ZeigerLab

Rye manhattan with Mexican chocolate bitters and luxardo cherries. Totally unrelated to events of the last 48 hours, I’m sure.

My lab’s major NIH grant was among those blocked in the attack on UCLA. Because our lab website discusses inclusivity? Because this grant had a diversity-based supplement? Simply because I work at UCLA? Who knows. Feeling a strange mix of unsurprised, furious, and numb.

Of course, without continued funding, we won’t be able to do any of this exciting work.

We think this suggests that in young adult animals, compensatory circuit changes can preserve cortical function in the face of early a-syn pathology. Our model can now be used to test risk factors for dementia in PD, to understand patient heterogeneity and cognitive resilience.

In another heroic feat, Theint Theint tested visuoperceptual function longitudinally using a coherent motion discrimination task that is sensitive to visuoperceptive impairments in persons with PD. She found motion discrimination is preserved.

Theint Theint finds that as alpha-synuclein pathology accumulates, visual circuit function changes. Neurons with large, somatic intercellular inclusions become hypoactive. She also found increases in activity in neurons without inclusions that correlate with the local burden of a-syn pathology.

I am not certain what this means for the future of the project. But I am very proud of the work we’ve done so far. Led by post doc Dr. Aye Theint Theint, this was a massive amount of work. She performed longitudinal in vivo 2P imaging for 6(!) months in a novel model of cortical Lew’s pathology.

Cortical α-synuclein pathology induces cell autonomous neuronal hypoactivity and compensatory circuit changes in a model of early Lewy Body Dementia Cognitive impairment is a common non-motor symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD) and a defining feature of Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). Although many cognitive domains can be affected, impairments i...

On the same day we posted this manuscript describing our work on the circuit mechanisms of cognitive impairment in PD, the grant funding the research was suspended. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cutting funding for life-saving research has nothing to do with attacking antisemitism.

It has everything to do with attacking science, universities, and California.

And sadly, it is our health, our knowledge and our economy that will pay the price.

Cortical α-synuclein pathology induces cell autonomous neuronal hypoactivity and compensatory circuit changes in a model of early Lewy Body Dementia https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.668024v1

Trump freezes $300 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism The Trump administration has frozen more than $300 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school...

A tough day for UCLA. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Legislators and non-scientists need to understand the limits of what philanthropy / disease foundations can do to protect science. They cannot be a big enough lifeboat (even if they would like to be!)

3/n

FDA-NIH Workshop: Reducing Animal Testing The FDA is hosting a workshop on reducing animal testing. The workshop is open to current FDA and NIH employees.

Does everyone know there is a comment period re: changes in animal research at NIH? I didn't. Closes July 14. The scientific community need to respond en masse. I asked university leadership to distribute to reach our colleagues not on social media, you can too

go.pardot.com/e/858023/duc...

NIH announces end to funding for animal-only studies - Drug Discovery and Development Drug Discovery and Development covers strategies and technologies related to pharmaceutical research and development and drug formulation.

This will devastate all of my colleagues that do neuroscience in mice. Drugs don't always translate from mouse to human, But 90% of our genes are shared. They allow recordings and manipulations that cannot be done in humans. We will cede discovery to Europe and China with this unnecessary handicap.

A field that would be uniquely harmed if all grants needed a non-animal component is neuroscience. Brains inherently interact with other organ systems and are constantly changing (this is how learning occurs!). Even simple neural systems like reflexes are hard to model via chip.

Happy Independence Day from Dodger Stadium!

Check out our new lab pre-print! Some “homework” experiments turned into a full-fledged study to try to understand how inhibitory interneurons might regulate experience dependent somatosensory circuit remapping. Led by outstanding post doc Dr. Baruc Campos.

Dynamic recruitment of PV interneurons in the somatosensory cortex induced by experience dependent plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.27.662081v1

“Why Are We Funding This?” Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

www.americanscientist.org/article/%E2%... Know any non-scientists who think GLP-1 agonists were a big breakthrough? Or anyone who benefits from optimized data flow on the internet? These breakthroughs came from what many would call “silly” or “wasteful” basic science

Just wrapped up a great GRC. Wonderful to meet so many amazing scientists working to advance our understanding of #parkinson’s.

YouTube video by WBNS 10TV Scores of NIH researchers sign letter criticizing deep cuts in public health research

PLEASE WATCH
Video via the AP, with Jenna Norton NIDDK Program Officer, Ian Morgan NIGMS post doc fellow, Anna Culbertson, fmr NIAID Scientific Program Specialist regarding the Bethesda Declaration of dissent that made the news. 300 NIH staff members signed the letter.

🧪 youtu.be/uF1xi19zoMg?...

Retrograde and anterograde trans-synaptic viral tracing of neuronal connections reveals local and distant effects of ischemic stroke on dendritic spines - Myrthe Van Sprengel, Jenna Butterworth, Patri... Focal stroke leads to complex neurological disturbances with variable recovery. One explanation for this variability is that stroke disrupts local and remote ne...

Happy to share new paper from MSc grads Myrthe and Jenna. We asked the question, when part of the brain dies during stroke, what happens to local and distant cortical neurons that innervate the stroke site (in S1 cortex) or those that receive outputs? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A reduced ability to discriminate social from non-social touch at the circuit level may underlie social avoidance in autism - Nature Communications Social touch is critical for communication to impart emotions and intentions. However, certain autistic individuals experience aversion to social touch. Here, we used Neuropixels probes to record neur...

Really cool new science from the Portera-Cailliau lab on the neural circuit basis of social touch avoidance in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The summer fight for science. The time is now. Join the fight at standupforscience.net.

☀️THE SUMMER FIGHT FOR SCIENCE☀️

🫵 WHO: You + all our friends

🧪 WHAT: Share science with your neighbors and tell them about the impact of proposed budget cuts.

🇺🇸 WHERE: Your local community

🏖️ WHEN: Now to Sept 30th

🔬 WHY: The 9/30 budget vote will determine the future of science in America.

Functional neurological disorder (#FND) remains a research orphan at NIH. FND is among the costliest and least funded sources of neurological disability (see graph). The latest NIH review cycle was no exception: zero FND-based grants were funded.

www.neurology.org/doi/abs/10.1...

A wonderful #LifetimeAchievementSymposium honoring Dr J Tim Greenamyre and his multiple contributions to the #Parkinsons field 🤓🧠🤩🧫💉 🩺

Grateful for the initiative #SB829 proposed by CA state senator @scottwiener.bsky.social for a new California Institute for Scientific Research to continue supporting lifesaving research!

#standupforscience

New Parkinson’s Treatments in the Clinical Trial Pipeline | 2025 Explore the latest Parkinson’s disease treatments in development. Learn about promising clinical trials and emerging therapies undergoing research in 2025..Archive: /new-parkinsons-treatments-clinical...

www.apdaparkinson.org/article/new-...

Congratulations! Ohio State’s gain is sadly also our loss. Looking forward to seeing the lab’s amazing work.