Michael Totty
@mictott.bsky.social
Postdoctoral neuroscientist at JHU working at the intersection of neural circuits, bioinformatics, and psychiatric disorders.
https://mictott.github.io
https://mictott.github.io
Pinned
Michael Totty
@mictott.bsky.social
· Sep 18
Transcriptomic diversity of amygdalar subdivisions across humans and nonhuman primates
Specialized cell types and links to psychiatric disorders are revealed by genetic mapping of primate amygdala neurons.
www.science.org
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Michael Totty
Restaurants, billboards, commercials… what brain circuits link context to appetite? 🧠🌎🍽️
Very happy to finally share a major update in our work exploring the hippocampus and lateral septum in calibrating food consumption! 🍩
Major thanks to our lab and collaborators! ⭐️⭐️
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Very happy to finally share a major update in our work exploring the hippocampus and lateral septum in calibrating food consumption! 🍩
Major thanks to our lab and collaborators! ⭐️⭐️
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
A dorsal hippocampus-prodynorphinergic dorsolateral septum-to-lateral hypothalamus circuit mediates contextual gating of feeding
Goode et al. show that prodynorphin (Pdyn)-expressing neurons of the dorsolateral
septum (DLS) receive substantial dorsal hippocampal (DHPC) input and inhibit lateral
hypothalamic (LHA) GABAergic neur...
www.cell.com
February 12, 2026 at 10:04 PM
Restaurants, billboards, commercials… what brain circuits link context to appetite? 🧠🌎🍽️
Very happy to finally share a major update in our work exploring the hippocampus and lateral septum in calibrating food consumption! 🍩
Major thanks to our lab and collaborators! ⭐️⭐️
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Very happy to finally share a major update in our work exploring the hippocampus and lateral septum in calibrating food consumption! 🍩
Major thanks to our lab and collaborators! ⭐️⭐️
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Major congratulations to @travisgoode.bsky.social and team on this!! This work was years in the making and is an absolute tour de force uncovering the neural circuitry of context-dependent feeding.
Excited to share our study in Neuron led by
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
February 12, 2026 at 5:27 PM
Major congratulations to @travisgoode.bsky.social and team on this!! This work was years in the making and is an absolute tour de force uncovering the neural circuitry of context-dependent feeding.
Reposted by Michael Totty
Excited to share our study in Neuron led by
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
February 12, 2026 at 5:03 PM
Excited to share our study in Neuron led by
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
@travisgoode.bsky.social, a K99 PDF (interviewing for Faculty) and Sahay lab team with collaborators at BROAD, Hopkins, and UW Seattle, defining a neural circuit that links prior experience with feeding behavior. Open Access: sahaylab.com/publications
Reposted by Michael Totty
Congrats to @aaronsalisbury.bsky.social and @mictott.bsky.social on this exciting project initially designed to mechanistically investigate a molecular association with PTSD that we observed in postmortem human brain tissue. Fun🧵below explaining the scientific rational and findings from Michael!
New paper out on cortistatin neurons and their role in regulating fear and cortical hyperexcitability in the prelimbic cortex! This one has been a fun ride 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org
February 2, 2026 at 5:58 PM
Congrats to @aaronsalisbury.bsky.social and @mictott.bsky.social on this exciting project initially designed to mechanistically investigate a molecular association with PTSD that we observed in postmortem human brain tissue. Fun🧵below explaining the scientific rational and findings from Michael!
New paper out on cortistatin neurons and their role in regulating fear and cortical hyperexcitability in the prelimbic cortex! This one has been a fun ride 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org
February 2, 2026 at 5:22 PM
New paper out on cortistatin neurons and their role in regulating fear and cortical hyperexcitability in the prelimbic cortex! This one has been a fun ride 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Michael Totty
Now online! @lieberinstitute.bsky.social & @jhubiostat.bsky.social collaboration generating important resource (Visium & Xenium) on molecular organization of human hypothalamus w/ cool findings associating sex differential expression to neuropsychiatric disorders 🧠🔬🧪
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Spatially resolved molecular sex differences at single-cell resolution in the adult human ventromedial and arcuate hypothalamus
The ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) and arcuate (ARC) nuclei of the hypothalamus play
critical roles in regulating metabolism and behavior. Here, Mulvey et al. create a
focused spatial transcriptomic ...
www.cell.com
January 29, 2026 at 2:52 PM
Now online! @lieberinstitute.bsky.social & @jhubiostat.bsky.social collaboration generating important resource (Visium & Xenium) on molecular organization of human hypothalamus w/ cool findings associating sex differential expression to neuropsychiatric disorders 🧠🔬🧪
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Reposted by Michael Totty
1/4 New Paper 🧠🐭 #Neuroscience #Dopamine #FearExtinction
#eNeuro
Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice www.eneuro.org/content/12/1...
#eNeuro
Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice www.eneuro.org/content/12/1...
Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice
A central mechanism of exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and trauma-related disorders is fear extinction. However, the mechanisms underlying fear extinction are deficient in some...
www.eneuro.org
December 5, 2025 at 12:16 AM
1/4 New Paper 🧠🐭 #Neuroscience #Dopamine #FearExtinction
#eNeuro
Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice www.eneuro.org/content/12/1...
