I am thrilled to see my postdoctoral work finally published in @NatureNeuro ! (free access here: https://t.co/Myl2RGGaNv). We used in vivo ephys and a new behavioral paradigm to elucidate what the PFC represents when mice face danger. These are the main findings of our work: 🧵

🏆 Mario Martín-Fernández @mmf_89 (@HMar_research), recipient of the SENC–Tatiana Foundation Young Investigator Award 2025, shared an excellent Young Investigator Award Talk at #SENC2025: "Danger in the brain: From #Astrocytes to Neurons and Back Again" 🧠👏

Proud to take on this challenge: building the new @InstitutoCajal @CNC_CSIC @CINCnews into a space where neuroscience crosses boundaries and transforms how we understand the 🧠!! Honored to take the lead after @MoratallasLab and @JuanLerma1 @CSIC

📰 Mario Martín-Fernández @mmf_89 del @HMar_research, ha sido distinguido con el prestigioso SENC–Tatiana Foundation Young Investigator Award 2025, que concede la Sociedad Española de #Neurociencia #SENC con el patrocinio de la @fund_tatiana https://t.co/SKZO6x1mmH

🧠 The Executive Board of #SENC is pleased to announce that the Tatiana Foundation Young Investigator Award, promoted in collaboration with @fund_tatiana, has been granted to Mario Martín Fernández, @HMar_research, for his outstanding trajectory and contributions to neuroscience

Having fun at @CSHL with @MValero87 and @mmf_89 training Ephys to next generations! And we even got some ripples!!! 🧠 waves

🧠🇦🇹 The @CyrilHerrylab is at #FENS2024! Our latest science will be showcased 👇 We are also looking for new talented lab members : please DM or come meet us in Vienna. See you soon! @AnaPMenegolla @Cloe_Lheraux @mmf_89

Looking forward to this symposium! Come join us at FENS on the 27th of June at 9:45!

A fantastic way to close the scientific year with the 1st @HMar_research Neuroscience Christmas Meeting. Thanks to all the extraodinary speakers from our institution and all over the world. A special thanks to the co-organizer

Calentando motores para el Xmas meeting @MValero87 @SaraMederos_ @jakefwatson @mmf_89 @Chris_Lisgaras 🎄🧠

We are recruiting! If you are interested in single cell biology, neuroendocrinology and hypothalamic circuits, please consider applying. If not, please retweet :-) More information via DM or email.

The deadline for the POSTDOC POSITION available in our lab is extended until 31st December. We are looking for motivated candidates with strong interest in how brain circuits control mouse behavior. More info below🔽🔽🔽 https://t.co/QZ1R9p2oD7

Are you enjoying SfN and curious about prefrontal cortex codes? Come join us in this session this afternoon!

🔔Our new 📝 with @EnrRodSeb is out in @NatureNeuro Using topological analysis we show that ripple waveforms can be represented in a low-dimensional space, which conveys information about layer-specific synaptic inputs https://t.co/w7ItgPtqWd Follow 👉🏼🧵 to discover the Minotaur!

Also, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of collaborators (especially @AnaPMenegolla), and the trust of Cyril @CyrilHerrylab in this project! Thanks!

There is more to the article (Figure 5 and many supplementary figures), but these are the main findings. I hope you find this study interesting and do not doubt contacting me if you have any questions or comments you would like to share (mario.martin-fernandez@inserm.fr).

Consistently, when we inhibited the activity of the PFC mice kept eliciting defensive responses but failed more at selecting the correct ones. This suggests that the PFC is not necessarily for response expression, but for the selection of the most adaptive one in each situation

Interestingly, the danger representation was present in the PFC in error trials, while the threat-identity representation was not. We believe that this suggests that, during error trials, mice understand that they are in danger but fail to recognize the identity of the threat

Consistently, we observed specific dimensions where all threats had a similar projection. But, interestingly, also dimensions where each threat had a specific representation. Therefore, we found both specific and general threat representations in different dimensional spaces

But, at the level of the population we observed that the patterns of activity generalized across threats. We attribute this generalization across threats to the presence of a shared representation of danger (or the defensive state elicited once danger is recognized)

With this paradigm we could look at the neuronal activity in the PFC and see if it was specific for each threat or general across dangerous situations. At the level of the single neuron, we observed that most of the neurons were not specific or general, but something in between…