Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · 6h

What an amazingly cool project!

Sarang Dalal @sarangnemo.bsky.social · 15h

📈🧠 We're looking for brains! 🧠📈
Postdoc + PhD positions are available to help pioneer fetal MEG with optically pumped magnetometers, measuring prenatal responses to sound and light to understand how we start making sense of the world even before we're born. 🐣

Please get in touch to hear more!

3

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · 2d

I think the fact that this post is resonating so strongly says something very important about present-day academia.

Just had a DM convo with Mike about it - we've both had people tell us "your postdoc is your best stage in academia" - an idea we agree with (but wish wasn't the case...)

PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 2d

Michael X Cohen on why he left academia/neuroscience.
mikexcohen.substack.com/p/why-i-left...

Why I left academia and neuroscience

Don't worry, this isn't yet another story of rage-quitting.

mikexcohen.substack.com

5

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · 5d

An argument always worth repeating.

@marksblumberg.bsky.social

I read this entire thread in your voice.

Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 5d

This is an awe-inspiring and fascinating study that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. However, the overall framing in terms of "innate versus learned” is unnecessary. The innate versus acquired dichotomy is outdated and has been for a long time. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Over 20 species of geographically and phylogenetically diverse bird species produce convergent whining vocalizations towards their respective brood parasites. Model presentation and playback experiments across multiple continents suggest that these learned calls provoke an innate response even among allopatric species.

www.nature.com

1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · 15d

guess they're pulling out everything to get to 100% of spending

1

Reposted by Jimmy Dooley

Brian Trainor @briantrainor.bsky.social · 15d

If you are funded by NIMH and only received 85% of your budget this year (like we did), check era commons to see if you have a new award notice. We just got the remaining 15% today.

2 7 26

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Aug 9

Two years of (non-federal!) funding for the lab! Should be able to fund science and (nearly) all salaries in that time. I guess people weren't lying - you need at least 10 rejections before the funding gods give you a win.

1 7

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jul 25

Done!

1 1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 23

Look what just moved to the top of our labs summer journal club reading list.

Can't wait to take a look! So far, gorgeous visuals!

Britton Sauerbrei @brittonsauerbrei.bsky.social · Jun 23

1/N
How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? I’m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1 2

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 13

We argue that instead of focusing on when in development "REM sleep" can be unambiguously called REM sleep, we should focus on how these REM sleep features map onto REM sleep functions. Understanding the relationships of features to functions is a key part of the next decade of sleep science.

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 13

Basically, REM sleep (as it's defined in adults) has a bunch of components, or features, that all develop at their own rate. Gao et al.'s recent publication (Ontogenetic development of PGO waves during paradoxical sleep in kittens) shows us that PGO waves are the last of these features to show up

1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 13

An editorial from the lab was published today about a recent paper published in the journal Sleep that characterizes the development of PGO waves. It's short, so if you have ~5 minutes, go ahead and click through. Still, a quick summary in the 🧵 that follows.

academic.oup.com/sleep/articl...

Building the dream: uncovering the development of REM sleep’s features

Imagine a factory that builds cars. Raw materials come in one end, the individual components are progressively assembled, and complete cars come out the ot

academic.oup.com

1 1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 7

Part of me thinks a piece of the problem is data analysis is so (relatively) easy now

I know some of this is survivor bias but I'm amazed at the depth of the theory (given the limited data) in the 60s and 70s classics

If analysis was still done by hand we'd think a lot more deeply before analyzing

8

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Jun 1

Sky's are likely turning colors tonight. If you're in the Midwest, you should have cloudless sky's tonight - take a look at 10-11pm. And even if you can't see anything, point your phone to the northern skies, just in case

Swapna Krishna @swapnakrishna.com · Jun 1

Aurora alert! It’s possible the aurora boralis may be visible tonight as far south as Alabama. Start looking tonight after dark around 10 pm

(I’ve attached both the NOAA and University of Alaska maps, the former is always very conservative with view lines)

www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/...

Fairbanks map showing view line into FL)

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 31

There's a very decent case to be made for no AI overviews for medical searches.

Someone is going to search for this and panic...

1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 31

If you rely on Federal funding, read this. And read it again next week, when it's updated to reflect today's budget requests

Ed Yong @edyong209.bsky.social · May 30

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding.

It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job.

unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Medical Research Funding — Unbreaking

How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

unbreaking.org

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 31

Just pre-ordered! So glad you did an audiobook. Otherwise with a 16 month old at home I don't stand a chance

1 1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 30

To recap:

RN neurons are excited by some movements, inhibited by others
Their responses are kinematically precise
M1 shows no directional tuning at P24

So in P24 rats:
Motor cortex? Still learning
Red nucleus? Still doing

M1 isn’t motor yet, but it’s close.
What happens after P24? Stay tuned...

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 30

RN neurons showed way more variability in their wake responses than M1 neurons.

So we asked: Which neurons encode movement trajectory?

Answer: RN wins again.

“Tuned” M1 neurons only care about how big the movement was. But RN neurons? Nearly all the tuned ones cared about both size and direction.

1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 30

We tracked limb trajectories and matched them to neural spikes from both M1 and RN in P24 rats. The results?

RN neurons weren’t just responsive. They were selective.

Take one RN neuron: Some wake movements (bilateral facial grooming) made it fire like crazy. Others suppressed it.

What about M1?

1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 30

In late January, I said we were "still exploring" a cool thing we found in RN.

Well, we're back, and we've got movement kinematics (thanks to ‪@deeplabcut.bsky.social‬)!

(You can find all the details in our updated bioRxiv paper, linked below)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1 4 8

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 22

Another paper showing that circuits are never as straightforward as we'd assume...

From the abstract:
"The data suggest Purkinje cell spike activity changes cannot accurately predict nuclei cell changes"

If it can't be straightforward, at least it's endlessly fascinating.

Meike van der Heijden @meikeesther.bsky.social · May 22

Purkinje cells form inhibitory connections on cerebellar nuclei cells. So, when Purkinje cells fire abnormally, as in disease states, we should see the inverse in nuclei cells, right?

Well - it may not be so straightforward: tinyurl.com/PCtoNC

@fralinbiomed.bsky.social @vtneuroscience.bsky.social

Purkinje Cell spike patterns do not correlate with nuclei cell spike patterns in mouse models for cerebellar disease

Cerebellar dysfunction causes various movement disorders, including ataxia, dystonia, and tremor. Previous work demonstrated that spike patterns in cerebellar nuclei neurons were distinct between diff...

tinyurl.com

1 3

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · May 16

I think i saw someone else post this same idea a little while ago...

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · May 14

Dear neuroscientists,

The brain cannot generate information about the world de novo, it's impossible.

All the brain can do is:

1. Selectively remove info that is irrelevant.
2. Re-emit info previously absorbed via evolution or memory.

Our brain never "creates" information. Never.

🧠📈 🧪

1

Reposted by Jimmy Dooley

Denis Wirtz @deniswirtz.bsky.social · Apr 28

A huge majority of Americans (77%) oppose the cuts to medical research that the current administration has made.

(Source: Wash. Post/ABC/Ipsos poll)

3 41 110

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Apr 18

I've had 3 times I've done an analysis that gave me goosebumps - and I go to lab every day for the 4th.

Excited to see what's coming!

1 1

Jimmy Dooley @jimmycdooley.bsky.social · Apr 10

If we get a few more papers like this, saying "we pay too much attention to cortex" is going to stop being a hot take...

Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · Apr 10

Neurons just keep mixing their selectivity.
Whisking and locomotion are jointly represented in superior colliculus neurons
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
#neuroscience

Whisking and locomotion are jointly represented in superior colliculus neurons

To navigate the world, the brain needs to have internal models of self-motion, for example of whisker movement in mice. This study shows how neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus encode internal...

journals.plos.org

2