Boston, MA – June 2025 – Bridging the gap between cutting-edge neuroscience and public understanding, Dr. Michael Halassa, a leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Tufts University, has launched a dedicated Substack newsletter and blog platform aimed at translating the complexities of brain science into accessible, insightful content for a general audience.
With a career defined by pioneering work in neural circuits, cognitive control, and computational processes, Dr. Halassa is expanding his focus beyond the lab and into public communication. His goal: to make new discoveries in mental health, cognition, and brain function more available to patients, educators, scientists, and the intellectually curious public.
“My work has always been driven by questions that have practical human consequences, how we think, how we reason, and what goes wrong in mental illness,” says Dr. Halassa. “But those insights can’t just stay in papers or conferences. They have to reach people in a way that’s useful, digestible, and intellectually honest.”
A New Platform for Public Science
The initiative includes two complementary venues:
- Substack (michaelhalassa.substack.com): A subscription-based newsletter offering regular essays on cognition, psychiatric science, and neuroscience, grounded in current research.
- Official Blogs (michaelhalassa.com/blog and michaelhalassa.net/blog): Archives of explanatory posts, reflections on research, and behind-the-scenes insight into lab methods and thinking.
Both platform types reflect Dr. Halassa’s signature approach: combining scientific rigor with conceptual clarity, drawing connections between deep biological mechanisms and their cognitive or clinical implications.
Beyond Academia: Rethinking Public Engagement
While many researchers rely on institutional platforms to showcase their work, Dr. Halassa’s direct-to-reader model embraces transparency, narrative, and intellectual reach. Rather than oversimplify or sensationalize, he aims to present core ideas honestly, in ways that foster long-term understanding.
This move is especially timely. Recent advancements in neuroscience—including those involving GABAergic signaling, mediodorsal thalamus regulation, and computational models of cognition—are increasingly relevant to ongoing conversations around AI, mental health, and personalized medicine. Yet much of this work remains difficult to access or interpret outside of scholarly publications.
“Whether I’m discussing a new algorithm for belief updating or revisiting the overlooked role of GABA in psychosis,” Halassa explains, “I want the public to be part of the conversation. These are not abstract concepts, they touch on how we understand mental illness, and how we might treat it better.”
Highlighting a Culture of Openness in Research
The blog also offers a window into the collaborative work happening inside the Halassa Lab, a multidisciplinary group of researchers working across species and systems, from tree shrews and rodents to computational frameworks and human cognition. Team members are featured across content, allowing readers to follow not just the science, but the scientists behind it.
This reflects a broader value held by Dr. Halassa: promoting lab culture as a public resource, where mentorship, transparency, and collective inquiry are as important as the experiments themselves.
About Dr. Michael Halassa
Dr. Michael Halassa is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist whose research focuses on the circuit-level and computational foundations of cognition. He is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Tufts University and a principal investigator in the NIH-funded Conte Center for the Cognitive Thalamus, a multi-university collaboration with Princeton and UC Davis. His work has been published in Nature, Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, and other top-tier journals, with support from NIH, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Visit and Subscribe
To follow Dr. Halassa’s writing and updates:
- Blog: https://michaelhalassa.com/blog/
- Blog: https://michaelhalassa.net/blog/
- Substack: https://michaelhalassa.substack.com
