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Michael Goard

@michaelgoard.bsky.social
410 followers 249 following 60 posts

Associate Professor of Neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara. I study neural circuits underlying sensation, decision making, and spatial navigation.

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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Since I don't have grants to cheer about, I'm instead celebrating a successful ascent of half dome with my daughter last weekend. It was a brutal day - 4am wake up + 18 miles of hiking + 2000' of technical climbing - but the epic views at the top made it well worth it!
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Important paper for 2P imagers. Also a good reminder that 1P imaging scopes (which have axial resolutions >20um) will generally not accurately measure responses from single neurons.
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Dan Feldman @danfeldman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The Neuroscience Department at UC Berkeley is hiring an Asst Professor in Computational Neuro. All areas of computational/theoretical neuro are welcome. Deadline Oct 30. Join our neuroscience community! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05446 #AcademicJobs #Neuroscience #NeuroJobs
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Assistant Professor - Computational Neuroscience - Department of Neuroscience
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Does replay (like place cells) follow the champagne rule, where non-hippocampal consolidation is just ‘sparkling repetition’?
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Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Thrilled to share our new #preprint, and super proud of @zednud.bsky.social and our work on eye–brain dynamics during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Also excited to share that Zach started his PhD with me recently! 🎉 Lots of ideas and cool work ahead. Follow him on Bluesky and check out his thread! 🧵
Zach
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
New review on ecological visual processing. Really enjoyed writing this as part of a longstanding collaboration with @crisniell.bsky.social, @mbeyeler.bsky.social, and @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social
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Cris Niell @crisniell.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
The latest result from a fun ongoing collaboration! @mbeyeler.bsky.social @michaelgoard.bsky.social @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social
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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Ecological Visual Processing in the Mouse - with @michaelgoard.bsky.social @crisniell.bsky.social @mbeyeler.bsky.social Visual computations that are engaged in ecological contexts: active sensing, motion processing, scene analysis, distance estimation, and spatial perception. doi.org/10.1146/annu...
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Lab hike off Lake Louise to close out iNav
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Managed to sneak in some pre-iNav rock climbing…
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Arrived in Banff for iNav a little early, not disappointed…
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 02/07/2026
It is sad that Scott Atlas doesn’t understand basic economics. Paul Samuelson wrote about public goods—why NIH has been such a stunning success—more than 75 yrs ago. Also, to see why Atlas urges ending US success, just look at who elevates him: pro-privatization billionaires. 1/
Clown shoes pro-oligarchy pablum, supported by far-right billionaires — a Hoover fellow, brought in by Trump 1 to blame others for COVID, arranged doubt via billionaire-funded AIER, and now writes in the Bezos Post.
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Beautiful morning in Machu Picchu to cap off a six-day trek through the Andes…
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Very nicely done Radiolab episode featuring @emilyjacobs.bsky.social and team’s work. Check it out! radiolab.org/podcast/this...
radiolab.org
This is Your Brain on Hormones
We don’t have hormones, hormones have us.
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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Labrigger Catechism for 2p calcium imaging 1. Get enough photons/s/cell. About 1000 - 10,000 photons/s/cell can be enough. 2. Make sure that your neuron signals are not completely swamped by neuropil. labrigger.com/blog/2026/06... (1/3)
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Hillscape cells: Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior #neuroskyence @roddy-grieves.bsky.social Eleonore Duvelle and Jeff Taube: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior
Place cells map terrain geometry, not behavior, revealing a surface-based brain code for real-world navigation.
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Peter Rupprecht @ptrrupprecht.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
In this new blog post, I review some several recent studies on dendritic voltage and calcium imaging in hippocampus: gcamp6f.com/2026/05/19/d... Great work by @bhlee1117.bsky.social, Xiang Wu, @adamezracohen.bsky.social, Attila Losonczy, Balazs Rosza, Kevin Gonzalez, and others!
gcamp6f.com
Dendritic imaging of pyramidal neurons in mouse hippocampus
Dendrites are the tree-like arborizations of neurons through which they receive input from other neurons. This compartmentalized anatomy has given rise to the idea that individual dendrites process…
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
In celebration of World Bee Day, I wanted to recommend the Secrets of the Bees, a new 2-part doc that uses innovative camera work (exec produced by James Cameron) to get some really incredible shots of bee behavior (waggle dance, hornet mobbing, and more): www.scientificamerican.com/article/tita...
scientificamerican.com
Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron explains why bees are his latest fixation
James Cameron tells Scientific American how his latest documentary, Secrets of the Bees, reveals an intimate view of the inside of a beehive
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Rafiq Huda @brainsonmymind.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Incredibly excited to share the latest published work from the lab: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Using a range of techniques, including closed-loop optogenetics, we show that the ACC modulates pupil linked arousal in real time. Great summary of our findings here: scienceblog.com/your-brain-h...
science.org
The anterior cingulate cortex modulates pupil-linked arousal
The anterior cingulate cortex modulates pupil-linked arousal in real time.
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Liisa Galea @liisagalea.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
In Beautiful Hawaii for @ossdcomm.bsky.social premeeting on women’s health! Up next is @emilyjacobs.bsky.social for our keynote on the Unchartered Mind: New Frontiers in Women’s Health.
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Simon Hammann @simonhammann.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
On the other hand, since this is being accomplished via administrative reshuffling of multi-year funding programs, the decimation of American science is saving the tax payer a whopping (checks notes)… $0.
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Will Redman @wtredman.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
New preprint out 🚨 “Predictive pursuit emerges in high-dimensional recurrent neural networks”! This was an awesome collaboration with co-first author @fatihdinc.bsky.social , @andyalexander.bsky.social, @xiaoxiao-lin.bsky.social, and May Chen biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/
biorxiv.org
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andy alexander @andyalexander.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Very excited to announce the first preprint from the lab @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social -- "Predictive pursuit emerges in high-dimensional RNNs." @wtredman.bsky.social (starting his own group at JHU this fall) summarizes the work nicely in this thread.
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Dr. Becca @docbecca.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...
washingtonpost.com
Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year
The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.
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Katrin Franke @katrinfranke.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
New paper out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social 🎉 What determines contextual modulation in V1? Why does the visual surround sometimes facilitate and sometimes suppress a neuron's response to its preferred stimulus?
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Nora Newcombe @noranewcombe.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
This book has just been published, open access, edited by Ken Cheng and me. It contains multiple chapters originating in a wonderful Strungmann Forum held in Frankfurt around a year ago. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com
Challenges in Navigation Research
This open access book explores navigation across species using a multidisciplinary approach to address challenges in research and clinical applications.
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Emily A. Aery Jones @emilyaeryjones.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
My main postdoc work is now published: www.nature.com/articles/s41...! We (myself, Isabel Low, Frances Cho, and @lgiocomo.bsky.social) discovered task-relevant remote representations in entorhinal cortex independent of CA1. #paperthread below! 1/13
nature.com
Entorhinal cortex represents task-relevant remote locations independently of CA1 - Nature Neuroscience
Neurons in medial entorhinal cortex collectively represent discrete nonlocal positions during immobility. During this nonlocal coding, CA1 is uncoupled from entorhinal cortex. These representations ar...
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Filip Tomaska @filip-tomaska.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Hey everyone! 
Do you remember this post from your fav blogger? labrigger.com/blog/2025/11... 
Not super easy to use - I know. Well, spring break has sprung here at ucsb and we decided to bring that activation energy down a notch.
 I guess welcome to my first bsky thread? letsgo (1/5)
labrigger.com
Snappy looking calcium imaging videos – Labrigger
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Michael Beyeler @mbeyeler.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
New @annualreviews.bsky.social #neuroscience article 👁️🧠: bionicvisionlab.org/publications... w/ @crisniell.bsky.social, @michaelgoard.bsky.social, @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social Grateful to be part of this collaboration & learn from such a sharp group while rethinking vision in natural settings!
bionicvisionlab.org
Ecological visual processing in the mouse | Bionic Vision Lab
We review computations that are engaged in ecological contexts, including active sensing, motion processing, scene analysis, distance estimation, and spatial perception.
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Amazing work by my mother-in-law Jo Ellen Jacobs and colleagues to uncover the true origins of On Liberty
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
A San Francisco institution. Started by Robert Oppenheimer’s brother Frank after he lost his professorship in physics due to his “communist sympathies”…
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 12/03/2026
Fabulous keynote session at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social. @neurokim.bsky.social and I kicked off the meeting and introduced Chris Olah. m.youtube.com/watch?v=koGy...
m.youtube.com
Cosyne 2026 - Session 1: Opening Remarks
YouTube video by Cosyne Talks
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andy alexander @andyalexander.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Come check out our poster "[2-018] Predictive pursuit emerges in high dimensions" Friday from 1-4p if you are at #cosyne2016! This work was led (and is presented) by the amazing @wtredman.bsky.social alongside an awesome team incld. @xiaoxiao-lin.bsky.social, @fatihdinc.bsky.social, and May Chan.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 09/03/2026
The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed. For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com 🧪
nature.com
How Congress can restore the independence of US science
Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Two-photon calcium imaging at 24,000 lines/s, with the resonant axis spanning 4x what other systems can do. Inertia-free. Diffraction-limited. No tradeoffs. Che-Hang Yu developed a 4x angle multiplier for laser scanning. His paper is out today: opg.optica.org/optica/fullt... 1/n #fluorescenceFriday
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Carsen Stringer @computingnature.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
🔬🧠 Releasing the 1.0 version of #Suite2p and THE PAPER w/ @marius10p.bsky.social! Now with GPU acceleration. Want to use Suite2p but don’t have 100,000 neuron recordings? We show you how to get those with a standard 2p microscope #neuroscience #imaging #neuroAI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Adrien Peyrache @apeyrache.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
New paper alert! 🚨 We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales 1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks 2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps. Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
When a brain researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious. By @lyrebard.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...
thetransmitter.org
A brief history of precision self-scanning
When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.
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Mark Brandon @markbrandonlab.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward. Full text here: rdcu.be/eY5nh
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Regina Lapate @lapate.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
📣 Our lab is hiring a full-time RA/lab manager! Join us in beautiful Santa Barbara to study the neural bases of affect-cognition interactions using fMRI and brain stimulation. Great stepping stone to a PhD in cognitive/affective neuro 🧠🐬🏖️ Apply by Jan 22: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF03048
recruit.ap.ucsb.edu
Junior Specialist - Lapate Laboratory, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
University of California Santa Barbara is hiring. Apply now!
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Michael Goard @michaelgoard.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Researchers using microprisms: I am planning to place a custom order from FST for 1.5 mm wide diamond knives with a 30 deg point (similiar to finescience.com/en-US/diamon... but with a 1.5mm wide blade), but there is a minimum lot number. Anyone else interested in purchasing one? Let me know!
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adamezracohen.bsky.social @adamezracohen.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Annegret Falkner @neurrriot.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Want to track the dynamics of estrogen in the brain across long periods of time? New paper as part of very fun collab with team UCLA Ed Van Veen and Steph Correa! We use a specialized optical reporter and show that this is possible and actually very easy! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Mark Andermann @markandermann.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Our lab is hoping to hire a long-term lab manager / research associate to help with admin tasks and neuroscience experiments (3-year minimum commitment). bilh.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
bilh.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Research Associate
When you join the growing BILH team, you're not just taking a job, you’re making a difference in people’s lives. The Andermann lab consists of a vibrant and diverse group of 20 scientists (undergradua...
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Matthieu Bernard @matthieubernard.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Excited to share my first PhD preprint! “How human aging disrupts the head direction network: evidence from VR experiments and mechanistic models” We investigated why our sense of direction becomes less stable as we age. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/ thread 🧵
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 14/11/2025
Hearing a rumor that NIH/HHS may now plan to retaliate against other Bethesda Declaration signers. I am one, but it’s not about me: we have been speaking out because of the ongoing damage to US medical research, cancer and Alzheimer’s research. As @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social put well: 1/
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Carla Golden @goldenneurons.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #blueprint 1/7
nature.com
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning - Nature Neuroscience
Dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors naturally fluctuates over females’ reproductive cycles with estrogenic signaling due to reduced expression of dopamine reuptake proteins.
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S. Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world. www.nobelprize.org
nobelprize.org
The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org
The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...
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