Brendon Watson
@brendonwatson20.bsky.social
Neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Michigan
Lab website: https://sites.google.com/view/watsonlab/
Lab website: https://sites.google.com/view/watsonlab/
Reposted by Brendon Watson
HAPPENING NOW: A sea of protesters have gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a “No Kings Day” rally against Donald Trump (Video: WXYZ-TV)
June 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
HAPPENING NOW: A sea of protesters have gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a “No Kings Day” rally against Donald Trump (Video: WXYZ-TV)
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
May 15, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
Reposted by Brendon Watson
@qlu.bsky.social is starting his lab at City U of Hong Kong! This is a truly amazing opportunity for trainees interested in computational cognitive neuroscience and neuroAI
I’m thrilled to announce that I will start as a presidential assistant professor in Neuroscience at the City U of Hong Kong in Jan 2026!
I have RA, PhD, and postdoc positions available! Come work with me on neural network models + experiments on human memory!
RT appreciated!
(1/5)
I have RA, PhD, and postdoc positions available! Come work with me on neural network models + experiments on human memory!
RT appreciated!
(1/5)
May 8, 2025 at 1:31 PM
@qlu.bsky.social is starting his lab at City U of Hong Kong! This is a truly amazing opportunity for trainees interested in computational cognitive neuroscience and neuroAI
Reposted by Brendon Watson
🚨 This MUST READ essay and call to action spells out, in very clear terms, how the Trump administration could get away with slashing the NIH budget. NIH scientists and Dems in congress need to read and understand it. This is where we win or lose the battle to save the NIH and US science. 🧪 🧠 🧬 🔊
The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster
An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do
donmoynihan.substack.com
April 28, 2025 at 12:54 PM
🚨 This MUST READ essay and call to action spells out, in very clear terms, how the Trump administration could get away with slashing the NIH budget. NIH scientists and Dems in congress need to read and understand it. This is where we win or lose the battle to save the NIH and US science. 🧪 🧠 🧬 🔊
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
forms.gle
February 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
My lab is looking for postdocs interested in brain electrophysiology and circadian rhythms. Message me if interested!
April 29, 2025 at 1:21 AM
My lab is looking for postdocs interested in brain electrophysiology and circadian rhythms. Message me if interested!
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Does your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
April 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Does your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Thank you for sharing news of our initiative... we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers from U of Maryland, UPenn, and Georgia Tech + more whose aim is to communicate the impacts of federal cuts on science and health research nationwide. Full explainer thread here:
bsky.app/profile/josh...
bsky.app/profile/josh...
March 29, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Thank you for sharing news of our initiative... we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers from U of Maryland, UPenn, and Georgia Tech + more whose aim is to communicate the impacts of federal cuts on science and health research nationwide. Full explainer thread here:
bsky.app/profile/josh...
bsky.app/profile/josh...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
fantastic post, and tasty food for thoughts.
shamelessly adding here that many different types of STDP come about from minimizing a prediction of the future loss function with spikes :)
hopefully another case of successful predictions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
shamelessly adding here that many different types of STDP come about from minimizing a prediction of the future loss function with spikes :)
hopefully another case of successful predictions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Sequence anticipation and spike-timing-dependent plasticity emerge from a predictive learning rule - Nature Communications
Prediction of future inputs is a key computational task for the brain. Here, the authors proposed a predictive learning rule in neurons that leads to anticipation and recall of inputs, and that reprod...
www.nature.com
March 23, 2025 at 9:49 AM
fantastic post, and tasty food for thoughts.
shamelessly adding here that many different types of STDP come about from minimizing a prediction of the future loss function with spikes :)
hopefully another case of successful predictions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
shamelessly adding here that many different types of STDP come about from minimizing a prediction of the future loss function with spikes :)
hopefully another case of successful predictions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Proud of our new paper, such an interesting story! NonREM sleep is typically considered a "synchronized state", but we find many pairs of neurons are actively de-synchronized in nonREM and even more so with more delta activity. Great work Tangyu Liu and Jeremy Hartner: www.eneuro.org/content/12/3...
Desynchronization Increased in the Synchronized State: Subsets of Neocortical Neurons Become Strongly Anticorrelated during NonREM Sleep
We aimed to better understand the dynamics of cortical neurons during nonREM sleep—a state in which neuronal populations are silenced for ∼100 ms of every second due to delta wave fluctuations. This a...
www.eneuro.org
March 21, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Proud of our new paper, such an interesting story! NonREM sleep is typically considered a "synchronized state", but we find many pairs of neurons are actively de-synchronized in nonREM and even more so with more delta activity. Great work Tangyu Liu and Jeremy Hartner: www.eneuro.org/content/12/3...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
March 7, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Brendon Watson
As my grants are stripped away, I will say thank you so much for protecting me from antisemitism!
www.hhs.gov/about/news/2...
www.hhs.gov/about/news/2...
www.hhs.gov
March 7, 2025 at 6:22 PM
As my grants are stripped away, I will say thank you so much for protecting me from antisemitism!
www.hhs.gov/about/news/2...
www.hhs.gov/about/news/2...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
NIH has cut billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com
February 8, 2025 at 2:35 PM
NIH has cut billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Tesla paid $0 in federal income tax last year.
2022: $0
2021: $0
2020: $0
2019: $0
2018: $0
Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
2022: $0
2021: $0
2020: $0
2019: $0
2018: $0
Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
February 8, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Tesla paid $0 in federal income tax last year.
2022: $0
2021: $0
2020: $0
2019: $0
2018: $0
Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
2022: $0
2021: $0
2020: $0
2019: $0
2018: $0
Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
Reposted by Brendon Watson
I stand with the trans community. Pass it along.
February 9, 2025 at 12:45 PM
I stand with the trans community. Pass it along.
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Two cool papers on the HPC out today in @nature.com:
1. Replay during non-REM sleep switches between prioritizing recent versus remote memories:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2. All optical obs. of synaptic plasticity rules during place field formation:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧠📈 🧪
1. Replay during non-REM sleep switches between prioritizing recent versus remote memories:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2. All optical obs. of synaptic plasticity rules during place field formation:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧠📈 🧪
Sleep microstructure organizes memory replay - Nature
The temporal microstructure of the brain can multiplex distinct cognitive processes during sleep to support continuous learning.
www.nature.com
January 30, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Two cool papers on the HPC out today in @nature.com:
1. Replay during non-REM sleep switches between prioritizing recent versus remote memories:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2. All optical obs. of synaptic plasticity rules during place field formation:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧠📈 🧪
1. Replay during non-REM sleep switches between prioritizing recent versus remote memories:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2. All optical obs. of synaptic plasticity rules during place field formation:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧠📈 🧪
Reposted by Brendon Watson
Dendrites doing AI problems, so great to see the increased activity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dendrites endow artificial neural networks with accurate, robust and parameter-efficient learning - Nature Communications
Artificial neural networks, central to deep learning, are powerful but energy-consuming and prone to overfitting. The authors propose a network design inspired by biological dendrites, which offe...
www.nature.com
January 30, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Dendrites doing AI problems, so great to see the increased activity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
I will try to post the new articles published in Neuroscience of Consciousness here!
Let's start with a paper on grief, which challenges neuroscience's ability to investigate affective states.
**The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion**
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
Let's start with a paper on grief, which challenges neuroscience's ability to investigate affective states.
**The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion**
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion
Abstract. This paper explores the limitations of neurobiological approaches to human emotional experience, focusing on the case of grief. We propose that g
academic.oup.com
December 22, 2024 at 3:14 PM
I will try to post the new articles published in Neuroscience of Consciousness here!
Let's start with a paper on grief, which challenges neuroscience's ability to investigate affective states.
**The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion**
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
Let's start with a paper on grief, which challenges neuroscience's ability to investigate affective states.
**The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion**
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
Our new paper is out!: While hippocampal inhibitory neurons fluctuate around the 24 hour clock, excitatory neuron overall activity remains stable all day long.
Congrats to Nicolette Ognjanovski and team!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Congrats to Nicolette Ognjanovski and team!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Daily rhythms drive dynamism in sleep, oscillations and interneuron firing, while excitatory firing remains stable across 24 h
Electrical patterns in the mouse hippocampus are dynamic across the 24-h (12:12 light:dark) day. Inhibitory neurons show rhythmicity in firing across the day, peaking around light transitions; meanwh...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 15, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Our new paper is out!: While hippocampal inhibitory neurons fluctuate around the 24 hour clock, excitatory neuron overall activity remains stable all day long.
Congrats to Nicolette Ognjanovski and team!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Congrats to Nicolette Ognjanovski and team!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Brendon Watson
There are many nuances regarding the structural neural plasticity associated with antidepressant drugs. 💊🧠
We share our thoughts here in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, led by Clara Liao with co-authors from Conor Liston’s lab at Weill Cornell.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We share our thoughts here in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, led by Clara Liao with co-authors from Conor Liston’s lab at Weill Cornell.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 19, 2024 at 1:23 PM
There are many nuances regarding the structural neural plasticity associated with antidepressant drugs. 💊🧠
We share our thoughts here in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, led by Clara Liao with co-authors from Conor Liston’s lab at Weill Cornell.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We share our thoughts here in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, led by Clara Liao with co-authors from Conor Liston’s lab at Weill Cornell.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Omg perfect for starting thanks!!!
Can we get a starter pack of starter packs?
November 18, 2024 at 1:51 AM
Omg perfect for starting thanks!!!
Excited to see so many neuroscientists here on BlueSky!
November 17, 2024 at 8:00 PM
Excited to see so many neuroscientists here on BlueSky!