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Ron Keiflin

@ronkeiflin.bsky.social
797 followers 540 following 35 posts

Behavioral Neuroscientist • Associative learning • Decision-making @UC Santa Barbara KeiflinLab.com

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Reposted by Ron Keiflin
Dave Root @neuronroot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Our department seeks a teaching professor for neuroscience courses. If interested apply here jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...
jobs.colorado.edu
Assistant Teaching Professor – Psychology and Neuroscience
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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
For those interested in a neuroscience PhD - the University of Minnesota Graduate Program in Neuroscience www.neuroscience.umn.edu is hosting a virtual open house event on Oct. 26th. Learn about the program and meet students and faculty! Register here: forms.gle/CXRLvz2EGPwG...
Flyer for the graduate program in neuroscience at the university of minnesota, to announce a virtual open house event on October 26th. Register at https://forms.gle/CXRLvz2EGPwGSL7J7
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Chronic semaglutide treatment attenuates cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine-seeking and cocaine-induced stereotypy in male and female rats www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Alicia Izquierdo @aliciaizquierdo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
📣 Assistant Professor of Teaching in Neuroscience at UCLA! ☀️ 🧠 Apply before Nov 9th recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF11315
recruit.apo.ucla.edu
Assistant Professor of Teaching in Neuroscience in the UCLA Department of Psychology and Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program
University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!
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Rachel Donka @racheldonka.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
🚨New paper alert: Excited to share our journey to contrast how multiple dopamine sensors respond to acute morphine treatment. We first compared changes in dopamine transients in rats prepared with VTA DA GCaMP6f, NAcLS dLight1.3b or GRABDA2h 1/5
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Zoe McElligott @nanopharmnc.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Our new investigation examining how #SBI-553 a biased modulator of NTSR1 alters motivated feeding and NST potentiation of inhibitory transmission in the extended amygdala is now online! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Steve Ramirez @okaysteve.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🚨 new work from the lab! "Dissociable cortical-hippocampal dopamine dynamics support memory-guided behavior" by @albitc.bsky.social et al. congratulations whole-heartedly to the team and we're excited to hear everyone's thoughts on the work! 👇🏽 www.cell.com/current-biol...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Pavlovian conditioned approach with different reward magnitudes reveals opposing effects of acute and chronic semaglutide treatment www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Drew Schreiner @schreinerdrew.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I’m on the faculty job market this fall! 🐦🧠 I’m an NIH K99/R00 awardee studying how the brain learns complex skills, using birdsong to connect molecules, synapses, circuits, behavior & computation. Know of a search where I might fit? Please send it my way & share!
drewschreiner.github.io
Drew Schreiner, Ph.D. | Neuroscience of Learning
I use birdsong to understand how the brain learns complex skills across molecules, synapses, circuits, behavior, and computation. On the 2026–27 faculty job market.
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Ron Keiflin @ronkeiflin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
New lab preprint! OFC—>M2 in rule selection. Project led by the amazing @margole.bsky.social
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Kauê Machado Costa @kmcostalab.com · 01/09/2026
My lab is looking for a new postdoc (or exceptional grad student) to tackle an interesting hypothesis on Parkinson's disease and learning. The position is funded and we are looking for someone that can start ASAP. See thread, and please follow these instructions to apply: www.kmcostalab.com/join-us
kmcostalab.com
K.M. Costa Lab - Join us
Join
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Dr. Becca @docbecca.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
My behavioral neuroscience lab at Northeastern is looking to recruit two new research techs! Job description and link to apply is here: northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Laboratory Technician - The Shansky Lab
About the Opportunity Job Summary The Shansky Lab is seeking a full-time technician to conduct National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded behavioral neuroscience research. The position includes lab ma...
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Andrew MacAskill @macaskillaf.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Congrats @jespass.bsky.social on her new paper! PFC is widely thought to talk to HPC via nucleus reuniens - but no one has tested if this actual connectivity exists. Turns out it's wired to block it: PFC inputs to reuniens contact only neurons projecting back to PFC, not ones projecting to HPC. 🧪🧠📈
biorxiv.org
Nucleus reuniens is organised as parallel circuits rather than a prefrontal-hippocampal relay
Interactions between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus (HPC) are crucial for flexible and memory guided behaviour. Because there are no direct projections from PFC to HPC, it is widely presu...
