Simon Beggs
@simonbeggslab.bsky.social
UCL Neuroscientist. Otherwise dowsed in cocktails and slathered in fetid whimsy. Views unreliable.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also
mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)
mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)
November 7, 2025 at 11:43 PM
When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also
mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)
mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)
Too much admin and students not engaged? Its nothing new!
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
November 3, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Too much admin and students not engaged? Its nothing new!
Found a bar in London for game 6. It’s a Phillies bar, got to be a good omen.
October 31, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Found a bar in London for game 6. It’s a Phillies bar, got to be a good omen.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Prof Selina Wray will join us as our careers keynote, sharing her journey from a working class background and part time work through to a professorship, and Dr Carole Torsney, our research keynote, will tell us about her preclinical research on sex & gender disparities in pain.
October 12, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Prof Selina Wray will join us as our careers keynote, sharing her journey from a working class background and part time work through to a professorship, and Dr Carole Torsney, our research keynote, will tell us about her preclinical research on sex & gender disparities in pain.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Somatotopic organization of brainstem analgesic circuitry | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Somatotopic organization of brainstem analgesic circuitry
The lateral periaqueductal gray (lPAG) evokes somatotopically appropriate defensive behaviors, including an analgesia that allows the animal to escape or fight unimpeded. Whether the lPAG and its desc...
www.science.org
August 29, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Somatotopic organization of brainstem analgesic circuitry | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Once you’ve done that, there is also a link in the thread to contact the lawyers who are filing the lawsuit with your details and details of your work.
August 27, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Once you’ve done that, there is also a link in the thread to contact the lawyers who are filing the lawsuit with your details and details of your work.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
First party to prioritize getting rid of Teams and SharePoint over screwing with immigrants will coast to landslide victories in national and EU elections
For the EU, this should be a very urgent matter of national security. All EU member states should build on Denmark's wise strategy to phase out Microsoft products
August 23, 2025 at 8:25 AM
First party to prioritize getting rid of Teams and SharePoint over screwing with immigrants will coast to landslide victories in national and EU elections
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Hi all, I’m going to be writing an article that looks at when in their careers scientists feel they do their most satisfying work… I’m sure it’ll vary hugely but if you’d like to help provide a starting point please fill in this survey - and please share! survey.alchemer.com/s3/8407348/C...
Careers survey - best work
survey.alchemer.com
August 6, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Hi all, I’m going to be writing an article that looks at when in their careers scientists feel they do their most satisfying work… I’m sure it’ll vary hugely but if you’d like to help provide a starting point please fill in this survey - and please share! survey.alchemer.com/s3/8407348/C...
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Our paper showing decreased KCC2 expression in the human spinal cord in people who died with a history of neuropathic pain is now published in PAIN: journals.lww.com/pain/abstrac... Great work from @oliviadavis.bsky.social and the teams of the De Koninck and Hildebrand labs. ❤️ 🇨🇦 collabs!
Decreased KCC2 expression in the human spinal dorsal horn... : PAIN
date there is no evidence supporting or opposing this hypothesis in humans. Here, we demonstrate that KCC2 expression is decreased in superficial dorsal horn neurons of organ donors who died with a do...
journals.lww.com
July 22, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Our paper showing decreased KCC2 expression in the human spinal cord in people who died with a history of neuropathic pain is now published in PAIN: journals.lww.com/pain/abstrac... Great work from @oliviadavis.bsky.social and the teams of the De Koninck and Hildebrand labs. ❤️ 🇨🇦 collabs!
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Happy birthday Brenda Milner! 🧠🎉
Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.
Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.
My favorite account of the early history is this one:
www.jneurosci.org/content/jneu...
ALSO: AWARD BRENDA MILNER THE NOBEL PRIZE (for work with H.M. and the discovery that the hippocampus the structure that stores memories) - SHE'S 106!)
www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=25635
www.jneurosci.org/content/jneu...
ALSO: AWARD BRENDA MILNER THE NOBEL PRIZE (for work with H.M. and the discovery that the hippocampus the structure that stores memories) - SHE'S 106!)
www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=25635
July 15, 2025 at 5:42 AM
Happy birthday Brenda Milner! 🧠🎉
Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.
Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
And the office of Pain Policy and Planning was eliminated. That office has coordinated pain research across NIH for ages and played a key role in many important initiatives.
May 11, 2025 at 1:03 PM
And the office of Pain Policy and Planning was eliminated. That office has coordinated pain research across NIH for ages and played a key role in many important initiatives.
Sometimes the answer is an absinthe fountain. Saturday night at The Parlour with @skochlab.bsky.social working out what the question is.
April 27, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Sometimes the answer is an absinthe fountain. Saturday night at The Parlour with @skochlab.bsky.social working out what the question is.
Yes it’s three penguin kites on a beach in Le Touquet, what of it?
April 22, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Yes it’s three penguin kites on a beach in Le Touquet, what of it?
The world is your oyster, quite literally here in Le Touquet in Normandy. I do enjoy a challenge…
April 15, 2025 at 4:41 PM
The world is your oyster, quite literally here in Le Touquet in Normandy. I do enjoy a challenge…
A much needed escape to the bucolic Kent countryside for some vintage motorcycle racing. The roar of ancient machines and the perfume of Castrol R in the air. Delicious!
April 13, 2025 at 9:58 PM
A much needed escape to the bucolic Kent countryside for some vintage motorcycle racing. The roar of ancient machines and the perfume of Castrol R in the air. Delicious!
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Just thinking about how much time I spend applying for grants and how this dumb shit is gonna spend 20 million or something on this dumb nonsense and will publish it in cureus next to Vinay Prasads latest paper “why Arnold ventures should be allowed to buy people and execute them for sport”
RFK Jr: "By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures."
April 10, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Just thinking about how much time I spend applying for grants and how this dumb shit is gonna spend 20 million or something on this dumb nonsense and will publish it in cureus next to Vinay Prasads latest paper “why Arnold ventures should be allowed to buy people and execute them for sport”
Reposted by Simon Beggs
🧠🐭📊🔬🧬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
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Fascinating new article from the Basbaum Lab! Elora Midavaine et al. show that regulatory T cells can curb pain via endogenous opioid signaling - but only in female mice. #PainResearch #Neuroimmunology #Tregs #SexDifferences #Enkephalin www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Meningeal regulatory T cells inhibit nociception in female mice
T cells have emerged as orchestrators of pain amplification, but the mechanism by which T cells control pain processing is unresolved. We found that regulatory T cells (Treg cells) could inhibit nocic...
www.science.org
April 7, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Fascinating new article from the Basbaum Lab! Elora Midavaine et al. show that regulatory T cells can curb pain via endogenous opioid signaling - but only in female mice. #PainResearch #Neuroimmunology #Tregs #SexDifferences #Enkephalin www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Simon Beggs
I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.
April 2, 2025 at 1:09 AM
I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.
Reposted by Simon Beggs
How is the input of the different kinds of primary sensory neurons responding to heat and mechanical stimuli summarized in the spinal cord? Check out our recent study.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Neural ensembles that encode nocifensive mechanical and heat pain in mouse spinal cord - Nature Neuroscience
Zhang et al. identify unimodal neural representations in the spinal cord of cutaneous mechanical and heat stimuli gated by a shared feed-forward local inhibitory neuron type and a neural transition du...
www.nature.com
March 24, 2025 at 4:07 PM
How is the input of the different kinds of primary sensory neurons responding to heat and mechanical stimuli summarized in the spinal cord? Check out our recent study.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Simon Beggs
Michael Gold, founding president of USASP, explains why industry can’t fill the gap in funding from cuts to NIH in letter to the editor of local paper (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
March 23, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Michael Gold, founding president of USASP, explains why industry can’t fill the gap in funding from cuts to NIH in letter to the editor of local paper (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
It’s that time of the day
March 17, 2025 at 3:08 PM
It’s that time of the day
Happy St Patrick's Day! I shall be bathing in Guinness later, hopefully.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Happy St Patrick’s Day. m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCbu...
Danny Boy
YouTube video by Blakwulf
m.youtube.com
March 17, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Happy St Patrick's Day! I shall be bathing in Guinness later, hopefully.
Halle-bloody-lujah!
I am somehow for the first time ever reviewing for PNAS and their reviewer instructions include this BANGER of a line:
"The purpose of peer review is not to demonstrate proficiency in identifying flaws"
Print it in eleventy point font and hang it from the hillside. Scream it from the rooftops.
"The purpose of peer review is not to demonstrate proficiency in identifying flaws"
Print it in eleventy point font and hang it from the hillside. Scream it from the rooftops.
March 16, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Halle-bloody-lujah!