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Spring Semester

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2025-

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2026

The Cognition and Neural Systems (CNS) Journal Club (nee' BCS Journal Club), also known as PSYCH 6271-101, meets on Tuesdays from 11:45 40 to 1:00 15 pm in 205 Uris Hall 205. (across from the elevators). 

Your hosts are David Smith and Thomas Cleland.  

Papers and notes from previous semesters can be found in the CNS (BCS) meeting archive.

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Presentations in the CNS JC are intended to "show us what you are interested in"; i.e., present work within your subfield that illustrates why it is interesting and broadly applicable.  It is less important to choose papers that you think will be close to every attendees' heart than it is to choose papers that are blisteringly important or interesting or controversial in your own subfield, and explain/share this with the group.  It's good for all of us.  The corollary is that journal club members attend regularly, and don't decide whether to attend in a given week based on what is being presented.  

Presenting your own work is always welcome, in whatever manner you like.

To add yourself to the mailing list, send a plain-text email to bcs-L-request@cornell.edu  (BCS is the historical name of the journal club) with the body of the message saying simply join. The subject line doesn't matter. Sending the message leave instead will unsubscribe you from the list. See Cornell's Lyris HowTo page for further details.journal club mailing list (BCS-L@lists.cornell.edu), or remove yourself from it, follow the instructions at https://it.cornell.edu/simplelists/manage-subscriptions.  

You can enroll in the CNS Journal Club for graduate or undergraduate credit (1 CR, S/U) as a a Topics in Biopsychology seminar: PSYCH 6271-101. The course requires that you present at least once during the semester and participate actively overall. You are welcome to attend without enrolling, of course, but we do appreciate you graduate students enrolling if you plan to attend the whole semester and to present.

Please contact Thomas Cleland or or David Smith with  with any questions.

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31 August 202120 January 2026:   Organizational Meeting

7 September 2021:  Julia Jun

• Scott GA, Liu MC, Tahir NB, Zabder NK, Song Y, Greba Q, Howland JG (2020).  Roles of the medial prefrontal cortex, mediodorsal thalamus, and their combined circuit for performance of the odor span task in rats: analysis of memory capacity and foraging behavior.  Learning & Memory 27(2):67-77.
  

14 September 2021:  Jesse Werth

• Schoonover CE, Ohashi SN, Axel R, Fink AJP (2021). Representational drift in primary olfactory cortex.  Nature 594: 541-546. 

• Followup papers of interest:
  • Raman D, O'Leary T (2021).  Optimal plasticity for memory maintenance during ongoing synaptic change.  eLife 10:e62912.  (Online only; PDF not yet available).  

21 September 2021:  Margaret Cruz

• Meinhardt J, et al. (2021).  Olfactory transmucosal SARS-CoV-2 invasion as a port of central nervous system entry in individuals with COVID-19.  Nature Neuroscience 24: 168-175.  

  • The role of brain microglia in synaptic plasticity (as well as the immune response) arose during discussion.  Here are a couple of starting-point reviews of the topic for those interested. 
    • Morris GP et al. (2013). Microglia: a new frontier for synaptic plasticity, learning and memory, and neurodegenerative disease research. 
    • Augusto-Oliveira M et al. (2021). Lifestyle-dependent microglial plasticity: training the brain guardians. 

28 September 2021:  Celia McLean

• Vahaba DM, Hecsh A, Remage-Healey L (2020).  Neuroestrogen synthesis modifies neural representations of learned song without altering vocal imitation in developing songbirds. Scientific Reports 10:3602.

5 October 2021:  Michael Mariscal

• Kato HK, Chu MW, Isaacson JS, Komiyama T (2012).  Dynamic sensory representations in the olfactory bulb:  modulation by wakefulness and experience. Neuron 76: 962-975.
  

12 October 2021:  FALL BREAK / Indigenous Peoples' Day

• No meeting
  

19 October 2021:  Lia Chen

• Cornblath EJ, Li HL, ..., Henderson MX (2021).  Computational modeling of tau pathology spread reveals patterns of regional vulnerability and the impact of a genetic risk factor.  Science Advances 7: eabg6677.