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Alicia Izquierdo @aliciaizquierdo.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Thanks @rudebecklab.bsky.social and @realdiehllab.bsky.social for chairing a fantastic GRC Frontal Cortex! Lasting impact and inspiration 🫶🏼
Holderness NH scene with clouds under bright sun
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Kate Wassum @katewassum.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
We’re hiring a research technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/11232
Photo of group of Wassum lab scientists standing in front of a fountain at UCLA.
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Dr. Becca @docbecca.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Please share--the Shansky lab is currently recruiting at all levels to work on an NIH-funded project investigating sex differences in the neural circuits that drive defensive behaviors. The official job ad isn't yet up, but interested folks can contact me as instructed here www.shanskylab.com/join
shanskylab.com
Join — Shansky Lab
The lab at our end-of-semester field day
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Talia Lerner @talialerner.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
And a second new preprint from Lerner Lab on the same day! 👀 🎉 Led by graduate student Nkatha Mwenda! “Dopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking” #neuroskyence🧪
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Talia Lerner @talialerner.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
🚨Happy to share a new preprint from Lerner Lab led by graduate student @nadelneurosci.bsky.social! 🚨 “Adolescent stress recruits a latent amygdala-dopamine circuit to drive punishment-resistant reward-seeking” This has been a wholly impressive effort by Jacob; summary below 👇 #neuroskyence🧪
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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The final version of our amygdala dopamine paper is out! BLA dopamine dynamically tracks emotional salience and not value or reward prediction error. Congrats to Dr. Megan Brickner!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits emotional salience - Nature Communications
The basolateral amygdala dopamine system has received little attention. Here, authors show that BLA dopamine plays a unique role in learning, by encoding the emotional salience of sensory cues to supp...
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Robin Magnard @robinmagnard.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
🧠🧬 What are the effects of intravenous fentanyl self-administration on the habenula and amygdala transcriptomes? In our new Addiction Biology paper, we addressed this question using a chronic long-access model in rats! Here are some highlights 🧵👇 Paper 👉 dx.doi.org/10.1111/adb....
dx.doi.org
Transcriptional Response to Chronic Long‐Access Fentanyl Self‐Administration in Rat Habenula and Amygdala
Chronic intravenous long-access fentanyl self-administration in rats produced transcriptional remodeling in the habenula and amygdala. Bulk RNA-sequencing identified 453 habenula and 3,041 amygdala d...
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Jennifer Bussell PhD @jenbussell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
How does the brain represent the value of knowledge? In our paper--out now at Nature Neuroscience--we identify a representation of intrinsic information value within neural population structures in the orbitofrontal cortex in mice. www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02377-y #neuroskyence 🧠🧪 (1/8)
nature.com
Representations of the intrinsic value of information in mouse orbitofrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Mice are motivated to seek information of no extrinsic value. Recording neural activity in orbitofrontal cortex reveals a representation of the value of information that is distinct from the value of ...
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Matt Wanat @mattjwanat.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Check out the new preprint from the lab led by Brandon Garcia-Castañeda! Huge shout out to NIH/NIDA for initially funding this line of research and continuing to support this work in a new R21/R33 with @asoshnev.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Ventral tegmental area astrocytes regulate drug-cue associations and drug intake
Cocaine use disorder remains a critical public health concern with limited treatment options. Astrocytes are increasingly recognized as active regulators of neurotransmission and are emerging as impor...
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Vinny Costa @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
The President of OHSU Shereef Elnahal and the OHSU Board of Directors will be voting to effectively gut research and shutdown the Oregon National Primate Research Center on 7/27/2027. Public comments can be submitted here until 3PM EST today. savescienceoregon.org/contact
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Mitch Roitman @mitchroitman.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Dopamine and sodium appetite! Sodium appetite causes a 'sign change' in the taste of hypertonic NaCl solutions. We've previously shown that generation of the appetite recruits phasic dopamine to the taste of NaCl; here we show the 'derecruitment' process during satiation.
