Chen Ran

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

UCSD is holding a town hall with @repscottpeters.bsky.social this Wednesday to urge him to oppose proposed research funding cuts in the FY2026 budget, set for a vote in September. Please RSVP below and share widely. Everyone is welcome.
form.laborbase.org/251675765832...

Orbitofrontal cortex influences dopamine dynamics associated with alloparental behavioral acquisition in female mice Orbitofrontal cortex neurons facilitate alloparental behaviors in virgin female mice by modulating the dopamine system.

Happy to share our new work in Sci Adv! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...　We found a robust representation of pup retrieval in the orbitofrontal cortex of female mice, which positively regulates VTA dopamine neurons during the acquisition of maternal behavior. Congrats to Gen-ichi and the team!

Thrilled to share our latest work in @nature.com studying inter-brain neural dynamics in both biological and artificial intelligence systems — amazing work by @nobrainxz.bsky.social and Nguyen Phi, and fantastic collaboration with Jonathan Kao! Read the full article here: rdcu.be/euu5Z

Very interesting!

Excited to share the first 2(!) preprints from the Kebschull Lab. The amazing @hyopilkim.bsky.social developed MAPseq2 & POINTseq and used them to map the dopaminergic cells of VTA and SNc. tl;dr MAPseq2=10x cheaper, 4x better; POINTseq=easy cell type specific barcoding; DA neurons=very cool.

Cholinergic feedback for modality- and context-specific modulation of sensory representations The brain’s ability to prioritize sensory information is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated basal forebrain cholinergic neurons modulating olfactory bulb...

Our new paper is out in Science.

We identified a subgroup of cholinergic neurons that mediate sensory modality-specific attention. They change their funcitonal properties within secs of behavioral context change.

Congrats to Bin for the great thesis, and the team!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congrats to @xinjin.bsky.social @tinakim-neuro.bsky.social and many others!

Nobel laureate on how Trump's cuts are hurting science Neuroscientist, biologist and 2021 Nobel Prize winner Ardem Patapoutian joined Midday Edition to talk about how the Trump administration's effort to cut back on science spending is impacting researche...

I spoke with Jade Hindmon, host of @kpbssandiego.bsky.social Midday Edition, about the consequences of the current administration’s cuts to science funding. Please share to help spread the word and raise awareness.
www.kpbs.org/podcasts/kpb...

The U.S. Lit a Beacon for Science. Under Trump, Scientists Fear It’s Dimming

Talked to @KateZernike at @nytimes about my journey and the current moment for scientists in the U.S.

“Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.”

Read the article here. No subscription required:

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

Wild!

Stephen, Praneel and their team use fluorescence lifetime imaging and various manipulations to show that, in male mice, both mating drive and hypothalamic tonic dopamine release drop after a successful mating and gradually recover over the next week, paralleling the recovery in sperm count.

We previously showed that specific hypothalamic neurons get more and more activated by each bite of food until they put a brake on homeostatic feeding. Here, we find that this brake is already on at the start of a meal in obese mice on a high-fat diet.

Congrats to Marta, Stephen and the whole team!

Share your favorite ones in the NTS 😆😆

Thrilled to share 2 reviews from the lab:
🧬Annual Review Functional Neurogenomics
annualreviews.org/content/jour...
🧠Current Opinion high-throughput analysis of corticogenesis
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Thanks to my labbies and the field—we were honored to showcase your work! #WeAreHiring

Thank you Ish!

Thank you, Ardem! Wouldn’t have happened with all the support

Shared by Carlos Brody at SCGB: publicusaresearchbenefits.com - a crowdsourced effort to tell folks about the products of US research funding. Please share, and submit!

A drop of milkshake takes a wild ride as it passes through the body. Rachel and Kiersten and the team came up with cool strategies for visualizing food passing through the mouse GI tract and mapping the activity of the same 100s of brainstem neurons across weeks during feeding and other behaviors.

A distributed coding logic for thermosensation and inflammatory pain - Nature Functional imaging and multiplexed in situ hybridization were combined to investigate how trigeminal neurons encode heat and mechanical stimuli, revealing distinct cellular mechanisms for continuing p...

co-author @dimacd.bsky.social pointed out that the link was truncated in my post. Hope this works: www.nature.com/articles/s41...