Dr. Cate Peña
Neuroscientist and mom. Interested in brain development, early life stress, epigenetics, cats, mountains, donuts, and lots of coffee.
www.PenaLab.org
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaExtremely proud of Rachael @neurohoke.bsky.social and Kiara for this work. I have learned so much working with @talliezee.bsky.social and the whole team.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaNews from central Jersey: I'm running to represent New Jersey's 12th Congressional District. By entering the fray, I hope to bring ideas of repairing our frayed republic. Not only to defend it in 2026, but to build something stronger, for generations to come! samwang.substack.com/p/entering-t...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaWhy I’m running for Congress: www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaI’m thrilled to share our latest preprint from the lab, now available on BioRxiv! We investigated how early life adversity (ELA) shapes the adult brain, and the results are a stark reminder that sex isn't just a variable but leads to fundamentally different stress-induced mechanistic consequences
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaMy weekly update (Grants with Notice of Award dates up to 1/23/26) All projects 1/3
- This quantification of loss is staggering. And knowing some of the excellent people that make up these numbers… is heartbreaking www.science.org/content/arti...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaPeople outside of Minnesota, in case you are wondering how to help the current situation, this website has many current opportunities to donate and support people who need help in Minnesota. Help pay rent, get groceries, and provide other support for people in hiding. www.standwithminnesota.com
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaPssst… it’s been a few years but @stellatecomms.bsky.social will be hiring for TWO roles ✨ Looking for excellent communicators with advanced degrees. Must have a strong attention to detail, passion for science & enjoy working within a team. Agency & media experience is +++ but not required.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaWhat happens when a neuroscientist realizes trauma rewired their own brain? ❤️🩹 I’ll be sharing that very personal story - the intersection of my research, insights it's brought me & the healing journey I've embarked on - LIVE & LIVESTREAMING on 1/26! Tickets 👇 www.storycollider.org/tickets/2026...
- On Jan 26, Do Not Miss UNSPOKEN, an @storycollider.bsky.social event @caveatnyc.bsky.social! JOIN Diana Li & @paulacroxson.bsky.social when they host @denisejcai.bsky.social & 4 other story tellers for an unforgettable evening of deeply personal stories.🎟️🎟️ 👉 www.storycollider.org/tickets/2026...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaAs a someone with a 33 year NIH-funded lab whose grant is supposed to be reviewed this week, shut NIH down if that is what's needed to end ICE terrorism. Innocent lives are more important 🧪
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaWe cannot do science while our people are being shot down in the streets. We cannot fund DHS/ICE. Call your representatives.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaThey shot Renee Good in the face. They kidnapped Liam Ramos. They just executed a man on the street. Unmask them. Prosecute them. No more secret police.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaEvery child is everyone's responsibility www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña1/12 Really proud of this paper! We borrowed tools from biology to ask a simple question: does who you play with actually matter in football? (Spoiler: it does, a lot.) 🧬 🤝 ⚽ Paper here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUusArnpe...
- We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867
- We tested these 3 hypotheses using snRNA-seq in the VTA and LHb, regions for reward and aversive learning. We find the strongest evidence that resilience is an active molecular process in the VTA, and somewhat surprisingly that there were few lasting molecular adaptations in LHb after chronic stress
- Congrats to lead author Addie Minerva for this beautiful analysis and paper! Many thanks to Brenna, Rixing, and Anna who helped collect and process nearly 390,600 cells from 34 samples, and to @ilanawitten.bsky.social for insights throughout! Read it here! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
- Feeling very lucky to have @thebalelab.bsky.social in my life 🫶
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaDeadline extended to 29 Jan 2026! Nominate!!!!! One of the most prestigious mid-career recognitions in neuroscience. A great chance to spotlight outstanding mid-career researchers whose achievements shine relative to opportunity. Self-nominations welcome!
