Alisson Pinto de Almeida

New paper out today w @dalmaijer.bsky.social @barbaraklump.bsky.social and @lucymaplin.bsky.social as part of the Phil Trans special issue doi.org/10.1098/rstb.... Over 2 years, we studied a population of cockatoos thought to be the source of the innovation of bin-opening.

snRNA-seq of Huntington′s disease mice reveals vulnerability profiles of cortical cell types A common feature of neurodegeneration is selective vulnerability, where certain neurons succumb to disease, while others remain spared. The molecular underpinnings of these differences remain elusive....

New preprint from the lab by Dennis Feigenbutz et al.: Using #snRNA-seq, we explore vulnerability profiles of cortical cell types in #HuntingtonsDisease mice and identify ER-phagy as a new pathway in HD pathogenesis.

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

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

Thrilled to share our new paper!
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice!

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

#neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪
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Integration of hunger and hormonal state gates infant-directed aggression - Nature Combined behavioural, circuit-level and cellular approaches are used to demonstrate how hypothalamic neurons integrate hunger and oestrous state to drive a switch in how female mice interact with pups...

Out today in Nature: We uncover a neural mechanism for the integration of two internal states - hunger and estrous state - and how this integration shapes pup-directed behaviors in mice.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience
Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint:
“Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

A parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain - Nature Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain.

A brief rundown...

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

Maternal aggression driven by the transient mobilisation of a dormant hormone-sensitive circuit - Nature Communications Mothers can fiercely defend their young, but how the brain triggers this response remains to a large extent a mystery. Here, authors show that a dormant, hormone-sensitive brain circuit switches on to spark maternal aggression during the lactation period.

1/n. New paper from us: here we explore the mechanisms underlying maternal aggression in mice as a means of addressing how an individual transiently can gain access to a behaviour normally outside of its repertoire. Lead investigator Stefanos Stagkourakis (not on 🦋)🧵:

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

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...

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

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

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A brain center that controls consummatory responses The BNST brain region integrates a broad range of external and internal signals to flexibly regulate consumption, revealing a unified control over consummatory responses.

Read more on @cellpress.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

A circuit that integrates drive state and social contact to gate mating - Nature Analyses of consummatory reproductive behaviours in male mice uncover a brain mechanism whereby an internal state can attribute a social quality to a generic touch to initiate purposeful reproductive actions.

Nature research paper: A circuit that integrates drive state and social contact to gate mating

go.nature.com/4mQdE7a

Super excited to share the first cooperative foraging paradigm in freely interacting mouse pairs! Stable leader and follower roles emerge spontaneously and predict learning. Well-trained mice show stereotyped, role-specific “behavioral motifs” absent in naive animals (1/5)
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧠🧪Brain-bending news: A new study reveals how changes in cell behavior and number affect the formation of distinct grooves and ridges in the brain.

Read more: www.bi.mpg.de/news/2025-08...
Scientific publication: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to announce our latest paper uncovering circuit, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of social hierarchy, another terrific collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social, Vic Kapoor and Adam Nelson (not on bsky) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A hypothalamic circuit that modulates feeding and parenting behaviours - Nature Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of mouse hypothalamus and behavioural experiments show that specific hypothalamic networks regulate conflicting feeding versus parenting behaviours of female mice.

How do animals decide if they should forage for food or stay home to take care of newborn offspring? Whose needs come first? For my PhD work now out in Nature, we examined how hunger and parenting neurons interact and are reshaped postpartum in mice 🧵⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper from the lab, from Jeremy Biane and team, out today, characterizing the principles of stimulus feature coding in populations of ventral CA1 neurons.

The neural basis of species-specific defensive behaviour in Peromyscus mice - Nature Visual threat triggers contrasting freeze and escape defensive responses in two species of deer mice as a result of different activation thresholds downstream of the superior colliculus in the do...

Finally it's out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... How flexible are essential innate behaviours and their underlying neural circuits? @felixbaier.bsky.social & I, with Hopi Hoekstra and @farrowlab.bsky.social, addressed this by studying the #evolution of threat avoidance in Peromyscus mice.

A new manuscript with my friend and collaborator Yasu on the neural pathways involved in alarm pheromone-induced behavior.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Screenshot of the top of the article, including the title, authors, and abstract.

What’s better than a one-channel #Miniscope? 🥁 A TWO-CHANNEL Miniscope!

Our new Miniscope2C is a dual-channel, open-source Miniscope that lets you record 2 fluorescent signals simultaneously in freely moving animals.

Read the paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Temporal control of progenitor competence shapes maturation in GABAergic neuron development in mice - Nature Neuroscience Unlike cortical progenitors, ventral telencephalic progenitors retain the ability to generate diverse neuron types during neurogenesis. Here, the authors show that ventral telencephalic progenitor mat...

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com: Temporal control of progenitor competence shapes maturation in GABAergic neuron development in mice. Congrats to first authors @annrosebright.bsky.social, Yana Kotlyarenko, @flo-neuhaus.bsky.social, and thanks to all collaborators!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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I am very happy to receive the Young Investigators Award from EBBS! 🎉 It was a great honour and a wonderful opportunity to share my work with such an inspiring group of scientists. Many thanks to the organizers, and I look forward to the next EBBS meetings! 🙌🔬 #EBBS2025

Honored to be one of the recipients of the EBBS Young Investigators Award at the fantastic EBBS conference in Bordeaux! Huge thanks to the organizers for such an amazing event. 💐✨ #EBBS2025

Let’s start the 51st EBBS meeting! Looking forward to great talks, ideas, and people. #EBBS2025 🧠✨

A simple action reduces high-fat diet intake and obesity in mice Diets that are high in fat cause overeating and weight gain in multiple species of animals, suggesting that high dietary fat is sufficient to cause ob…

This was a really fun project: We blocked obesity in mice by making them do a tiny bit of work for their food. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Emerging studies reveal that the brain & body maintain continuous communication via the Vagus nerve. In the Spring 2025 #FBINewsletter, Learn More about how a racing heart, increased breathing, or altered metabolism, informs the brain about #Stress 👉 reports.mountsinai.org/article/fbis...

A food-sensitive olfactory circuit drives anticipatory satiety - Nature Metabolism The authors describe a sensory circuit involving the medial septum (MS), where MS glutamatergic neurons integrate food odours to prime satiety and regulate nutrient intake.

📢 🤩Excited to share our latest paper👃🧠! Huge thanks to the amazing first author @janice-bulk.bsky.social‬ and all co-authors, especially @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social and ‪@tobiasackels.bsky.social‬ 🙌! ‬‬
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

CRISPR-mediated knockdown of oxytocin receptor in extended amygdala reduces stress-induced social avoidance and vigilance Oxytocin receptors (OTR) within the extended amygdala and nucleus accumbens have been implicated in modulating social behaviors, particularly following stress. The effects of OTR could be mediated by ...

A new preprint from @valentina-cs.bsky.social using @ajboender.bsky.social CRISPR tool shows that locally expressed oxytocin receptor in BNST modulates effects of stress on social approach and vigilance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...