Douglas Vormstein-Schneider
@DouglasVormste1
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PhD candidate in the Golshani lab at UCLA. Studying the neural circuitry underlying cognitive flexibility. BLM. Pronouns: He/him/his
Joined June 2020
Very proud of this new preprint by Conor Dorian and @JiannisTax showing behavioral time scale plasticity is not limited to the spatial domain but can also new create new fields representing sensory stimuli, time &outcome during working memory performance.
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Excited to publish a broad set of enhancers to target interneuron types in the brain, along with a broad set of collaborators. This is part of the BI armamentarium, which together will help revolutionize the targeting and understanding of brain circuits. https://t.co/NWI7xHreB8
biorxiv.org
In recent years, we and others have identified a number of enhancers that, when incorporated into rAAV vectors, can restrict the transgene expression to particular neuronal populations. Yet, viral...
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New preprint alert! ( https://t.co/Ip9BtPmzAV) How does neural activity change when animals switch between engagement/disengagement? What may be the behavioral source of the changes? Are there any behavioral indicators of engagement other than the often-reported task performance
biorxiv.org
Existing work demonstrates that animals alternate between engaged and disengaged states during perceptual decision-making. To understand the neural signature of these states, we performed cortex-wide...
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Excited to share my PhD work in @pgolshani 's lab designing and building low-cost miniature 2P microscopes with everyone! They cost < $10k USD (even at low production runs), are fitted with 2 on-board SiPM detectors, and are completely open-source! 1/5 https://t.co/LRof7MMKf7
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Please check our newest study on @biorxivpreprint - a tour de force led by the phenomenal @Chris_M_Reid, describing the diversity of neurons in the lateral septum in terms of transcriptomics, anatomical distribution, connectivity and electrophysiology:
biorxiv.org
The lateral septum (LS) is a nucleus in the ventral forebrain that modulates complex social and affective behaviors. Several distinct neuronal types have been described in the LS; however, the full...
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Our @scholars_cell high school mentees will be published science writers this year! Stay tuned to see their articles on @KnowingNeurons đź“ť
#Outreachrecap! 🧠Knowing Neurons and @scholars_cell hosted a science writing workshop for high school students in Los Angeles this past fall. Several of these students are now creating their own articles which will be published on Knowing Neurons' website this year!
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An AAV capsid reprogrammed to bind human Transferrin Receptor mediates brain-wide gene delivery https://t.co/to2HcvHCPi
#biorxiv_neursci
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Check out this article on our outreach program @scholars_cell! Incredibly grateful to everyone who has made this idea become a reality and can’t wait to start year 2 with six amazing mentees 🤩
CELL Scholars is a new outreach program at UCLA that provides high school students from underrepresented backgrounds with scholarship-sponsored research opportunities in neuroscience labs. Read more about this fantastic program below! https://t.co/5zbTEZqWIe
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Every student I’ve talked to about this has had some kind of payment or administrative issue. My hope is that increasing awareness of this broken system can lead to systemic change and a workplace where students feel valued.
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This culture of apathy towards the support of UCLA graduate students doesn’t just impact me
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When I met with the admin responsible for the scheduled firings / not getting paid, I was told that the solution is to email them whenever I get fired in the future (I have emailed them every time already), and that “Nothing fell off, it was just a delay” in pay
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These are not just my experiences, but an accepted norm within much of UCLA administration
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However the most telling part of this whole saga is that when I told the administration that I needed to be paid to have a bed to sleep on, it was suggested that I get a loan through UCLA - because of course the answer is to dive deeper into UCLA financials
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This is particularly frustrating in the context that the university regularly underpays or fails to pay the stipends of grad students, then takes weeks to months to figure out the error and provide the originally promised funds
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This lined up with me moving apartments and having to pay security deposit on top of (LA) rent, such that I did not have the money in my account to purchase a bed
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If this is for the administrative aspects of setting up the exam, I scheduled everything, booked, and set up the room myself. Worth noting is that this occurred at the same time as one of the instances in which the university failed to pay my stipend
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Recently, I passed my thesis proposal and became a PhD candidate. Immediately after this, I was billed $90 for an advance to candidacy fee, that my peers in other programs are not charged, despite how this candidacy exam is a requirement for my degree
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It doesn’t just happen when my employment status is renewed each year, as I was once fired when my stipend was being transitioned onto a T32 training grant I was awarded. In this case, I also was underpaid for several months, financially punishing me for funding for my stipend
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This year, I sent a reminder email to the admin who oversees this to remind them about the problem. Many of us were still fired. Each time I'm fired, I lose access to the wifi and my email, and I can't sign into the computer to run my experiments
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In the past year I have been fired 4 times due to administrative error. One of these happens every year on the same day to the grad students in my department, has been happening for several years before I arrived, and has remained unchecked
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