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Jennifer Bussell

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H-index: 13
Political science 68%
Sociology 15%
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Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Michael W. Kraus, Andrew Jacobs , and 2 more

bakerdphd.bsky.social
Brown is out! They had to do more dancing in their letter because they previously capitulated and needed to reference their previous agreement but, at its core, this reiterates MIT's letter.

The clock is now on for all other institutions.

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...
www.brown.edu
8 150 660

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Peter Thorne

eos.org
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 11% of its staff today, including many people working on an active Mars rover mission. “There’s no whitewashing the ‘doomsday-eve’ feeling that's looming over all our heads,” wrote one JPL’er. eos.org/research-and...
JPL Workforce Decimated - Eos
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., laid off 550 people, a roughly 11% reduction of its workforce.
eos.org
4 56 88

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Anna O. Law, Elizabeth Saunders , and 16 more

karl-jacoby.bsky.social
Student government leaders of MIT, UVA, U of AZ, Dartmouth, UPenn, Brown, and Vanderbilt united in their opposition to the "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.
brendannyhan.bsky.social
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 2d
www.instagram.com/p/DPm507ljBJ...
6 210 870

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

astro-cowboy.bsky.social
Tomorrow about a third of Perseverance rover staff will be laid off, despite the mission being the penultimate step in a decades long effort to bring samples back from mars.

Reckless, needless budget cuts intended to hinder the pursuit of knowledge.
27 230 630

by Joshua S. Weitz — Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Kevin J. Anchukaitis

joshuasweitz.bsky.social
MIT says no to the Trump admin higher-ed compact clearly and emphatically. Other universities would be well served to read, remix, and respond similarly.

"In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences."

orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
4 26 57

by Nancy Kanwisher — Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Brian A. Nosek, Janet Murray , and 1 more

MIT Rejects the Compact!
I am so proud.
"The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief ...
3 63 290

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
A dual information seeking strategy improves imprecise human inferences outside the explore-exploit tradeoff https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.08.681186v1
1 5

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

ppiantad.bsky.social
for anyone interested in the amygdala and risky decision-making, check out our new preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

amygdala neurons track reward-seeking actions, and punishment risk dramatically alters this function. lots of other (BLA-accumbens!) data included.
Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice
Modifying behavior in response to changing environmental conditions is a crucial adaptive function. This capacity is exemplified when animals curtail pursuit of a valued outcome that risks being punis...
biorxiv.org
9 21

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

aliciaizquierdo.bsky.social
🎇 Excited to finally share JL Romero Sosa’s publication! Results are from single-cell imaging in different subregions of rat frontal cortex during ✨de novo learning. Spoiler: everything is not everywhere all at once www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Neural coding of choice and outcome are modulated by uncertainty in orbitofrontal but not secondary motor cortex - Nature Communications
Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.
www.nature.com
3 38 95

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Kate Starbird

peter-butler.bsky.social
Bloomberg research found wholesale electricity up ~270% in areas near data centers

It doesn't seem like nearly enough people are taking it seriously

One A.I. image isn't too much energy, but 5 million videos? Per day/hour/minute whatever. It's not sustainable

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring
Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.
www.bloomberg.com
9 310 460

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
Hippocampal Fos-expressing neurons stably encode boundaries in novel environments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680713v1
2 3

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Gavin A. Schmidt

rosalafersousa.bsky.social
Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.
8 230 470

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Karen Benjamin Guzzo

npr.org
Inspired by a military strategy to ward off disease-carrying mosquitoes, researchers see if the technique will help cut malaria infections in little ones. n.pr/3IwwWQc
Babies take a lesson from soldiers in the war against malaria
Inspired by a military strategy to ward off disease-carrying mosquitoes, researchers see if the technique will help cut malaria infections in little ones.
n.pr
3 18 100

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

thetransmitter.bsky.social
To celebrate the first anniversary of the release of FlyWire, we asked nine neuroscientists to share how they are using connectome data in their research and what they hope is in store for the future of fly connectomics.

By @franciscorr25.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/3Wx5nt3
How FlyWire is redefining Drosophila research, one year in
Nine Drosophila researchers share how the connectome transformed the field and what additional new tools they would like to see.
bit.ly
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Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

janelia-flyem.bsky.social
We're very proud to be releasing the complete male fly CNS connectome!

It's the product of a huge team effort here at Janelia in partnership with the Cambridge Fly Connectomics group (@jefferis.bsky.social and colleagues), plus invaluable collaborators.

