Matt Wanat

a white cat is sitting on a box with the words where written on it . ALT: a white cat is sitting on a box with the words where written on it .

The fiscal year is over.

So how was the NIH appropriation committed?

A long thread with institute by institute results about where the money went.

On the nature of a NSF (or NIH) graduate training fellowship I had a thought about graduate school fellowships and added it to the prior past about the NSF GRFP limitations to first year graduate students. [ETA 09/29/2025: I forgot to mention something impor…

On the nature of a NSF (or NIH) graduate training fellowship drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/o...

Sometimes you hear a bump in the night. Sometimes that bump is your ceiling crashing down due to an AC drain leak. This wasn’t on my bingo card for today

🔵 I'm interrupting my social media hiatus to flag this important preprint from the Bruchas lab (is he not on Bluesky!?) together with @davidweinshenker.bsky.social. Very difficult experiments to show that dopamine release from LC terminals is independent of VTA 🔥
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Photostimulation of locus coeruleus CA1 catecholaminergic terminals reversed Spatial memory impairment in an alzheimer’s disease mouse model - Psychopharmacology Rationale One of the earliest changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the loss of catecholaminergic terminals in the cortex and hippocampus originating from the Locus Coeruleus (LC). This ...

We showed previously that chemogenetic activation of the LC rescues spatial reversal learning in the TgF344-AD rat. New paper follows up and reports that optogenetic stimulation of LC terminals in CA1 also rescues cognitive deficits in 3xTg mouse model of AD. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Flyer for Texas A&M hiring of two assistant professors in Behavioral and Cellular Neuroscience, with link for applications.

We're hiring 2 faculty in Behavioral and Cellular Neuroscience at the Assistant Professor level -- come join our amazing department at Texas A&M!
apply.interfolio.com/172286
Apply by Oct 1 for highest priority.

Graph titled "value of grants awarded in 2025 has caught up to average of previous years." Graph shows average of 2016-24 spending and how much has been spent so far in FY25

Graph titled "Amount of first-year R01 and R21 grants." Graph compares average of 2016-24 to 2025.

It's been a busy time for NIH grants staff — the agency seems on track to spend its budget this fiscal year

But, because of multi-year funding, fewer projects are being funded than in previous years.

The number of R grants has fallen from 5,633 to 3,758

analysis by @jaspar.bsky.social

Adding up the NIH R01s lost to Multi-Year Funding From Berg’s bluesky post Jeremy Berg recently noted that he’s estimating about 2,400 grants that cannot be funded due to multi-year funding of other grants. His focus was on total fundi…

Adding up the NIH R01s lost to Multi-Year Funding drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/09/09/a...

Excited to share this update to our paper investigating the role of superior colliculus inputs to the ventral midbrain in learning and movement. Studies led by the amazing Dr. @carlipoisson.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

a man in a costume holding a scroll that says hear ye hear ye Alt: a man in a costume holding a scroll that says hear ye hear ye

Here ye, here ye!!! #WCBR2026 #WinterConfrenceonBrainResearch will be extending the panel deadline one week for submission (new deadline 9/18/2025)! Official announcement coming soon so check your emails! please reskeet!

Florida moves to end all school vaccine mandates, first in nation to do so Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo criticized school vaccine mandates, which every state has, and likened them to slavery.

Florida: Come for the beaches and stay for the preventable diseases.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Kristen Harris has been an active participant in the WCBR since 2002. Her professional career began at Harvard Medical school from 1984-1999 when she was recruited to Boston University, where she worked to establish their graduate program in experimental and computational neuroscience. From BU she was recruited as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent scholar to the Medical College of Georgia. Since 2006 she is Professor of Neuroscience in the Center for Learning and Memory and Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. She is renowned for her work on synapse structure and function pioneering three-dimensional reconstruction from serial section electron microscopy to advance understanding of the synaptic mechanisms of learning and memory. Her lab had developed novel tools sharing them together with data that are widely used resources (synapseweb.clm.utexas.edu). She is the recipient of Sloan Research Fellowship, Javits Merit Award, Brain Research Foundation Fellowship, Mika Salpeter Lifetime achievement and many other awards. She is known for innovative teaching, service on many prestigious scientific advisory boards, and presentations worldwide. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Amy Hauck Newman received her doctorate in Medicinal Chemistry from the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Glennon. She joined the laboratory of Dr. Kenner Rice at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her postdoctoral studies where she conducted total opiate synthesis, as a National Research Service Award fellow. After starting her first independent lab at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, she joined the National Institute on Drug Abuse-Intramural Research Program (NIDA-IRP), NIH, in 1991, where she was tenured and became the Medicinal Chemistry Section Chief. She currently serves as the Scientific Director, Chief of the Molecular Targets and Medications Discovery Branch and Director of the NIDA-IRP Medications Development Program. She has coauthored more than 340 original articles and reviews on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of centrally active agents, with an emphasis on selective ligands for the dopaminergic system, as potential treatment medications for substance use disorders. In particular, she has pioneered the development of highly selective and bitopic dopamine

D3 receptor antagonists and partial agonists for treatment of Opioid Use Disorders (OUD). More recently, she has turned her attention to developing medications for the treatment of psychostimulant use disorders that are comorbid with bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia. In addition, she has developed research tools that include small molecule fluorescent ligands, radioligands and irreversible ligands directed toward the dopamine, serotonin or norepinephrine transporters. She is an inventor on >25 NIH patents and patent applications. Dr. Newman has received numerous awards from both the NIH and NIDA Directors including the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Mentoring Award, in 2019. She was the first woman to receive the Philip Portoghese Lectureship Award, awarded by the Division of Medicinal Chemistry (MEDI) and the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2016. Dr. Newman was honored as a “Remarkable Woman in Medicinal Chemistry” by the ACS, in 2018 and was inducted into the ACS MEDI Hall of Fame in 2023.

Congratulations to Kristen Harris and Amy Hauck Newman the Pioneer Award Winners for #WCBR2026 ! Registration is now open and panel submissions are due Sept 11, 2025; posters are due October 9, 2025

#eNeuro: @mattjwanat.bsky.social‬ et al. show that the cue-evoked dopamine response in rats signals the duration of the trace period between cue and reward, and relates to the response latency.
https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0016-25.2025

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

A single stress exposure alters reward learning in ♀️ 🐀 depending on estrous cycle: ⬆️ responding in non-estrus, but ⬇️ in estrus. Repeated prior stress, however, ⬆️ cue-driven responding regardless of cycle stage

TL;DR: 5 justices say Trump doesn't have to immediately restore the funding, but 5 *also* signal that the underlying directives are unlawful.

That sends a fairly strong (if mixed) message that Trump will lose these cases *eventually,* but only once they're brought in the Court of Federal Claims.

Ahoy matey. I dig it

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

My greatest accomplishment this week was coming up with this dad joke

What does a gen alpha Thor call his brother?

Low key Loki

Epigenetic regulation of brain development, plasticity, and response to early-life stress Neuropsychopharmacology - Epigenetic regulation of brain development, plasticity, and response to early-life stress

Review now out in @npp-journal.bsky.social!
Epigenetic regulation of brain development, plasticity, and response to early life stress
rdcu.be/ezzYq

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