John Tuthill
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tuthill.bsky.social
John Tuthill
@tuthill.bsky.social
2.1K followers 360 following 220 posts
Neuroscientist at UW studying proprioception and motor control. Promoting the people and work in my lab (www.tuthill.casa). Also pursuing a snow fly side habit (www.snowflyproject.org).
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tuthill.bsky.social
John Tuthill @tuthill.bsky.social · 25d
How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm?

Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg.

w @bingbrunton.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
tuthill.bsky.social
a bright spot in this otherwise dismal year was the journalism and commentary provided by @thetransmitter.bsky.social. i am grateful that this publication exists and i hope @simonsfoundation.org continues to support them.
December 29, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
jeremymberg.bsky.social
More news (not good) from NIH

The renewal request from National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Director Walter Koroshetz has been denied.

I guess the NIH_leadership™ needed another position to fill with their time-tested recruitment process.
An email to NINDS staff from Walter Koroshetz announcing that his reappointment request has been denied.
December 27, 2025 at 4:17 PM
tuthill.bsky.social
0.00003 foot tall xmas tree from a Drosophila flight steering muscle 🎄

image by @anne-sustar.bsky.social
December 24, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
thetransmitter.bsky.social
Adam Kampff prioritized spreading knowledge over publishing flashy papers in prestigious journals, but colleagues say his mark on neuroscience was undeniable. The researcher and educator passed away on 9 December.

By Lauren Schneider

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
Remembering Adam Kampff, neuroscience educator and researcher
Kampff’s do-it-yourself approach inspired a generation of neuroscientists.
www.thetransmitter.org
December 24, 2025 at 3:15 PM
tuthill.bsky.social
no epstein files today but as consolation it seems that they have finally chosen to declassify the infamous "MODIFICATIONS OF THE FLY FOOT FOR HUMAN NEEDS" technical report from the US Army Tank Automotive Command and it's even more salacious than anticipated

apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/...
December 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
samlewis.bsky.social
⚡️Mitochondria make ATP, the energy that powers life. But in neurons, with axons up to a meter long, how do these tiny power plants stay functional in the right places? We went looking. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Self-renewal of neuronal mitochondria through asymmetric division
Mitochondrial ATP production is essential for life. Mitochondrial function depends on the spatio-temporal coordination of nuclear and mitochondrial genome expression, yet how this coordination occurs ...
www.biorxiv.org
December 18, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
jan-ache.bsky.social
How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...
Landing and takeoff sensorimotor pathways illustrated alongside fly drawings showing behavioral responses.
December 19, 2025 at 7:02 AM
tuthill.bsky.social
Grateful to @pewtrusts.org for funding our snow fly work, in collaboration with Sebastian Brauchi at Universidad Austral de Chile.

We are now looking for post-docs to work on the biophysical mechanisms that allow snow fly neurons and muscles to function below zero.

newsroom.uw.edu/news-release...
Most insects slow down in bitter cold. Not snow flies. - UW Medicine | Newsroom
newsroom.uw.edu
December 18, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
rochellemeah.bsky.social
Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)
December 17, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
kristenseveri.bsky.social
A Go Fund Me link has been shared to support Adam Kampff's educational organization @noblackboxes.bsky.social - for those who wish to support you can find a link here gofund.me/245cb96ff
Donate to In Memory of Adam: His Legacy of Education for Everyone, organized by Elena Dreosti
Adam’s greatest loves were his ideas, his work, and our two chil… Elena Dreosti needs your support for In Memory of Adam: His Legacy of Education for Everyone
gofund.me
December 15, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
yvetteefisher.bsky.social
*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️
Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.
December 15, 2025 at 6:26 PM
tuthill.bsky.social
the legend Jim Truman; "my heart is that of an accountant in the body of a scientist"
December 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
tuthill.bsky.social
Video abstract for our preprint, “Connectome simulations identify a central pattern generator circuit for fly walking”, bit.ly/4pubCuN

Animated by T Sloan @quorumetrix.bsky.social, narrated by @sarahpugly.bsky.social, music by J McNamara, collab w @bingbrunton.bsky.social.

youtu.be/twAZlL6olS4
Connectome simulations identify a central pattern generator circuit for fly walking
YouTube video by Bing Wen Brunton
youtu.be
December 9, 2025 at 5:50 PM
tuthill.bsky.social
How do neural circuits generate the walking rhythm?

