Kepecs Lab

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

1/ Why do late-stage cancer patients lose motivation & sink into apathy?
🔥Our new Science paper shows cancer activates a cytokine-sensing brain circuit to lower motivation.Great work by Aelita Zhu @sarahstarosta @Pignatelli_Lab @JanowitzTobias &team!🧵
🔗 https://t.co/j5yD6riRGE

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

One of the coolest electrophysiology results ever...
rapidly flickering neural representations reflecting conscious perception

Huge congrats @doristsao & @HesseJanis!

[Doris Tsao @doristsao]

1/ We discovered something totally unexpected about the neural structure of consciousness that overturns decades of thinking on its biological basis and brings us significantly closer to the recipe for generating conscious awareness.
New preprint: https://t.co/K8BwiHXvXg (led by @HesseJanis, with @FrankLanfranchi, @_conor_mcgrory, @Yuelin_Shi, and @EngelTatiana)

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@ScottRussoPhD @paulkenny @ericnestler Congrats Scott! 👏👏 Exciting!

[Michelle Monje 🟦 @michelle_monje]

💔May their memories be a blessing. May those who were injured heal completely. May light and love overcome darkness and hate. Am Yisrael Chai.

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

Huge congratulations, Karl! @KarlDeisseroth

You and your colleagues fundamentally changed how we do neuroscience and we are still unlocking the power of these techniques. Incredibly well deserved!

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

Congratulations to our first #NobelPrize laureate of 2026 🎉

Early this morning Karl Deisseroth found out he was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

He seems very happy with the news!

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

Could not agree more with brilliant insights from @doristsao
What we do has to have consequences, whether for AI or medicine

[Doris Tsao @doristsao]

If someone had simply published an academic paper on transformers, no one would have cared. The impact has come from scaling it to solve actual problems. In neuroscience we similarly tackle problems at such a small scale (describing the neural correlate of percept X or task Y) that it's hard to make people care. It's hard to even know if any proposed algorithm is right.

But I feel so inspired by what's happened in AI...if we also scale our efforts and aim for understanding the *full structure of the brain's model of world and self*, there actually is hope to solve the entire problem in our lifetime...and when we do, we will not only figure out intelligence (as LLMs have), but consciousness.

What is the brain's algorithm for tracking a persistent piece of matter? What is the brain's algorithm creating programs with variable arguments? What is the brain's data structure for representing "I"? I am dying to know.

Re the neural foundation model program: I think intelligently stitching data together across sessions and subjects is important, and foundation models are a good tool for that. But I absolutely disagree that they are an answer to understanding the brain.

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@JulioMTNeuro Pi et al 2013, directly demonstrated VIP-mediated disinhibition of pyramidal cells in vivo:
https://t.co/fOGRdyhiU0
At the same time, Leet et al 2013, @GordFishell
linked this to active sensing & VIP inhibits SST during whisking:
https://t.co/qFU84nnGVS

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@JulioMTNeuro Historically, Fuxe identified VIP in cortical neurons, not disinhibition. Freund’s group showed CR+ and VIP+ are interneuron-selective in hippocampus. In fact CR initially seemed the best marker and Josh Huang’s Cre lines enabled the field to study these neurons functionally

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@iamayybee @JulioMTNeuro Our paper, Pi et al. (2013) showed that VIP interneurons are disinhibitory & showed pyramidal control in vivo.
https://t.co/fOGRdyhQJy

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@tyrell_turing @schmidtsciences Congrats Blake, super exciting!
Great choice @schmidtciences of a true polymath

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@claudeai The fallback rate is literally 100%
not a single question answered

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@TheAnnaGat 🎯 pontosan!

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@TheAnnaGat Igen, csak kár, hogy ezt nem tudtam húsz évvel ezelőtt.😂

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

Fascinating @nature piece on cancer cachexia. Grateful to speak with Amber Dance & see our research highlighted: the brain is a key orchestrator that actively drains a patient's motivation. "It’s not that they don’t care. It is part of the disease." https://t.co/pcpenrRmHg

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

Fable is definitely living up to its name, it’s a complete myth! 🤫

Got team access and every single query I tried is getting routed to 4.8 anyway... didnt try coding but many topics

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@madras_bertha @EricJNestler @SinaiBrain @IcahnMountSinai Congratulations Eric, richly deserved, what an impact on the field!

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

American science is shrinking.

A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://t.co/tz9q9odnSC

[Miriam Merad, MD, PhD @MiriamMerad]

The proposed FY2027 budget includes a $5.8B (−12.3%) cut to the NIH. United for Medical Research calculated this could cost ~50,000 jobs and $11.6B in economic activity, with 26 states losing >$100M each. A tragedy for science, patients, and the economy. #NIH

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@silvirouskin Wow, nuts but also says you're doing something truly unique!! Worth reaching out to POs early... or apply for TR01
My closest experience: one Aim + money cut from a funded grant (3 percentile) because it didn't match institute priorities. PO said I should've checked first🤷‍♂️

[Kepecs Lab @KepecsLab]

@TheAnnaGat A fagyi visszanyal!