María Olvera

Defining Your Legacy in Science and Beyond (Panel Discussion) — Stories of WiN In November, we hosted our first-ever in-person Stories of WiN Symposium in San Diego, just before the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. The program included a panel discussion on “Defining You...

We're kicking off 2026 with a special episode! Check out our panel discussion from our in-person event: Defining Your Legacy in Science and Beyond featuring @theerincalipari.bsky.social, @denisejcai.bsky.social & @huda-akil.bsky.social 💜

Listen below:
www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202...

Hunger increases exploration and risk-taking behavior, allowing an animal to forage for food despite risks

Hunger-induced changes in exploration result from the modulation of dopamine signaling in the tail of the striatum via the following circuit:

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www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Felicidades!

Integration of hunger and hormonal state gates infant-directed aggression - Nature Combined behavioural, circuit-level and cellular approaches are used to demonstrate how hypothalamic neurons integrate hunger and oestrous state to drive a switch in how female mice interact with pups...

Out today in Nature: We uncover a neural mechanism for the integration of two internal states - hunger and estrous state - and how this integration shapes pup-directed behaviors in mice.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience
Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

*The Animal and the Thinker*
by the amazing neuroscientist John Duncan, U of Cambridge.
Haven't read it but looks really interesting.
#neuroskyence

Congrats and also congrats on the new position!

What's so special about the human brain? Torrents of data from cell atlases, brain organoids and other methods are finally delivering answers to an age-old question.

Fun Saturday morning read! Loved the graphics 😬 🧠

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

YouTube video by Civil Servants Coalition Mark Histed, NIH Scientist *speaking in personal capacity

Federal workers are speaking out on how the Trump regime is harming Americans:

"We stand here today at a moment of the greatest assault of our lifetimes on our freedoms. The US Constitution is being shredded... We are here to call on Congress to stand up and stop it."

youtu.be/uw1KwIBgrCw?...

So happy for you! Hope to be back soon! Mucho exito!

Bringing neuroscience to rural Mexico Monica López-Hidalgo’s outreach program, Neurociencias Para Todos, gives schoolteachers tools to bring neuroscience to their communities.

¡#OpenScience para todos!

Neurociencias Para Todos is bringing neuroscience to rural Mexico with curriculum feat. our free and open brain atlases.

Dra. López-Hidalgo shares the story and impact of the program w/ @analog-ashley.bsky.social.

www.thetransmitter.org/community/br...

#OpenScienceWeek

My team has updated our free database of POSTDOC fellowships.

This database contains 286 entries. For each entry, we provide a link, short description, deadline, amount, and eligibility criteria.

Download this updated and expanded database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

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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“Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures”
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Small contribution in this piece by @frosas.bsky.social and colleagues on how we need both types of research culture in neuroscience.
#neuroskyence

Amygdala GRC fed my soul in a time of doom and gloom. Ready to keep climbing knowing that there’s such a fantastic community with me.

"WE'VE ARRANGED A society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" "Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.

Interoceptive processing in the nucleus of the solitary tract The interoceptive nervous system continuously monitors the status of visceral organs to synthesize internal perceptions and regulate behavioral and ph…

Lots of recent papers discuss the nucleus of the solitary tract in interoception. In this review, we take a sensory processing perspective on how interoceptive signals are encoded in the NTS:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can I be added

Mating proximity blinds threat perception - Nature A state-dependent dopamine filter system in the male Drosophila brain balances threat perception against the drive to mate.

Sex or survival—what’s more important? Excited to share our
@Nature paper on how flies resolve this conflict.

We found a dopamine-based filter that reduces threat perception, helping flies focus on courtship when close to mating.

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

Neuroscience methods - YouTube Nanocourse: Approaches to Study Neural Circuits This course was taught by Anita Autry, Tiago Gonçalves, and Luke Sjulson at Albert Einstein College of Medici...

Neuroscience students asked us to teach a PRACTICAL course on experimental methods, and it is now on YouTube!

Please like and repost to help us get the word out!

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Lecture 1: Signals and data acquisition
Focusing on hardware, digital/analog I/O, synchronization
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