Sandra Poulson
@sandrapoulson.bsky.social
Postdoc at Penn Corder Lab studying neuroscience, chronic pain, cingulate circuits, in vivo imaging, cholecystokinin, serotonin. PhD University of Toronto Martin Pain Lab, social nocebo.
What's sad and mind-blowing is hearing the local businesses are really suffering this year because the universities and hospitals here in Philly aren't spending because the Trump administration put a squeeze on NIH and NSF funding. No parties that need catering, no flower orders, nothing like that.
November 12, 2025 at 1:27 PM
What's sad and mind-blowing is hearing the local businesses are really suffering this year because the universities and hospitals here in Philly aren't spending because the Trump administration put a squeeze on NIH and NSF funding. No parties that need catering, no flower orders, nothing like that.
Current obsession: Thriller www.amazon.com/Thriller/dp/...
Watch Thriller: Season One | Prime Video
Anthology series of self-contained episodes with the genres ranging from murder mystery to suspense to psychological and supernatural horror.
www.amazon.com
November 2, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Current obsession: Thriller www.amazon.com/Thriller/dp/...
Laptops should come with cat mode. Like oh, tons of keys are being pressed at once 😑 I understand what's going on, and preserve your work from being deleted. 🐈⬛😹
October 19, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Laptops should come with cat mode. Like oh, tons of keys are being pressed at once 😑 I understand what's going on, and preserve your work from being deleted. 🐈⬛😹
Just submitted a poster abstract for #CanadianPain2026 end of April @canadianpain.bsky.social, got some cool data to share. Hope to see @damboorman.bsky.social, Loren, @jeffreymogil.bsky.social and you all in Quebec City!
October 18, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Just submitted a poster abstract for #CanadianPain2026 end of April @canadianpain.bsky.social, got some cool data to share. Hope to see @damboorman.bsky.social, Loren, @jeffreymogil.bsky.social and you all in Quebec City!
You know what blew my mind the other day? A chicken fried steak is a version of a schnitzel. Jägerschnitzel. And chicken fried chicken is like Rahmschnitzel. 🤯 Makes sense with all the German immigrants that came to Texas. 🤠
October 12, 2025 at 4:46 PM
You know what blew my mind the other day? A chicken fried steak is a version of a schnitzel. Jägerschnitzel. And chicken fried chicken is like Rahmschnitzel. 🤯 Makes sense with all the German immigrants that came to Texas. 🤠
Light your candles and cross your fingers
October 6, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Light your candles and cross your fingers
Whoa SO COOL to see the Lewin lab @garyrlewin.bsky.social figure out why naked mole-rats *have* TRPM8 but couldn't sense cold after nerve injury. Turns out their TRPM8 is nonfunctional, and they sense cold in a different way. VV cool! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A specialized cold sensing system in the naked mole-rat
Avoiding cold or seeking warmth are universal animal needs. Homeothermic mammals maintain a constant body temperature despite fluctuating ambient temperatures. One exception is the naked mole-rat whic...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Whoa SO COOL to see the Lewin lab @garyrlewin.bsky.social figure out why naked mole-rats *have* TRPM8 but couldn't sense cold after nerve injury. Turns out their TRPM8 is nonfunctional, and they sense cold in a different way. VV cool! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Is it mirror neurons, or is it the perception in Perception Action Model of empathy: recognition of salient information in social partners. To me the cortical neurons in nocebo and are not bound to social interaction. How to handle it: look for the same neural patterns in contextual conditioning.
April 25, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Is it mirror neurons, or is it the perception in Perception Action Model of empathy: recognition of salient information in social partners. To me the cortical neurons in nocebo and are not bound to social interaction. How to handle it: look for the same neural patterns in contextual conditioning.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40247818/ New paper from @damboorman.bsky.social and Loren Martin woo!
Sex and Strain Differences in Analgesic and Hyperlocomotor Effects of Morphine and μ-Opioid Receptor Expression in Mice - PubMed
Sex and gender differences in the analgesic efficacy and side effects of opioids have been widely reported, but their underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. Preclinical animal...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
April 21, 2025 at 8:05 PM
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40247818/ New paper from @damboorman.bsky.social and Loren Martin woo!
Whut, I was working on a similar paradigm when I was at Stanford! Very validating to see another group publish it 😝
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I'll add that females will drag their unconscious casemate toward the cotton nest occasionally.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I'll add that females will drag their unconscious casemate toward the cotton nest occasionally.
Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents
Whereas humans exhibit emergency responses to assist unconscious individuals, how nonhuman animals react to unresponsive conspecifics is less well understood. We report that mice exhibit stereotypic b...
www.science.org
April 9, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Whut, I was working on a similar paradigm when I was at Stanford! Very validating to see another group publish it 😝
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I'll add that females will drag their unconscious casemate toward the cotton nest occasionally.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I'll add that females will drag their unconscious casemate toward the cotton nest occasionally.
