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 (6528), meets on Tuesdays from 11:40 to 1:00 15 pm (ish) in Ives Hall 107 - NOTE THE NEW ROOM!in 205 Uris Hall (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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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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23 20 January 20242026:   Organizational Meeting30

27 January 2024:   Cancelled - see you next week.

6 February 2024:  Tim DeVoogd

• J. N. Audet, M. Couture, E. D. Jarvis (2023). Songbird species that display more-complex vocal learning are better problem-solvers and have larger brains. Science 381, 1170–1175.

13 February 2024:  Lindsay Sailer

• A. Kaźmierowska, M. Kostecki, M. Szczepanik, T. Nikolaev, A. Hamed, J. Michałowski, M. Wypych, A. Marchewka, and E. Knapska. (2023). Rats respond to aversive emotional arousal of human handlers with the activation of the basolateral and central amygdala. PNAS, 120(46):1-9.

20 February 2024:  Dev Subramanian - Time Cells in the Retrosplenial Cortex

• Optional background reading: Eichenbaum, H. (2014). Time cells in the hippocampus: a new dimension for mapping memories. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience (15)732-44.

27 February 2024:  Feb Break - no meeting

5 March 2024:  David Smith

• A. LePort, A. Mattfeld, H. Dickinson-Anson, J. Fallon, C. Stark, F. Kruggel, L. Cahill, J. McGaugh (2012). Behavioral and neuroanatomical investigation of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). Neurobio. Learn. Mem. 98:78-92.
• Optional background reading (short and very interesting!): A. Luria (1968). The Mind of a Mnemonist. Ch 38. In U. Neisser, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts, 1982, W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, 382-9.

12 March 2024:  Hamid Turker

• C. Lai, S. Tanaka, T. Harris, A. Lee (2023). Volitional activation of remote place representations with a hippocampal brain–machine interface. Science 382:566-73.

19 March 2024:  Wendy Yang

26 March 2024: 

2 April 2024:  Spring Break - no meeting

9 April 2024:

16 April 2024:

23 April 2024:  Chen Yang

• Chen will present the newest developments in the Annolid software package for deep learning-based behavior analysis using instance segmentation.  There are substantial new advances to present, based on new instance segmentation models including Cutie VOS (visual object segmentation) and Meta's Segment Anything.  Come with your ideas, questions, and research needs.  
• There is no reading, but you can look at our lab's two Annolid-related posters from SFN 2024 for an introduction:  Chen Yang et al., Ray Fang et al.
• There are also several Annolid videos posted on Youtube.  

7 May 2024: 

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!Until next fall...