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David Margolis

@margolislab.bsky.social
917 followers 604 following 61 posts

Neuroscience lab at Rutgers

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Reposted by David Margolis
Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The superposition of these two studies — both incredible — reflect a snapshot of "one big thing" systems neuroscience has yet to resolve. In mice: 1. Task-related signals are everywhere. 2. Absent large swaths of "everywhere," suprisingly sophisticated learning & behavior remains.
Post by Enny van Beest, "Brainwide representation of navigation"Post by Jieyu Zheng, "How fast can mice learn complex mazes?"
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Critics warn using civilian health funds for military needs is legally dubious. Yet the agreement gives the DOD final authority over products “tailored to warfighter protection, military operational environments, and tactical deployment”, something NIH has no congressional mandate for.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 26/06/2026
Gregg gets it correct here. “New OMB grant rule” sounds nerdy. But this is a huge and insane plan. This is the Trump admin writing down their goal of fundamentally changing the relationship between government and society. Funding for everything will be taken over. 1/
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Interesting study, + bonus for opening with a Jack London quote ″the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. . . dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch.″
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
no words www.thetransmitter.org/neurology/ex... @thetransmitter.bsky.social
thetransmitter.org
Exclusive: Brain and spinal cord institute stops research
The Burke Neurological Institute, which aims to find treatments to repair the brain and spinal cord, ceased research operations on 22 May.
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Very happy to share the work of Ivan Linares +coauthors who carried this whole project from behavioral task development to long term imaging of striatal neurons through learning to analysis of their behavior-related activity and its flexibility over time. Well done all!
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Jeremiah Cohen @jeremiahycohen.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1
biorxiv.org
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
“offers interpretable alternatives to deep-learning-based foundation models” Exploiting correlations across trials and behavioral sessions to improve neural decoding: Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
cell.com
Exploiting correlations across trials and behavioral sessions to improve neural decoding
Animals share common patterns of brain activity across trials and sessions. Exploiting this shared structure improves the prediction of behavior from neural activity, scales across many sessions and b...
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Reposted by David Margolis
Senator Mark Warner @markwarner.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Last year, Republicans gave ICE $75 BILLION – more than most militaries across the globe – while refusing to fund your health care. I fought it then and I’m fighting it now. I’m voting NO on DHS funding.
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Leslie Rissler @ljrissler.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃
Boxing up the NSF at Eisenhower Av for the forced relocation. Boxes have “Details Matter” signage.
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
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Tom Kash @superkash.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Anybody else worried that because of the long standing Republican war on SNAP people are going to experience painful hunger. Lets do something. @nanopharmnc.bsky.social and i are going to donate to some local nc food banks. Join us! Gonna match up to $500.
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Wei Wen @wwenneuro.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
After 13 years in the US, I’ve made the difficult decision to leave. Having packed up everything and rethought about priorities, rather painstakingly, while I’m sad to leave the life I’ve made here, I’m also relieved that I won’t have to plan my life around immigration policies anymore.
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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s4...
nature.com
Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits
Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...
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The MIND Platform @ Western @mind-western.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Is it candy? Nope, it is a spooky 👻 cleared mouse 🧠 used for #fluorescencefriday movies
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Kelsey Tyssowski @kelseytea.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 23/10/2025
The NIH institute director firing last Friday is very bad. I made a video explainer about why. Stay for last post, w link to @science.org story from @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social 1/4 🧪
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 17/10/2025
I made a video about the shutdown, and why this government worker won’t be a pawn. When the president and Supreme Court are both acting lawlessly, Congress must stand up and stop it. US science is collapsing and Congress needs to act. 🧪 Full video here: www.instagram.com/reel/DP1tXXE...
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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
basic research on wacky things like Gila monster venom are what gave us GLP-1 drugs that are treating diabetes, obesity, & addiction in new ways this piece from @whyy.org is great an analogy: navigation apps are great but don't tell you how to climb Mt. Everest & survive whyy.org/segments/oze...
whyy.org
How experiments with venom on guinea pig pancreases led to Ozempic
Elon Musk wants to cut funding for scientific research, but the weight loss drugs he promoted also came from government funded basic science.
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DrDinD.bsky.social @drdind.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
The Nobel Prizes, 5 of 6 having so far gone to US based scientists, are a reminder of why we must stand up for science against this horrid administration. Here are some great Scientist Activists to follow. go.bsky.app/14W5Rdk
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
👀“experience of a punished outcome generates a BLA representation that is selectively replayed when animals subsequently abort choice of the large/risky reward option.” ⚡️“… risk leads to the incorporation of newly encoding BLA neurons into the pre-choice representation”
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
A big step in the work of postdoc Arlene George. Nice work Arlene!!
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Controlled Delivery of a Neurotrophic Factor in the Adult Mouse Brain Using Engineered Microglia www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
So many academics are on HB-1 visas. This is another attack by #RussellVought on universities and scientific research. Stop telling me anything this administration does is in good faith or with any sort of policy goal except destruction.
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Ann Kennedy @antihebbiann.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
And we are live! Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️ Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions! www.kaggle.com/competitions...
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/MABe-mouse-behavior-detection
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Stimulus-Dependent Dopamine Dynamics from LocusCoeruleus Axons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Prof Phoebe Barnard @phoebebarnard.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Whether or not you are a US scientist, you’ll know that this US administration’s reckless ideology endangers the entire globe - the trajectory of human civilization and all life on Earth. Scientists please sign.
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Glorious whiskers too
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Claire O'Callaghan @claireocallaghan.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Adaptive learning is coordinated across behaviour, time and neurobiology (from synapses and dendrites, to astrocytes and the systems level). If you’ve ever wondered how noradrenaline helps shape these multiscale learning processes, you might like this: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
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Robyn St. Laurent @robynstlaurent.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
All donations goes straight to the project (+10% bonus donation will be added if you use my referral link above) www.researchhub.com/fund/4309/ac...
researchhub.com
Accelerating What We Know About OCD: From Genes to Mice t...
Accelerating What We Know About OCD: From Genes to Mice to Bet...
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
‘ In response to a request for comment, Zhu told us, “I have retired and I am in Greenland. I do not have to talk to you.” ‘
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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
The biggest violent crime spree in Washington, DC, happened on January 6, 2021, and Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who were part of that.
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Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
All scientific grant funding must now be approved by a political appointee and "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities." I wonder where innovation will happen in the future? It won't be in the US arstechnica.com/science/2025...
arstechnica.com
New executive order puts all grants under political control
All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.
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Beth Kingsley @ejkdc.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
I really worry about the world the next generation or the one after it will be growing up to live in.
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Bratislav Misic @misicbata.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️
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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
While many institutions are capitulating to Trump, my favorite scientific societies are fighting back. Aug 1 @ascbiology.bsky.social, @asm.org, @asbmb.bsky.social, & @faseborg.bsky.social jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court in American Public Health Association v. NIH 1/n
Leading Scientific Societies File Amicus Brief With U.S. Supreme Court in Support of NIH Grant Recipients
 
 
Washington, DC – August 4, 2025 – On Friday, August 1, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) jointly filed an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in American Public Health Association v. NIH. As some of the nation’s largest and most respected scientific societies, the amici submit this brief to emphasize the urgent need to safeguard federal research investments, protect early-career scientists, and uphold the integrity of the nation’s science ecosystem.
 
The four leading life science organizations originally filed an amicus brief in the case on May 2, urging the court to find recent executive actions that led to the termination of NIH grants supporting early-career scientists—such as the Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) program—unlawful and to compel NIH to restore funding swiftly. MOSAIC grants support scientists from a wide range of backgrounds in transitioning to research careers. Today’s updated filing focuses specifically on the immediate and irreparable harm caused by the grant terminations and asks the Court to deny the government’s request for a stay pending approval.
 
The updated brief includes new evidence and perspectives drawn from peer-reviewed articles and commentary published in recent months, which underscore the devastating consequences these grant cancellations have already had across the scientific community. Together, ASBMB, ASCB, ASM, and FASEB represent more than 150,000 biological and biomedical researchers whose work drives innovation, improves public health, and fuels the U.S. economy. Their members have long supported and participated in programs like MOSAIC, w…
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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
It was an incredible relief last night that this particular nightmare only lasted about five hours or 0.0189 Scaramuccis. That said, if Russ Vought can insert a footnote somewhere else that kills NIH funding, he will attempt it again. Project 2025 demands it.
Screenshot from WSJ that says Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding
The National Institutes of Health can't award grants to outside researchers under a new...Screenshot from WSJ that says 

Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause
Health-Research
Funding
White House officials intervened to force budget office to reconsider health-research funding pause
By Liz Essley Whyte Follow, Nidhi Subbaraman
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Let’s hope 🤞 rollcall.com/2025/07/28/r...
rollcall.com
Republicans brush aside Trump plan to slash NIH funding - Roll Call
Despite criticism of accusations of sexual harassment, controversial research, lawmakers say a 40 percent cut at the agency is too much.
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David Margolis @margolislab.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
James Joyce
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Rosa Lafer-Sousa @rosalafersousa.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
‼️🚨‼️ Russel Vought just locked up the entirety of the remaining extramural NIH budget for this fiscal year, and part of intramural. $15 billion. ~a third of the NIH budget. THIS IS AN ALL-OUT ASSAULT. All $$ is iced except intramural salaries, admin expenses, and clinical center. NO MORE GRANTS. 🧪
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
New Science story about multi-year funding and it potential catastrophic consequences www.science.org/content/arti... 1/n
science.org
Odds of winning NIH grants plummet as new funding policy and spending delays bite
Funding multiyear grants up front will sharply cut number of investigators receiving awards
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Katherine Brown @katherine-brown.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
This is a useful summary of how some major publishers are responding to the new NIH policy. We've just updated our policies at @biologists.bsky.social: @dev-journal.bsky.social @jcellsci.bsky.social and @jexpbiol.bsky.social will allow authors to deposit the accepted version with zero embargo.
authorsalliance.org
An Updated NIH and Publisher Guidance: What Authors Need to Know about NIH’s Public Access Policy
In June, we published an FAQ for authors and librarians to give some guidance on how they might respond to NIH’s accelerated implementation of its public access plan, which requires immediate avail…
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
This is unfortunate: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u... I wrote to the president of Harvard. I hope other faculty will speak their conscience, even if it means more struggle ahead.
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Maureen Barr @barrlab.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
From @aaas.org check-in with Sudip Parikh: a letter by 14 Republican senators urge the Office of Management and Budget to release NIH funding. If this includes your state (AL, ME, WV, SC, KY, KS, AR, PA, NC, IN, AK), Sudip recommends contacting & thanking them for being American science leaders.
Director Vought: 
We write to ask you to fully implement the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, including funds appropriated for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 
The continuing resolution supp011s NIH initiatives across a range of critical research areas­cancer, cardiovascular disease, rare pediatric disorders, and more. These vital efforts are not only necessary to Make America Healthy Again, but also have a direct impact on American families, biomedical innovation, our economy, and competing with Communist China. 
We are concerned by the slow disbursement rate of FY25 NIH funds, as it risks undermining critical research and the thousands of American jobs it supports. Suspension of these appropriated funds - whether formally withheld or functionally delayed - could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science. It also risks inadve11ently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results. 
We share your commitment to ensuring NIH funds are used responsibly and not diverted to ideological or unaccountable programs. We are confident Secretary Kennedy and Director Bhattacharya are well positioned to uphold gold standard research by ensuring that NIH awards are grounded in transparency, scientific merit, and a clear alignment with national interests. Our shared goal is to restore public trust in the NIH precisely because its work is focused on results, accountability, and real-world impact. Withholding or suspending these funds would jeopardize that trust and hinder progress on critical health challenges facing our nation. Ultimately, this is about finding cures and seeing them through to fruition. 
We respectfully request that you ensure the timely release of all FY25 NIH appropriations in accordance with congressional intent. Doing so will ensure continued momentum in curing disease, supp011ing American innovation, and delivering result…Sincerely,
Katie Boyd Britt
John Boozman
Shelly Moore Capito
Bill Cassidy
Susan Collins
Lindsey O. Graham
David H. McCormick
Mitch McConnel
Jerry Moran
Lisa Murkowski
Thom Tillis
Todd Young
Dan Sullivan
Tim Scott
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Some sweet people have been sending physical cards and letters to the Bethesda Declaration signers. This is so kind and meaningful. It would be GREAT if they received more. Cards can be sent to Ian Morgan NIGMS 45 Center Dr, MSC 6200 Bethesda, MD 20892-6200 Ian will share them with the signers.
media.tenor.com
harry potter is surrounded by a bunch of letters falling on the floor .
ALT: harry potter is surrounded by a bunch of letters falling on the floor .
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 09/07/2025
World’s premier cancer institute faces crippling cuts and chaos www.cnn.com/2025/07/08/h...
cnn.com
World’s premier cancer institute faces crippling cuts and chaos | CNN
The Trump administration’s broadsides against scientific research have caused unprecedented upheaval at the National Cancer Institute, the storied federal government research hub that has spearheaded ...
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Michael Buice @mabuice.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
The ICE budget is now set to be approximately what the NIH budget was. We’re shifting money from solving real problems to solving fictitious problems.
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Roberto de la Torre Martinez @robertodelator.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Our new paper in Current Biology "Presynaptic and postsynaptic determinants of claustro-cortical connectivity" CLA→ACC projections are highly specific: defined by presynaptic identity, postsynaptic target, and cortical layer. Check here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #Neuroscience #Claustrum
sciencedirect.com
Presynaptic and postsynaptic determinants of claustro-cortical connectivity
The claustrum (CLA) is a thin and elongated brain structure that is located between the insula and lateral striatum and is implicated in a wide range …
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Maureen Barr @barrlab.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
My NIH diversity supplement is on this list, along with several Rutgers training grants (IMSD & G-RISE)!
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Barbara J. King @bjking.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Pushing back against science defunding: "Hundreds of people wrote to their hometown newspapers as part of a national campaign spearheaded this spring by graduate students and scientists who are just starting their careers." #science 🧪
nytimes.com
To Protest Budget Cuts, Young Scientists Try Letters to the Editor
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