We think of navigation in terms of location, because of the way we draw maps... there is another way!

John Lisman, a friend and scientific sparing partner, died on October 20, 2017. John proposed in 1985 that an autophosphorylating kinase could be the molecular mechanism for memory persistence. He then worked on CaMKII as a memory storage molecule.

Exciting to see the Cover image of today's issue of Neuron featuring EunHye's artwork - adaptation of a photo inspired by etak navigation of the Pacific Islanders!

EunHye's head-direction cell paper out in Neuron - Congratulations EunHye - a massive and difficult study to complete

Opinion Piece in Spectrum: How a ‘pacemaker’ for the brain could ease autism traits

Milenna's dentate paper inspired a Preview commentary in Neuron and a LeBron James piece in the Washington Post.

Nova Wonders is a show about some of the really big questions that science is tackling. It was super interesting (and really hard) to do this show! The shows are beautiful and fascinating - the co-hosts, especially Talithia and Rana are really really good - watch Wednesday evenings.

Congrats to Dr. Milenna van Dijk on successfully defending her thesis and on her Neuron paper!

The brain generates all our thoughts with the electrical activity of neurons. We imagine it should be possible to use brain electrical activity to figure out what kinds of thinking someone is doing. If we could do this, it would be useful to decide if someone is using their brain to think in a neurotypical or or a neurodiverse way, a way that is typical for the person or a way that is atypical for that individual. That type of measurement can objectively guide all sorts useful decisions. But what signals in the EEG are most informative? How can we evaluate brain signals that are often contaminated with noise? That's what Dino set out to assess. The answer is in this IEEE paper.

Our latest work with hippocampus place cells in Fmr1 knockout mice published in two papers this week.

Congratulations especially to Dino, Zoe (who's a new mom!!), and Fraser (who's a new dad!! - unrelated to Zoe). It's been a productive season!

Congratulations to the team on this meaty PLoS Biology paper. Special kudos to Dino for leading this from start to finish!

Genetic deletion of BC1 a non-protein coding RNA enhances group 1 mGluR-stimulated LTD and impairs active place avoidance learning, but the magnitude of these effects depend on the background strain of the mice. This is Ain's rotation project, when she was just trying out the lab. This was the cover story at Learning & Memory - Congratulations Ain!

Maddy's tour de force on PCP disruption of spatial cognition and place cell discharge coordination with minimal impact on place fields. Although the spatial tuning of individual cells is undisturbed, their sub-second action potential discharge correlations are discoordinated by PCP. Specifically, PCP causes the cells that did not previously discharge together, to discharge together and this seems to produce the cognitive disturbance.

Tumble has terrific podcasts for children motivated by the children's questions. It was fun and surprisingly challenging to talk about the process of discovery science and memory in a way that was comprehensible and not boring. The picture show expansion microscopic images of learning-stimulated genetically-tagged (green = ChR2.0-eYFP) dendrites of hippocampus neurons with PKMzeta (red) co-localized to a select, sparse number of spines in the lower image. This image was created by Edith during her studies of the place avoidance PKMzeta engram.

On the Fourth of July in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, you might find André Fenton dressed up as a neuron, surrounded by students pretending to be calcium ions and electrical signals. You might also find him quietly pondering the meaning of ‘reality.’