Excited to share that I landed my dream job!🎉🎉🎉 The Pennington Lab will be opening at the University of British Columbia in January 2026!
@ubcpsych.bsky.social @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social

We're looking forward to the first annual New York Memory Hub conference later this week! Can't wait for all the talks and discussion about all things learning and memory 🧠

🚨New preprint alert🚨
We used closed-loop optogenetics to causally test the importance of inhibitory spike timing in network function and found that manipulating PV+ cell theta phase locking in the dentate gyrus can shift seizure susceptibility (both ways!)

Check out new work from our lab! We developed a new way to directly control the precise timing of interneurons during behavior and found that theta phase locking is a causal mediator of seizure susceptibility in both healthy and epileptic mice.

Check out our latest paper today in Nature: “Goal specific hippocampal inhibition gates learning” www.nature.com/articles/s41...
By Nuri Jeong, Xiao Zheng, Abby Paulson, Steph Prince and colleagues.

🚨 New lab paper!🚨

A dream study of mine for nearly 20 yrs not possible until now thanks to NIH 🧠 funding & 1st-author lead @seeber.bsky.social

We tracked hippocampal activity as people walked memory-guided paths & imagined them again. Did brain patterns reappear?🧵👇

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

Grid cells have a geometry in time. Thanks to @azvollan.bsky.social l & @rjgardner.bsky.social for this heroic discovery. @ercresearch.bsky.social
#KiloNeurons @m-bmoser.bsky.social @kavlintnu.bsky.social @nature.com
@kavlifoundation.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This work was led by the amazing @susieyufeng.bsky.social but was a huge team effort across the Shuman and Cai Labs!

All of the data is available online and we hope other labs will be able to utilize it to answer other questions about epileptic circuits in MEC and hippocampus.

Altogether, this work suggest that the induction of epilepsy drives a progressive disease state with circuit dysfunction that accumulates and shifts from the hippocampus to medial entorhinal cortex as cognitive impairment progresses.

In particular, the MEC cell type that was most impaired were "Trough-locked" cells in layer 3, which were recently characterized as predictive grid cells (doi.org/10.1126/scie...). Their dysfunction suggests this cell type may be uniquely vulnerable in epilepsy and contribute to memory deficits.

By 8 weeks after pilocarpine, the synchronization within MEC and between MEC and hippocampus became impaired. These deficits aligned with the onset of severe memory impairments, suggesting that changes in MEC may underlie progressive memory impairment in epilepsy.

To investigate the circuits that drive this progressive memory impairment we recorded HPC and MEC simultaneously as epileptic and control mice explored a virtual linear track. We found early changes in theta power, coherence, and interneuron phase locking only in hippocampus, while MEC was intact.

First we found that memory deficits after pilocarpine were progressive, with minor early deficits (within 3 weeks) and more severe deficits 8 weeks after pilocarpine. Yet there were no changes in seizures or cell death across these time points suggesting altered neural activity drives these effects.

New paper out in Cell Reports! Led by @susieyufeng.bsky.social, we found that chronic epilepsy in mice drives distinct synchronization deficits in hippocampus and MEC, with early changes in HPC and late-onset changes in MEC that align with progressive memory impairment.
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Interested in how neural communication breaks down in a model of Alzheimer's pathology?

In a new preprint, we found desynchronization in medial entorhinal–hippocampal circuits that coincided with the onset of spatial memory deficits in 3xTg mice. (1/6)

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

New preprint from the lab!

@laurenmvetere.bsky.social found disrupted MEC-hippocampal synchronization that paralleled the emergence of memory deficits in the 3xTg mouse model of AD pathology!

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Did 2024 feel LONG to anyone else? A little 2024 recap from me: I defended my PhD and submitted a first author paper describing my thesis work! Look out for a preprint very soon. (1/6)

Hey #ACNP2024!!! I’ve been inspired by y’all to start a new thread to capture the amazing #FashionsOfACNP!

Please add on🙏🏼💃🏻🕺

First up: the one and only @jaredwyoung.bsky.social!
The shoes. The kilt. The vest. Perfection 🧑‍🍳😘

Thank you to NIH Director Dr. Bertagnolli for sharing our recent work in her latest blog post! I’m so proud of the team and first author @joezaki.bsky.social for all their hard work on these exciting new findings examining stress & memory-linking 🧠

Read here 👇
directorsblog.nih.gov/2024/12/05/s...

SO EXCITED to share our latest work demonstrating that the anterior hypothalamic nucleus (AHN) regulates stress vulnerability!!!

This is going to be a great conference! Excited to join!

It's beautiful! Excited to get this in vivo!

A thread on NIH Reorganization and the Scientific Management Review Board (SMRB)

Disclosure: I was involved with the SMRB since its inception and have very strong feelings about how it was used, misused, and abandoned. My passion on these issues will undoubtably show through.

1/n

🌟 Cai Lab Nature (@natureportfolio.bsky.social) paper alert! In work led by Joe Zaki, we find that rest periods after learning not only stabilize new memories BUT ALSO integrate new memories with older ones from days past! (1/10)

Read it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...