Christian Cazares, Ph.D.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D.

@fleabrained.bsky.social

Neuroscientist researching neurodevelopmental conditions | Postdoc | UC San Diego: Voytek / Salk Institute: Callaway Labs | DSPAN F99/K00 | San Diego IRACDA | BWFUND PDEP | UC San Diego Chancellor's Fellow | Co-founder of Colors of the Brain 501(c)(3)

1.8K followers2.4K following689 posts

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Angeline J. Dukes, PhD
@heydrdukes.bsky.social

‼️Mentorship program APPLICATIONS OPEN‼️ Developing a Community of Neuroscientists (DCNS) •5-year mentorship program 👥 •for neuroscience grad students, postdocs & assistant profs 👩🏾‍🏫 •in-person sessions 3x/year ✈️ •professional development, mentoring, & research enhancement 🔬 •peer support network 💞

Christian Cazares, Ph.D.
@fleabrained.bsky.social

i been pretty bad at posting updates about colors of the brain since twitter died but 4 of our scholars got into ABRCMS, one with a travel award, and thanks to fundraising we will be able to send all of them with all expenses paid!

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Ron Keiflin
@ronkeiflin.bsky.social

New lab preprint! OFC—>M2 in rule selection. Project led by the amazing @margole.bsky.social

Margo Le@margole.bsky.social

New preprint! 🧠🐭🔬 Reward-predictive cues can bias action selection, but can they also influence the *rules* we use to complete a sequence of actions? sPRInT through this thread to find out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.orgReward Memories Bias Instrumental Rule Selection via the Orbitofrontal-to-Secondary Motor cortex PathwayReward-predictive cues can influence decision-making and promote the pursuit of specific outcomes. This influence is classically studied using specific Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (sPIT), in wh...

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Kenneth Amaya, PhD
@kenam15.bsky.social

Attention all central amygdala aficionados and habit learning lovers: Sharing the latest work from my time at Dartmouth where we examined CeA activity during habit formation, now out at JNeuro www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

jneurosci.orgHabit learning shapes activity dynamics in the central nucleus of the amygdalaA habit develops as a motivated behavior that is strengthened by extended experience and feedback. While the performance component of a habit is relatively well studied, being linked to action-related...

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Earl K. Miller
@earlkmiller.bsky.social

Your breathing and your brainwaves match shape, breath by breath. Cycle-by-cycle respiration waveforms are coupled with the shape of neural oscillations www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... #neuroscience

jneurosci.orgCycle-by-cycle respiration waveforms are coupled with the shape of neural oscillationsBeyond sustaining life, breathing is a vital physiological rhythm that shapes cognition, perception, emotional regulation, and mental health. Breathing has a direct effect on neuronal excitability and is coupled to neural oscillations across a variety of brain regions. Notably, both respiration and neural oscillations are asymmetric and not perfectly rhythmic: for example, every breath has a different shape and duration, and is interspersed with variable pauses. Here, we examined the coupling between breathing and the brain by quantifying the nonsinusoidal features of each breath and comparing it to the shape of each corresponding neural oscillation cycle. By leveraging invasive human brain recordings from 16 participants (8 female, 8 male), we found respiration-neural waveform coupling on a breath-by-breath, cycle-by-cycle basis across limbic and cortical forebrain regions. For decades, the dominant perspective on cognition and mental health have focused on the brain, but recent work is highlighting the importance of brain-body interactions. Our results show that the coupling between breathing and neural activity is much richer than previously appreciated, and our approach opens new avenues for studying these peripheral-to-central nervous system interactions in a more robust, temporally precise manner. Significance Statement Breathing shapes brain activity, but prior work has characterized this coupling by aggregating across many breath cycles, leaving the fine-grained shape of individual breaths unexamined. Here, we show that the precise waveform shape of each breath is coupled to the shape of corresponding neural oscillation cycles in the human forebrain, on a breath-by-breath basis. Using invasive brain recordings from 16 epilepsy patients, we demonstrate that temporal and amplitude features of individual breaths are linked to the morphology of neural oscillations in limbic and cortical regions. This cycle-by-cycle respiratory-neural coupling reveals a richer and more temporally precise relationship between breathing and brain activity than previously appreciated.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Científico Latino
@cientificolatino.com

Our Executive Director, Robert Fernandez, PhD, is moderating a workshop at Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 2026 on "Improving Pathways for Scientific Careers in and Outside Academia" on November 15, 3pm ET in Washington, D.C.⁠ ⁠ #SfN2026 #Neuroscience⁠

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Ashley Juavinett, PhD
@ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

let me phrase this differently: trainees: what papers did your advisors hand to you to read before starting your project? PIs: what papers do you share with your trainees?

Ashley Juavinett, PhD@ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

dear #neuroskyence -- as some of you know i write a column over at @thetransmitter.bsky.social called "how to teach" which breaks down ~recent but seminal neuro papers for educators and self-guided learners and i'd love your input on what papers to cover! www.thetransmitter.org/how-to-teach...

thetransmitter.orgHow to teach this paperThis column by Ashley Juavinett guides educators and self-learners through recent seminal neuroscience papers.
Christian Cazares, Ph.D.
@fleabrained.bsky.social

....

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

WELKER: Do democratic socialists belong in the Dem Party? JEFFRIES: What I can say is I do not support defunding the police, I do not support open borders, I do not support abolishing the Senate. We're focused on actually solving the problems hard-working American taxpayer want us to solve ...

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

elizabethginexi.bsky.social
@elizabethginexi.bsky.social

‼️NIH is proposing to change NIH Peer Review outcomes. Instead of impact scores they propose 3 categories: "Most competitive" "Competitive", or "Not discussed" This RFI link will accept your comments/feedback on this proposal until 10/13/26. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

grants.nih.govNOT-OD-26-088: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer ReviewNIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review NOT-OD-26-088. NIH

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

vincentholst.bsky.social
@vincentholst.bsky.social

Replying to @vincentholst.bsky.social

Due to a (then unreported) bug in the seaborn plotting software, the published histograms silently dropped the largest data points. A peak of papers with the maximum disruption score of CD = +1 was hidden from view, while these papers were kept in the analysis. 2/8

Christian Cazares, Ph.D.
@fleabrained.bsky.social

We found that this reduction was correlated with changes in reaction time during a sustained attention task, but not with changes in performance on an executive function task. This suggests aperiodic neural activity is a domain-specific biomarker of attentional aging in neurotypical populations.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D.
@fleabrained.bsky.social

We leveraged scalp EEG from over 270 adults from the Dortmund Vital Study, tested twice approximately 5 years apart, to show that aperiodic neural activity declines within individuals over this interval, independent of age at baseline.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Ruth Ann Crystal
@drruth.bsky.social

Please write your comment on proposed OMB federal funding changes. 👉We can't let science grants be decided by political appointees. 👉We can't let federal funding for Head Start for kids or Meals on Wheels for seniors be cut without being able to appeal. DEADLINE: JULY 13 🔗 ombcomment.netlify.app

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Christian Cazares, Ph.D.
@fleabrained.bsky.social

thanks to the UC Alianza MX postdoc award, I get to combine my roots in Mexico and the UC system! super grateful for another year of funds to do my research in neurosevelopmental disorders, this time with a plan for building a collaboration with researchers in Mexico!!

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Nature Human Behaviour
@nathumbehav.nature.com

Potential mechanisms and functional significance of aperiodic neural activity

dlvr.itPotential mechanisms and functional significance of aperiodic neural activityNature Human Behaviour, Published online: 22 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02503-7In this Review, Preston, Smith and Voytek examine aperiodic neural activity in the brain and how measuring aperiodic activity can shed light on brain function and disease.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Jeremy Berg
@jeremymberg.bsky.social

I heard from several sources yesterday that NIH is planning to release a Request for Information (RFI) that apparently will include this: Scores and percentiles for NIH grant applications will not be shared with applicants although they will be provided to NIH program officers and staff. 1/3

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Abraham Palmer
@abepalmer.bsky.social

A colleague received bad news from her NIH program officer today: my colleague’s grant got a great score, but NIH still can’t pay it, and my colleague will have to closer her lab. The call ended with the program officer (not my colleague) crying. Awful on so many levels.

Christian Cazares, Ph.D. reposted

Drew Schreiner
@schreinerdrew.bsky.social

Where, exactly, does learning happen in the brain? Out today in @nature.com, we identify a synaptic locus of birdsong learning and show that the circuit can be tuned to make birds learn faster - but at a cost. Read on👇 #neuroskyence 🧪 #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics Shareable link: rdcu.be/fiyrS

nature.comA synaptic locus of song learning - NatureCombining a computational framework and optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations within and downstream of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit identifies the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapse...