ZeigerLab

Knockdown of endothelial Serpine1 improves stroke recovery by attenuating peri-infarct blood flow and blood brain barrier disruption Focal stroke leads to complex changes in the cerebral microcirculation in surviving brain tissues that strongly influence recovery. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1; encoded by Serpine1) is hi...

New finding from the lab. This surprised us since it went against the common assumption that increasing peri-infarct blood flow is best for stroke recovery. Congrats to Kamal and the team!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Regionally mapped astrocytic responses to cortical and white matter stroke show differential roles in astrocyte-induced vascular remodeling Stroke is a major cause of disability. Astrocytes respond to stroke in a gradated manner, but details of that response and its consequences for tissue…

Thrilled to share this work from my postdoc with Tom Carmichael, available online @ Neuron! Long story short: we find even more evidence that all reactive astrocytes are not equal, and we can take advantage of those differences to improve repair after stroke.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Neural coding of choice and outcome are modulated by uncertainty in orbitofrontal but not secondary motor cortex - Nature Communications Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.

🎇 Excited to finally share JL Romero Sosa’s publication! Results are from single-cell imaging in different subregions of rat frontal cortex during ✨de novo learning. Spoiler: everything is not everywhere all at once www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Anyone else get anxiety on Sundays just thinking about what you meant to accomplish and what you need to do during the upcoming week?

Here is the formal letter the NIH sent today to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

“These projects are fully reinstated, and the letter dated July 31, 2025 is rescinded without conditions. Funds will be made available immediately and are no longer suspended, terminated, or restricted.”

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

In the early years of my PhD I remember being asked if we'd ever treat or cure diseases like HIV or Huntington's. I remember saying maybe, but not knowing if I believed. Seeing research pay off as real impact on human lives is - incredible.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Federal judge orders Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA medical research grants A San Francisco-based federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore all National Institutes of Health grants to UCLA, roughly $500 million, that the government suspended in July.

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA NIH grants. The same judge, Rita F. Lin, previously ordered all UCLA NSF grants reinstated. Lin has now nearly entirely reversed Trump's July de-funding of UCLA research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Yes, that’s a human brain on a cafeteria tray. UCLA fair shows off science cuts under Trump UCLA's researchers go low-tech to plead their case to the public with poster boards and props. The Trump administration has suspended more than $500 million in research grants to the university.

We shared research about things affecting us all: addiction, autism, brain injury, dementia, mental illness. This work has been arbitrarily cut or delayed.
Thats a human brain on cafeteria tray. UCLA fair shows off science cuts. @sfn.org @standupforscience.bsky.social www.latimes.com/california/s...

Advocates urge Congress to boost Parkinson's research funding Advocates gathered in Washington to urge Congress to expand federal funding for Parkinson’s disease research at NIH.

parkinsonsnewstoday.com/news/advocat...

UCLA researchers host science fair to showcase work suspended by the Trump administration On Thursday evening, dozens of researchers hosted a science fair at UCLA to demonstrate the long-term impact of frozen grants.

More coverage of suspended science outreach efforts this week at UCLA.

laist.com/news/educati...

California’s $23 Billion Plan to Restore Federal Cuts to Scientific Research

“Supporters of the proposal said it would effectively create a state version of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, two of the nation’s largest institutional funders of scientific and public health research.”
🧪 #giftarticle

This was a great event I was happy to help organize it. It was so heartening to see so many folks put their time and effort into making it happen. At the same time, it is eye opening to realize how little most folks out in the public, including our own backyard, know about what is going on.

You can also learn more about this important research in this press release from UCLA: newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucl...

#neurorehabilitation #rehabilitation #stroke #drugdiscovery #drugdevelopment #therapeutics #research #science #neurology #neuroscience #UCLA
@ucalgary.bsky.social

A Pill to Heal the Brain Could Revolutionize Neuroscience

After a #stroke, patients typically undergo extensive #rehabilitation and a slow journey to recover the ability to do everyday tasks. However, ASNR Past President Dr. Tom Carmichael is developing a drug to produce the same effects as rehabilitation and could augment or replace rehab after a stroke.

join us for our Science Fair for Suspended Research, sponsored by the UCLA Faculty Association and the UCLA Brain Research Institute! We are reaching out to the public to show the life-saving research that is at stake in the Trump admin's attack on UCLA research!

Critical research hangs in the balance as UC faces unprecedented federal threats Explore some of the research happening at UC that’s poised to deliver transformative benefits to the American people.

#StandUpforScience #SaveOurScience @saveourscience.bsky.social

Biomedical Research Deserves Support I know that our country is very divided right now, but I still have some hope that most Americans can at least come together around the idea of supporting biomedical research.

