Anita Devineni

Every single congressional Democrat needs to be out there, right now, insisting that Pete Hegseth resign right now and announcing that he will be held accountable for committing war crimes.

If you do not demand accountability here and now, they will only become more emboldened.

Dual roles of Drosophila reward-encoding dopamine neurons in regulating innate and learned behaviors Neuroscience; Behavioral neuroscience

Our paper on the counterintuitive effects of activating dopamine "reward" neurons is out now!

Props to all the trainees, especially Fio Lozada-Perdomo and Yuzhen Chen who did most of the work. Yuzhen is applying for PhD programs now and you'd be lucky to get her!

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas. Walker is one of several women ProPublica found with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions.

While pregnant, Tierra Walker had a cascade of health complications that threatened her life.

Of more than 90 doctors who were involved in her care, not one offered her an abortion, according to medical records.

Reminder for neuro postdocs on the market - apply for this soon! Emory Biology is a fantastic place to start a lab

Can’t believe the whole country has to suffer through the return of Dickensian childhood diseases because the worst, most ignorant attention-demanders decided other people’s expertise makes them feel bad

Fantastic opportunity for a senior PI. Atlanta has an amazing neuroscience and neuroengineering community ✨

Hearing a rumor that NIH/HHS may now plan to retaliate against other Bethesda Declaration signers.

I am one, but it’s not about me: we have been speaking out because of the ongoing damage to US medical research, cancer and Alzheimer’s research.

As @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social put well: 1/

This is very, very bad. Call your reps, speak out, demand that NIH be led by expert scientists and not political cronies.

Homepage - 67th Annual Drosophila Research Conference Visit our website to learn more.

Join us at the Drosophila meeting #Dros26 in Chicago next March! Abstract submission closes TOMORROW!!!

I'll be co-chairing the Neural Circuits and Behavior session and encourage neuro peeps to submit!! 🪰 + 🧠 = ❤️

This admin is absolutely dedicated to the noble cause of taking food away from hungry people. They’re working overtime. They’re fighting tooth and nail. They’re going above and beyond. Using your taxpayer dollars to advance their mission of stealing more from working people.

Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamps

Republicans are going to extraordinary lengths to starve children in the United States. They will not be satisfied until people die from their policies.

Call and write to your Republican representatives, and when they ignore you, consider protesting at their offices.

Congrats on getting this out! Excited to read it

Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics Extracting relevant features of a complex sensory signal typically involves sequential processing through multiple brain regions. However, identifying the logic and mechanisms of these transformations...

Excited to share my most recent postdoctoral work in the Jeanne lab @yaleneuro.bsky.social !

“Sensory processing reformats odor coding around valence and dynamics”
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We ask: how is a sensory code transformed across multiple stages of processing to inform behavior?

Fantastic postdoc opportunity at Emory for ppl interested in interdisciplinary science, especially theoretical approaches to biology. You get to pursue a semi-independent research program. Deadline is Dec 1 but you must identify potential mentors beforehand!

faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/155512/...

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

Today @TheNewYorker released our short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” online.

It traces the ongoing effects of the sudden shutdown of US foreign aid through the story of one mother in Kenya as she seeks to save her daughter from sickness and starvation. 🎥 1/ www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

U.S. Military Kills 14 More People Accused of Smuggling Drugs on Boats

So I guess our government is going to continue illegally murdering civilians without anyone stopping them?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...

Our newest preprint! Work led by Ben Dykstra (co-mentored by @gordonberman.bsky.social). Some of the first recordings from the iCA3 region during social behaviors. Ben found that iCA3 neurons more strongly represent social recognition information relative to iCA1 . www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Trump Administration Won’t Use Emergency Funds for Food Stamps During Shutdown

Oh, I thought 42 million people losing the ability to buy groceries was "just" collateral damage of the shutdown, I didn't realize that there is $ available for exactly this situation but the government is refusing to use it because they want people to go hungry

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

Democrat-led government shutdown.” She added: “Due to a recent court order, HHS is not currently taking actions to implement or administer the reduction-in-force notices.” According to the document reviewed by POLITICO, the National Institutes of Health was to take the hardest hit among HHS agencies, 4,545 layoffs, or roughly a quarter of its workforce. It ended up firing no one. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the firing of 362 of the 954 HHS employees who did receive the October layoff

Russ Vought

My reax to the big planned NIH shutdown firing news from @politico.com:

The Project 2025 ppl didn’t do big (illegal) NIH firings because they know there would be public outcry.

Keep speaking up!

I’ll be co-chairing a session on Neural Circuits and Behavior at #Dros26! 🪰

Fly neuro friends, please submit abstracts! Our session will be 🔥

Deadline Nov 13

Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself

"Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant."

He has refused to let the House meet for over a month, meaning he has no job to do but continues to get paid while nearly all other federal workers do not

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/u...

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)!

This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

FlyBase secures funding for year, but future still uncertain The FlyBase team’s fundraising efforts have proven successful in the short term, but restoration of its federal grant remains uncertain.

There is still “an urgent need for donations from the community,” says Eric Lai, president of the Fly Board.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/community/fl...

Adding up firings, forced retirements, and resignations since January, CDC has lost 30% of its workforce

1 in 3 CDC staff are gone. We have never been less ready for a large-scale emergency response than we are now

CDC, our union is fighting these illegal firings. Join today www.afge2883ga.org

More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...

Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents.

They’ve had their necks kneeled on.

They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear.

At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them.

By @nicolefoy.bsky.social

This 4-year-old's heart is failing. A federal grant that might help him was canceled A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

My portfolio had 100s of UG & Grad students lose their funding in the previous 9mo. PIs that had their training programs canceled for bogus reasons. I’m ok holding out for congress to get a spine and remember it’s a system of checks & balances.

Years ago @lauragrima.bsky.social talked about what a pity it is when scientists who work on #foraging miss out on fruitful interactions because they work with different animals. Together with collegues we started a virtual seminar series, which grew into a conference and now a review!

Check out our FlyWire anniversary piece to learn how @crezaval.bsky.social, @anitadevineni.bsky.social, Pelin Volkan, and six other researchers are using connectome data in their labs, and to read their thoughts on what new tools Drosophila neuroscience needs to move forward!