Matt Wanat

Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind - Nature Neuroscience Differences in neuroeconomic decision-making influence nucleus accumbens dopamine dynamics and reflect choice confidence during evaluation, as well as past and future value during re-evaluation, which...

Dopamine dynamics in the nucleus accumbens core reflected decision confidence during evaluation of decisions in an economic foraging task in mice, as well as both past and future value during re-evaluation and change-of-mind

@perothwell.bsky.social

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

Yeah dopamine encodes reward but what about when contingencies shift and behavior needs to be flexible? Turns out VTA GABA neuron activity plays a role, check it out in my first postdoctoral research article here!👇

Flexible updating of reward and punishment contingencies by VTA GABA neurons In dynamic environments where stimuli predicting reward or punishment unexpectedly change, it is critical to flexibly update behavior while preserving…

New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility

GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Full Committee Markup of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Acts | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

🧪 Senate appropriators say: NIH's budget gets a... boost!

Rather than 40% cut, NIH gets a $400M *increase* in the Senate committee bill for FY26 (about +1%).

"Congress has your back," said @murray.senate.gov.

ADVOCACY MATTERS! There's still a long road (esp in the House), so keep up pressure.

From left to right, Dr. Albert Mulenga, William Tae Heung Kim, Dr. Thu Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Alex Kiarie Gaithuma, Dr Hassan Hakimi and Emily Bencosme Cuevas. Kim is a Texas A&M researcher who was detained in San Francisco last Monday despite being a permanent resident of the United States and a green card holder. COURTESY OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim.

He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.

He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States.

And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

The NIH can’t award ANY grants to outside researchers under new WH restriction, reports @wsj.com.

The pause came in the form of a footnote from OMB Director Vought, in a document that doles out federal funds to the NIH.

Prelude to rescissions, especially after his comments over the weekend?

Trump administration blocks NIH from awarding any research grants and contracts The order applies to the entirety of new and, possibly, ongoing research grant dollars that go to universities and academic medical centers.

STAT Story

www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/t...

1/n

Largest genetic study of cocaine self-administration

The results replicate previous loci associated with human cocaine use disorder and provide novel biological insights, including the potential of pharmacological treatment strategies targeting carboxylesterases

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

Talk about your grant lotteries. Earn a 4%ile for a chance at a four year award....or bupkis. whee.

NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year. NIH has issued NOT-OD-25-132 Supporting Fairness and Originality in NIH Research Applications which informs us that NIH will only accept six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications fro…

NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/n...

Yep, that is for sure our bet with some preliminary data to support it! Thanks for sharing that paper

Thanks Debbie!

Thanks a ton!

Thanks Jibran!

Thanks Beth!

Exciting new work from @mattjwanat.bsky.social & team is out NOW ⤵️🤩

Thanks David!

Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning Neuropsychopharmacology - Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning

5 years of my life are finally available to read thanks to @npp-journal.bsky.social! Check out my first first-author paper here: rdcu.be/ewtDQ.

Shout out to @mattjwanat.bsky.social for all of his incredible mentorship and making sure this was something I could be proud of, which I absolutely am!

Thanks Mike!

Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning Neuropsychopharmacology - Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning

Ever wonder how stress and the estrous cycle affects reward learning? Well we have answers for you in our paper led by @askaneuroscientist.bsky.social published in
@npp-journal.bsky.social

And huge thanks to the NIH and NSF who supported this research.

(1/3) Excited to introduce our new GRAB sensors for a series of steroid hormones! These tools enable real-time detection of steroid hormone dynamics in vivo🐭🧠. Happy to share these sensors and welcome any feedback! Please contact yulonglilab2018@gmail.com for information.

Journalist freaks out researchers because of incomplete understanding of how NIH works The socials blew up yesterday over a recent article in Drug Discovery & Development posted by Brian Buntz. With good reason. The subhead reads “NIH announces end to funding for animal-onl…

Journalist freaks out researchers because of incomplete understanding of how NIH works drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/09/j...

Pleased to share my recently minted PhD student Dr. Kaisha Meyer-Acosta’s first author publication. She’s on the postdoc market, DM her if you’d like to connect
@karinameyera.bsky.social

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40541173/

Details of the announcement by Nicole Kleinstreuer start ~min 2:40 www.youtube.com/live/vz1uF42...

Indiana Jones will be played by a rotating cast of three adjuncts who answer to two different associate deans

Winter Conference on Brain Research January 24th to 29th 2026 Big Sky Montana!

Submissions for #WCBR2026 open today! Please go to www.winterbrain.org Big Sky is my absolute favorite venue for this meeting. The science is top notch, the people are great, the meaning is inclusive, and I learned to ski as a 35 year old! Please repost!

So I know it takes time for traditional media to catch up. But the lack of stories about this is noticeable. This is freaking huge and great

BREAKING: A federal judge in Massachusetts (the Reagan-appointed William Young) has declared the Trump administration's cuts to NIH grants — ostensibly over Trump's EOs on gender ideology and DEI — are "illegal" and "void." He's ordering many grants restored.

Excited to share the preprint for one of my postdoctoral projects in the Nestler lab 🥳

Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine Encodes the Trace Period during Appetitive Pavlovian Conditioning Pavlovian conditioning tasks have been used to identify the neural systems involved with learning cue–outcome relationships. In delay conditioning, the conditioned stimulus (CS) overlaps or co-termina...

Funny story - I forgot about this work I did as a PD in the PEMP lab (circa 2011-2013) but was recently reminded during a lab journal club. Better ~12 years late than never. Thx to Paul, Tati, and people from the lab doing revision expts (Brandon, Ceci, and Leo)! www.eneuro.org/content/12/5...