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Brendon Watson

@brendonwatson20.bsky.social
294 followers 584 following 8 posts

Neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Michigan Lab website: sites.google.com/view/watsonlab

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Reposted by Brendon Watson
PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 31/03/2026
Humans have stronger social affinity for people with matched 'neurotypes'. @brendonwatson20.bsky.social &co reveal a similar phenomenon in #PrairieVoles; #voles have higher #social affinity for the opposite sex when placed in matched- versus mixed-neurotype dyads @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4bUJjjz
Summary of main findings. Top: The main finding from Experiment 1 is that males from mixed dyads tended to behave more persistently toward the divider compared to males from matched dyads. No such effects were observed in females. Bottom: The main finding from Experiment 2 is that females from mixed dyads were more likely to chase and attack compared to females from matched dyads. Correlations between Experiments 1 and 2 reinforced the influence of dyad type on social behaviors (not illustrated here). Furthermore, matched-dyad females were more likely to transition from chasing to huddling, even though chasing was less frequent in females from matched dyads.
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Marco Foster @marcofoster.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
HAPPENING NOW: A sea of protesters have gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a “No Kings Day” rally against Donald Trump (Video: WXYZ-TV)
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Hayley Bounds @hayleybounds.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
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Norman Lab @ptoncompmemlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
@qlu.bsky.social is starting his lab at City U of Hong Kong! This is a truly amazing opportunity for trainees interested in computational cognitive neuroscience and neuroAI
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Rosa Lafer-Sousa @rosalafersousa.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
🚨 This MUST READ essay and call to action spells out, in very clear terms, how the Trump administration could get away with slashing the NIH budget. NIH scientists and Dems in congress need to read and understand it. This is where we win or lose the battle to save the NIH and US science. 🧪 🧠 🧬 🔊
donmoynihan.substack.com
The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster
An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do
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Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
forms.gle
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Brendon Watson @brendonwatson20.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
My lab is looking for postdocs interested in brain electrophysiology and circadian rhythms. Message me if interested!
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Eliezyer de Oliveira @eliezyer.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Does your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747 This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵 1/
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Thank you for sharing news of our initiative... we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers from U of Maryland, UPenn, and Georgia Tech + more whose aim is to communicate the impacts of federal cuts on science and health research nationwide. Full explainer thread here: bsky.app/profile/josh...
Visualization of IDC cut impacts on NIH-funded research nationwide. More at scienceimpacts.org
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Reposted by Brendon Watson
Matteo Saponati @matteosaponati.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
fantastic post, and tasty food for thoughts. shamelessly adding here that many different types of STDP come about from minimizing a prediction of the future loss function with spikes :) hopefully another case of successful predictions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Sequence anticipation and spike-timing-dependent plasticity emerge from a predictive learning rule - Nature Communications
Prediction of future inputs is a key computational task for the brain. Here, the authors proposed a predictive learning rule in neurons that leads to anticipation and recall of inputs, and that reprod...
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Brendon Watson @brendonwatson20.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Proud of our new paper, such an interesting story! NonREM sleep is typically considered a "synchronized state", but we find many pairs of neurons are actively de-synchronized in nonREM and even more so with more delta activity. Great work Tangyu Liu and Jeremy Hartner: www.eneuro.org/content/12/3...
eneuro.org
Desynchronization Increased in the Synchronized State: Subsets of Neocortical Neurons Become Strongly Anticorrelated during NonREM Sleep
We aimed to better understand the dynamics of cortical neurons during nonREM sleep—a state in which neuronal populations are silenced for ∼100 ms of every second due to delta wave fluctuations. This a...
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Reposted by Brendon Watson
Rebekah Evans @cellularscale.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
#standupforscience
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Alexander Harris @dralexharris.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
As my grants are stripped away, I will say thank you so much for protecting me from antisemitism! www.hhs.gov/about/news/2...
hhs.gov
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Reposted by Brendon Watson
Mia Farrow @miafarrow.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
NIH has cut billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
washingtonpost.com
NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately
The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.
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Reposted by Brendon Watson
Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Tesla paid $0 in federal income tax last year. 2022: $0 2021: $0 2020: $0 2019: $0 2018: $0 Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
I stand with the trans community. Pass it along.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Canada is considering 100% tariffs on Teslas. 🔗: www.businesstoday.in/world/canada...
media.tenor.com
a man wearing sunglasses and a green jacket is standing in a crowd and says `` do it '' .
ALT: a man wearing sunglasses and a green jacket is standing in a crowd and says `` do it '' .
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Reposted by Brendon Watson
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Two cool papers on the HPC out today in @nature.com: 1. Replay during non-REM sleep switches between prioritizing recent versus remote memories: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 2. All optical obs. of synaptic plasticity rules during place field formation: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈 🧪
nature.com
Sleep microstructure organizes memory replay - Nature
The temporal microstructure of the brain can multiplex distinct cognitive processes during sleep to support continuous learning.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Dendrites doing AI problems, so great to see the increased activity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Dendrites endow artificial neural networks with accurate, robust and parameter-efficient learning - Nature Communications
Artificial neural networks, central to deep learning, are powerful but energy-consuming and prone to overfitting. The authors propose a network design inspired by biological dendrites, which offe...
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Thomas Andrillon @thomasandrillon.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
I will try to post the new articles published in Neuroscience of Consciousness here! Let's start with a paper on grief, which challenges neuroscience's ability to investigate affective states. **The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion** academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
academic.oup.com
The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion
Abstract. This paper explores the limitations of neurobiological approaches to human emotional experience, focusing on the case of grief. We propose that g
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Brendon Watson @brendonwatson20.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
Our new paper is out!: While hippocampal inhibitory neurons fluctuate around the 24 hour clock, excitatory neuron overall activity remains stable all day long. Congrats to Nicolette Ognjanovski and team! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Daily rhythms drive dynamism in sleep, oscillations and interneuron firing, while excitatory firing remains stable across 24 h
Electrical patterns in the mouse hippocampus are dynamic across the 24-h (12:12 light:dark) day. Inhibitory neurons show rhythmicity in firing across the day, peaking around light transitions; meanwh...
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Alex Kwan @alexkwan.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
There are many nuances regarding the structural neural plasticity associated with antidepressant drugs. 💊🧠 We share our thoughts here in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience article, led by Clara Liao with co-authors from Conor Liston’s lab at Weill Cornell. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Review article on neural plasticity and antidepressant interventions
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Brendon Watson @brendonwatson20.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Omg perfect for starting thanks!!!
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Brendon Watson @brendonwatson20.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Excited to see so many neuroscientists here on BlueSky!
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