More soon...
www.janelia.org/project-team...
Male CNS Connectome
A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...
www.janelia.org
2 31 69

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

natneuro.nature.com
Characteristic facial features in mice simultaneously encode not only currently used decision variables but also independent and unexpressed ones, and these features partially originate from neural activity in the secondary motor cortex

@fannycazettes.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Facial expressions in mice reveal latent cognitive variables and their neural correlates - Nature Neuroscience
The face reveals more than just emotion. Cazettes, Reato and colleagues show that subtle facial movements reveal hidden cognitive states, reflecting the brain’s ongoing computations and offering a noninvasive window into unexpressed thoughts and decisions.
www.nature.com
1 6 27

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

daweibai.bsky.social
New paper: the ‘Double Ring Illusion’!
Does the visual system integrate *intuitive physics*? This new illusion developed by Brent Strickland and I offers a straightforward demonstration – one that you can experience yourselves!
Demos in thread👇
[1/6]
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by Jennifer Bussell

jenbussell.bsky.social
Amazing news, congratulations!!
1 1

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

thetransmitter.bsky.social
“It’s hard to know if I should close down my existing projects and/or redouble my efforts writing new grant applications,” Joshua Jacobs, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, told @thetransmitter.bsky.social.

By Natalia Mesa

www.thetransmitter.org/funding/nih-...
NIH awarded 37 percent fewer neuroscience-related grants in 2025 than in past years
But the agency has spent nearly its entire budget for this fiscal year, which ends tomorrow.
www.thetransmitter.org
23 38

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Lisa W. Fazio, CARMEN DRAHL , and 1 more

beebrookshire.bsky.social
In reporting this piece on the new trial for a Huntington's treatment, I was struck by one thing in particular:

The joy.

One of my sources wept for joy. He has spent his entire career studying this disease, he said it was the happiest day. www.sciencenews.org/article/hunt...
Huntington's progression slowed by experimental gene therapy
An experimental gene therapy slowed Huntington’s by up to 75 percent in a small clinical trial. While not a cure, it may give patients longer lives.
www.sciencenews.org
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Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

stevemaren.bsky.social
Isn’t it weird that 27 years of important behavioral neuroscience work published from 1973-2000 in Psychobiology has been disappeared because it isn’t on PubMed? That’s 100s of papers that the field has no knowledge of….
4 3 7

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

endoeartha.bsky.social
Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪
1/12
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Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

jeremymberg.bsky.social
Articles of Impeachment for RFK, Jr. introduced

thehill.com/policy/healt...
thehill.com
13 110 380

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

jlussenhop.bsky.social
This is EXTRAORDINARY impact, driven by the Pulitzer Prize-finalist journalism of @deldeib.bsky.social. At a time when so much is being dismantled, it is incredible to see something like this launching to improve health outcomes for moms and babies: www.propublica.org/article/nih-...
NIH Launches New Multimillion-Dollar Initiative to Reduce U.S. Stillbirth Rate
Clinical teams across the country are forming a five-year, $37 million consortium to research stillbirth, a long-neglected public health concern. “There’s no question that the ProPublica reporting was...
www.propublica.org
8 40 190

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Kim L. Scheppele

science.org
U.S. court orders NIH to restore killed grants to California researchers. https://scim.ag/46xy9hY
U.S. court orders NIH to restore killed grants to California researchers
Judge says district court is proper forum to protest mass grant terminations
scim.ag
3 24 97

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

briantrainor.bsky.social
If you are funded by NIMH and only received 85% of your budget this year (like we did), check era commons to see if you have a new award notice. We just got the remaining 15% today.
2 7 26

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

qqzhang.bsky.social
Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
4 26 85

by Jennifer Bussell

jenbussell.bsky.social
Congrats!!
1

Reposted by Jennifer Bussell, Colin F. Camerer

malcolmgcampbell.bsky.social
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵
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Reposted by Jennifer Bussell

natneuro.nature.com
A pair of papers on using holographic optogenetics and compressed sensing for connectomics:

Rapid learning of neural circuitry from holographic ensemble stimulation enabled by model-based compressed sensing

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rapid learning of neural circuitry from holographic ensemble stimulation enabled by model-based compressed sensing - Nature Neuroscience
The authors develop a new computational system for high-throughput mapping of synaptic connectivity using two-photon holographic optogenetics and intracellular recordings.
www.nature.com
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