If, like me, the new biosketch website pissed you off. If HTML tags and constant PDF downloads to see the formatting drive you crazy when editing your NIH/NSF biosketch, try this.

Interesting new result: in a model of fear/stress/ptsd, second-order conditioning cue (SOC in the figure) that was never directly linked to danger being absent still reduced fear just as much as a true safety signal (S), as long as it is immediately preceding the safety cue.

Couldn’t agree more! We need to 10x polysubstance use research funding. We actually need whole research centers dedicated to basic research on polysubstance use. Right now they are almost all exclusively dedicated to a single substance.https://t.co/y4bmFOZ2YU

Very happy to share a new paper in
@npp-journal.bsky.social I thought I knew what would predict escalation of cocaine use. Well, I was wrong. After tracking behavior daily for weeks, the answer turned out to be the opposite of my prediction, and it changed how I see addiction.

Could your initial response to a painkiller reveal your future risk of addiction?
Excited to share our new paper where we conducted a massive behavioral screening to understand the behavioral patterns underlying addiction-like behaviors in rats and how they relate to each others
A quick thread 👇

#ThisWeekInNPP

Behavioral indices of incentive salience, not sensitization or tolerance, were highly predictive of escalation of cocaine self-admin, suggesting incentive salience as a critical behavioral indicator of vulnerability to cocaine use

Breaking initial resistance to incentive salience with sufficient drug exposure

Individuals initially resistant to incentive salience can, with sufficient exposure, become sensitized and escalate cocaine use to the same level as more susceptible individuals

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