A little hesitant to post this on here, as I wrote it specifically for the Jewish community in Detroit...but maybe it'll inspire other scientists to write articles in their hometown papers. www.thejewishnews.com/opinion/biom...

Thanks for the kind words! We’ll need to find time to chat and look out for opportunities to collaborate.

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com

What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed?

Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation

www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7

🧵1/18

Barrel cortex plasticity after photothrombotic stroke involves potentiating responses of pre-existing circuits but not functional remapping to new circuits - PubMed Recovery after stroke is thought to be mediated by adaptive circuit plasticity, whereby surviving neurons assume the roles of those that died. However, definitive longitudinal evidence of neurons chan...

This is an incredible study and such important work. It also aligns with what we are seeing in the complimentary situation after stoke- rather than losing the peripheral limb, losing the central map.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34172735/

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37940595/

Dear President Milliken, Regents, and Governor Newsom, As faculty members of University of California law schools, we endorse Governor Newsom's commitment to resist the Trump Administration's unlawful actions taken against the University of California, Los Angeles. The Governor is on firm legal ground. The Trump Administration's termination and suspension of federal funds has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in numerous ways. Governor Newsom and the University of California Regents will protect the vital interests not only of Californians but of all Americans if they defend the University of California's rights. The U.S. Department of Justice notified UCLA on July 29, 2025, that it had found that UCLA had "violated its obligations under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Chancellor Frenk subsequently announced that "the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons" for federal grant terminations. UCLA faces losses of at least $584 million, funding that has supported vital research on matters ranging from treatments for pancreatic cancer to advances in online security. The Trump Administration has made no pretense of following the law. Title VI permits a federal agency to terminate funding only if it has found that the particular program receiving that funding has violated the law's non-discrimination provisions. Funding cannot disappear just because the agency's policy or political preferences differ from the institution's. Moreover, the agency can act only after following specific procedural steps. Importantly, Title VI requires a formal administrative hearing—a proceeding much like a trial-before the agency can terminate funding. At the hearing, the agency would have the burden of proving the university's alleged violations of Title VI before an impartial decision-maker. If the agency prevails at the hearing, the university or other interested persons could appea…

factually supported and consistent with civil rights laws. Without the steps Title VI requires, there is no protection against an administration alleging discrimination as a pretext to force compliance with its policy or partisan preferences. Title VI's procedures guarantee the constitutional due process requirement that no person can be deprived of liberty or property without fair notice and opportunity to be heard. They protect the university and its members' academic freedom, an endowment essential to scientific research, intellectual discovery, and open debate. We are deeply committed to the core principle of non-discrimination codified in Title VI and in the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The principle that no person may suffer discrimination because of race, color, or national origin protects equality and ensures fairness in political as well as social life. Allegations of discrimination deserve serious and careful consideration and, where established, effective redress. But this enforcement effort must follow the law. We urge Governor Newsom and the UC Regents to continue to stand up for the fundamental principles of the rule of law, due process, and equal protection. A defense of the University of California's rights in court will model respect for these bedrock principles of equality and fairness, and it will ensure that the government honors them. The Trump Administration's failure to abide by the law subverts these principles by denying the University of California a fair opportunity to contest the government's charges of unlawful discrimination before an impartial decisionmaker. It is precisely because we cherish the principles of the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution that we encourage Governor Newsom, the UC Regents, and the University of California to fight back. Through its grantmaking powers, the federal government wields vast influence over social and economic life. If not held to account by the procedural protections enacted by Congres…

🚨 150 University of California law professors (and counting) have now signed this open letter to the UC Regents and other officials, explaining the flagrant illegality of the Trump Administration’s UCLA funding cut offs, and urging the UC to fight back. sites.google.com/view/uclawfa...

'An attack on knowledge': UCLA researchers say lifesaving research is in jeopardy - Daily Bruin Dr. Jerzy Kupiec-Weglinski has led organ transplant research at UCLA for nearly three decades. Kupiec-Weglinski, the vice chairman of basic science research in the David Geffen School of Medicine’s su...

urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

'A continual assault.' How UCLA's research faculty is grappling with Trump funding freeze The Trump administration has suspended $584 million in grants at UCLA over what the U.S. Department of Justice has described as the school's 'deliberate indifference' to Jewish students' civil rights.

NEW: @danielnmiller.bsky.social and I report on how $584 million in grant fund freezes are hitting UCLA researchers looking into Lyme disease, pancreatic cancer and cryptography in financial markets: www.latimes.com/california/s...

The federal government’s $1B dollar demand is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to devastate @UCLA and its critical mission. #StandUpForUC to defend America’s greatest public university system and support this life-saving work. ucal.us/standupforuc

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.