Matt Smear

Octopus track chemosensory plumes to find food

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice!

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

#neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪
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Kavli and NSF Announce New Grant Awards to Advance Neurobiology in… An initiative to explore how nervous systems function and evolve in dynamic natural environments

A POSTDOCTORAL POSITION ON THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF REPRODUCTION IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: We are recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to work on a Neurobiology in Changing Ecosystems (NiCE) award from NSF and the Kavli Foundation (www.kavlifoundation.org/news/kavli-a...).

falling rent free in our head

The BioE department at the @uoknightcampus.bsky.social is hiring 2 complementary TTF neuroengineering positions!

We're looking for someone with expertise in experimental & translational neuroengineering and someone else with expertise in computational & data-science neuroengineering.

#neurosky

A fluorescent-protein spin qubit - Nature An optically addressable fluorescent-protein spin qubit is realized using enhanced yellow fluorescent protein; the qubit can be coherently controlled at liquid-nitrogen temperatures and the spin detec...

Fluorescent proteins can now act as qubits 🤯
This opens the door for single cell MRI in vivo and highly localized sensors that map magnetic fields, temperature gradients, etc. Insane.

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

Cooperative actions of interneuron families support the hippocampal spatial code Identifying the computational roles of different neuron families is crucial for understanding neural networks. Most neural diversity is embodied in various types of γ-aminobutyric acid–mediated (GABAe...

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

“If everything is everywhere, why have distinct areas? Here we show that the function of a brain area is more related to how different types of information are combined (formatted) in neural representations than merely whether that information is present.”

Full text of
"The Organization Of Behavior:
A Neuropsychological Theory"

archive.org/stream/in.er...

“Instead of a joker to occasionally confuse the student of behavior, nonsensory activities appear in every fall of the cards and must make up a large share of the deck. Neurophysiologically, it may even become a problem to account for any consistent effect of a specific stimulus."
Donald Hebb (1949)

Choice-relevant information transformation along a ventrodorsal axis in the medial prefrontal cortex - Nature Communications Choice-relevant computations across the medial prefrontal cortex differ only quantitatively between areas. Here the authors suggest these computations may be organized along a functional gradient.

Speaking with 20+ years of experience, I strongly believe that if these guys had done their experiment in primate instead of mouse, they would have gotten exactly the same results.

E.g.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

We watched mice follow scent trails drawn on an “endless” treadmill. By manipulating trail geometry/statistics, perturbing mouse nose & brain, and modeling behavior with a Bayesian framework, we show that mice use predictive (rather than reactive) strategies.

We’re searching for a Developmental Neuroscientist! Building on UO’s rich tradition in the field, we’re excited to welcome the next scientist to carry it forward.

#internationaldogday

The Jackpot Trilogy Buy books online and find book series such as The Jackpot Trilogy written by William Gibson from PenguinRandomHouse.com

let’s hope that @greatdismal.bsky.social ‘s precognitions are less prescient than they used to be… www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/TJ3/t...

Supraspinal commands have a modular organization that is behavioral context specific Lau et al. use calcium imaging and statistical modeling to comprehensively survey reticulospinal activity during diverse locomotor behaviors. They find that a small set of functional modules act combi...

Latest from the lab. Beautiful work from Joanna Lau and a fantastic collaboration with James Fitzgerald.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

We’re searching for a Developmental Neuroscientist! Building on UO’s rich tradition in the field, we’re excited to welcome the next scientist to carry it forward.

Proud to share Kai Clane Belonio’s latest work in our lab. Kai showed that induced-depression decreases behavioral tolerance of aversive odorants as well as increases in neuroinflammation in sensory affective areas. Also contributing are @nervenkidd.bsky.social and Eyerusalem Haile.

the psychophysicist’s “noise” is an experimental subject’s ________ ?

maybe “noise” isn’t the best word for it?

a husky puppy is laying on the floor with its tongue out and wearing a blue collar . ALT: a husky puppy is laying on the floor with its tongue out and wearing a blue collar .

Hmm: Correlated variability in sensory neurons (how much responses fluctuate together) is related to behavior: it’s modulated by attention, learning, & motivation and related to individual decisions. But because it's low-D, in theory its effect on behavior should be small. What’s up with that? 2/

Ramanujan Srinath collected & analyzed many data sets including Amy Ni’s, Yunlong (Draco) Xu & Brent Doiron modeled, & Doug did a causal experiment. The key is: when noise and signal come from the same circuit (they must!), then smart, flexible decisions have a strong relationship with noise. 4/

Advertise your account with a GIF

Pan-cortical 2-photon mesoscopic imaging and neurobehavioral alignment in awake, behaving mice Procedures were developed to perform mesoscale 2-photon Ca2+ imaging simultaneously from all of mouse dorsolateral neocortex, facilitating identification of widespread neural ensembles with activity r...

I'm pleased to announce that the Version of Record of our eLife paper, "Pan-cortical 2-photon mesoscopic imaging and neurobehavioral alignment in awake, behaving mice" (Vickers and McCormick, 2024) is now available at: elifesciences.org/articles/94167 (94167.3, VOR).

Psychedelics are serotonergic drugs...

Right?!?

Well, think again and embrace the complexity revealed by @zenbrainest.bsky.social et al testing 41 compounds in 318 receptors: "psychedelics have potent and efficacious actions at nearly every serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic receptor."

Proposal recommended for funding! Which means we have a fresh, 3-year-funded position available for a computational postdoc interested in studying dynamics of social interactions in rats, with simultaneous Neuropixels data to follow 🐀🐀🐀

Proper job ad pending, but email me if interested!

nothing makes sense in computational modelling, except in the light of these two all-time classic maxims:

1. all models are wrong, some are useful - George Box

2. everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler - Albert Einstein

Building a climate neuroscience subfield: Q&A with Angie Michaiel Michaiel, a program officer at the Kavli Foundation, shares what it took to cultivate research on the relationship between climate change and the nervous system.

Program officer Angie Michaiel spoke with The Transmitter about her efforts to shepherd a burgeoning climate neuroscience subfield and the fruit she hopes it will bear.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/community/bu...

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory.

🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

there's so much going on I almost forgot the telescope project i have worked on for TWENTY YEARS is revealing its first images today! Tune in to watch live: