Natalia Favila

Have said this before in other forms, but will reiterate it here: if you're doing long-form writing of any sort, reading the words aloud into a microphone is a completely unparalleled cheat code. It's free, easy, and so effective it feels like it shouldn't be allowed. I do it in a few stages...

Task learning increases information redundancy of neural responses in macaque visual cortex How does the brain optimize sensory information for decision-making in new tasks? One hypothesis suggests that learning reduces redundancy in neural representations to improve efficiency, whereas anot...

RIP redundancy reduction?

Beautiful work by Liu & colleagues showing that neural redundancy increases with learning, as predicted by a Bayesian model:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A drawing on the cover of the journal Neuron. Each section of the fan has a drawing of a mouse. Each mouse has a slightly different pose. The tassel of the fan resembles a neuron.

My first cover of 2026
"Spontaneous behavior is a succession of self-directed tasks"
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
#sciArt #Scicom #illustration #neuroskyence

Information theoretic measures of neural and behavioural coupling predict representational drift Author summary Activity in the brain represents information about the outside world and how we interact with it. Recent evidence shows that these representations slowly change day to day, while memori...

Out now in @plos.org CB: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Neural representations of tasks change over time, even in the absence of changes in task performance. But neurons change tuning at different rates. How does a neuron's stability relate to its interactions with the population?
#compneuro #neuroskyence

Redefining the central pattern generator for vertebrate locomotion - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The neuronal circuits that comprise the spinal cord central pattern generator (CPG) orchestrate the rhythmic and coordinated motor activity that underlies locomotion. El Manira describes recent advanc...

Redefining the central pattern generator for vertebrate locomotion — a Review by Abdeljabbar El Manira

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Correa et al. show that tropicamide, an M4 muscarinic receptor antagonist, reverses catalepsy and motor impairments in a haloperidol-induced mouse model of #Parkinson’s disease. doi.org/10.4103/AGIN... #Neuroscience #Tropicamide #MuscarinicReceptors #AgingResearch #MedSky #neuroskyence

Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning - Nature Neuroscience Cue–reward learning rate scales proportionally with the time between rewards. Consequently, learning over a fixed duration is independent of the number of trials. This challenges trial-based dopamine ...

Very excited to post our paper led by @daburke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... where we uncover a simple mathematical rule underlying how brains learn that a cue predicts a reward. 1/26

Excited to share our new findings on how chronic nicotine changes dopaminergic and cholinergic neural activity!

Astrocytes enable amygdala neural representations supporting memory - Nature Astrocytes in the basolateral amygdala dynamically track fear state and support fear memory retrieval and extinction.

Congratulations to Olena, Andrew, and the rest of our incredible team! These exciting findings challenge neuron-centric models of fear - take a look!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In the first systematic, multi-node recordings of spiking activity across the human basal ganglia–thalamic circuit, @dennislondon.bsky.social explains how this pathway integrates cognitive variables with ongoing action. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

BG GRC Oath: I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

Taking the #GRCBasalGanglia Oath ✋🏼

I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

A prefrontal cortex map based on single-neuron activity - Nature Neuroscience The authors mapped spontaneous and choice activity across mouse prefrontal cortex. The activity maps aligned with intrinsic connectivity rather than anatomical subregions, suggesting that connectivity, not cytoarchitecture, organizes prefrontal function.

A study in Nature Neuroscience maps spontaneous and choice activity across mouse prefrontal cortex. The activity maps aligned with intrinsic connectivity rather than anatomical subregions, suggesting that connectivity, not cytoarchitecture, organizes prefrontal function. #Neuroskyence 🧪

𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀
More hidden markov models for cool behaviors and brain data
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

I edited a special issue of Addiction Neuroscience on dopamine circuitry & heterogeneity in addiction - now complete!🧠🧪

Check out the full issue & my editorial (all open access) here: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

To be clear, they're play-fighting and also: this video improved my day measurably and I wish I'd've watched it earlier. If you haven't, fix that now.

#neuroskyence #glia very needed single cell map of the murine female brain as a function of estrous cycle
Worth a read!

#RewardSignals #neuroskyence

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain Much effort has been spent clustering neurons into transcriptomic or functional cell types and characterizing the differences between them. Beyond sub…

"My New Year's Resolution is to find a principled way to think about all those cell types in the brain"

Why friend, you are in luck, because @rgast.bsky.social has just the perspective for you: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Dual cholinergic mechanisms for sculpting striatal dopamine in vivo Striatal dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine constitute a computationally powerful neuromodulatory dyad that orchestrates action selection, motivational vigor, and reward learning. Striatal cholinergic in...

Excited to share latest study from the lab by an amazing RA, Dylan Flink.

We solved a small (important) puzzle while in the trenches of a larger (wavy 🌊) puzzle.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵...

A study from the Baier Departement, published in Nature in February 2025, has now been selected for the Nature Highlights List 2025.
Congratulations to all the researchers involved on this well-deserved recognition!

👉 Nature Highlights 2025: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

@ishainer.bsky.social

Three panels: an Xmas tree where a christmas tree is aligned along the X axis of a graph, then a Ymas tree, the same but aligned vertically, and a Zmas tree showing the third axis in the 3-D projection. Stolen from the Internet.

Consumer PSA:
A lot of stores will advertise an Xmas tree,
but the package actually *contains* a Ymas tree.

DON'T BE FOOLED.

Excited to share my postdoc work with @yttrilab.bsky.social and @ahmarilab.bsky.social where we show that the striatal indirect pathway mediates hesitation in mice (www.nature.com/articles/s41...).

And I'm honored to have @ahmarilab.bsky.social introduce the findings with a musical abstract!

**How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited
for cognition?**
That goes to the top of the list!
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Hunger increases exploration and risk-taking behavior, allowing an animal to forage for food despite risks

Hunger-induced changes in exploration result from the modulation of dopamine signaling in the tail of the striatum via the following circuit:

1/2

www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

From brain to behaviour On this page, we highlight some of the most exciting neuroscience papers that advance our understanding of the brain, covering neurodegeneration, neurological ...

Happy to see that our recent work led by @nataliafavila.bsky.social and @jcmneuro.bsky.social on amygdala interneuron function for learning and memory was selected as an Editor’s Highlight by @natcomms.nature.com

Check our work an many other great articles out here: www.nature.com/collections/...

𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲
Oldie but goodie.
doi.org/10.1103/RevM...
#neuroskyence

Altered Dopamine Signaling in Extinction-Deficient Mice A central mechanism of exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and trauma-related disorders is fear extinction. However, the mechanisms underlying fear extinction are deficient in some...

1/2 S1 mice display impaired extinction and abnormally sustained VTA-DA activity during US omission. Surprisingly, optogenetic excitation of VTA or IL-terminals failed to rescue the deficit. www.eneuro.org/content/12/1... #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

Ventral Tegmental Area dopamine neurons regulated by Parabrachial Nucleus mediate long-term aversive memory Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) dopamine neurons are intermixed with glutamate and GABA neurons, which had been implicated in aversion. While it is unclear the neuronal circuitry involved in regulation…

How do parabrachial nucleus 🧠 neurons relay threat ⚠️ information to ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons to influence long-term aversive memory 🤔 ?

I am really proud that eLife have published this paper. It is a very nice paper, but you need to also read the reviews to understand why! 1/n

A network of basolateral amygdala projection neurons contributes to stress-induced activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis A network of basolateral amygdala neurons, but not singular projections, contributes to the neuroendocrine response to stress.

New lab paper drop, this one has been a long time coming! Driven by Rob Aukema (now a postdoc with Kerry Ressler) this paper in Science Advances answered the lingering question of what role the amygdala plays in stress-induced neuroendocrine responses.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...