Using connectome simulations, @sarahpugly.bsky.social found a minimal central pattern generator (CPG) that produces oscillations in leg motor neurons. Same circuit motif for each 🪰 leg.

w @bingbrunton.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
December 9, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
ruimcosta.bsky.social
Last night Adam Kampff, the glue, the light, the catalyst, the builder, the smile, left us. He and his work transformed the lives of many labs, scientists, students. He inspired and was generous to his last transformation, working tirelessly to set up a foundation to continue the work.Thank you!
December 9, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
csdashm.com
I had heard this was coming, but it’s still an amazing indication of how far we’ve come in the last decade or so!
natmethods.nature.com Nature Methods @natmethods.nature.com · 26d
Our Method of the Year 2025 is...drumroll please...EM-based connectomics!!

Our Editorial introduces our choice and highlights six Comments and other related content in this special issue. Please join us in celebrating EM-based connectomics! 🎉🧠🔬

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Method of the Year 2025: electron microscopy-based connectomics - Nature Methods
A large network of interconnected neurons serves as the basis of brain function and of behavior. Methodological advances have enabled the reconstruction of large-scale and even whole-brain connectomes...
www.nature.com
December 8, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
andrewstraw.bsky.social
Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/9
December 6, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
murray.senate.gov
After slow-walking critical funding for lifesaving research, the Trump administration has sabotaged the NIH grantmaking process so that researchers get LESS money on average and LESS time to use it.
 
No one is asking to fund less cancer research, but that's what's happening.
The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine
A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.
www.nytimes.com
December 2, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
adrianawanner.bsky.social
Happy to share the first paper from my journey at @psich.bsky.social towards X-ray connectomics, now out in @natmethods.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 27, 2025 at 10:21 AM
Reposted by John Tuthill
kuanawanda.bsky.social
Our new paper showcasing molecular connectomics with pan-expansion microscopy is out in @natbiotech.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This wonderful collaboration with @bewersdorflab.bsky.social was led by Ons M'Saad (now founder/CEO of Panluminate) and @allisonphysics.bsky.social. (1/5)
November 27, 2025 at 4:40 AM
Reposted by John Tuthill
senguptalab.bsky.social
Check out the newest Editors' (that would be me and Eunjoon Kim) Choice issue in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Superbly guest edited by Stephen Liberles and @zknight.bsky.social

>20 review articles on Interoception

www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...
Current Opinion in Neurobiology | Interoception 2025 | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
Read the latest articles of Current Opinion in Neurobiology at ScienceDirect.com, Elsevier’s leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature
www.sciencedirect.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
ardemp.bskyverified.social
Great story by @carlzimmer.com in @nytimes.com that nicely conveys the excitement for the emerging field of interoception. @dulaclab.bsky.social and others are featured, including my tattoo 😳!

Gift article link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/s...
November 25, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
dsitaraman.bsky.social
I will be co-teaching a summer course at Allen Institute on connectomics education please apply. Travel support, new connectomics data sets and learning directly from the scientists who built these datasets. Details here: alleninstitute.org/events/incor...
Incorporating open connectomics data into teaching neuroscience
Learn to analyze open neuroscience data and introduce dry lab modules into your existing classes at the Incorporating Open Connectomics data into...
alleninstitute.org
November 24, 2025 at 1:53 AM
Reposted by John Tuthill
maxkozlov.bsky.social
About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in.

Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A glorious selfie with the official MAHA lanyard seconds after I made it past Secret Service screening.
November 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by John Tuthill
micarodriguezc.bsky.social
SO HAPPY to share our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Using volumetric EM, we found daily shifts in synapses, vesicles, and mitochondria that accompany neuronal remodeling, linking structural plasticity to changes in how s-LNv neurons influence their targets
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Daily ultrastructural remodeling of clock neurons
A cluster of Drosophila clock neurons remodel their axonal arbors daily. Using volumetric electron microscopy at different times of day, Ispizua, Rodriguez-Caron, and colleagues reveal ultrastructural...
www.cell.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM