Mathew Summers

Intrinsic dendritic integration features of prefrontal layer 5 pyramidal cell subclasses Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is an associative center in the brain and integrates various inputs to support cognition. Layer 5 pyramidal cells are themselves associative centers, as their dendrites span al...

Fresh off the press! @selinsch.bsky.social discovered some really cool features of mouse frontal cortex pyramidal cells that co-vary with dopamine receptor expression. D3R+ cells appear very responsive to AP bursts, producing Ca transients across dendritic arbors.

www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

well deserved!

YEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHH, Teresa!!!

How FlyWire is redefining Drosophila research, one year in Nine Drosophila researchers share how the connectome transformed the field and what additional new tools they would like to see.

To celebrate the first anniversary of the release of FlyWire, we asked nine neuroscientists to share how they are using connectome data in their research and what they hope is in store for the future of fly connectomics.

By @franciscorr25.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/3Wx5nt3

A Seattle scientist won a Nobel Prize. She thought the call was spam Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

A huge congrats to Seattle scientist Mary E. Brunkow for winning the Nobel Prize in medicine!

This is exactly the kind of groundbreaking work that we should be leading on — and it’s exactly why I’ll continue to fight Trump’s cuts to the NIH and research.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Exploring the correspondence between gene expression and thalamic nuclei using the THALMANAC resource The thalamus connects the sensory organs and major subcortical brain regions with the neocortex. The thalamus has long been divided into multiple discrete nuclei, based on cytoarchitecture, histochemi...

Check out our resource for navigating and analyzing spatial transcriptomics data in the thalamus, which we fondly call "the THALMANAC" (𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐋amus 𝐌ERFISH 𝐀𝐍alysis and 𝐀𝐂cess), now live on bioRxiv:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Light adaptation in cone vision involves switching between receptor and post-receptor sites - Nature Humans can see in conditions from darkened cinemas to bright sun because cone photoreceptors adapt their mean output to the current light conditions; here, a second site of adaptation is identified, i...

Sensitivity is one thing, but do you think a single light sensitive ion channel will ever have sufficient dynamic range for natural-ish vision? After all, the retina uses tiered adaptation systems even for just photopic vision.
www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Cool stuff! I had a similar "headlamp test" when troubleshooting retina recordings.

If you're a trainee studying the thalamus, consider checking out our GRS on Thalamocortical Networks in Sensation, Behavior, and Disease: www.grc.org/thalamocorti.... Apply by Nov 16th to be considered for a talk!

Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...

Very few PhD students finish within 4 years. But international students will need to do that if US proposed visa rules change go through.

Sound reasonable to you?

Fed register is accepting comments for next month. Details at the link & comment button

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Supreme Court allows NIH to stop making nearly $800M in research grants for now But the court, in its emergency docket order, also left in place by a 5-4 order a lower court ruling that threw out NIH memos that enforced the administration's policies.

The ideological cancellation of $800 million of scientific research grants because they supposedly focused on DEI was just backed by the Supreme Court. This is horrific on so many levels.

A great environment!

6+6 = 12 reasons to move to Waterloo, Canada.

First 6.....

6 job openings in the University of Waterloo School of Optometry & Vision Science/Waterloo Eye Institute.

lnkd.in/d3QD5wFA

see thread for the next 6.

Exclusive: NIH to dismiss dozens of grant reviewers to align with Trump priorities The move would undo years of work, leaving advisory councils understaffed, and without the full expertise needed for reviews.

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding.

NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

Seattle police cameras, now up and running, draw constitutional concerns Seattle's newly revamped Real Time Crime Center is operational, with analysts monitoring dozens of surveillance cameras placed in areas with high crime rates.

CCTV comes to Seattle.

Crowd waiting to race the 8

This is amazing.

The momentum to fix the 8 is UNPRECEDENTED!

Really important article in the NY Times today about cuts to NIH diversity grants, featuring a profile of Ashley Albright @aralbright.bsky.social who is an amazing and super inspiring cell biology postdoc whose K99 was prematurely terminated.

Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The ICE budget is now set to be approximately what the NIH budget was. We’re shifting money from solving real problems to solving fictitious problems.

Half Price Books will close its downtown Berkeley store after 20 years It's been a fixture of downtown for 20 years. It’s the second big Berkeley bookstore closure this year.

It's been a fixture of downtown for 20 years. It’s the second big Berkeley bookstore closure this year.

SCIMaP - Impacts of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical Research View Projected Impact of the FY2026 Budget Cuts to the NIH

Part 2 - Slashing budgets of NIH, NASA, NSF (and NOAA, DOE, EPA and ...) undermines key employers in communities all across the US that form hubs of research and technology development. For NIH alone, we estimate $46B in economic loss and 202K lost jobs.

scienceimpacts.org/fy26

More Americans voted for Senator Alex Padilla than for 48 of the 53 red state GOP U.S. Senators combined.

That alone makes him a powerful senator.

ME: two of my most hated enemies are going to drag each other down
YOU: right, the Trump-Musk thing
ME: the what

why not decommission it the usual way: launching it into a million pieces over protected wetlands

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

The President's Budget request as released yesterday will gut scientific research. Why should you care?
1) Science is fundamentally a jobs program. Many 100,000s are employed to do science and work for you, the US taxpayer.

I subscribe to the @newyorker.com, I was part of ACT UP, I knew Larry Kramer well and know Tony Fauci too. Daniel Immerwahr's piece on RFKJr, features this and other passages that need a reponse. 1/

Mathematics in Biology Biology has turned into a quantitative science. The core problems in the life sciences today involve complex systems that require mathematical expression, ye...

If you're planning a course with mathematical methods content, or use such methods in your own work, please take a look at "Mathematics in Biology", by Meister, Lee, and Portugues, published at MIT Press. 1/2 @portugueslab.bsky.social mitpress.mit.edu/978026204940...

Time to Save the National Science Foundation, 75 Years and Thriving The National Science Foundation marks its 75th anniversary today, May 10th 2025. Rather than celebrate, it's time to save it.

On the NSF's 75th:

“‘NSF investments have driven groundbreaking innovations, from the internet and LASIK eye surgery to the first image of a black hole... The foundation has also played a key role in the work of 268 Nobel Prize laureates, helping to shape many of their landmark achievements.’”

It's hard to compare to the retina!

Check out some of our locus coeruleus reconstructions - the average fully reconstructed LC neuron is about 30 cm in length (in a mouse brain that spans ~1.3 cm front to back)