iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Danai Riga

Bernie Mulvey @berniejmulvey.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Excited to share work with cryostat wizard @heenadivecha.bsky.social looking at gene expression in my favorite brain region (LC) in adult postmortem brain! (Long URL to spare the trouble of identifying cars, buses, beds in 5x5 pixel imgs). (1/x) link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...

link.springer.com

Molecular programs in human locus coeruleus link APOE and neuromelanin to Alzheimer’s vulnerability

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Tomás Ryan @tjryan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Announcing #engramsensembles '27, to be held at @tcddublin next May. Registration and abstract submission will open in autumn 2026.

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Barbara Mellone 🇺🇦 @centromellone.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Manuscripts with women as corresponding authors are less frequently sent out for review at Science. The ones reviewed receive less favorable reviews by both male and female reviewers.

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Natale R. Sciolino, PhD @sciolinolab.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Looking for a postdoc? The @sciolinolab.bsky.social at UConn is hiring! We investigate how neuromodulatory systems interact with central taste processing regions to regulate behavior using in vivo recordings, optogenetics & mouse behavior. Apply: jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49...

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Tommaso Patriarchi @tpatriarchi.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Absolutely stunning work: de novo designed miniproteins targeting GPCRs as potent agonists and antagonists. This opens countless possibilities for programmable signaling, cleaner therapeutics, and faster drug discovery. Protein design is coming for pharmacology. 🚀 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

doi.org

De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs - Nature

Nature - De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs

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Tommaso Patriarchi @tpatriarchi.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Check out the birghtest star in the room: PinkyCaMP - the latest member to the red GECI family! Amazing work led by Olivia Masseck and a wonderful team! Proud to contribute

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Patrick Piantadosi @ppiantad.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Officially out today! Long-running project, many thanks to give - in particular to my mentors & collaborators, the postbacs who worked so hard on each experiment, and the reviewers. If you love the amygdala, give it a read. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice

Modifying behavior in response to changing environmental conditions is a crucial adaptive function. This capacity is evident when animals curtail the …

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Danai Riga @danai-lama.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

I've been (relatively) patiently waiting for this one to come out since I saw one of these gorgeous reconstructions 🤩 WHAT AN EFFORT, and significant resource for the field! Cannot wait to dive in 🔵🧠

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

something that wrinkles my brain every time I remember it is the fact that total eclipses are only possible on earth because the moon and sun appear to be the same size in our sky, due to the insanely, astronomically unlikely fluke that the moon is 400x smaller than the sun but 400x closer to us.

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Keri Martinowich @martinowk.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

For #FluorescenceFriday 🧠🔬🧪 - mPFC projection neurons heading to ventral tegmental area 🟢 or the locus coeruleus 🔴. Processes on some of these GPF+ neurons are just AMAZING! Image credit to our Circuits team! @jorge-miranda.bsky.social @rehg-j.bsky.social and Daniel Olivares!

Fluorescence microscopy of a section of mouse brain tissue with neurons labeled in green and red based on projection target

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Tommaso Patriarchi @tpatriarchi.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Norepinephrine imaging, pushed further. Our latest NE sensors enable highly sensitive monitoring across recording modalities, Have you been using GRABNE2 sensors? the toolkit just got a major upgrade. Interested in trying them in your system? Reach out.

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Keri Martinowich @martinowk.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Too excited about this image to wait for #FluorescenceFriday 🔬🤩👩‍🔬. Serotonin neurons 🟣 in the raphe nucleus along the midline of the human brainstem 🧠, flanked bilaterally by norepinephrine neurons 🔴 in locus coeruleus. Image credit to @ishbeldelrosario.bsky.social @svitlanabach.bsky.social

Microscope imaging labeling mRNA transcripts in situ of postmortem human tissue in the transverse plane of the brainstem labeling tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) and dopamine beta hydroxylase (DBH), to label serotonin neurons in the raphe, and norepinephrine neurons in the locus coeruleus, respectively.

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Josh Johansen @jojolab.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Excited to share our new paper: We uncover a locus coeruleus→amygdala circuit linking β-adrenergic signaling to transcription regulation in defined amygdala cells during memory reconsolidation—+ stress or elevated noradrenergic signaling at recall can strengthen memory. www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

cell.com

A neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway for reformatting aversive memories during recall

Tan et al. identify a neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway in rats that updates aversive memories when they are recalled. Noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus triggers synapse-to-nuclear tra...

