⚡️GREG_CORDER⚡️
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flybottleescape.bsky.social
⚡️GREG_CORDER⚡️
@flybottleescape.bsky.social
Associate Professor @ Penn | Dept Psychiatry + Dept Neuroscience + Dept Anesthesiology | Pain • Placebo • Poppies • Psychedelics

https://corderlab.com/
i am always shocked at the number of papers without verification of fiber placement or check if their AAV expressed etc ... and when i am a reviewer and ask for it then sometimes i have gotten wildly "offended" resposnes from authors
January 28, 2026 at 7:16 PM
actually, someone in lab sent me this: AAVretro inject into ~ Cg2 ... those look like labeled anterior insula in this iamge ... but we do not see posterior insula
January 28, 2026 at 1:13 AM
!!! Same… also the histology in this part’s gig 1 just looks like bleed thru?
January 27, 2026 at 4:25 AM
thank you! we didnt try the combo therapy+morphine .... could be intersting to look at something like cross-tolerance, or is there something else you think we should try out
January 15, 2026 at 7:33 PM
✌🏼🤠🙏🏼😁🤘🏽
January 10, 2026 at 3:44 PM
🔥🍾🙌🏼😎🎉
January 9, 2026 at 1:40 PM
🙏🏼😎🙌🏼🤠🤘🏽
January 8, 2026 at 9:48 PM
🙏🏼😎🙌🏼🤠🤘🏽
January 8, 2026 at 9:46 PM
🙏🏼😎🙌🏼🤠🤘🏽
January 8, 2026 at 9:46 PM
🙏🏼😎🙌🏼🤠🤘🏽
January 8, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Please check out the Peer Review file to see how our publication process unfolded

... as well as the Supplementary Information file for expanded Discussion Notes 1-7
👇
nature.com/articles/s41...
January 8, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Brought to you by the 6+ years of dedication from these amazing scientists ...

Huge congrats to the co-First authors:
Corinna Oswell, Sophie Rogers, Justin James

... and co-Senior authors:
Eric Yttri, Karl Deisseroth, Ben Reiner
January 8, 2026 at 6:10 PM
15/ 🚀 LUPE + AMPS + ACC pLick neurons + mMORp = blueprint for decoding and treating affective pain

Spontaneous behavior is the readout

Cortex is the control panel

And we just built a new switch

nature.com/articles/s41...

#Neuroscience #Pain #DeepLearning #GeneTherapy
January 8, 2026 at 6:08 PM
14/ 💥 Key insight: Spontaneous pain isn’t random—it’s structured, stateful, and encoded in affective brain circuits

The ACC selects actions to reduce pain unpleasantness

And now, we can decode those states, track their dynamics, and intervene in real time
January 8, 2026 at 6:07 PM
13/ 🧠📷 Activating this therapy silenced pain-related ACC activity and reduced LUPE-AMPS pain behaviors—just like morphine

But there was no reinforcment (less risk of addiction)

A new, non-opioid way to control cortical pain dynamics
January 8, 2026 at 6:06 PM
12/ 🧬 Could we mimic morphine’s effects—but without opioids?

We engineered a synthetic MOR promoter (mMORp) that drives chemogenetic inhibition only in opioid-sensitive, pain-encoding ACC neurons

A targeted, biologically informed strategy for precision pain managment
January 8, 2026 at 6:06 PM
11/ ⏱️ In chronic pain, yes, mice show spontaneous licking behavior (no need to do CPP) pLick neurons became less selective and less responsive

Morphine rescued this—restoring lick-locked activity and state decoding

The better the neural rescue, the lower the pain scores
January 8, 2026 at 6:06 PM
10/ 📉 Morphine didn’t just reduce behavior—it silenced specific ACC neurons active during pain states

We discovered “pLick neurons” whose activity predicts licking probability

Morphine suppressed pLick neurons in a state- and behavior-dependent manner
January 8, 2026 at 6:05 PM
9/ 🧠 LUPE-AMPS tracking + neural data revealed that ACC activity predicts transitions between latent pain states

We could decode spontaneous behaviors like licking directly from ACC population activity

Spontaneous neural activity is not noise—it encodes affective decisions
January 8, 2026 at 6:05 PM
8/ 🏛️ Enter the ACC: a cortical hub for affective pain

We did in vivo calcium imaging with miniscopes in freely behaving mice across acute capsaicin injury and SNI chronic neuropathic injury

This let us track how ACC neural ensembles reorganize as pain becomes chronic
January 8, 2026 at 6:04 PM
7/ 👅Licking is an affective-motivational behavior emerging during Pain States

This structure supports the original Gate Control Theory that rubbing/licking is an antinociceptive negative feedback loop to reduce pain

Pain drives licking → licking reduces pain → licking stops
January 8, 2026 at 6:04 PM
6/ 📈 To quantify this, we built a new metric: the Affective-Motivational Pain Scale (AMPS)

AMPS captures the bidirectional effects of both injury and analgesia

A single, continuous index of spontaneous pain state occupancy across models (formalin, capsaicin, SNI)
January 8, 2026 at 6:03 PM