Reposted by Sandra Poulson
🧠🐭📊🔬🧬BIG PREPRINT UPDATES:
Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits
We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/15
Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits
We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/15
April 5, 2025 at 3:33 PM
🧠🐭📊🔬🧬BIG PREPRINT UPDATES:
Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits
We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/15
Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits
We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with our synthetic opioid gene therapy
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/15
My arguments: 1) it was already like this for most postdocs for the last 3 decades 2) universities will always be a cheap place to train people how to think, which is what a phd is and 3) universities discover stuff in the process of training those phds journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Navigating your US bioscience career into the 2030s
The coming decade might see major cuts to US Government funding for biomedicine and the mainstreaming of pseudoscience. This Perspective highlights how your biosciences PhD gives you the problem-solvi...
journals.plos.org
April 7, 2025 at 2:25 PM
My arguments: 1) it was already like this for most postdocs for the last 3 decades 2) universities will always be a cheap place to train people how to think, which is what a phd is and 3) universities discover stuff in the process of training those phds journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Reposted by Sandra Poulson
📣 Across the U.S., cuts to federal funding for health research are projected to cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. How will YOUR area be impacted?
Excited to share SCIMaP, a website that our team has created to communicate the impact of funding cuts. #PsychSciSky #MedicalSky
scienceimpacts.org
Excited to share SCIMaP, a website that our team has created to communicate the impact of funding cuts. #PsychSciSky #MedicalSky
scienceimpacts.org
SCiMaP
scienceimpacts.org
March 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
📣 Across the U.S., cuts to federal funding for health research are projected to cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. How will YOUR area be impacted?
Excited to share SCIMaP, a website that our team has created to communicate the impact of funding cuts. #PsychSciSky #MedicalSky
scienceimpacts.org
Excited to share SCIMaP, a website that our team has created to communicate the impact of funding cuts. #PsychSciSky #MedicalSky
scienceimpacts.org
Reposted by Sandra Poulson
The United States government just disappeared a lawful US resident because it didn't like his speech. You should care about this because it shouldn't happen to anyone, but you should also care because it could happen to you. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/n...
ICE Arrests Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia
Mahmoud Khalil, who recently completed a graduate program at Columbia, has legal permanent residency, his lawyer said.
www.nytimes.com
March 9, 2025 at 11:09 PM
The United States government just disappeared a lawful US resident because it didn't like his speech. You should care about this because it shouldn't happen to anyone, but you should also care because it could happen to you. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/n...
Reposted by Sandra Poulson
Cholecystokinin input from the anterior cingulate cortex to the lateral periaqueductal gray mediates nocebo pain behavior in mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636522v1
February 7, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Cholecystokinin input from the anterior cingulate cortex to the lateral periaqueductal gray mediates nocebo pain behavior in mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636522v1
Reposted by Sandra Poulson
Cholecystokinin input from the anterior cingulate cortex to the lateral periaqueductal gray mediates nocebo pain behavior in mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636522v1
February 7, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Cholecystokinin input from the anterior cingulate cortex to the lateral periaqueductal gray mediates nocebo pain behavior in mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636522v1
If you haven't already, check out the BADASS preprint from my colleague Blake Kimmey @bakspace.bsky.social 🎉🎉🎉 We see overlapping but not the same bregma activation of the PAG in nocebo and placebo responses, SO much to explore!
1/ 🧠 Excited to share our new preprint:
Convergent state-control of endogenous opioid analgesia
We uncover how cognitive + contextual factors—like injury, fear, and placebo—modulate pain through dynamic opioid signaling in the periaqueductal gray (PAG)
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Convergent state-control of endogenous opioid analgesia
We uncover how cognitive + contextual factors—like injury, fear, and placebo—modulate pain through dynamic opioid signaling in the periaqueductal gray (PAG)
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 26, 2025 at 7:54 PM
If you haven't already, check out the BADASS preprint from my colleague Blake Kimmey @bakspace.bsky.social 🎉🎉🎉 We see overlapping but not the same bregma activation of the PAG in nocebo and placebo responses, SO much to explore!
New awesome #Neuroskyence!! 🧠
Hey everybody, I want to share a few things about my recent #preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬
www.biorxiv.org
February 26, 2025 at 7:17 PM
New awesome #Neuroskyence!! 🧠
And check out the AWESOME work of my new colleagues in the Corder lab woo!!
On behalf of my BSky-less student, Lisa Wooldridge:
🐭🧠💊⚡️
"Thrilled that my PhD work is on bioRxiv! I study how central amygdala (CeA) neurons contribute to opioid effects, but how specific CeA cell types drive this process remains unclear"
🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🐭🧠💊⚡️
"Thrilled that my PhD work is on bioRxiv! I study how central amygdala (CeA) neurons contribute to opioid effects, but how specific CeA cell types drive this process remains unclear"
🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 26, 2025 at 6:47 PM
And check out the AWESOME work of my new colleagues in the Corder lab woo!!
Hey everybody, I want to share a few things about my recent #preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬
www.biorxiv.org
February 26, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Hey everybody, I want to share a few things about my recent #preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬
Take a break ☕ for some cool #neuroscience on #nocebo, #ACC, #PAG, and #CCK in mice to take your mind off of the goings on 👩🔬