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Mark Nicholas

@markolas.bsky.social

PhD candidate in Neuroscience in the @yttrilab.bsky.social at @CMU_Bio, retired footballer, maker of good food https://markolas11.github.io

245 Followers  |  191 Following  |  9 Posts  |  Joined: 19.11.2024  |  1.7595

Latest posts by markolas.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Dissociable effects of curiosity and hedonic valence on reinforcement learning Curiosity and exploration support learning and adaptive decision-making in uncertain environments. While these processes are sensitive to motivational context, it remains unclear how outcome valence s...

Why do we go downstairs when we hear a scary noise at night?

New #preprint by postdoc Kati Rothenhoefer shows how novelty seeking & explore-exploit decision making in #macaques resolves curiosity about whether choices will lead to appetitive or aversive outcomes.

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

27.06.2025 11:52 β€” πŸ‘ 66    πŸ” 29    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 2
Director | Isaacson, Miller

Neuroscience peeps!
There is an amazing opportunity opening up at CMU!

www.imsearch.com/open-searche...

@cmu-neuroscience.bsky.social
@cmuscience.bsky.social
@cmu.edu

17.06.2025 01:52 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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GitHub - Julie-Fabre/bombcell: Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data - Julie-Fabre/bombcell

πŸš€ We are excited to share that bombcell is now available in Python! 🐍 Automatically sort your units into good/MUA/noise/non-somatic using quality metrics and interpretable & adjustable classification thresholds.
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
πŸ”— github.com/Julie-Fabre/...

13.06.2025 18:55 β€” πŸ‘ 60    πŸ” 23    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 2

Well whether or not "they have to do it", is still a question, but I would say blinking is a convenient way to break up incoming information.
Next time you give a lecture or a talk, take note of when the audience blinks relative to your speech cadence and information you are sharing

10.06.2025 20:10 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

The idea of blinking and editing are linked comes from the first link - "In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing" by Walter Murch

"...And that blink will occur where a cut could have happened, ... Not a frame earlier or later." (pg 36)

10.06.2025 18:59 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Viewers Change Eye-Blink Rate by Predicting Narrative Content Eye blinks provoke a loss of visual information. However, we are not constantly making conscious decisions about the appropriate moment to blink. The presence or absence of eye blinks also denotes lev...

Cool to see someone has studied this recently!
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

10.06.2025 18:32 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

In a past life I did film production and editing and we knew to make edits around content - we would see blinks in the audience with cut scenes as if they were chunking information

I remember reading this back in the day which helped me a lot with editing

www.craftfilmschool.com/userfiles/fi...

10.06.2025 18:32 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Dynamic basal ganglia output signals license and suppress forelimb movements - Nature Basal ganglia output neurons fire dynamically in bidirectional and movement-specific patterns to license forelimb movements. 

Forelimb movement control at the basal ganglia - brainstem interface!

Happy to finally share this work from me and @harsh-kanodia.bsky.social with Silvia Arber!

@biozentrum.unibas.ch @fmiscience.bsky.social

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

28.05.2025 15:32 β€” πŸ‘ 30    πŸ” 15    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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CMU Neuroscientist Has Big Plans for Guggenheim Fellowship - Neuroscience Institute - Carnegie Mellon University Timothy Verstynen has always been fascinated by how organisms explore their environments β€” from the human quest to map the surfaces of distant planets to the itty-bitty journeys of single-celled bacte...

Tim Verstynen, Interim Director of the NI, has been awarded the 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship! πŸ‘

Awarded annually to "trailblazing artists and scholars," Tim will be inducted into the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows on June 2.

Read more about his upcoming "exploration of exploration."
🌎 ⬇️

27.05.2025 18:54 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Congrats @tdverstynen.bsky.social !!

28.05.2025 14:43 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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🚨New lab preprint alert!🚨

Grab a drink, sit down, and let me walk you through the moment-by-moment process of how information loops through basal ganglia circuits during a decision.

(Link at the end of the thread)

1/9

24.03.2025 19:29 β€” πŸ‘ 119    πŸ” 24    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1

Having learned from Carl both as an undergraduate and graduate student, I continuallyΒ go back to my notes and the topics studied in his course to help me think about concepts in cognitive neuroscience.

Thank you, Carl

20.03.2025 14:56 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Super proud of this work and as I finish up my #PhD studies I am actively looking for a #postdoc position.

I am interested in studying learning and value-based decision making and how cortical and subcortical areas contribute to complex behavior

tinyurl.com/LesionsOfM1

#neuroskyence

12.02.2025 22:47 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Dissociable roles of central striatum and anterior lateral motor area in initiating and sustaining naturalistic behavior Corbit etΒ al. studied patterns of activity in corticostriatal circuits during naturally occurring complex behavior in mice. In contrast to models in which cortex leads striatum, these findings suggest...

It's a little surreal that this paper is finally out. My last paper from my PhD and likely my last mouse neuro publication ever!
Ft. @ahmarilab.bsky.social @piantadosisean.bsky.social

If you're into mouse behavior, optogenetics, and calcium imaging, here's this πŸ€πŸ”¦πŸ”¬
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

30.01.2025 22:29 β€” πŸ‘ 21    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 3

Thanks to @antofala.bsky.social and @harsh-kanodia.bsky.social of @biozentrum.bsky.social for presenting at our journal club on some really cool SNr/brainstem activity during skilled reaching

#neuroskyence

17.12.2024 17:21 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

hello world

19.11.2024 02:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

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