- 🧠 Deadline extended! You now have until 29 Jan to nominate remarkable mid-career researchers (can be yourself) whose neuroscience achievements shine relative to opportunity, especially those uncovering the causal mechanisms of brain diseases. 🏆 €15k prize + #FENS2026 travel support 👉🏾 loom.ly/_EvQvm4
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña✨New year, new webinars! We are kicking off a new season of the GSRNet Flagship Webinar Series. 🎙️ Elisabeth Binder (Germany) 🧠 Moderators of the Stress Response: From Molecular Discovery to Translational Impact ⏰ March 4, 3 PM CET | 9 AM EST | 7:30 PM IST Register now👉 forms.gle/XUkDRbLXmouf...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaJust spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaHappy to share the latest from our lab published @cp-cellreports.bsky.social, where we delineated the synaptic maturation trajectory for vCA1 and iCA1 projections to mPFC, and pathway-specific effects of vCA1- and iCA1-mPFC juvenile inhibition on cognitive flexibility www.cell.com/cell-reports...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaExcited to share a new preprint that examines how adversity exposure across development is associated with subcortical-cortical structure-function coupling and youth mental health! 🧠 Thread below: 🧵⬇
- Corticolimbic structure-function coupling is sensitive to childhood adversity and buffers adversity-related symptoms during development biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaEvery day, a new atrocity. This one hits close to home.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaWhat ICE can and can't do:
- So much #ACNP FOMO 😭
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaThis is stunning. Listen to this in Philadelphia. Thousands singing “Hey-Oh, we won’t be silent while our friends are gunned down.” Really listen to it.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaDelighted to share our first preprint of the year! A project that we're all really proud of in the lab led by @ossamaghenissa.bsky.social with @mathiasgua.bsky.social in which we set out to test the role of basolateral amygdala astrocytes in anxiety behaviour. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña🚨 Proposals for @sfn.org Jan 21st 🚨 I’ve only been on the programming committee led by @nictritsch.bsky.social for a short time but already impressed with the vision for 2026 & @sfn.org’s service to our 🧠 community. This is a grear year to support @sfn.org & contribute to a smashing meeting! 🧪
- Have an idea for an innovative session or event at #SfN26? The submission window for Neuroscience 2026 sessions is now open! Submit your proposal by Wednesday, January 21. 🔗 vist.ly/4htvd #neurosky #neuroskyence #academicchatter
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaThis really struck me too about this biography. Over and over in his career when people asked Crick what he did for a living he would respond: "I read and I think"
- Loved this brilliant biography of Crick by @matthewcobb.bsky.social But what struck me from the start: it's also a portrait of a lost time in science: no grant applications or teaching, big travel budgets: the job only to think, talk & get science done. Future scientific biogs will be so different.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaHow does your favorite gene respond to stress? Check out our updated “Stressome-app”! In a new @natcomms.nature.com paper we vastly extend our interactive app with loads of bulk and single-cell transcriptomics after acute and chronic stress. www.nature.com/articles/s41... I'll walk you through👇
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaExtremely excited & proud to share our new preprint - we provide for the first time a single cell map of the mouse brain across sex, the estrous cycle, and peripartum! Data are 🔥 👇 "Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaIn a recent pub, grad students Kijoon and Corinne co-led a study where we made molecular tools to manipulate transposable elements (TEs) in mouse prefrontal cortex. We saw that transcriptional escape of brain TEs uniquely impaired complex social behavior. Read it here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- I’ve never been so relieved to read typos as I am grading final papers this year
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaHuge congratulations and kudos to RA @rehg-j.bsky.social @jorge-miranda.bsky.social who led this study that is a continuation of ongoing collaboration between the Circuits group in our division with the @lieberinstitute.bsky.social Behavioral Pharmacology group led by Greg Carr! 🧠🧪
- Finally on Bluesky and I’m really excited to share this latest preprint with @jorge-miranda.bsky.social in which we functionally examined the role of a medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)- Locus Coeruleus (LC) circuit in regulating sustained attention. 1/7 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña“Basic neuroscience hasn’t produced new drugs.” 💊 Not true - zuranolone (PPD), suzetrigine (pain), gepants (migraine), and more... were born out of a long arc of studies in the lab. I wrote a Perspective on why this matters. @thetransmitter.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/drug-develop...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaNew paper alert!!...🤩 Led by @blogeman.bsky.social, we identify how cell type-specific hormonal responses in the hypothalamus tunes parenting behavior in males and females 🐭🧠🍼. Highlights in thread 👇 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaTo our colleagues at Brown, my heart is broken. I send my deepest sympathy.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña🎉DPN is now indexed in PubMed Central🎉! This expands our accessibility and helps our research reach a global audience of clinicians, researchers & scholars. We’re deeply grateful to our editors, authors, and reviewers whose work made this possible. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov?term=npp-dig...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaJustice Jackson to Solicitor General Sauer (just now, in Trump v. Slaughter arguments):
- 10/10 celebratory happy hour with 12/10 brilliant, supportive, kind, collaborative colleagues 🥂🫶 @neurrriot.bsky.social @tinakim-neuro.bsky.social @fennak.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña"I think this president thinks we have the world's largest economy ever because of real estate investors. It's not—it's because of science." Sen. Mark Kelly criticizes Trump's cuts to critical scientific research.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaContinued damage to scientific independence from political interference - NIH is now asserting the authority to terminate any grant at any time, for any reason, at the discretion of the awarding agency. (grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...).
