Alexander Harris

This blew me away!

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...

Here’s my top line overview:

I dunno. You kinda make sense to me!

Can you help me vibe this code I don’t understand?

Herma of Demosthenes from the Athenian Agora, work by Polyeuktos, c. 280 BC, Glyptothek ^ Origin In the earliest times Greek divinities were worshipped in the form of a heap of stones or a shapeless column of stone or wood. In many parts of Greece there were piles of stones by the sides of roads, especially at their crossings, and on the boundaries of lands. The religious respect paid to such heaps of stones, especially at the meeting of roads, is shown by the custom of each passer-by throwing a stone on to the heap or anointing it with oil. Later there was the addition of a head and phallus to the column, which became quadrangular (the number four was sacred to Hermes).

Name and origin The earliest form of the name Hermes is the Mycenaean Greek *hermahãs, written e-ma-a2 (e-ma-ha) in the Linear B syllabic script. Other forms of the name of Hermes are Hermeias, Hermaön, Hermãn, Hermaios, and Hermayos. Most scholars derive Hermes from Greek (herma), 'stone heap’, Hermax, ('heap of stones'), hermaion, ('gift of Hermes'), hermaios hill were holy to Hermes.

Today’s daf!

Congratulations!!

Congratulations!!!

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!👇

'Untangling the multifaceted VTA responses to stress'

by Urszula Skupio, Alexander Harris & Abigail Polter
@ampolter.bsky.social @dralexharris.bsky.social

www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Gorgeous

Can I choose none of the above?

But I guess they have decided to do it this way. Blargh

I see. Although they could give across the board annual steep haircuts to existing grants, no?

I don’t get it yet. Is it to use up the budget before the big cut?

Do you have a sense of the ostensible rationale?

So this happened... Useful if you want to make economic (and health) arguments about the importance of NIH.

A sesame chicken & a balsamic-ginger-peach chicken.
Wishing for peace. Gut Shabbos

Have you ever wondered why it’s called “The Three Weeks” but sefira isn’t called “The 7 weeks”? Sefira is literally about the 7 weeks, bain hamitzorim just happens to be 3 weeks long!

“With these considerations, we expect to fund through the 4th percentile.”

There it is, in black and white, the destruction of cancer research in the US.

Well then. Glad we sorted that out.

YouTube video by NPP Journal npp's "Meet the Editor" with Dr. Kate Fitzgerald

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Kate Fitzgerald
@KDFitzgerald_MD, professor at @columbiapsych.bsky.social and expert in child and adolescent psychiatry, as the newest Associate Editor at NPP! "Meet the Editor" with Dr. Kate Fitzgerald youtu.be/zDnOFSm9kxg?... via
@YouTube @npp-journal.bsky.social

This FDA hearing is a sham. There is enough stigma and confusion about treatment for medically-based psychiatric issues. These lies will result in deaths of people who have treatable illnesses.

Do I know anyone who has worked with Peter Carruthers, Joshua Knobe, Hakwan Lau, or Thomas Metzinger?

I am looking for who would be a good collaborator on an experimental philosophy project.

The group also attacked financial aid programs at Hopkins, including one given by alum Michael Bloomberg, making the medical school free to attend for those from families making under $300,000 a year. About two-thirds of Hopkins medical students, according to the university, qualify for the scholarship. But the conservative group argued that "it is well recognized that race and ethnicity are inseparable from socioeconomic status," adding that "Johns Hopkins masks racial preferences behind income thresholds."

Who does America First Legal (founded by Stephen Miller) hate more: poor people or minorities?

www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/hi...

Very much aware. Tragic. Maybe I’ll get lucky

Statue of John Henry at the Great Bend train tunnel

Me vs. ChatGPT

Untangling the multifaceted VTA responses to stress Stress has profound impacts on the ventral tegmental area (VTA). However, the complex and opposing effects of stress on the VTA have limited our abili…

New from @dralexharris.bsky.social, Ula Skupio, and myself in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social: a long in the works review trying to untangle what stress is doing in the VTA, and what the piles of confusing data might teach us about what the VTA is doing at all.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Stress is complicated, right?

Ula Skupio @ampolter.bsky.social & I had a hard think about the way acute & chronic stress impacts the different neural populations in the VTA & I’m really pleased with what we came up with.

Just published in TINS. Check it out!

authors.elsevier.com/c/1lRWibotq7...

Distinct prelimbic cortex neuronal responses to emotional states of others drive emotion recognition in adult mice Jabarin et al. show that adult mice recognize emotional states of others in a sex-specific manner. Emotion recognition is driven by the differential response of prelimbic cortex pyramidal neurons to a...

Folks, the video abstract on this paper is a masterpiece

www.cell.com/current-biol...

H/t Urszula Skupio

#goals