Austin A Coley, PhD

Year 1 as an Assistant Professor is officially complete! This has been a dream of mine, and I feel fortunate to have landed in such a supportive environment, surrounded by amazing senior faculty mentors and an exceptional multidisciplinary team. 🏆

@sciqst @UCLANeuroTheme @dgsomucla Great question, we showed ketamine administration reverses anhedonia in subjects exposed to chronic stress. Ketamine enhanced cortical firing in response to rewards and improved behavior. Also, we showed prefrontal activity and facial features can predict susceptibility.

Anhedonia is indeed a complex and intriguing symptom that poses both challenges and opportunities for understanding psychiatric disorders. In your research, have you found any potential interventions that could reverse or mitigate the effects of anhedonia? Understanding the neural circuits involved could be key to developing targeted treatments. For anyone interested in exploring this further, Sci-Quest (sciqst.com) is an incredible resource for generating comprehensive biomedical reviews. #Neuroscience #MentalHealth #Medicine

What happens when the brain loses its ability to experience pleasure? At @dgsomucla Austin Coley studies anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure, a debilitating symptom of depression, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric disorders. By uncovering how stress and brain circuits alter our capacity for reward, his work could help pave the way for more precise treatments for mental illness. neurobio.ucla.edu/people/austin-…

@haoli_nu Indeed. Sounds like a great place 🔬

📣📣We are recruiting 1-2 postdocs at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. We studies how neuropeptides shape circuit function and behavior, and psychiatric disease using Neuropixels, calcium imaging, and optogenetics. Pls RT! More info: haolilab.org

@DrLJBrady Big Congrats 🎉👏🏾!

My MOSAIC K99/R00 may have been terminated, but I got the McKnight 🙌🏾😩🙌🏾 mcknight.org/news-ideas/202…

Neuroscience subfields are often siloed. Embracing an integrative approach during training can help change that, @AustinAColey explains. thetransmitter.org/craft-and-care…

@FlyBottleEscape Congrats! 🎉

!!!!! TENURE !!!!!

Special lab meeting this week. A mixture of science, team building and awards. 2-Photon imaging lecture ✅: 2P calcium teaching session. Professional Development workshop ✅: get to know the team. Trophy Ceremony ✅: Team showing elite mini golf skills.

We're hiring postdocs! Come join our team.

@IshmailSaboor Congrats Ishmail 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

I’m extremely honored to be a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award!

In these difficult times (all grants frozen) it is good to recognize the good that science can do. Very proud of our new paper on open-source 2P miniscopes! They can image dendrites in cortex and dentate granule neurons through an intact CA1. nature.com/articles/s4146…

Coley Lab North and Coley Lab South unite 🤝🏾

The best part of the job is designing creating/implementing new ideas 💡 with the team during our project development and technical development meetings, as well as establishing a new culture for next generation of scientists.

Year 1 as an Assistant Professor is officially complete! This has been a dream of mine, and I feel fortunate to have landed in such a supportive environment, surrounded by amazing senior faculty mentors and an exceptional multidisciplinary team. 🏆

@IshmailSaboor No Surprise! Congratulations Ish 💪🏾

I am happy to share that I’ve been awarded tenure here at Columbia University. Alhamdulillah. I thank my wife, parents, mentors, colleagues, friends, & family. I thank my lab members, present and past, for entrusting their careers in my hands and making this a thrilling journey.

Congrats Assaf and Takaki! 🥳🥳

@FlyBottleEscape Congratulations Blake!

🧠💰K99/R00 NoA day! Huge congrats to Dr Blake Kimmey … #GameOn 🔥🍾🙌🏼 Gonna brag on this guy and say he’s on job market this year and he can bring this kinda cutting-edge placebo / pain / addiction systems-circuit neuro research to your department: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39803541/

Applications are now open for the Shenoy Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Neuroscience (SURFiN) program for the 2025–26 academic year. The SURFiN program aims to spark and sustain interest in neuroscience among undergraduate students who have not had access to research opportunities. The paid fellowships will run from Sept 2025 - May 2026. Deadline to apply: May 1. For more info: bit.ly/4l2YAlY

🔥🔥🔥

@IshmailSaboor Nicely done sir 👏🏾👏🏾

Excited to share that I’ve recently been named a Kavli-Grossman Scholar at Columbia University. This funding will support our efforts to combine peripheral somatosensory manipulations with large scale brain recordings using Neuropixels.

It has been incredibly rewarding to build the lab with my team. We got 2 new lasers installed and beaming! 😎🔦