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Chemogenetic Inhibition of the Ventrolateral Orbitofrontal Cortex Disrupts Prediction Error and Salience-Guided Memory-Updating at the Hippocampal Engram Level www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Daniel Castro @flanbrain.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Fresh from the Castro Lab! We characterize how mu opioid receptors on pancreatic alpha cells regulate ingestive phenotypes. Surprise! Mu can act both inside and outside the brain😱 Congrats to our technician Diego De Gregorio! @ssibsociety.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Pancreatic mu opioid receptors regulate metabolism and ingestive behaviors
The mu opioid receptor system has long been recognized for its role in regulating ingestive behaviors and food palatability. However, beyond their rob…
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Stephen V Mahler @svmahler.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Are ultrasonic vocalizations a window into the subjective effects of drugs of abuse, and VTA dopamine neuron manipulations, in rats? 🤔 New answers to these questions, & intriguing new questions raised! urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
urldefense.com
Interrogating roles for VTA dopamine neurons in locomotion and ultrasonic vocalizations elicited by different classes of rewarding drugs
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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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Kurt Fraser @kurtfraser.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Our labs first paper! Some 😳 surprising effects. Turns out everything comes back to context 🤓
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Lex Kravitz @kravitzlab.com · 09/07/2026
I am happy to share our latest manuscript, led by newly-minted PhD Justin Wang, identifying a neural population that selectively controls hedonic, but not homeostatic, feeding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Ventral pallidal GABAergic neurons control hedonic feeding and obesity
Food intake is governed by two interacting drives. The homeostatic hunger drive regulates food intake to fulfill caloric needs while the hedonic drive promotes intake of palatable foods outside of cal...
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Jorge Miranda Barrientos @jorge-miranda.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Thrilled to share that our latest paper investigating how mPFC-LC projectors contribute to sustained #attention is now out in @npp-journal.bsky.social This is so meaningful to me and the team, Its @rehg-j.bsky.social first first-author paper and my first corresponding one. rdcu.be/fqBJp
rdcu.be
Top-down control of sustained attention by medial prefrontal cortex—locus coeruleus (mPFC-LC) projection neurons during the rodent continuous performance test (rCPT)
Neuropsychopharmacology - Top-down control of sustained attention by medial prefrontal cortex—locus coeruleus (mPFC-LC) projection neurons during the rodent continuous performance test (rCPT)
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Dopamine projections to the basolateral amygdala enable reward prediction www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Neuropsychopharmacology @npp-journal.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Glewwe et al. demonstrate that female mice outperform males in a touchscreen set-shifting task, suggesting that stable choice commitment in females paradoxically enhances cognitive flexibility
nature.com
Sex-biased computations underlying differential set shift performance in mice
Neuropsychopharmacology - Sex-biased computations underlying differential set shift performance in mice
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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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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Check our new work! Studies led brilliantly by @louisakuper.bsky.social. We investigate the parafascicular thalamus as an interface of sensory, attention, and movement signals that guide exploration and cue-related learning.
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Kurt Fraser @kurtfraser.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I'm looking to hire a research technician/lab manager. This role is ideal for someone looking to gain experience and independence after undergraduate research on their way to graduate school. Please encourage anyone interested to apply: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/374... (job code 374183)
hr.myu.umn.edu
Careers
The Fraser Lab at the University of Minnesota (https://fraserlab.psych.umn.edu/) is recruiting a full-time research technician to support the lab. As a part of the Department of Psychology we are involved in the greater neuroscience research community at the University of Minnesota which provides excellent access to training and professional development. The Fraser Lab is interested in the neurobiological basis of motivated behavior and investigates how defined brain circuits contribute to behavioral regulation. We make use of modern neuroscience approaches to record and manipulate neural activity in real-time as rodents perform complex behavioral tasks to relate precise aspects of neural activity to well-defined psychological processes. To do so, we regularly use optogenetics, chemogenetics, calcium imaging, biosensors, pharmacology, and immunohistochemistry. Our ultimate goal is to decipher the neural mechanisms regulating behavior and to characterize how these are altered in psychiatric illness, such as addiction, or by differences in lived experience, such as after early life adversity, to potentially identify novel therapeutics. We seek a team member who can play a lead role in lab operations, collaborate closely with the PI, and engage in team-building and growth.Duties:Laboratory logistics, maintenance and operations (30%):
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Ben Saunders @bensaunders.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Check out our new paper, led brilliantly by Dr. Megan Brickner, in early view form at @natcomms.nature.com. We characterize BLA dopamine signaling in emotional learning - lots of insights into broad dopamine heterogeneity beyond classic value learning signals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits emotional salience - Nature Communications
The basolateral amygdala dopamine system has received little attention. Here, authors show that BLA dopamine plays a unique role in learning, by encoding the emotional salience of sensory cues to supp...
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janaklab.bsky.social @janaklab.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
❤️ Howard will be greatly missed
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Vikaas Sohal @vikaassohal.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
New paper out! For decades there has been a ‘standard model’ for gamma oscillations. This upends that model - PFC gamma oscillations are not one thing. Rather they dynamically recruit diverse cell type-specific synchrony motifs to implement multiple functions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Prefrontal gamma oscillations engage dynamic cell-type-specific configurations to support flexible behavior
Cognitive dysfunction in conditions such as schizophrenia involves disrupted communication between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the mediodorsal tha…
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Daniel Castro @flanbrain.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
First Castro Lab paper, brought to you by the hard work of Dr. Kathryn Braden @katybraden.bsky.social In this manuscript we investigate the role of endogenous enkephalin or dorsal raphe nucleus. We find that it is incredibly important for buffering negative affect 😱 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Dorsal raphe nucleus enkephalin peptide modulates behavioral preference - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - Dorsal raphe nucleus enkephalin peptide modulates behavioral preference
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Chemogenetic Inhibition of Lateral Hypothalamus Inputs to the Paraventricular Thalamus Reduces Goal-Tracking in a Behaviorally Flexible Subgroup of Male Rats www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
1/ New preprint from the lab 🧠💉 led by Hazel Edwards & Lola Papanikolaou. We investigated whether artificial reactivation of cocaine-related HPC memories influences relapse-like beh after extinction. We tagged dDG ensembles encoding cocaine experiences during CPP. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Laura Bradfield (she/her) @bradfield-neuro.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
New preprint from the lab "Contingency degradation overwrites initial learning and depends on lateral orbitofrontal cortex": url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/pos5CjZ1N7... Highlights: * Degradation reduces responding that does not spontaneously reover * Degradation does not reinstate and... 1/2
url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com
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Robin Magnard @robinmagnard.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Thrilled about our new @janaklab.bsky.social paper now out in @npp-journal.bsky.social🧠⚡ Action-sequence termination cues evoke mesolimbic dopamine activity that drives habit-like behavior. Thanks to Tricia Janak, @younavandaele.bsky.social, and @yfcheng.bsky.social! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Sequence termination cues drive automated habit-like strategy via dopamine-mediated processes - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - Sequence termination cues drive automated habit-like strategy via dopamine-mediated processes
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Kurt Fraser @kurtfraser.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Easily the largest dataset of neurons recorded in the central amygdala during sucrose and alcohol self administration to date - super cool! More evidence the CeA is a motivational amplifier (but I’m biased bc it’s from @janaklab.bsky.social )
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Neil M. Dundon @neilmdundon.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Check out our latest work! link.growkudos.com/1dznnd63t34 @ejrise.bsky.social @neurodreea.bsky.social @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org
link.growkudos.com
How the carrot and the cane use different brain pathways to drive movement
When something exciting or threatening happens, it can change how we move. But how do emotional signals in the brain actually reach the parts that control movement? The well-known route for voluntary ...
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Stephen V Mahler @svmahler.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Check out this very cool new paper on rat ultrasonic vocalizations emitted in a naturalistic habitat--some surprising findings, and cool quantitative analyses done by Jordan Saltzman in the Ron Frostig Lab in Neurobiology & Behavior @ucirvine.bsky.social www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
cell.com
Correlating ultrasonic communication with behavior in a small-scale rat colony living in a naturalistic habitat
Rodent behavior; Biological sciences; Zoology
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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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Andrew MacAskill @macaskillaf.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Huge congrats to @snierwetberg.bsky.social , David (not on BSky), and @maxwellxchen.bsky.social for their paper! They developed a mouse task in which relational structure can be isolated from cue identity and reward statistics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧠📈🧪 #neuroskyence @uclnpp.bsky.social
biorxiv.org
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Ron Keiflin @ronkeiflin.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Had fun working with @margole.bsky.social on this eLife Insight piece. Also check out the original paper by Zong et al. (Schoenbaum lab): elifesciences.org/articles/109...
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