#eNeuro
Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice www.eneuro.org/content/12/1...
Reposted by Michael Totty
So functional cell types certainly exist in the spatial system. There is no doubt about this. However, this paper shows that you cannot know that you have found them by just decoding space, or even by showing spatial selectivity! This is a very important thing to tell the field.
November 25, 2025 at 8:34 PM
So functional cell types certainly exist in the spatial system. There is no doubt about this. However, this paper shows that you cannot know that you have found them by just decoding space, or even by showing spatial selectivity! This is a very important thing to tell the field.
Reposted by Michael Totty
"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition". Intuitive cell types are found in random artificial networks using the same selection criteria neuroscientists use with actual data. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 1/2
elifesciences.org
November 25, 2025 at 7:29 PM
"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition". Intuitive cell types are found in random artificial networks using the same selection criteria neuroscientists use with actual data. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 1/2
Reposted by Michael Totty
A great intro to academic conferencing.
Not sure how I missed this one.
scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
Not sure how I missed this one.
scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
Getting the most of out a scientific conference
A slightly unconventional guide to your first time
scienceforeveryone.science
November 26, 2025 at 4:47 AM
A great intro to academic conferencing.
Not sure how I missed this one.
scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
Not sure how I missed this one.
scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
Reposted by Michael Totty
We are excited to share our online book and preprint on “Orchestrating Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis with Bioconductor”!
Many people hours, calls and messages later: OSTA is now “in (pre)print”, though the real thing lives at bioconductor.org/books/OSTA.
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
November 22, 2025 at 12:38 PM
We are excited to share our online book and preprint on “Orchestrating Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis with Bioconductor”!
Whether you're new to bioinformatics or a seasoned pro, OSTA covers everything that you need to know about spatial transcriptomics data analysis spanning both sequencing and imaging-based technologies within the Bioconductor framework 👨💻🧬
Congrats to all the authors on this huge effort!
Congrats to all the authors on this huge effort!
Many people hours, calls and messages later: OSTA is now “in (pre)print”, though the real thing lives at bioconductor.org/books/OSTA.
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
November 21, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Whether you're new to bioinformatics or a seasoned pro, OSTA covers everything that you need to know about spatial transcriptomics data analysis spanning both sequencing and imaging-based technologies within the Bioconductor framework 👨💻🧬
Congrats to all the authors on this huge effort!
Congrats to all the authors on this huge effort!
Reposted by Michael Totty
Many people hours, calls and messages later: OSTA is now “in (pre)print”, though the real thing lives at bioconductor.org/books/OSTA.
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
November 21, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Many people hours, calls and messages later: OSTA is now “in (pre)print”, though the real thing lives at bioconductor.org/books/OSTA.
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
Check it out, get in touch. We welcome any feedback, suggestions, wishes (& contributions).
It’s been a joy working with you @estellayixingdong.bsky.social!
Reposted by Michael Totty
and there it is. the absolutely massive change in R01s funded multi-year. our perceptions that the new mandate, sorry strong suggestion, has had a dramatic effect on forward funding and therefore success rates is validated.
2025
Here the largest fraction is for R01 awards, followed by RF1s, and R21s.
In most cases, these were R01s that had not particularly reason to be forward funded except that NIH had put itself in a situation when large amounts of funding needed to be committed by the end of the fiscal year
21/25
Here the largest fraction is for R01 awards, followed by RF1s, and R21s.
In most cases, these were R01s that had not particularly reason to be forward funded except that NIH had put itself in a situation when large amounts of funding needed to be committed by the end of the fiscal year
21/25
November 5, 2025 at 4:45 PM
and there it is. the absolutely massive change in R01s funded multi-year. our perceptions that the new mandate, sorry strong suggestion, has had a dramatic effect on forward funding and therefore success rates is validated.
Learning induces persistent chromatin loops underlying robust gene expression during memory recall www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Learning induces persistent chromatin loops underlying robust gene expression during memory recall
Long-term memories are stored in neuronal ensembles called engrams, but the existence of persistent molecular traces in nuclei of engram neurons remain unknown. Using activity-dependent nuclear taggin...
www.biorxiv.org
October 8, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Learning induces persistent chromatin loops underlying robust gene expression during memory recall www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Locus Coeruleus-Amygdala Circuit Disrupts Prefrontal Control to Impair Fear Extinction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Locus Coeruleus-Amygdala Circuit Disrupts Prefrontal Control to Impair Fear Extinction
Background Stress undermines extinction learning and hinders exposure-based clinical therapies for a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. In both animals and humans, dysfunction in the ventromedial ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Locus Coeruleus-Amygdala Circuit Disrupts Prefrontal Control to Impair Fear Extinction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Michael Totty
Have you wondered which neuron types are conserved across mammals and amygdalar subdivisions? Check out this article from @mictott.bsky.social et al. in Science Advances bit.ly/4pKcbkO #PRF #PapersoftheWeek
October 2, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Have you wondered which neuron types are conserved across mammals and amygdalar subdivisions? Check out this article from @mictott.bsky.social et al. in Science Advances bit.ly/4pKcbkO #PRF #PapersoftheWeek
Single-cell long-read sequencing of the experience-induced transcriptome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Single-cell long-read sequencing of the experience-induced transcriptome
Neural activity drives transcriptional events that are critical for learning. Activity-induced transcript isoform expression and alternative splicing are cell-type specific events typically obscured b...
