Chen Ran

Excited to co-host this conference with @marissascavuzzo.bsky.social and Steve Liberles focused on the peripheral nervous system -- No Brainer! Check out the amazing list of speakers and apply for one of the spots for this small, interactive meeting on the beautiful Janelia Campus at HHMI.

Vagal blood volume receptors compensate for haemorrhage and posture change - Nature A vagal reflex to blood volume changes in the heart involves PIEZO2 and helps to stabilize blood pressure in an upright posture and after blood loss.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... beautiful work from Stephen Liberles’ lab on neural mechanisms of sensing blood volume.

A very nice spinal spatial transcriptomics paper here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Patagonia was not bad at all!

🧠⚡️💊New @nature.com publication !

Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits

We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with a synthetic opioid gene therapy

nature.com/articles/s41...

@pennmedicine.bsky.social

Beautiful paper! Somebody should do it in then viscerosensory brainstem.

quote from Chen Ran: “I feel very lucky to have the support of the Simons Foundation and to have access to this outstanding community.”

Fellows-to-Faculty awardee Chen Ran maps the senses of internal organs. Receiving this award — which is currently open for apps — has been crucial in enabling his work: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/autism-and-neuroscience-innovators-awardees-share-their-research-at-the-annual-retreat/ #science

Some news. Exciting new challenges and opportunities ahead.

Locus coeruleus norepinephrine neurons facilitate orbitofrontal cortex remapping and behavioral flexibility Ogg et al. use in vivo imaging techniques to record activity in the locus coeruleus (LC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) during a reversal learning task in freely moving rodents. They show that man...

Thrilled this is out, led by former PD Cameron Ogg (now with her own lab at @rhodescollege.bsky.social!). It was a driven by a desire to see, in real-time, how LC activity/NE release influences downstream targets in behaving animals. SO hard to do, but Cameron did it! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Trump says he wants to 'permanently pause' migration to the US from poorer countries President Donald Trump says he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and is promising to seek to expel millions of immigrants from the United States by revoking their legal status...

I was one of those immigrants, and we commit fewer crimes than people born here.

“Trump says he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and is promising to seek to expel millions of immigrants from the US by revoking their legal status.”

apnews.com/article/trum...

What does it take in mechanosensory biology to earn one? Characterizing brainstem responses to stomach stretch?

Ive seen this work from Prof Liqun Luo’s presented a few times now and its stunning and heroic.

A beautiful paper on the role of Piezos in uterine biology. I have known first author Yunxiao Zhang since 2012. Yunxiao is rare talent (and a wonderfully kind human being) now on the job market!

Deeply honored to receive this year's Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Young Investigator Award from @sfn.org Grateful to all lab members and my mentors.

Actively hiring! Video made by Sora-2 but the job post is 100% real.

Apply here: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

1.5 years in the making, only two weeks to go! Can’t wait to see everyone here at Scripps!

Sickness and the brain Zuri Sullivan and Catherine Dulac discuss the reciprocal communication between the brain and the immune system in sickness behavior.

This great primer from our #brain–body special by @dulaclab.bsky.social explores the many ways in which the brain and the immune system interact in the diseased state.
🧠
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Scripps is a wonderful place to do science. Hard to imagine better colleagues and students…

A parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain - Nature Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain.

A brief rundown...

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

We’re hiring!
My new Gut–Brain Axis Lab at Northwestern is looking for a Research Technologist 2 to help build the lab and explore how the nervous system shapes gut health and disease.
🔬 Apply here: myhr.northwestern.edu/psp/hrnu/EMP...

Submedius Thalamus Modulates Orbitofrontal Cortex Representations During Maternal Behavior in Mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.18.677207v1

Very interesting paper—>must read- and the first author will be looking for a job soon: one of the strongest scientists I could imagine. I learned so much from Yunxiao since my graduate school days.

PIEZO channels link mechanical forces to uterine contractions in parturition Mechanical forces are extensively involved in pregnancy and parturition, but their precise roles and mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we identify mechanically activated ion channels PIEZO1 a...

New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨 New preprint from an ongoing collaboration with the Pang lab. Project led by rising stars @rohansavani.bsky.social and @lewang1.bsky.social showing how individual GLP-1R neurons in the paraventricular hypothalamus track ingestion across energy states.

Preprint: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Lots of interesting data there!

Thanks Misha for the shout-out!
It has been a truly mind-opening journey. WHOLISTIC is one step towards whole-organism neuroscience and a true physiological observatory - with extensions on the way! I am continually amazed by what the data reveals - so much remains to be discovered and mined.

We are looking for a postdoc fellow to join the group. Focus on studying feeding-relevant slow dynamics in the brain using invivo microscopy approaches. Please share with anyone interested. Thank you. www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-inf...

I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it!

Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.

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

What’s the effect of no withdraw, just overdose?

Amid lots of uncertainty, anger, and exhaustion I am excited to share this work from my incredibly talented MSTP and @nuincomm.bsky.social student Haley Province. In it we explore the fascinating and powerful anti-aversive properties of GIPR agonists