Staci Bilbo

PNIRS 2026

📣 #PNIRS2026: Save the Date‼️

🗓️ June 22–25, 2026
📍 New Orleans, Louisiana 🇺🇸

✨ Whether your PsychoNeuroImmunology research emphasizes the P, N, or I — we look forward to seeing your work and connecting in The Big Easy!

📻 Stay tuned for more info re: call for abstracts. Please spread the word 🙏🏼

Opinion | Why Young Men Are Losing Faith in Science

I find this really insightful (and scary). Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/o...

It's always such a joyful day when students defend! Congrats to the newly minted Dr. Julia Dziabis on a brilliant thesis. We are so proud of you!

Rhythmic metabolites in the E19 SCN peak during the day. Majority of rhythmic lipids and polar metabolites in the E19 SCN peak during the day, while there are more diverse phase clusters in the developed P28 SCN postweaning. Polar metabolites and lipids identified as rhythmic in E19 SCN (E19 clusters 1, top, and 2, bottom) were divided into subgroups based on hierarchical K-means clustering. Line plots on the left show traces of the normalized level of each rhythmic compound in each corresponding cluster. Bar plots on the right represent the lipid classes and polar metabolites in each rhythmic cluster.

How are #circadian rhythms established during development? This study shows that maternal metabolic signals oscillate in the fetal #SCN before the endogenous #clock becomes functional, offering a plausible mechanism for maternal entrainment of the developing clock @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3VD45fZ

A Pill to Heal the Brain Could Revolutionize Neuroscience

Always happy to share hopeful science. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/s...

Advice | How to Get Through The Year, and Maybe Even Thrive Four ways to nurture academic well-being in these uniquely challenging times.

www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

😂

RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That. While touting a $50 million initiative to identify the causes of autism, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is helping lead an administration that is rolling back protections against pollution and toxic chemicals,...

www.propublica.org/article/rfk-...

I Came from Rural Texas to Harvard’s MD-PhD program. Now, Trump Defunded that Program. These decisions affect not just the archetypal Ivy League student many imagine—they affect people who grew up in places like Lindale.

Last week: Both NIH grants that support the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program were terminated as part of a broader attempt by the federal government to terminate direct NIH funding to Harvard Medical School. 32 students who spent countless hours applying for and earning fellowships saw their awards vanish.

I still get chills

Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts

Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE

see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut Senators from both parties endorsed a $400 million increase to the budget of the National Institutes of Health on Thursday

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut www.statnews.com/2025/07/31/n... via @statnews.com

Future of NIH in the hands of five senators.

Write to them if you are in
PA -McCormick
WV - Moore Capito
ME - Collins
AL - Britt
LA - Cassidy

All science needs an evolutionary perspective....

👏👏 thank you for writing this article Jason

not just you. I posted this a few days ago: For every 1 animal used in research, there are hundreds to thousands used for food.

Can you hit repost? Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't want you to know the name of her opponent but will try every desperate attempt to save her seat.

My name is Shawn Harris. I am a Democrat, husband, father, Retired Brigadier General, farmer, and I'm running against MTG. Can you share and follow me?

Yesterday, marked 1 month since we sent the #BethesdaDeclaration.

So, has anything changed? 🧵 1/n

US-CAN Doctoral Excellence Award Western University, in vibrant London, Ontario, delivers an academic and student experience second to none.

Graduate students who have an offer to study in the US but are reconsidering or have been denied entry or current grad students who want to leave, then consider coming to Western University in Canada. Our University just launched a US-CAN Doctoral Excellence Program : grad.uwo.ca/finances/wes...

Public comment on this new "no animal only studies" is open here:

www.fda.gov/news-events/...

It closes next Monday.

and we don't have to eat animals to live. We need whole animal options to understand biology, at least for now.

For every 1 animal used in research, there are hundreds to thousands used for food.
Research animals globally: Estimated 50–100 million/year (most are mice, rats, and fish).
Animals killed for food globally: Over 70–80 billion land animals per year, plus trillions of fish.

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit In a court filing, the tax agency said a decades-old ban on campaigning by tax-exempt groups should not apply to houses of worship speaking to their own members.

The double standard here is stunning. Universities are losing grants, student aid, and endowments for being "too woke." But churches (which also receive federal funds, eg, for school vouchers, food banks, and marriage promotion programs) are now allowed to openly endorse political candidates.

Neuro-Immune Link Could Shape Brain Development, Study Finds Long seen as defenders against disease, immune cells in the brain are now emerging as architects of early brain development.

Neuro-Immune Link Could Shape Brain Development, Study Finds medschool.duke.edu/news/neuro-i...

Taken together, we hypothesize that IL34 is a signal that neurons can use as a brake to decrease pruning once neural circuits have stabilized, and disruptions in its expression can have significant consequences for neural development (and neurodegeneration, e.g. Alzheimer's disease)

Blocking IL34 beyond the critical period of pruning reopens pruning and decreases total synapse number, and over-expression of IL34 prior to the period of pruning prevents proper pruning.

whereas over-expressing IL34 too early in life accelerates the maturation of microglia. Finally, we show the functional consequence of this signal for synaptic pruning of Vglut2+ thalamocortical synapses within the anterior cingulate cortex.

We show that cortical excitatory neurons up-regulate IL34 during a discrete window between the first and second postnatal week in mice. This increase coincides with the functional and morphological maturation of microglia in the cortex. Blocking IL34 prevents the proper maturation of microglia,

There is striking heterogeneity across brain regions for the microglial dependence on CSF1 vs IL34 for their survival, which suggested to us that these ligands are likely not redundant in their function. Moreover, little was known about when in development microglia become dependent on each ligand.

We know that microglia depend on the CSF1R for their survival. What is often overlooked is that this receptor has two ligands: CSF1 produced primarily by glial cells (including microglia), and interleukin 34 (IL34), produced primarily by neurons in the CNS.

Excited to share this new story from the lab and led by the very talented @bendevlin.bsky.social! In collab with Anne Schaefer and grateful for funding from NIH and @curealzheimersfund.bsky.social. a brief 🧵