Introduction
I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, where I attended Ashbury College for school. I studied for an undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Ottawa, and became fascinated by neuroscience after a formative experience in an electric fish lab. After a brief stint at the Massachussets Institute of Technology in Boston, where I obtained an M.Sc. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, I returned to the University of Ottawa and obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2023. I started as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford in 2024 working under Dr. Armin Lak, and in 2026 became a Wellcome Early-Career Fellow in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics.
Research
I am broadly interested in the physiology and computational principles of the mammalian serotonin system. As one of the phylogenetically oldest neuromodulators, serotonin expansively innervates many cortical and subcortical regions, yet a precise understanding of its role in normal brain functioning and disease states remains elusive. As a Junior Research Fellow at Queen’s, my research programme is focused on understanding the physiology of serotonin release in frontal cortex during economic decisions. A secondary aim is to determine how serotonin release reconfigures neuronal population codes to shape behaviour. To achieve these aims, I combine cutting-edge optical recording techniques with controlled rodent visual decision-making tasks and computational modeling.
Publications
- Lynn M.B., Maler, L. & Béïque, J.-C. Multiplexing of functionally distinct inputs by intrinsic modulation of spike timing in a monoaminergic nucleus. Cell Reports 45, 117746 (2026).
- Lynn, M.B., Geddes, S.D., Chahrour, M. et al. Nonlinear recurrent inhibition through facilitating serotonin release in the raphe. Nat Neurosci 28, 1024–1037 (2025).
- Lynn M.B., Lee, K., Soares, C. et al. A synthetic likelihood solution to the silent synapse estimation problem. Cell Reports, 32, 107916 (2020).
An up-to-date list of my publications can be found here.