Matt Gardner

Science Matters. 🧪🔬🚀 I am alive because of science. We all benefit from science — every day. Science is in our homes, our hospitals, our streets, our work. For 80 years, science and technology have been a north star for the United States. In 1945, Vannevar Bush’s report to the president of the United States Science, The Endless Frontier called for bold government support of scientific research to drive national security, economic growth, and innovation. This vision led to the creation of the National Science Foundation and to policies ensuring the U.S. leads in science & technology. Since then, for 80 years, the government has invested in science, fueling discoveries that transformed our health, economy, and quality of life. Science is not a zero-sum game—it creates knowledge, exponential value, innovative industry, and longer better lives. From life-saving medicine, advanced diagnostics, and disease prevention to AI-driven innovation, space and deep-sea exploration, clean energy, next-generation materials, quantum computing, and precision agriculture, science continues to shape our future. Science matters. 🔬🌍💡 #ScienceMatters #EndlessFrontier #FutureOfScience

@jasongordo626 @MacFarlaneNews The NIH budget is less than 1% of the federal budget. How is this where you make the biggest dent?! By the way, the majority of those funds go to research grants that are vetted through a highly competitive process by external scientists.

@MacFarlaneNews VA is the prime target for job cuts under Project 2025. If you want to reduce the size of the federal government, the VA and NIH is where you start. Nothing else makes a dent.

U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs confirms it has dismissed more than 1,000 employees A once unthinkable concept for an agency that operates 100+ major hospitals and many hundreds more clinics And processes veterans benefits news.va.gov/press-room/va-…

@RonKeiflin It's a fantastic experiment and paper! Necessary reading for those interested in orbitofrontal-hippocampal interactions during learning, particularly when applying an established associative structure (i.e., cog map) to a novel situation.

Now out in Current Biology. cell.com/current-biolog… Also, check out the great summary by @mphgardner cell.com/current-biolog…

AI/ML is changing biotech, but image segmentation will always depend on signal quality. Our new paper in @PNASNews presents a robust genetic strategy for brain cell counting that boosts throughput where AI/ML falls short. Check it out! 🧠🔬 pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Last Minute Announcement: Virtual Open House for our PhD program in Cognitive & Comparative Psychology, 3pm today…. More info can be found here - docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Can't wait to read this, particularly considering all the time and thought you've put into this theory. Looks like I'll be editing my UG course on neurobiology of motivated behavior next semester!

Happy to share the latest open-source tool from the @JKhokharLab by @JudeFrie: FARESHARE to perform drinking studies (volume and capacitance-based lickometry) in socially-housed rats using RFID: github.com/jfrie/FARESHARE. Get in touch if you are interested in trying it out!

Happy to announce the publication of our book on Learning processes. This is a really accessible book great for neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, clinical psychologists, etc, interested in delving more into basic psychological principles…. apa.org/pubs/books/ess…

@garrface Fantastic! A very elegant way to show the importance of DA in retrospective learning. Very nice work!

@DrJKhokhar @CSBN_Montreal @iordanova_lab @milaniuum Of course! It was literally our pleasure getting to hear about your work and meet with you. Wish it were for longer!

Had a great time visiting @CSBN_Montreal and hearing about all the awesome science! Thank you @mphgardner for the invite and for being such a wonderful host! Was great to hang out with @iordanova_lab, @milaniuum Uri Shalev, Guillem Esber and some exceptional trainees.

Join us to celebrate the life and legacy of @DrNadiaChaudhri @Concordia @FASConcordia @psyc_concordia

Happy to share our protocol on volitional social reward & choice in mice! A step-by-step guide to building or 3D printing social boxes and tips for studying operant social reward in mice!! @LeslieARamsey @FernandaH05 @samsangmi @UMMedNeuro @NatureProtocols nature.com/articles/s4159…

Folks at #cosyne2023, check out the Sharpe Lab’s first ever cosyne poster. @mtaira_723 will present at poster 2-072 tonight on dopamine release in nucleus accumbens during backward conditioning!

Special issue of the week: @PsychopharmEBPS special issue on "conditioned determinants of reward seeking: a tribute to Dr. Nadia Chaudhri." The issue includes excellent reviews & research papers of former mentors, colleagues & students of @DrNadiaChaudhri link.springer.com/journal/213/vo…

New Shea Lab pape published online today. Congratulations to @yunyao_xie and the rest of the authors cell.com/neuron/fulltex…

Fortunate that our @SfNJournals review on the protective effects of social reward on drug reward/relapse is in @MarinaP63’s last issue as EiC! Thanks Marina! Thanks @RosannaMarino19 Jonathan Chow @dan_caprioli @David_NeverDave @LeslieARamsey @yavinshaham jneurosci.org/content/42/50/…

@vectorgen Why not pitch it in terms of something akin to anti-trust law? By putting a max cap in funding for big labs, $ get distributed across a broader range of research. With static funding and inflation how do we make the burden not just fall on trainee salaries and small/mid size labs

@vectorgen Definitely. I was thinking of this more in terms of policy at the federal government level. Of course this would take years to see a positive effect. Perhaps I'm ignorant and this already exists. I know I'm certainly not the first to suggest this!