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaBiological brains have the upper hand over AI in at least one crucial domain: flexibility. New work from the lab of @princeton.edu's @timbuschman.bsky.social finds "cognitive Legos"— reusable patterns of brain activity—support rapid, efficient learning in primates. pni.princeton.edu/news/2025/co...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaNew lab paper drop, this one has been a long time coming! Driven by Rob Aukema (now a postdoc with Kerry Ressler) this paper in Science Advances answered the lingering question of what role the amygdala plays in stress-induced neuroendocrine responses. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaCongratulations to @tinakim-neuro.bsky.social on being named one of the 2025 "Rising Stars in Neuroscience" by @thetransmitter.bsky.social! Kim was recognized for her many early career scientific contributions and dedication to mentoring and community building 🌟 📰: pni.princeton.edu/news/2025/tr...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaThoughtful piece on the importance of "DEI" in health research, published in Time Magazine. time.com/7333975/dei-... This presents the case in the context of lupus.
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaPretty special dinner @sfn.org with these glorious women last night 🤩 ❤️ How do I have a job where I travel around the world and hang out with awesome people? @moriel-z.bsky.social @denisejcai.bsky.social @ladenardo.bsky.social @neurrriot.bsky.social @bjmarlin.bsky.social @debiaselm.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaWe are grieving our friend and brilliant colleague Natalia Duque-Wilckens. A creative scientist, artist, caring mentor, and force for change. Words can’t describe the impact she had on lives at UC Davis, MSU, NC State and beyond. I feel lucky to have known her and wish her time didn’t end so soon
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaThe Cummings Lab is hiring a postdoc to work in the areas of reward and addiction! Please see the ad below:
- I missed this when it came out, but such thorough work to be proud of. Especially important to share it now
- Happy to share that the first data paper from my lab is out! We find that developmental exposure to PBDE flame retardants drives persistent and sex specific effects on mast cells in and ex vivo www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Massive lab clean yesterday ahead of safety inspections, and was just awarded with this official report: “Lab was in great condition, well organized, and clean.” Special thanks to @forrestdrogers.bsky.social for leading the effort!
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaScientific breakthroughs are rarely unique; someone else would’ve made them soon enough. But when prominent scientists cause harm, that harm isn’t inevitable; the world might simply have been better had the harm not been inflicted. liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...
- Reposted by Dr. Cate Peña
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaHow do VTA DA neurons sculpt downstream representations to reinforce actions? VERY excited about our new preprint (by Alex Pan Vazquez & @czimmerman.bsky.social )
- VTA dopamine neuron activity produces spatially organized value representations biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaOur new manuscript, led by Emily Corrigan, examines inhibitory neuron diversity across approximately 160 million years of evolutionary divergence, as part of BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) developing brain atlas package: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Happy Tuesday after the first Monday in November! For those who are eligible and haven’t yet, please exercise your right to VOTE!!!! 🇺🇸
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaEarly postnatal developmental atlas (epDevAtlas) for the mouse brain has been published. nature.com/articles/s41... High definition brain growth charts with GABAergic neurons and microglia highlight spatially distinct emergency of key cell types.
- Just increased our monthly donations to @feedingamerica.org . If you’re in a position to give, this is a great charity helping get food to families in need across the nation
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaLab’s 1st preprint! Menstruation is understudied due to societal taboos + a biological challenge: mice (a key system for research + drug discovery) don’t menstruate. @cagricevrim.bsky.social made menstruating mice + used them to discover early events in menstruation. He is on the job market!
- I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉 @karalmckinley.bsky.social We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice. We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵
- Oh hey look what arrived in the mail today @okaysteve.bsky.social!! So excited to read this
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaI am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab
- A genetically-defined population of amygdalofugal neurons promotes suckling and early postnatal growth biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- I am caught up on both paper and grant reviews and have done my 3x submission:review duty. Fully expecting karma to work in my favor now. Thank you universe for understanding
- Reposted by Dr. Cate PeñaVery proud of Dr Tracy Bale’s @thebalelab.bsky.social induction into the National Academy of Medicine yesterday evening! A brilliant impactful scientist, a champion of women, and a tireless advocate for global neuroscience at @ibroorg.bsky.social! Congratulations!