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Reposted by Danai Riga

davidweinshenker.bsky.social @davidweinshenker.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Excited to share newly minted PhD Anu Korukonda's tour de force thesis work describing the impact of pathogenic tau on #locuscoeruleus function in a mouse model of early #Alzheimers. A must for #BlueSpot researchers! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/3

biorxiv.org

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Mathias V. Schmidt @mathiasvschmidt.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

I’m thrilled to share our latest preprint from the lab, now available on BioRxiv! We investigated how early life adversity (ELA) shapes the adult brain, and the results are a stark reminder that sex isn't just a variable but leads to fundamentally different stress-induced mechanistic consequences

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SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

#JNeurosci: Johantges et al. used mice to study excitatory and inhibitory synaptic connections in the CA1 region, creating a circuit map with cell-type resolution that will guide future research on how the hippocampus supports learning and memory. doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1102-25.2…

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Peter Rupprecht @ptrrupprecht.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Excited to share our new preprint! We explore the link between the locus coeruleus (LC) and arousal for astrocytes, pyramidal cells, interneurons in the hippocampus. A fantastic collaboration with @sianduss.bsky.social @bohaceklab.bsky.social, and many others: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/5

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Tommaso Patriarchi @tpatriarchi.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

An engineered nanobody inhibitor for molecular-to-circuit control of opioid receptor function. This was a really fun collaboration with @miriamstoeber.bsky.social and @amanglik.bsky.social labs, check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Danai Riga @danai-lama.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

A bit late to the party, but nonetheless super happy with these news! We teamed up with a fantastic group of cancer researchers to dive into the mechanisms via which the 🧠 reward center relays anti-tumor signals. This grant not only opens up a new & exciting direction for the lab... 1/2

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Abha Karki Rajbhandari, PhD @brainbodylab.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Excited to share new work from our lab showing, for the first time, a link between breathing dysregulation, stress responses, and energy metabolism via a neuropeptide receptor mechanism. This opens new ways of understanding #brainbody interactions! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Disruption of Pre-Bötzinger Complex neuropeptidergic tonality controls fear and metabolic response

Stress profoundly impacts systemic metabolism, yet the central circuits linking stress responses to peripheral metabolic regulation remain poorly defined. Here, we identify the preBötzinger complex (p...

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Danai Riga @danai-lama.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

If you have some time off these holidays have another look at our beautiful review on #LC neuropeptides 🔵🧠

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Lindsay Schwarz @lindsayschwarz.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Thrilled this is out, led by former PD Cameron Ogg (now with her own lab at @rhodescollege.bsky.social!). It was a driven by a desire to see, in real-time, how LC activity/NE release influences downstream targets in behaving animals. SO hard to do, but Cameron did it! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

cell.com

Locus coeruleus norepinephrine neurons facilitate orbitofrontal cortex remapping and behavioral flexibility

Ogg et al. use in vivo imaging techniques to record activity in the locus coeruleus (LC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) during a reversal learning task in freely moving rodents. They show that man...

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Bryan Roth @zenbrainest.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Brainstem circuit for sickness-induced sleep | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Brainstem circuit for sickness-induced sleep

Brainstem circuit mediates sickness-induced NREM sleep.

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Li Li, MD, PhD @dilithium.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Happy to share our study “Noradrenergic tuning of arousal is coupled to movement transitions” from my time at Michael Bruchas' lab. www.cell.com/cell-reports... Highlights: 1. Anesthetic emergence dissociates arousal components; LC-NE activation is coupled to the return of organized behavior.

cell.com

Noradrenergic tuning of arousal is coupled to movement transitions

Li et al. characterize the locus coeruleus (LC)-norepinephrine system in movement-arousal coupling during anesthetic emergence and awake-movement transitions. They find that LC activity correlates wit...

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Tallie Z Baram @talliezee.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Finally dropped! fantastic collaboration with @ladenardo.bsky.social, whole-brain analyses of our novel CRH/GABA BLA-NAc projection shows impact of earlylife stress that are sex dependent & reflect reward behaviors www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... @thebalelab.bsky.social @kundakoviclab.bsky.social

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Caitlin Vander Weele, PhD @caitvw.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

New from @stellatecomms.bsky.social ✨❄️ An icy website design for @nelsontotah.bsky.social's group at Helsinki Institute of Life Science! Go check out the *STUNNING* research illustrations. You won't be disappointed... totahlab.org/research

totahlab.org

Totah Lab | Research

The Totah Lab investigates neural control of cognition, actions, and emotions through locus coeruleus research, behavioral studies, and brain-body connections.

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Michael Kelberman @mikekelberman.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

New pre-print led by the talented undergrad Alexia with @davidweinshenker.bsky.social We used chronic DSP-4 treatment to lesion the LC-NE system in young TgF344-AD rats to see whether early degeneration led to accelerated onset of pathology and behavioral deficits. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Impact of early locus coeruleus lesions in the TgF344 Alzheimer’s disease rat model

INTRODUCTION In murine models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), lesioning the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system with DSP-4 exacerbates AD-like neuropathology and cognitive impairment. However, ...

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davidweinshenker.bsky.social @davidweinshenker.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

At #SFN2025 and interersted in the 🔵? Check out posters from Leslie Hassanein (D52; neuromelanin in the mouse locus coeruleus) and Maggie Tish (C59; human 3D locus coeruleus organoids) today from 1:00-5:00!

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Danai Riga @danai-lama.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

My postdoc (mainly) and I have just completed a 2-month long behavioral experiment (60+ mice, 3 time-points); collected our first #ephys data for a collaborative project (on a NEW rig 👀👀); and finished drafting the lab's first big grant (to-be-submitted soon🤞) We.need.holidays.

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Ishmail Abdus-Saboor @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Cool paper from Sora Shin’s lab mapping a neural circuit for aggression and self-harm. Awesome to see another group using our pain assessment platform in their studies. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Thalamo-hippocampal pathway determines aggression and self-harm

Thalamo-hippocampal calcium channel hyperactivity drives aggression and self-harm after early adversity.

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Keri Martinowich @martinowk.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Excited to share our newest project using spatial transcriptomics with novel image analysis approaches to investigate the impact of biological risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD) - APOE haplotype, sex, and genomic ancestry - on molecular states in the locus coeruleus (LC 🔵) of the human 🧠.

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Keri Martinowich @martinowk.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

For #FluorescenceFriday - projection neurons from the mouse prefrontal cortex to the locus coeruleus 🔴 with Fos labeling activated cells 🟢. Image credit to the Circuits team in the Translational Neuroscience Division @lieberinstitute.bsky.social 🧠🔬🧪

Image captured at 4X on a fluorescence microscope showing a tissue section through the mouse prefrontal cortex where neurons that project to the locus coeruleus in the brainstem are virally labeled in red and neurons that are activated are labeled with Fos in green.

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Jun Nagai @junnagai.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Just out in Nature! “The astrocytic ensemble acts as a multiday trace to stabilize memory.” We identified astrocytic ensembles that link experiences across days to stabilize memory nature.com/articles/s41.... New astrocyte tools are openly available at Addgene: addgene.org/Jun_Nagai/. 1/8

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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Really excited to have this paper accepted for publication now in @natcomms.nature.com - stay tuned for the final version and huge congrats to @margestelzner.bsky.social!!!!

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Keri Martinowich @martinowk.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Super excited about this ongoing spatial transcriptomics study in locus coeruleus of human 🧠. Expression of norepinephrine neurons - TH🔴, DBH🟢 and SLC6A2🟡 overlaid on post-Xenium H&E stain, allowing correlation of neuromelanin content (brown pigment) w/ gene expression #FluorescenceFriday 🔬🧪

mRNA expression using in situ sequencing (Xenium) on a tissue section at level of human locus coeruleus shows expression of marker genes for norepinephrine-producing neurons (TH in red, DBH in green, and SLC6A2 in yellow. Expression of markers is overlaid on the H&E histology staining, which shows cell bodies (purple) and neuromelanin (brown)

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davidweinshenker.bsky.social @davidweinshenker.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Excited to share the Special Issue on "Stress and Addiction" in Addiction Neuroscience is now available. Huge kudos to guest editors Karl Schmidt and Anushree Karkhanis and all the authors who contributed. www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

sciencedirect.com

Addiction Neuroscience | Stress <-> Addiction | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

Stress and drugs of abuse have a bidirectional relationship, such that stress is often seen as a driver of drug use, while at the same time drug use/abuse alters stress responses. Acute exposure to a ...

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Danai Riga @danai-lama.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Fantastic opportunity, APPLY! ⬇️

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Martin J. Dahl @mjdahl.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

At #ICON? – Join us tomorrow to hear about novel measurement & manipulation approaches for neuromodulatory systems! 🗓️Sept 19, 🕚11:45 am 🏫Room Sé #ICON2025 #CogNeuro #AcademicSky #LocusCoeruleus #neuroskyence

Speakers for ICON symposium on novel measurement & manipulation approaches for neuromodulatory systems!
Sept 19,
11:45 am
Room Sé

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Alex Naka @gottapatchemall.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

My group at Science has been running a big campaign to engineer new channelrhodopsins. Excited to share the first results from it today: a suite of highly sensitive new opsins. We call them "WAChRs". Everyday indoor office lighting is enough to activate them pretty strongly.

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Abha Karki Rajbhandari, PhD @brainbodylab.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

William James saw the brain as a filter of bodily signals shaping thought, memory and emotion. That psychological processes require bodily input, brain processing and then action. A century later, science has come full circle to this same mind–body insight! #mindbodyconnection

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Johannes Bohacek @bohaceklab.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

🔵 I'm interrupting my social media hiatus to flag this important preprint from the Bruchas lab (is he not on Bluesky!?) together with @davidweinshenker.bsky.social. Very difficult experiments to show that dopamine release from LC terminals is independent of VTA 🔥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

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