Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
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litif.bsky.social
Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
@litif.bsky.social
Postdoc (Telese Lab - UCSD) 🐭🧠 Investigating the molecular underpinnings of substance use disorder
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
The Neuro Latine community invites you!

Sunday, November 16
7–9 p.m.
Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina – Grand Blrm 5

#NeuroLatine #SfN2025
November 12, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
We have at least TWO postdoctoral fellowship openings on our @unm.edu @casaa.bsky.social T32 NIAAA Training Grant, best consideration date for applications is Nov 15 2025. Join our phenomenal community and enjoy incredible quality of life in beautiful New Mexico. casaa.unm.edu/training/ins...
Application Process :: Center on Alcohol, Substance use, And Addictions (CASAA) | The University of New Mexico
casaa.unm.edu
November 5, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
When you happily start the day with not a single meeting scheduled but only manage to write one paragraph of your manuscript because of all the little things that came up during the day
a woman with gray hair is sitting in front of a sign that says por 10 on it
ALT: a woman with gray hair is sitting in front of a sign that says por 10 on it
media.tenor.com
October 23, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
First lab paper out today! Student authors: Mikayla Cutler and Abhi Thati 🎉🤩

Hippocampus | Neuroscience Journal | Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Drug‐Related Engrams and Their Role in the Persistence and Recurrence of Drug‐Related Behaviors
Memory is a cornerstone of human behavior, and addiction offers a compelling model of its persistence and plasticity. The scope of engram research has rapidly expanded to include addiction-related ph....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 6, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Long post ahead! I am very excited to be recruiting 1 to 2 #PhD students during this upcoming application cycle for Fall 2026 admission! The Clinical Psychology PhD program at The University of New Mexico (UNM) is absolutely stellar and accredited by both #APA and #PCSAS (Clinical Science model). 1/
September 30, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
I think about this diagram a lot. This is a *simplified* schematic of *some of* the brain regions and circuits involved in behavioral control. (From: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
September 15, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
#eNeuro: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kycdyth6vrvgsxhx7kocf4bd" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky-mention">@mattjwanat.bsky.social‬ et al. show that the cue-evoked dopamine response in rats signals the duration of the trace period between cue and reward, and relates to the response latency.
https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0016-25.2025
August 27, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life?

Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social)
Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
August 25, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Very excited to share this major update to our paper delineating VTA GABA neuron encoding of valence and decision conflict. Studies led by the amazing @margestelzner.bsky.social. We leaned in here, taking the opportunity to add a lot of cool new data. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 21, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Congrats to Sven Bervoets and co-authors for our paper on fly Arc now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social !! This was an awesome collaboration with @thecaronlab.bsky.social’s lab @utah.edu

authors.elsevier.com/c/1lZlk3QW8S...
August 8, 2025 at 11:02 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Why publishing early and often advances science faster than complete story bullshit.

This is related to replication and generalization.

From the Archive: The many benefits of the LPU drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/t...
The many benefits of the LPU
A Daniel Sarewitz wrote an opinion piece in Nature awhile back to argue that the pressure to publish regularly has driven down the quality of science. Moreover, he claims to have identified ……
drugmonkey.wordpress.com
August 8, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Dopamine dynamics in the nucleus accumbens core reflected decision confidence during evaluation of decisions in an economic foraging task in mice, as well as both past and future value during re-evaluation and change-of-mind

@perothwell.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind - Nature Neuroscience
Differences in neuroeconomic decision-making influence nucleus accumbens dopamine dynamics and reflect choice confidence during evaluation, as well as past and future value during re-evaluation, which...
www.nature.com
August 4, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Excited to share this huge team effort collaboration supervised by Stephanie Page in Translational Neuroscience @lieberinstitute.bsky.social and @stephaniehicks.bsky.social @jhubiostat.bsky.social to generate a spatio-molecular resource of the hippocampus in human 🧠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
An integrated single-nucleus and spatial transcriptomics atlas reveals the molecular landscape of the human hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience
The topographical organization of cells in the hippocampus reflects its ability to regulate mood and cognition. Here the authors generate a spatially resolved gene expression map in the human hippocam...
www.nature.com
July 30, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
The field of neuroscience views the goal of human genetics as "finding genes". This is an outdated view. In whole genome studies of rare variants, finding genes is the easy part. The more interesting and important goal is to map out the causal pathway from genes to brain function to cognitive traits
A cross-disorder analysis of CNVs finds novel loci and dose-dependent relationships of genes to psychiatric traits https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.11.25331310v1
July 16, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Good stuff from Alex. I touch on some of these themes here as well, from the perspective of an applied statistician (plus a few more refs on the topic).

statsepi.substack.com/p/statistica... (ICYMI)
July 16, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Newest episode of The Addiction Psychologist (@addpsychpodcast.bsky.social) just dropped. In this episode, Dr. Sudie Back discusses Prolonged Exposure for Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorder and PTSD (COPE).

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
Dr. Sudie Back - Prolonged Exposure for Substance Use Disorder and PTSD
Podcast Episode · The Addiction Psychologist · 07/14/2025 · 1h 17m
podcasts.apple.com
July 15, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Long-Term Effects of Adolescent 5F-MDMB-PICA Intravenous self-administration: Neurobehavioral Consequences and medial Prefrontal Cortex Dysfunction in Adult Mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661592v1
June 30, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Submissions for #WCBR2026 open today! Please go to www.winterbrain.org Big Sky is my absolute favorite venue for this meeting. The science is top notch, the people are great, the meaning is inclusive, and I learned to ski as a 35 year old! Please repost!
July 1, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
We are delighted to have the cover article in J Neurosci this week! Briefly: inhibition of DA neurons at reward blocks the acquisition of sign tracking; stimulation (or bigger reward) doesn't alter it, but *stopping* stimulation halts acquisition in its tracks. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2...
Modulation of Dopamine Neurons Alters Behavior and Event Encoding in the Nucleus Accumbens during Pavlovian Conditioning
When a cue is located away from its associated reward, some animals will learn to approach the site of reward (goal-tracking behavior) while others will approach the cue (sign-tracking behavior). The ...
www.jneurosci.org
June 30, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
📣New paper out in Pediatrics about Adolescent & Young Adult OUD Care Access, by part of our UW team💕, & co-first-author, Dr. Alexis Ball!

📝Documenting part of what we already know in practice:

real care options & honest conversations @ drug use matter a lot.

publications.aap.org/pediatrics/a...
June 16, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
Today, my NIH colleagues and I did something scary but really important. We spoke up about egregious harms we are seeing happen to research participants and public health through thoughtless and politicized policies at NIH. 🧵1/3

apnews.com/article/nih-...
June 10, 2025 at 4:10 AM
Reposted by Carl (CJ) Litif, Ph.D.
New op-ed out in the Albuquerque Journal. I share about the importance of federal substance use and addiction funding for families like mine.

www.abqjournal.com/opinion/arti...

and in case you hit a paywall: unmm-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/person...
OPINION: Federal cuts put addiction treatment and recovery at risk
I vividly remember growing up and my grandmother warning me to be careful with alcohol — because addiction “runs in our family.” She wasn’t wrong. For generations, both sides of
www.abqjournal.com
May 19, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Why use a $20k+ centrifuge to spin your qpcr plate when you have $20 salad spinners 🤣
May 17, 2025 at 2:17 AM