iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Loyola Women in Neuroscience is planning to release a monthly newsletter in the future and we are torn between calling it The Neural Current or Neural Network. We need your help. Vote for your preference!

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Silent engram researchers, a student in class asked me a beautiful question today: If a silent engram is retrieved via optogenetics (AD mouse, infantile amnesia etc), does the artificial reactivation of that engram promote further natural recovery (e.g., via enhanced plasticity)?

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I am honoured to share that I have been selected as a recipient of the 2026 BBRF Young Investigator Grant! 🎉 I am incredibly grateful to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation for this support and to my mentors, collaborators, colleagues, and trainees for their encouragement and support.

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Bita Moghaddam @bita137.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Our new study ⬇️inspired by the question: does psilocybin influence meta-learning and cortical processing of unexpected uncertainty? Why is this important? Meta-learning may be critical for therapeutic effects of psychedelics and how the trip creates a window that facilitates clinical intervention

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I updated the version, should be working again shortly!

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Amelia Eisch 🧪🧠👩‍🔬 🐁 @eisch.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

New preprint from @sgrella.bsky.social team: silencing ventrolateral OFC (chemogenetically) blocks spatial memory-updating. Mice detect novelty fine but can’t use it to revise an existing memory. Deficit tracks w/ reduced engram reactivation in dentate gyrus. Looking forward to digging into this.

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The Women In Science Archive @wisarchive.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Neuroscientist Brenda Milner turns an incredible 108 years old today! In the 1950s she uncovered the role the hippocampus plays in consolidating memories, and in the 1970s she published her seminal studies of speech lateralization. Wishing her all the best today! tinyurl.com/3am8syhf #WomenInSTEM

tinyurl.com

Building a Kingdom in the Brain’s Unfashionable District: Brenda Milner’s Century of Neuropsychology

There are scales and metrics you use to evaluate the lives of most neuropsychologists, and then there are those you have to invent in order to speak with any degree of justice about people like Brenda...

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Peter Kok @peterkok.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social

royalsocietypublishing.org

Volume 381 Issue 1954 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

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bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Artificial Reactivation of a Cocaine-Associated Engram in the Dorsal Dentate Gyrus Attenuates Cocaine Prime-Induced Reinstatement of Drug-Seeking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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bioRxiv Animal Behavior and Cognition @biorxiv-behav.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Artificial Reactivation of a Cocaine-Associated Engram in the Dorsal Dentate Gyrus Attenuates Cocaine Prime-Induced Reinstatement of Drug-Seeking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

9/ And in science we say, “The biology corrected our hypothesis, unexpectedly aligned with our previous work, and that’s beautiful.”

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

8/ Overall, the data suggest: 💉cocaine memories evolve across drug experience ⌛️early and late drug representations are functionally distinct 🧠 hippocampal engrams can alter relapse-related behavior after extinction

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

7/ We observed additional sex differences as well. Females showed greater sensitivity to locomotor effects induced by cocaine memory reactivation, although these effects were dissociable from CPP. Another reminder of the importance of including sex as a biological variable in neuroscience studies.

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

6/ The hippocampus may be reinstating contextual state information rather than “drug reward.”

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

5/ These findings suggest early contextual representations may interfere with / destabilize later cocaine-associated memories when reactivated. Importantly, optical stimulation did not reproduce the pharmacological effects of cocaine itself.

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

4/ Unexpectedly, reactivating ensembles tagged during a saline experience also reduced cocaine-primed reinstatement - but only in females! This was originally intended as a control condition. Instead, it became one of the most interesting findings in the paper.

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

3/ But things became more interesting when mice received cocaine during reinstatement. Reactivating ensembles encoding the 1st cocaine exposure attenuated cocaine-primed reinstatement, while reactivating ensembles encoding a 4th cocaine exposure did not. Not all cocaine memories are equivalent.

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

2/ We originally asked a fairly straightforward question: If we reactivate a cocaine memory… does it function like a cocaine prime and promote reinstatement? Interestingly: reactivating a cocaine-related ensemble alone did NOT reinstate CPP.

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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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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

This press conference edit is already making me cry 😭

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Is Mission Control withdrawal a thing?

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andré, but scarier @andre-carlisle.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

i was glued to the broadcast every day of that mission and all i saw and heard were human scientists, human engineers, human curiosity, human determination, and human collaboration between multiple nations. what i didn’t hear was AI.

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Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

We needed this moment of collective joy.

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Andrew Tan @andrewtanyongyi.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

SCNR I do love this scene on Euler's Method from the movie Hidden Figures, a dramatization focusing on Katherine Johnson's, Dorothy Vaughan's and Mary Jackson's work at NASA in the 1950s and 1960s.

youtu.be

Euler's Method scene in Hidden Figures

YouTube video by Sergio K.

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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Humanity did that. Science did that. Publicly-funded research did that. Excellent universities did that. Diversity did that. International cooperation did that. Artemis II is a perfect example of what we can do at our best. Welcome home, Integrity crew!

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Dr. Sarah Parcak @indyfromspace.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I'm moonscrolling

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Loyola University Chicago @loyolachicago.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Your next four years could look a little like this 🐺 Rambler Day is less than a month away, tag @loyolachicago.bsky.social in your photos for a chance to be featured!

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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Reactivation during sleep segregates the neural representations of episodic memories www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Billy Wade presenting our work at the 36th Annual Cambridge Neuroscience Meeting. 🤩

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Stephanie L. Grella, PhD @sgrella.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Good advice from everyone! Worked so good 😊

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