  • Followups from discussion:
    • Seminal & review papers about graph theoretic analysis of brain networks:  Bassett & Bullmore 2006, Bullmore & Sporns 2009, Bullmore & Sporns 2012, Bassett & Bullmore 2017
    • Dementia papers utilizing brain network analyses:  Rittman et al 2016, Rittman et al 2019

26 October 2021:  Wendy Yang

• Rangel MJ, Baldo MVC, Canteras NS (2018).  Influence of the anteromedial thalamus on social defeat-associated contextual fear memory.  Behavioural Brain Research 339: 269-277.
  

2 November 2021:  Nicole Pranic

• Chen J, Markowitz JE, ..., Datta SR, Stowers L (2021).  Flexible scaling and persistence of social vocal communication.  Nature 593: 108-113.

9 November 2021:  Society for Neuroscience Conference (virtual)

• No meeting
  

16 November 2021:  Santi Forero

• Gobrogge KL, Jia X, Liu Y, Wang Z (2017).  Neurochemical mediation of affiliation and aggression associated with pair-bonding.  Biological Psychiatry 81: 231-242. 
  

23 November 2021:  Nora Prior

• TBD

30 November 2021:  Kefira Wu

• TBD

7 December 2021:  Patryk Ziobro

• TBD

27 January 2026:  NO MEETING

3 February 2026:  David Smith

• M. Zipple, B. Loflin, D. Chang Kuo, E. Tan and M. Sheehan (2025). Transfer to a naturalistic setting restructures fear responses in laboratory mice. Curr Bio 35:1157-76.

10 February 2026:  NO MEETING 

•  Instead, please attend Micaela Rodriguez' "Human Bonding" lecture, 11:00 - 12:30, in G90 Uris Hall.  (Dr. Rodriguez is a candidate for a faculty position in Psychology).  

17 February 2026:   FEBRUARY BREAK - NO MEETING

24 February 2026:  Lindsay Sailer

• Nardou R, Sawyer E, et al (2023). Psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period.  Nature 618: 790–798. 
• Lindsay has generously shared her slide deck, with background info and related context.  

3 March 2026:  James Cunningham

• Asumbisa K, Peyrache A, Trenholm S (2025). Stereo olfaction underlies stable coding of head direction in blind mice.  Nature Communications 16:3545.  

10 March 2026:  Patryk Ziobro

• Original research presentation (!)

17 March 2026:  David Zheng

• Jung J, You I-J, Shin S (2025).  Thalamo-hippocampal pathway determines aggression and self-harm.  Science Advances 11: eady5540.  

24 March 2026:  Cynthia Wu

• Wolf D, Oettle L-L, Sanchez-Guardado L, Linster C, Lois C, Kelsch W (2026).  Deletion of NPAS4 in olfactory bulb principal neurons alters E/I balance and impairs decoding of chemically similar odor molecules.  Journal of Physiology 604.1: 527-547.  
• Cynthia will also show some of her own work, some of which relates to the immediate-early gene Npas4.  Some related papers:
  • A preprint presenting "X-TRAP" transgenic mice ... essentially a double FosTRAP strain using two different inducers of Fos-gated fluorophore expression.
  • The original paper introducing the Xon method, used as the second "TRAP"-like method in the "X-TRAP" paper.  

31 March 2026:   SPRING BREAK - NO MEETING

7 April 2026:  TBD

14 April 2026:  Wangchen Pei

• Perez EC, Elie JE, Soulage CO, Soula HA, Mathevon N, Vignal C (2012).  The acoustic expression of stress in a songbird: Does corticosterone drive isolation-induced modifications of zebra finch calls?  Hormones and Behavior 61: 573-581.  
• For additional background reading of potential interest, there is this review:
  • MacDougall-Shackleton SA, Spencer KA (2012).  Developmental stress and birdsong: current evidence and future directions.  Journal of Ornithology 153 (Suppl): S105-S117.  

21 April 2026:  No meeting

28 April 2026:  No meeting

5 May 2026:  Shiping Li

• J. Zhao, B. An, N. Cheng, Q. Dong, C. Wang, X. Chen (2025). Gravity-dependent choice of frame of reference in the posterior parietal cortex. Current Biology 35, 4882–4897.

See you in the fall!

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