Sam Centanni

So excited to announce that I’ll be starting my lab as an Assistant Professor at @wakeforestmed in November! My lab will study the neuronal circuitry driving negative emotional states in stress disorders and alcohol use disorder. Can’t wait to join such a fantastic department!

Not sure who is still out there but we're proud of this work led by @lodder_bart that (1) propose a new method to turn intensity sensors into lifetime sensors and (2) applies it to GCAMP8m to make an excellent lifetime Ca sensor. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

🚨New lab paper! TL;DR we ID'd interesting connections between alcohol naïve stress-induced insula activity, and negative affect-like behavior in abstinence after chronic alcohol exposure. An AUD susceptibility marker? Congrats to 1st author Ben Williams! sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Want to combat the Thanksgiving food coma? Grab a cozy spot on the couch and read our new paper in Psychopharmacology's upcoming special issue honoring the late Dr. Klaus Miczek's seminal contributions. Congrats co-first authors Aditi Buch & @avashipman_! link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Next big lab news: we’ve received an R01 from @NIAAAnews to study the role of the insular cortex in stress and alcohol use disorder-related behavior! It’s been a longgg road to get here, but I’m incredibly excited (and grateful) to finally be able to pursue this research

All my trainees have been crushing it lately- receiving awards, submitting manuscripts and grants, giving phenomenal talks, posters, etc. Special shoutout to PhD student Aditi Buch, for receiving an F31 NRSA from @NIAAAnews! She developed an awesome project.

I’ve been quiet here for a while partly to tune out the inescapable negativity. But i'll admit I miss the good side of science social media- celebrating wins and learning about the cool science others are doing. I’ve got some exciting lab updates to share. Stay tuned!

I am not normally an alarmist, but these are not normal times. This change would cripple research infrastructure at hundreds of US institutions, and threatens to end our global superiority in scientific research. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/n…

And what did the taxpayer get? Watching flies mate led to the sterile insect technique, eradicating the screwworm fly from North America, saving the livestock industry over $20 billion and reducing beef prices by 5%.

Since we're talking about funding of absurd research by NIH and other federal agencies, the funded scientists: - watching flies fuck - giving rats massages - spending years digging into why jellyfish glow - tracking penguin poop from space - using horseshoe crab blood

Huge congrats to all the PECASE winners: whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-upda… @TheErinCalipari @xiaosigu @NeuroTejeda @lukejchang @DWWilliamsLab @lindsayschwarz @KanakaRajanPhD @kpleil1 @IjeomaOparaPHD @DrAyanaJordan and others not here! So well deserved!

@Nicktweetersen Congrats Nick!

I’m pumped to share that our new paper in Biological Psychiatry is out! We dissected a novel astrocyte-neuron interaction in the ventral periaqueductal gray (vPAG) that maintains wakefulness involving norepinephrine and dopamine neurons🧵: biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-…

I'm excited to share the lab's first pre-print on @biorxiv_neursci! We uncovered a sex-specific, insula-BNST-driven link between stress response & susceptibility to heightened alcohol abstinence-induced negative affect. Check it out: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Just Published: Sex Differences in Mouse Models of Voluntary Alcohol Drinking and Abstinence-Induced Negative Emotion @SamCentanni @mandysalazar21 sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Watching the winds shift here on X, and I think it’s time to start building my presence on Bluesky. Follow me there! @samcentanni.bsky.social

@AmeliaMDouglass @ISTAustria Congrats Amelia!

I am thrilled and grateful to share that I’ll be starting my lab at @ISTAustria in June 2025! We will study how the hypothalamus maintains homeostasis in response to challenges. Check out our website: dmhlab.org, and if interested please get in touch!

@DrJRink Haha great minds think alike? 🤷🏻‍♂️

@SamCentanni You must have channeled your musc roots because Peter Kalivas was also Mario for Halloween 🤣

Happy Halloween from the Centanni Lab!

Busy October in the Centanni Lab! Present at #sfn2024 ✅ Pumpkin Carving ✅ Lab trip to the Zoo ✅ Loving the fall festivities 🍂

26 years after Larry Swanson emphasized “the amygdala is neither a structural or functional unit” we used sn-RNAseq to answer the question: “What is the [primate] amygdala?” Check out the preprint 👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

🚨 Excited to share our latest paper in eNeuro, "A Novel Mouse Home Cage Lickometer System Reveals Sex- and Housing-Based Influences on Alcohol Drinking”! In this study, we introduce the LIQ PARTI system, an advanced tool for tracking drinking behavior in group-housed mice.