Nicole Mercer Lindsay

'A dimmer switch for reward: the vagus sets the gain' TINS 'Spotlight' by Hongyun Wang, Shuhan Liu & Ling Bai cell.com/trends/neurosc… discussing Onimus et al. 2026, Science Advances; Giuseppe Gangarossa group science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Oh, I couldn’t find @jxqjim yesterday when I posted this, but he was the first person I knew working on this project and was so persistent over the years to see it through fruition!

Here is the preprint showing the alignment from in vivo imaging to post hoc FISH: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Such an amazing technique developed by my friends @LunWangm, @Xiaochen_Sun_ , @GChattree, and others from the Schnitzer lab! I watched the struggle to optimize this over the years and am genuinely so impressed with the results.

Check our TRU-FACT videos! Now you can reliably match hundreds to thousands of neurons from in vivo to ex vivo, and perform spatial transcriptomics on the exact same cells throughout its journey! BioRxiv: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

For decades, two revolutions in neuroscience ran in parallel: - 🧠 In vivo imaging — watch neurons fire in living animals - 🧬 Spatial transcriptomics — read cell's molecular identity Meet TRU-FACT - a graph-based method that matches cells between these datasets at scale 🧵

Excited to share my co-first-authored work on registering in vivo Ca2+ imaging data to ex vivo transcriptomic and projection datasets, enabling the mapping of each cell’s functional coding to its genetic cell type: biorxiv.org/content/10.648….

@DrLu_Po @CellCellPress @hermanymv Congratulations Luca!

Excited this paper is out @CellCellPress ! 🎉 This work explores the role of MOR and SST interneurons in ketamine’s antidepressant effect and identifies synergistic approaches to develop new therapeutics. Big shoutout to @hermanymv and all the team! cell.com/cell/abstract/…

Using #Neuropixels or want to upskill? Check out our free and open Neuropixels resources including: ⚙️ Design files for our modular insertion system 🎯 Methods for MRI-guided targeting ☁️ Cloud-based spike sorting 🖥️ Open ephys GUI allenneuraldynamics.org/platforms/neur…

Online now: A cortical circuit for orchestrating oromanual food manipulation dlvr.it/TRjhh8

The first time you start a research lab, there’s no manual. So I made one. A practical toolkit for postdocs and early-career faculty launching their first lab: hiring, startup planning, collaborations, and building a sustainable research program. zenodo.org/records/188835…

The cuts aren’t random. They’re targeting on-ramps. When we zoom into 2026 funding decline by mechanism, the deepest cuts land on new ideas entering the system: ▪️Small R (R03 / R15) ↓81% ▪️R21 exploratory grants ↓73% ▪️Other high-variance mechanisms ↓70%+ If you want to stall science, this is exactly how. Meanwhile, among other news: ▪️R01s ↓47% ▪️R37 MERIT ↓40% In other words, the earliest-stage bets are being starved first. When the on-ramps close, the damage shows up later: ↓ pilot data ↓ resubmissions that mature into R01s ↓ new labs surviving their early years ↓ shared cores that support entire departments ↓ discoveries that ever reach trials So much remains unanswered. This week we’re digging deeper: -which disease areas rely most on these mechanisms -which institutions are most exposed -where the first downstream breaks appear (trials, screening, imaging, prevention, survivorship) If you run a lab, grants office, or cancer center, tell us what cut you want. Source: NIH RePORTER via @Jori_health

🔬 Cell-type-specific GCaMP6 miniscope imaging of a freely-behaving mouse brain. ~1,200 excitatory CA1 hippocampal neurons were imaged during active behavior over months. Courtesy of the Schnitzer Lab, Stanford. #MicroscopyMonday #Neuroscience #Lifescience

The new @NIH SciENcv Biosketch pissed me off so much today (lost 4 hours of my life) that I built a quick NIH Biosketch format converter. It lets you format each section while seeing both the preview and the HTML code at the same time. It restored my sanity, a little. Enjoy.

Science Unbiased discovery of neuronal architectures science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

#eNeuro: Results from Lustig, Lammers et al., using a novel Klhl14-Cre mouse line, suggest that early developmental molecular delineation of distinct CSN subpopulations can be used to specifically label them prospectively with reliability and precision. doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO…

Neuron Distinct representations of economic variables across regions and projections of the frontal cortex cell.com/neuron/fulltex…

The 38th Barrels Meeting November 13–14, 2025 (just before #SfN) UC San Diego Registrants may submit requests for short talks and poster presentations. Invited speaker list and registration link in replies ⬇️

Excited to share our new paper in @NatureMethods! Imaging the brain's fine architecture within the skull is a huge challenge. We developed a new "all-optical histology" technique to see both hard bone and soft brain tissue in situ at submicron resolution. 🧠🔬

Last night, Dr. Xiaofei Guan, was honored at the @BusinessCouncilofWestchester's 2025 Rising Stars – 40 Under 40 Gala! Congratulations to Dr. Guan and all of his co-honorees. buff.ly/NSlsIvM