Puja Parekh, Ph.D.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

The savings we're getting here by annihilating decades of American science will pay for whole minutes of the operation to create decades of death, immiseration, and chaos in Iran.

Why are automated readers for news sites using AI voices that mispronounce (Americanize) foreign names? It sounds ridiculous.

meanwhile >80 billion land animals are killed to eat and we are encouraged by HHS to eat even more animal flesh

Effort-Based Decision-Making and Its Discontents - Dr. Michael Treadway YouTube video by motcogmeet

ICYMI: Here's a link to today's talk from Michael Treadway: youtu.be/ZlaTDXc5ZOU @sebastianshorn.bsky.social @kendraseaman.bsky.social @colleencfrank.bsky.social @zitamayer.bsky.social @kimberlychiew.bsky.social @srndna.bsky.social @cvlneuro.bsky.social

The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn’t cheating – it’s the erosion of learning itself Automating knowledge production and teaching weakens the ecosystem of students and scholars that sustains universities, raising existential questions about their mission.

“Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.”
#AI #HigherEd #EduSky
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theconversation.com/the-greatest...

Full dopamine coding of basic economic subjective value: Utility and weighted probability Behavioral choices of uncertain rewards suggest that agents construct subjective reward value by combining the basic value components of utility and w…

I like to think about brain areas as well behaved (b/c they do what you tell them too, like V1) vs naughty (b/c 🤷, like PFC).

I'm delighted to learn that midbrain dopamine neurons are well behaved machines that convert objective value into subjective value.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislature YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Trump’s propaganda czar Brendan Carr and Trump-controlled CBS refused to let Colbert air his interview with James Talarico. You can watch the interview here, and it already has 1.4M views. youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...

🏆 GSRNet Breakthrough Award 2027 – Nominations Open

We invite nominations recognizing outstanding contributions to stress & resilience research.

Help us highlight scientific excellence!

📅 Deadline: June 30, 2026
🔗 Details: stress-and-resilience-meeting27.epfl.ch/awards/
#GSRNet2027 #ResearchAward

And as always, data fully available to check out for exploration and visualization! Feedback and comments welcome if you are checking it out to make this as user-friendly and accessible to the community as possible!

Please share: I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab in Oslo!

For this project, we will investigate the role of striatal interneurons during action selection, using a combination of behavior, in vivo voltage imaging, and slice ephys.

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

#NeuroJobs #NeuroSkyence

Calling all PFC and PFC-adjacent neuroscientists--registration for the GRC Frontal Cortex - "Frontal Cortex in Function, Dysfunction, & Therapies" is open! Check out the amazing lineup of speakers for this year's program, feat. keynotes by Geoff Schoenbaum & Helen Mayberg
www.grc.org/frontal-cort...

Decision-Making in the Aging Brain: An Update of the Evidence Base for the “Affect-Integration-Motivation” Framework Shaped by accumulating experience, shifting goals, and neurobiological development, decision-making changes across the adult human lifespan. The Affect-Integration-Motivation (AIM) framework has serve...

Hot off the presses! Our new chapter “Decision-Making in the Aging Brain: An Update of the Evidence Base for the “Affect-Integration-Motivation” Framework” in
"Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions"

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

📌 The 2027 Global Stress & Resilience Meeting is now confirmed!
🗓️ Feb 3–5, 2027
📍 EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland)

Calls will be launched soon for:
• Proposals for the scientific program
• The GSRNet Breakthrough Award
• The Junior Investigators Awards

Stay tuned for more details!
#GSRNet2027

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Hey, Texas! Very, very important. Please spread the word!

🧵Good news out of #NIH today.
(1) NIH is extending #ESI and #K99/R00 eligibility to accommodate researchers whose eligibility would have ended during the previous shutdown. Take a look at NOT-OD-26-020. If your ESI status would have ended in 2025, you get an automatic extension through 2026/03/31.

Plows cost money but a 50deg day is free

Experiencing the culture shock of living in a place that does absolutely nothing about snow. Haven’t seen a single plow. Roads are a continuous sheet of ice.

Nadine Gogolla also has a comprehensive map of mouse IC inputs and outputs if you haven’t checked that. Can’t remember about ACC specifically.

Structural Connectivity of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Claustrum, and the Anterior Insula of the Mouse - PubMed The claustrum is a narrow subcortical brain structure that resides between the striatum and insular cortex. The function of the claustrum is not fully described, and while our previous work supports a role for the claustrum in top-down cognitive control of action, other evidence suggests the claustr …

Some here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30534060/

As someone who is literally waiting for one button to be pressed to give me $2.1m of NSF funds six months late: I’d rather shut my lab down than have another person killed by ICE - in the street or in custody, citizen or non-citizen

As tens of thousands across America protest the violence that ICE sows with impunity, federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis today.

ICE terrorizes our cities. ICE puts us all in danger. Abolish ICE.

They shot Renee Good in the face.
They kidnapped Liam Ramos.
They just executed a man on the street.

Unmask them. Prosecute them. No more secret police.

If you are an undergrad studying science, here is a great opportunity to spend the summer at Johns Hopkins doing molecular and cellular research in neuroscience. This could be the launch of your career, so check it out.

🚨Registration for the N American stress meeting is now open!!🚨

Really excited to be part of it and host the event in the @crchum.bsky.social in Montréal this June!

www.stress2026.com/registration

Check out our Spring 2026 lineup!

Concern about animal models ?. “No change at the moment” at NIMH. FOA will now have opportunity for human or in silico. Koob clarified: no more NOFO that are exclusively animal models.

NIMH Acting Director: they hit 21% RPG success rate for FY25, NOFOs are over, grants dot gov is the only place for FOA. Name checks GWAS study for depression and emphasizes value of a diverse sample. #acnp2026

The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left “We can no longer lend our credibility to an organization that has lost its integrity,” write four scientists and administrators who recently resigned from the NIH.

Powerful piece in STAT this morning from some NIH staff members who have resigned

www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n...

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