Vinny Costa
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vincentcostaphd.bsky.social
Vinny Costa
@vincentcostaphd.bsky.social
Neuroscientist (PhD) exploring how the primate 🧠 learns and decides, while exploiting the consumption of 🍕 and 🥯

Lab website: www.fullcolorbrain.com

SYR/UFL/NIMH/ONPRC/EMORY
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Very excited to hear about this! We find Bayesian multi-level modeling at the ROI level super helpful (e.g. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... ), will be nice to not have to artificially carve the data into parcels a priori!
November 20, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Perfect way to end #sfn25. Thanks @neuroamyo.bsky.social!
November 19, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
We are thrilled to announce that the preliminary program for the 2026 GRC on the Frontal Cortex is now live!
www.grc.org/frontal-cort...
Registration is now open for both the GRC and our GRS, chaired by @albitc.bsky.social and @jorge-miranda.bsky.social!
2026 Frontal Cortex Conference GRC
The 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Frontal Cortex will be held in Holderness, New Hampshire. Apply today to reserve your spot.
www.grc.org
November 18, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Introducing the 𝐏𝐈-𝐚𝐭-𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞! 🤯

When activated, it will auto-reply to your PI's frantic ideas for new experiments, analyses, and projects with "Great suggestion! Saving this for later" (aka: let's talk when you’re back and got some sleep)

#sfn2025 #sfn25
November 18, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Apropos of... well...

I'm reviewing applications for a variety of things right now and can tell when letters are written by AI. There aren't many of them but they do exist. They are... not good.

If you're an academic trainee, choose your mentors wisely.
November 17, 2025 at 7:04 PM
@urochestersmd.bsky.social graduate student Daulton Meyers isn’t a modulator.

Daulton Meyers is a DRIVER.

Does anyone else in this ACC minisymposium hearing Whitesnake? #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Amygdala milkshake is either a great band name or an apt description of the current vibe
November 16, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Happening now! #sfn25 #sfn2025
How our foray into acute neural recordings from the frontopolar cortex started. Check out Kati Rothenhoefer’s LBP028 poster this afternoon (11/16) to learn about how it’s going. #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
How our foray into acute neural recordings from the frontopolar cortex started. Check out Kati Rothenhoefer’s LBP028 poster this afternoon (11/16) to learn about how it’s going. #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Want more neuroscience of explore-exploit? Come to LBP028 right now! bsky.app/profile/vinc...
The importance of the amygdala in explore-exploit cannot be overemphasized! #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 8:54 PM
#Amygdala and @ronypaz.bsky.social brings all the neuroscientists to yard #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
How our foray into acute neural recordings from the frontopolar cortex started. Check out Kati Rothenhoefer’s LBP028 poster this afternoon (11/16) to learn about how it’s going. #sfn25 #sfn2025
November 16, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
October and November NIH grant submission deadlines will be extended.

Study sections scheduled between October 1 and November 14 have been cancelled and will be rescheduled.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
NOT-OD-26-005: Interim Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Interim Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities NOT-OD-26-005. NIH
grants.nih.gov
November 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Neuromatch Academy: We’ll teach you to code, but scientific writing? That’s a waste of time.

Especially if you ask me to write you to you a letter of reference and I can’t boil your essence down to a bullet point with an eigenvalue that highlights one of the five humors.

bsky.app/profile/neur...
On a similar note, I feel like we ought to stop writing papers as flowing text and instead just have the bullet points you would have used as a prompt.

I'm actually not joking.
November 16, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Our lateral septum (LS) team is representing for #SfN25! We have two posters on Wed afternoon from RA Madeline Abramson (PSTR463.16) and undergraduate Yufeng Du (PSTR463.17) showcasing newest molecular profiling results across mouse, non-human primate and human 🧠

I'm there too - get in touch!
November 14, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Folks the Sharpe Lab are in the house for @sfn.org! 🎉 Come check out our talks and posters. We’ve been doing some cool stuff down under 🇦🇺 on dopamine, reinforcement learning, and remapping of the fear circuit. 🧠 🧪
November 14, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
At #SFN2025 and interersted in the 🔵? Check out posters from Leslie Hassanein (D52; neuromelanin in the mouse locus coeruleus) and Maggie Tish (C59; human 3D locus coeruleus organoids) today from 1:00-5:00!
November 15, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Chand lab is at SfN! (And I’m looking for postdocs on cells types and dynamics; reach out if you want to chat!)
November 15, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Yeah there was never any point to the most human element of an application that allowed people from non-traditional or disadvantaged backgrounds to get a leg up.
There was never any point to having reference letters. That's why we've all started using AI to do this nonesense task.

References should only be used for short-listed candidates for important positions/awards, and ideally, be done via a call to get the most honest opinion possible.
From my discussions with other faculty, the use of generative AI I hear about the most is writing reference letters.

What's the point of having reference letters anymore if everyone is just having them written by machine?
November 15, 2025 at 2:33 PM
McKenna Romac will also be presenting her poster tonight (Sat 11/15) at the Early Career Poster Session from 6:45-8:45PM in Hall E #SFN2025 #Neuroscience

Congrats to McKenna on winning a TPDA from @sfn.org generously supported by Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Her first SfN!
Going to #SFN2025. Check out the Costa Lab posters on Sunday and Monday afternoon!
November 15, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Making single unit neuron neurophysiology great again. Love it. Let’s link non-smooth tuning function to cell type properties.
November 15, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Interested in spatiotemporal decoding of choice and feedback in the human brain?

My lab’s postdoc Rohit Yadav will present these beautiful MEG results from our novelty bandit at #SFN2025 Sunday 11/16, PSTR094.23 / LL8 (top row: explore vs exploit; bottom: reward vs nonreward)
November 15, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Going to #SFN2025. Check out the Costa Lab posters on Sunday and Monday afternoon!
November 14, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Vinny Costa
Amazingly ~100 people from NINDS NIH will be going to the Society for Neuroscience #SfN meeting in San Diego! Seek out the booth and posters and please pass on your Neuroscience Love!

Kudos to administrators who got their travel in place despite the shutdown!

www.ninds.nih.gov/news-events/...
November 14, 2025 at 2:17 PM
If you think that the “Mante task” is the gold standard for context dependent decision making I suggest you look up and discover:

Reversal learning

Set shifting

Fear conditioning and extinction

The entirety of behavioral neuroscience…

bsky.app/profile/jbar...
November 13, 2025 at 2:27 AM