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WilluhnLab

@willuhnlab.bsky.social

390 followers 230 following 18 posts

A bunch of passionate neuronerds studying the brain origins of reinforcement learning and compulsive behavior at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. Dopamine, serotonin, basal ganglia, PFC, DBS. https://nin.nl/research/researchgroups/willuhn-group/

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WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Jul 24

I am very proud of lead author Tara Arbab for completing this most recent manuscript from the lab! --> Intracranial electrophysiological biomarkers of compulsivity in OCD. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Intracranial electrophysiological biomarkers of compulsivity in obsessive–compulsive disorder - Nature Mental Health

This research identifies local field potential markers associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder symptoms in patients during provocation. Key findings reveal increased delta and alpha power in spe...

www.nature.com

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Neuromatch @neuromatch.bsky.social · 13d

Exciting news! 🎉 Our Computational Neuroscience course has been awarded NIH BRAIN Initiative funding! Students will get hands-on experience w real BRAIN Initiative datasets, helping them build computational skills that are essential for the future of neuroscience.

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

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Kris Jensen @kristorpjensen.bsky.social · 14d

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time!

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

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eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 13d

Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice!

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

#neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 13d

A method for capturing neuronal activity using fMRI excited the neuroimaging field but couldn’t be replicated. Today, the authors of the original paper retracted their work.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/a...

Authors retract Science paper on controversial fMRI method

Several MRI artifacts contribute to the neuronal activity signal picked up by the method, according to a preprint the authors posted this month.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Julie Charlton @juliecharlton.bsky.social · 16d

🛑 Attention researchers who train freely-moving rodents!

Jess Breda and I developed a protocol for training center-port nose fixation 61% faster than a previous curriculum while keeping violation rates low.

Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

FixGrower: An efficient and robust curriculum for shaping fixation behavior in rodents

Center-port fixation is a common prerequisite for many freely-moving rodent tasks in neuroscience and psychology. However, typical protocols for shaping this behavior are non-standardized and ineffici...

www.biorxiv.org

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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 17d

I once saw a (very interesting) talk about sleep in which the speaker started by saying that we don't really know how to define sleep, and then proceeded to operationalize sleep in flies as basically periods when they are still for a long time. This got me thinking...

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Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 21d

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

The new TOC from academia dot edu.

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

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Hilary Barth @hilarybarth.bsky.social · 21d

We’re searching for TWO tenure-track cognitive neuroscientists here in the Wesleyan University Psychology Department! Apply here wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/careers

Careers at Wesleyan

We welcome your interest in Wesleyan’s diverse, energetic community of employees who, by their creativity, innovative thinking, and generosity of spirit, help make Wesleyan a great place to work. In t...

wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com

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BejaLab @bejalab.bsky.social · 20d

WAChRs are excitatory opsins sensitive to indoor lighting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Abhilasha Joshi, PhD @rhythmicspikes.bsky.social · 21d

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🚨 New preprint! 🚨

Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇

📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩

#neuroskyence

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Thomas Luo @thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social · 21d

How does the brain decide? 🧠

Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.

After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.

rdcu.be/eGUrv

Transitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions - Nature

Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neura...

www.nature.com

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Tatiana Engel @engeltatiana.bsky.social · Jun 25

Out today in @nature.com: we show that individual neurons have diverse tuning to a decision variable computed by the entire population, revealing a unifying geometric principle for the encoding of sensory and dynamic cognitive variables.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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European Behavioural Pharmacology Society @eurbehavpharm.bsky.social · 21d

Welcome to Almería everyone. Remember to tag us or use #EBPS2025 to promote everything you are enjoying about your time here.

Shelly Flagel @flagel-lab.bsky.social · 21d

Registration booth is open! Get there early to avoid lines and get your awesome swag! ##EBPS2025 @eurbehavpharm.bsky.social

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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 28d

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Tom Schaul @schaul.bsky.social · Aug 27

Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?

Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Sep 5

‪@benhayden.bsky.social‬
@tyrellturing.bsky.social‬
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social‬
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...

