kang & coauthors. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congrats!

University of Utah Health Campus in winter. Image courtesy of the University of Utah.

I’m very excited to share that I will join the University of Utah Department of Neurobiology as an Assistant Professor in Jan 2026!! 🎉🏔️🏜️

My lab will focus on body–brain interactions in learning & memory — how do signals from our internal organs remodel the brain & behavior?

Molecular and functional diversity of the autonomic nervous system - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The autonomic nervous system has long been viewed as a simple motor system in brain-to-body signalling. In this review, Wang and colleagues highlight diversity within autonomic neurons and their dynam...

Molecular and functional diversity of the autonomic nervous system
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks, Kate!

Thanks, Rob!

Thanks, Kathleen! Very excited to be part of the community!

Thanks, Ish!

Grateful for this amazing opportunity and generous support @klingensteinorg.bsky.social !

Meet the 2025 Klingenstein Neuroscience Fellows! Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund is pleased to welcome 13 highly promising, early career scientists conducting cutting-edge research. Each will receive $450K over 3 years and join us at our scientific conference.

Hope to catch up sometime near future!

Congrats!

The 2025 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars are outstanding early career faculty who have the potential to become leaders in their research fields.

Honored to be an HHMI FHS! Grateful to brilliant colleagues who push me to think deeply, and to my students whose curiosity & energy make the lab a joy.

My grad advisor said in genetic screens, you don’t get what you want—you get what you deserve. Hope we are deserving

www.hhmi.org/programs/fre...

Congrats, Allan! Well deserved. Strong representation of pain groups from here at UT Southwestern!

Announcing The 2025 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars - Rita Allen Foundation Investing in transformative ideas in their earliest stages to promote breakthrough solutions to significant problems

Thrilled to join the Rita Allen Scholars community (ritaallen.org/stories/2025...) and grateful for the support! Glad to (re)discover many inspirational colleagues as current and former award in pain scholars.

Congrats, Theanne! 🔥🎉

UC Davis researchers honored by McKnight and Howard Hughes Medical Institute UC Davis faculty Sergey Stavisky, Theanne Griffith and Elisa Zhang receive prestigious early-career recognition from McKnight Endowment Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

I’m so honored to be selected as both a 2025 McKnight Scholar and 2025 HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar. And I couldn’t be prouder to share these honors with awesome @ucdavis.bsky.social colleagues 💙💛💙💛

health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlin...

Calling all Neuroscience postdocs! 🧠 Share your research through SPiNES (Seminars from Postdocs in Neuroscience: Extramural Series) from the NYUGSoM Department of Neuroscience. Applications close 08/20/25. Apply today! 👉 nyumc.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
#Neuroscience #Postdoc #ResearchOpportunity

Unbiased Quantification of Persistent Postural and Motor Deficits Following Spinal Cord Injury in Mice Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes multifaceted postural and motor impairments that are challenging to quantify. Conventional behavioral tests, such as the Basso mouse scale (BMS), rely on qualitative ob...

A little science to brighten your day…

We define characteristic postural and paw pressure changes after SCI using Blackbox.

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