David Margolis

Exploiting correlations across trials and behavioral sessions to improve neural decoding Animals share common patterns of brain activity across trials and sessions. Exploiting this shared structure improves the prediction of behavior from neural activity, scales across many sessions and b...

“offers interpretable alternatives to deep-learning-based foundation models”

Exploiting correlations across trials and behavioral sessions to improve neural decoding: Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Last year, Republicans gave ICE $75 BILLION – more than most militaries across the globe – while refusing to fund your health care.

I fought it then and I’m fighting it now. I’m voting NO on DHS funding.

Boxing up the NSF at Eisenhower Av for the forced relocation. Boxes have “Details Matter” signage.

NSF

- Forced reorg

- POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements)

- Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …)

I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing.
“Details matter” 🙃

Anybody else worried that because of the long standing Republican war on SNAP people are going to experience painful hunger. Lets do something. @nanopharmnc.bsky.social and i are going to donate to some local nc food banks. Join us! Gonna match up to $500.

After 13 years in the US, I’ve made the difficult decision to leave. Having packed up everything and rethought about priorities, rather painstakingly, while I’m sad to leave the life I’ve made here, I’m also relieved that I won’t have to plan my life around immigration policies anymore.

Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Is it candy? Nope, it is a spooky 👻 cleared mouse 🧠 used for #fluorescencefriday movies

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!

We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

The NIH institute director firing last Friday is very bad.

I made a video explainer about why.

Stay for last post, w link to @science.org story from @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social

1/4
🧪

I made a video about the shutdown, and why this government worker won’t be a pawn.

When the president and Supreme Court are both acting lawlessly, Congress must stand up and stop it.

US science is collapsing and Congress needs to act.
🧪
Full video here: www.instagram.com/reel/DP1tXXE...

basic research on wacky things like Gila monster venom are what gave us GLP-1 drugs that are treating diabetes, obesity, & addiction in new ways

this piece from @whyy.org is great

an analogy: navigation apps are great but don't tell you how to climb Mt. Everest & survive

whyy.org/segments/oze...

The Nobel Prizes, 5 of 6 having so far gone to US based scientists, are a reminder of why we must stand up for science against this horrid administration. Here are some great Scientist Activists to follow.

go.bsky.app/14W5Rdk

👀“experience of a punished outcome generates a BLA representation that is selectively replayed when animals subsequently abort choice of the large/risky reward option.”
⚡️“… risk leads to the incorporation of newly encoding BLA neurons into the pre-choice representation”

A big step in the work of postdoc Arlene George. Nice work Arlene!!

Controlled Delivery of a Neurotrophic Factor in the Adult Mouse Brain Using Engineered Microglia https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680702v1

So many academics are on HB-1 visas. This is another attack by #RussellVought on universities and scientific research. Stop telling me anything this administration does is in good faith or with any sort of policy goal except destruction.

https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/MABe-mouse-behavior-detection

And we are live!

Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️

Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

Stimulus-Dependent Dopamine Dynamics from LocusCoeruleus Axons https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.15.676390v1

Whether or not you are a US scientist, you’ll know that this US administration’s reckless ideology endangers the entire globe - the trajectory of human civilization and all life on Earth. Scientists please sign.

Glorious whiskers too

Adaptive learning is coordinated across behaviour, time and neurobiology (from synapses and dendrites, to astrocytes and the systems level).

If you’ve ever wondered how noradrenaline helps shape these multiscale learning processes, you might like this: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Accelerating What We Know About OCD: From Genes to Mice t... Accelerating What We Know About OCD: From Genes to Mice to Bet...

All donations goes straight to the project (+10% bonus donation will be added if you use my referral link above)
www.researchhub.com/fund/4309/ac...

‘ In response to a request for comment, Zhu told us, “I have retired and I am in Greenland. I do not have to talk to you.” ‘

The biggest violent crime spree in Washington, DC, happened on January 6, 2021, and Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who were part of that.

New executive order puts all grants under political control All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

All scientific grant funding must now be approved by a political appointee and "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities."

I wonder where innovation will happen in the future? It won't be in the US

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

I really worry about the world the next generation or the one after it will be growing up to live in.

Congrats!

Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️

Leading Scientific Societies File Amicus Brief With U.S. Supreme Court in Support of NIH Grant Recipients Washington, DC – August 4, 2025 – On Friday, August 1, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in American Public Health Association v. NIH. As some of the nation’s largest and most respected scientific societies, the amici submit this brief to emphasize the urgent need to safeguard federal research investments, protect early-career scientists, and uphold the integrity of the nation’s science ecosystem. The four leading life science organizations originally filed an amicus brief in the case on May 2, urging the court to find recent executive actions that led to the termination of NIH grants supporting early-career scientists—such as the Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) program—unlawful and to compel NIH to restore funding swiftly. MOSAIC grants support scientists from a wide range of backgrounds in transitioning to research careers. Today’s updated filing focuses specifically on the immediate and irreparable harm caused by the grant terminations and asks the Court to deny the government’s request for a stay pending approval. The updated brief includes new evidence and perspectives drawn from peer-reviewed articles and commentary published in recent months, which underscore the devastating consequences these grant cancellations have already had across the scientific community. Together, ASBMB, ASCB, ASM, and FASEB represent more than 150,000 biological and biomedical researchers whose work drives innovation, improves public health, and fuels the U.S. economy. Their members have long supported and participated in programs like MOSAIC, w…

While many institutions are capitulating to Trump, my favorite scientific societies are fighting back. Aug 1 @ascbiology.bsky.social, @asm.org, @asbmb.bsky.social, & @faseborg.bsky.social jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court in American Public Health Association v. NIH 1/n