Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 8d

Congrats Beth! 👏🏽 🎉

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 13d

Thanks Phil!

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 14d

Somehow I wasn't following you yet here 😂😂😂

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 21d

Out in @elife.bsky.social!
Lora and the Roeper lab discovered a new mechanism by which surviving dopamine neurons recover their function in a model of Parkinson's - a key step for understanding this disease!
@goetheuni.bsky.social @uabneuro.bsky.social

elifesciences.org/articles/104...

Recovery of the full in vivo firing range in post-lesion surviving DA SN neurons associated with Kv4.3-mediated pacemaker plasticity

elifesciences.org

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Reposted by Kauê Machado Costa

Allen Institute @alleninstitute.org · 22d

Alright rat #neuroskyence community, lock in! We have an #OpenScienceWeek treat for you.

You've asked for it in our DMs, comments, and SfN booth. 🥁🥁🥁

MapMyCells can now map rat data and map it onto any of our mouse or human taxonomies!

More info: community.brain-map.org/t/new-featur...

New features in MapMyCells: Basal Ganglia taxonomy and cross-species mapping

We are pleased to announce two new features in MapMyCells. MapMyCells now allows users to map data onto the Consensus Basal Ganglia taxonomy, a multi-species (human, macaque, marmoset) taxonomy of ...

community.brain-map.org

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 23d

I'm super happy to have the lab featured on @thetransmitter.bsky.social, my favorite place for neuroscience news!

#neuroskyence

@uabneuro.bsky.social

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 23d

In this month’s “Liftoff,” @matthiasnau.bsky.social talks about the importance of making quick decisions as a PI, and @kmcostalab.com shares how lab members being mad at a PI can sometimes be a good thing.

By @franciscorr25.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/liftoff-new-...

Liftoff: New lab alerts

Learn about early-career scientists starting their own labs.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Sep 9

I am extremely grateful to the @pfresearchteam.bsky.social for this great opportunity!

Parkinson's Foundation Research @pfresearchteam.bsky.social · Sep 8

📢 Congratulations to 2025 Impact Awardee, Dr. Kauê Costa from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose project focuses on uncovering the dopaminergic mechanisms of early cognitive deficits in #Parkinsons disease.

@kmcostalab.com @parkinsondotorg.bsky.social

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Aug 26

If you are a highly motivated grad student (@uabneuro.bsky.social) or a prospective postdoc with experience in behavior, neural recordings, or programming, and would like to contribute to this project, just contact me. Details on kmcostalab.com

K.M. Costa Lab

kmcostalab.com

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Aug 26

The lab has received a Parkinson's Foundation Impact Award!

Together with @poonamthakur.bsky.social, we will explore how dopamine signaling changes in early PD impacts cognition. We are honored and grateful for this opportunity!

proposalcentral.com/Insights/E_E...

@parkinsondotorg.bsky.social

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Jul 11

This has been in the pipeline for while, so I am really thrilled it came out. I also thank the reviewers, which made interesting suggestions and really helped refined the discussion during the review process

Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Jul 11

These findings support a "model-based" interpretation for dopamine signaling, and suggest that dopamine signals, especially in the nucleus accumbens, reflect a domain-general, or multi-dimensional, prediction error

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Jul 11

GREAT NEWS! Our paper on dopamine signaling of valueless prediction errors is out in Science Advances @science.org! I found that striatal dopamine tracks cue-cue prediction errors in sensory preconditioning, which goes against model-free ideas of dopamine function

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Striatal dopamine signals errors in prediction across different informational domains

Dopamine reflects prediction errors not only about reward but also about valueless stimuli, challenging many current theories.

www.science.org

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Jun 2

Funding updates coming soon, and the lab is looking to recruit motivated postdocs, grad students, or postbacs with expertise in rodent behavior, stereotactic surgery, and neural data analysis. Come help us figure out the neural mechanisms of learning and cognition! See link:

www.kmcostalab.com/join

K.M. Costa Lab - Join

Join

www.kmcostalab.com

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · May 29

Em português: junto com meu colaborador, Anderson Herculano, aprovamos um projeto do CNPq para colaborações com brasileiros no exterior, como eu. Estou muito feliz pela oportunidade de colaborar com a UFPA, onde fiz minha graduação, agora como PI do meu laboratório nos EUA

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · May 29

This one is special - through my collaborator Anderson Herculano, we received a special grant from Brazil for collaborations with expat Brazilian PIs like me.

I am beyond thrilled to start working with my alma mater @ufpa.bsky.social on Amazonian research applied to the brain and mental health🥳

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · May 1

This is a fantastic program. I learned quite a lot. Strongly recommend applying!

Allen Institute @alleninstitute.org · May 1

Open call for Next Generation Leaders!

Our NGL program recognizes early career scientists with fresh and innovative perspectives. For 3 years, NGLs contribute to ongoing research and initiatives at the Allen Institute.

Apply by June 3. alleninstitute.org/about/people...

Next Generation Leaders

The Next Generation Leaders program at the Allen Institute aims to support emerging and diverse early-career researchers in bioscience who will contribute to cultivating new ideas to make a broad, tra...

alleninstitute.org

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Apr 14

Thrilled to see this great work by Bsky-less Wenhui Zong out in @natneuro.nature.com! It was a pleasure to contribute to this! The findings are wonderfully counterintuitive and provide surprising insight on the circuit bases of abstract representations in learning.

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

Hippocampal output suppresses orbitofrontal cortex schema cell formation - Nature Neuroscience

Inactivation of the ventral subiculum does not change existing schema cells in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) but aids their formation during new learning. This challenges the idea that the OFC relies...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Kauê Machado Costa

Kristina Visscher @visscherlab.bsky.social · Mar 8

Wonderful stand up for science rally in Birmingham! Well attended, gorgeous weather, and great thoughts!!

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Mar 5

Love this - it reflects many things that I had thought about and debated heatedly with others. I will print this out for future arguments. 🧐

Nencki Open Lab @openlab.bsky.social · Mar 5

We are super happy to present our first preprint - the effect of our Rethinking Naturalistic Behaviour Workshop - where we look more critically at the term "naturalistic behaviour" and point to its vagueness and inconsistency in its use! osf.io/preprints/os...

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Reposted by Kauê Machado Costa

Nencki Open Lab @openlab.bsky.social · Mar 5

We are super happy to present our first preprint - the effect of our Rethinking Naturalistic Behaviour Workshop - where we look more critically at the term "naturalistic behaviour" and point to its vagueness and inconsistency in its use! osf.io/preprints/os...

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Mar 3

Also a shoutout to @yulonglilab.bsky.social for making and sharing their fantastic sensors for dopamine and acetylcholine recordings!

Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Mar 3

This finding sheds light on how different neuromodulators act together to define behavior.

I am grateful for my colleagues, including my co-first Zhewei Zhang and my mentor Geoff Schoenbaum, and to the institutions that made this possible - NIDA, the NIH, and UAB @uabneuro.bsky.social

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Mar 3

I am happy to share my latest (NIH funded) work, out in
@currentbiology.bsky.social
!

We show that task demands define the correlations between accumbal dopamine and acetylcholine, in a pattern that supports a tripartite coincidence model of striatal plasticity.

sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Dopamine and acetylcholine correlations in the nucleus accumbens depend on behavioral task states

Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) changes quickly in response to errors in predicting events like reward delivery1,2,3 but also slowly …

sciencedirect.com

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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Feb 26

Also, if anyone wants to take some shots at the TDRL monarch, I'm looking to hire a postdoc and/or research scientist for an NIH-funded project on this topic

Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · Feb 26

In these turbulent times, I am happy to share our NIH-supported paper in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

Led by Zhewei Zhang, we discuss the rigor needed to rule out TDRL models of dopamine function - after all, when you aim at the king, you better not miss🎯

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

The devilish details affecting TDRL models in dopamine research

Over recent decades, temporal difference reinforcement learning (TDRL) models have successfully explained much dopamine (DA) activity. This success ha…

www.sciencedirect.com

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