Congratulations to Dr @anniely.bsky.social who defended her dissertation today!

Some prairie dog families out this mother's day

A yearly lab tradition, the paper plate awards later today

Brain regions out in the wild

She developed a task with few or many backward or forward pairings of a cue an an aversive stimulus and examined conditioned suppression. Forward cues and few, but not many pairings of a backward cue caused conditioned suppression. Backwards but not forwards conditioned was dependent on diazepam

VGluT3 neurons are activated by consumption when sated and not fasted. Also by aversive stimuli suggesting they are activated by conditions feeding shouldnt occur. Activating them when fasted reduces consumption and has no reliable effects on anxiety-like behavior or real-time reward or aversion

They largely target arcuate and paraventricular hypothalamic nuclei, release GABA, and rarely co-release glutamate

Annie identified a unique group of BNST neurons expressing the vesicular glutamate transporter 3, one of the 3 mechanisms glutamate can be loaded into synaptic vesicles. They co-express VGaT. are localized to anteromedial BNST, and molecularly distinct from striatal VGluT3 cholinergic interneurons

Rigged up a balloon drop for the kids

Eclipse shadows