Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · 7h

Congrats Kurt!!!

Reposted by Matt Wanat

davidweinshenker.bsky.social @davidweinshenker.bsky.social · 14h

Excited to share the Special Issue on "Stress and Addiction" in Addiction Neuroscience is now available. Huge kudos to guest editors Karl Schmidt and Anushree Karkhanis and all the authors who contributed. www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Addiction Neuroscience | Stress <-> Addiction | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

Stress and drugs of abuse have a bidirectional relationship, such that stress is often seen as a driver of drug use, while at the same time drug use/abuse alters stress responses. Acute exposure to a ...

www.sciencedirect.com

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Zoe McElligott @nanopharmnc.bsky.social · 1d

October 9th is the deadline for poster submissions for #WCBR2026 please share! www.winterbrain.org

one more day left for poster submissions to Winter Brain 2026

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 8d

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.

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 .

media.tenor.com

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 10d

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

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…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

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Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · 15d

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

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Johannes Bohacek @bohaceklab.bsky.social · 22d

🔵 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...

www.biorxiv.org

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davidweinshenker.bsky.social @davidweinshenker.bsky.social · 27d

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...

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 ...

link.springer.com

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Rachel Smith @rachelsmithphd.bsky.social · 27d

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.

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

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anil oza @aniloza.bsky.social · 27d

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

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.

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · Sep 9

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

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…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · Sep 9

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...

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Zoe McElligott @nanopharmnc.bsky.social · Sep 9

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!

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

media.tenor.com

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Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · Sep 3

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

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

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.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Zoe McElligott @nanopharmnc.bsky.social · Aug 28

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

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.

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SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · Aug 27

#eNeuro: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kycdyth6vrvgsxhx7kocf4bd" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@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

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Reposted by Matt Wanat

Neuropsychopharmacology @npp-journal.bsky.social · Aug 26

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

Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning

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

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Matt Wanat

Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · Aug 21

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.

Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · Aug 21

Splitting 5-4 (with Chief Justice Roberts joining the three Democratic appointees in dissent), #SCOTUS grants *partial* stay to Trump administration in NIH funding case; holds that challenges to grant terminations (but *not* the underlying guidance) need to be filed in the Court of Federal Claims:

www.supremecourt.gov

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Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · Aug 15

Ahoy matey. I dig it

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Thiago Krause @thiagokrause.bsky.social · Aug 14

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

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Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · Aug 9

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

What does a gen alpha Thor call his brother?

Low key Loki

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Reposted by Matt Wanat

Dr. Cate Peña @cate-cholamine.bsky.social · Aug 6

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

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

rdcu.be

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Nature Neuroscience @natneuro.nature.com · Aug 4

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...

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...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Matt Wanat

Merridee Lefner @merridee.bsky.social · Jul 31

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!👇

Bita Moghaddam @bita137.bsky.social · Jul 31

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...

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…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Matt Wanat

Bita Moghaddam @bita137.bsky.social · Jul 31

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...

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…

www.sciencedirect.com

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