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WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Aug 18

Here is the recording (in Dutch): www.nporadio1.nl/fragmenten/d...

Wat gebeurt er in het brein van iemand met een dwangstoornis?

Voortdurend je handen willen wassen, continu de drang voelen om aan plekjes op je huid te krabben of dwangmatige bewegingen uit moeten voeren gestuurd door angstige gedachten. Wat gebeurt er precies i...

www.nporadio1.nl

WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Aug 18

In case you have time at 12:30 today (in 25 min): Tune into www.nporadio1.nl/live to listen and watch our very own Dr. Tara Arbab talk about her latest findings for 10min (in Dutch): Intracranial electrophysiological biomarkers of compulsivity in OCD. www.nature.com/articles/s44....

Kijk live naar NPO Radio 1 | NPO Radio 1

Kijk live mee naar de webcam van NPO Radio 1

www.nporadio1.nl

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · Aug 13

Related to our previous post- if you had a grant terminated, Pro Publica wants to hear from you. Your work was funded because it was good, important science meant to help Americans. Reach out, and make your voice heard.

www.propublica.org/getinvolved/...

Did You Work on a Terminated NIH Grant? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

The National Institutes of Health is canceling grants that are seen as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities. We want to hear from researchers who have been affected.

www.propublica.org

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WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Aug 11

This link is open access, I think: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

De diepe hersengolven die schuilgaan achter dwangmatige handelingen

Tara Arbab | neurowetenschapper: Diep in de hersenen van patiënten vond Tara Arbab een uniek neurologisch signaal voor een psychiatrisch symptoom.

www.nrc.nl

WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Aug 11

Elektrofysiologische metingen in de hersenen van een ongekend groot aantal OCD-patiënten leveren belangrijke nieuwe inzichten op. Geweldig artikel over ons werk onder leiding van Tara Arbab!

NRC @nrc.nl · Aug 11

Diep in de hersenen van patiënten vond Tara Arbab een uniek neurologisch signaal voor een psychiatrisch symptoom. „Alsof er een netwerk van zenuwcellen is waarin de stroomsignalen niet meer stoppen maar blijven rondgaan in een loop.” buff.ly/BXvRIHQ

De diepe hersengolven die schuilgaan achter dwangmatige handelingen

Tara Arbab | neurowetenschapper: Diep in de hersenen van patiënten vond Tara Arbab een uniek neurologisch signaal voor een psychiatrisch symptoom.

www.nrc.nl

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WilluhnLab @willuhnlab.bsky.social · Aug 11

In the Dutch news today: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

www.nrc.nl

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Bing Ye @byneuron.bsky.social · Jul 31

🧵 I’m excited to announce that the 2025 LabGym Symposium & Tutorial will be held online via Zoom on Friday, August 22, 2025. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about cutting-edge AI-based behavioral analysis! www.lsi.umich.edu/events/2025-...
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LabGym Symposium

LabGym is a free software suite for automated video analysis and quantification of animal behavior. LabGym has now been downloaded over 55,000 times from GitHub in just about two years. The 2024 LabGy...

www.lsi.umich.edu

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Guido Meijer @guidomeijer.com · Aug 5

🚨Pre-print alert🚨

We stimulated serotonin with optogenetics while doing large-scale Neuropixel recordings across the mouse brain. We found strong widespread modulation of neural activity, but no effect on the choices of the mouse 🐭

How is this possible? Strap in! (1/9) 👇🧵

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Serotonin drives choice-independent reconfiguration of distributed neural activity

Serotonin (5-HT) is a central neuromodulator which is implicated in, amongst other functions, cognitive flexibility. 5-HT is released from the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) throughout nearly the entire f...

doi.org

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Ilana Witten @ilanawitten.bsky.social · Aug 5

We're looking for a research assistant to work in our neuroscience lab at @princetonneuro.bsky.social @hhmi.org where we study learning and decision-making circuitry.

Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21001/r...

Pls share w/ anyone who might be interested!

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