www.biorxiv.org
September 18, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Single-cell long-read sequencing of the experience-induced transcriptome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Michael Totty
This was a really fantastic collaboration! Congratulations @mictott.bsky.social Rita Cervera Juanes,
@svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧪🧬💻🧠
@svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧪🧬💻🧠
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Transcriptomic diversity of amygdalar subdivisions across humans and nonhuman primates
Specialized cell types and links to psychiatric disorders are revealed by genetic mapping of primate amygdala neurons.
www.science.org
September 18, 2025 at 1:17 AM
This was a really fantastic collaboration! Congratulations @mictott.bsky.social Rita Cervera Juanes,
@svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧪🧬💻🧠
@svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧪🧬💻🧠
Yes, I am on the academic job market looking to start my own lab at the intersection of molecular, computational, and systems neuroscience! If you think my work may be interest to your department, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Thank you, Keri!
Thank you, Keri!
Congrats Michael! Really appreciate the brilliance & creativity you brought to the analyses and as always, sincere dedication to open science 🧪 🧠
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
September 18, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Yes, I am on the academic job market looking to start my own lab at the intersection of molecular, computational, and systems neuroscience! If you think my work may be interest to your department, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Thank you, Keri!
Thank you, Keri!
Reposted by Michael Totty
Congrats Michael! Really appreciate the brilliance & creativity you brought to the analyses and as always, sincere dedication to open science 🧪 🧠
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Transcriptomic diversity of amygdalar subdivisions across humans and nonhuman primates
Specialized cell types and links to psychiatric disorders are revealed by genetic mapping of primate amygdala neurons.
www.science.org
September 18, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Congrats Michael! Really appreciate the brilliance & creativity you brought to the analyses and as always, sincere dedication to open science 🧪 🧠
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
@mictott.bsky.social is on the job market!! Amazing skillset spanning wet lab/computational at molecular, cellular + systems level - and across species!
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Transcriptomic diversity of amygdalar subdivisions across humans and nonhuman primates
Specialized cell types and links to psychiatric disorders are revealed by genetic mapping of primate amygdala neurons.
www.science.org
September 18, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Very excited to share my second postdoc, now out in Science Advances! We used targeted snRNA-seq to profile four major subnuclei of the primate across three species (including humans). 1/13 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Michael Totty
Congratulations to @mictott.bsky.social, Rita Cervera Juanes and @svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! Really fun collaboration w/labs of @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social and @stephaniehicks.bsky.social to better understand cell type and spatial heterogeneity across amygdala in primate 🧠!
A spatially resolved transcriptomic atlas of the primate amygdala (human, macaque, and baboon) now out in Science Advances (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). The amygdala contains 32 types of neurons with many neuron types specific to particular subdivisions.
Lots of updates from the preprint!
Lots of updates from the preprint!
Transcriptomic diversity of amygdalar subdivisions across humans and nonhuman primates
Specialized cell types and links to psychiatric disorders are revealed by genetic mapping of primate amygdala neurons.
www.science.org
September 17, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Congratulations to @mictott.bsky.social, Rita Cervera Juanes and @svitlanabach.bsky.social and all co-authors! Really fun collaboration w/labs of @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social and @stephaniehicks.bsky.social to better understand cell type and spatial heterogeneity across amygdala in primate 🧠!
Reposted by Michael Totty
Hot take #3: “BLA subdivisions contain specific subtypes of excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
Hot take #4: Genes downregulated in PTSD load mainly onto specific subtypes of inhibitory interneurons that are highly conserved across primates.
Hot take #4: Genes downregulated in PTSD load mainly onto specific subtypes of inhibitory interneurons that are highly conserved across primates.
September 17, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Hot take #3: “BLA subdivisions contain specific subtypes of excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
Hot take #4: Genes downregulated in PTSD load mainly onto specific subtypes of inhibitory interneurons that are highly conserved across primates.
Hot take #4: Genes downregulated in PTSD load mainly onto specific subtypes of inhibitory interneurons that are highly conserved across primates.
Reposted by Michael Totty
Hot take #1: Amygdala neuron types are highly conserved across different primate species. No human specific innovations.
Hot take #2: Canonical gene markers identified for murine amygdala neuron types are not especially informative inferring cell type identifies for the primate amygdala.
Hot take #2: Canonical gene markers identified for murine amygdala neuron types are not especially informative inferring cell type identifies for the primate amygdala.
September 17, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Hot take #1: Amygdala neuron types are highly conserved across different primate species. No human specific innovations.
Hot take #2: Canonical gene markers identified for murine amygdala neuron types are not especially informative inferring cell type identifies for the primate amygdala.
Hot take #2: Canonical gene markers identified for murine amygdala neuron types are not especially informative inferring cell type identifies for the primate amygdala.