Dr. Alexandra Rodman seeks a postdoc (Fall ’26/Spring ’27) for the Social Development & Wellbeing Lab, focused on leading independent research on adolescent social neurodevelopment with a focus on fMRI pipelines, mentorship, & dissemination! Learn more here: www.socialdevlab.com/prospective-...

🚨🚨 Job Alert! 🚨🚨 We are seeking a full-time Study Coordinator for a NIMH-funded project that aims to uncover cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying maladaptive food-choice behavior in anorexia nervosa using behavior, eye tracking, fMRI, and computational models. Pls spread the word!

I always assumed that brain function had to line up with cytoarchitectonics. It turns out I was wrong. Human cortex, especially PFC, is tiled by chains of functional patches that subdivide and interlink architectonic areas into parallel processing streams. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Annual Review with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social: “Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is.” We argue that the brain's 'planning' machinery is mostly used for learning from simulated experience, and that thinking prospectively at decision time is just one special case of this process.

As we read this about the Roberts Court let’s remember the shadow docket grievously harmed American scientific research, cancer cures, and public health over the past year. For ex, KBJ’s “Calvinball” quote was in an NIH case. More, short 🧵 1/

Excited to be at #SANS2026! Looking forward to talking about information seeking about threat and reuniting with lovely colleagues. Come say hi!

I'm thrilled to be attending #SANS2026 this week! I'll be presenting "Prospection Explains Age-Related Increases in the Use of Situation Selection for Emotion Regulation" (P1-A-f-62) on Thursday, 4/16. Catch the highlights at the 3pm spotlight or come chat at the boards from 3:30-5pm!

New preprint from my lab! We study how reinforcement learning & selective attention interact. To do so, we built a set of models describing different ways that value & reward prediction error can modulate top-down attention. We compare model outcomes to monkey data from a color value learning task

How can researchers better champion evidence-based policy? Join us on Monday in Guild Lounge for a conversation with Dean Karlan, @katieinsel.bsky.social, and @statstipton.bsky.social on engaging policymakers and advocating for research-informed policy. Register ➡️ spr.ly/63321B6xywD

This is finally out as Version of Record 🎉 Read to find out how and when humans strategically switch between approaching and avoiding uncertainty with Michael Shadlen and Daphna Shohamy elifesciences.org/articles/94231 🧵:

NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate has awarded only 16 grants since October. No big budget cuts went through. No freeze. The courts have acted to keep funds flowing at every turn. The money just isn't going out. Why...? 1/x source: grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 🟦🧠 #academicsky

Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron! Here is a download link (free for 50 days): authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH... Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social 🧵

Check out this @nature.com paper on how the brain’s functional hierarchy evolves from birth to 100. Infants' gradient architecture is anchored by sensory systems, differentiates along association and control axes during childhood/adolescence & dedifferentiates in aging www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint!🚨 How do people learn how to search the visual world? Across 3 experiments, @chrisahn.bsky.social and I show that abstract environmental statistics shape visual strategy selection, but asymmetrically. People readily lean into bottom-up salience, but only override it when they have to.

When I retired only around 25% of Full Professors in STEM were women. I was proud be one of them, and to support the success of fellow women in STEM through mentoring. This was not an organic process. It took hard work and persistence. And now The Regime is setting us back decades.

NIH is requesting comments on a new draft policy that may require human brain imaging data (and other data) from nih-funded research to only be shared via controlled access, & only with certain countries. I suggest neuroimagers read closely & submit comments by 3/18. osp.od.nih.gov/comment-form...

Longitudinal changes in T1w/T2w estimates of cortical myelin with age and pubertal timing | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

New paper out in Child Development (@srcdorg.bsky.social) with Dave Sobel (@candmlab.bsky.social)! ✨ We investigated how 5- to 7-year-old children decide to take on easy versus hard tasks while pursuing a goal. doi.org/10.1093/chid...

New paper in Nature Neuroscience! We developed personalized fMRI-based predictive models tracking ongoing spontaneous pain in chronic pain patients—trained on 6+ months of densely sampled data. A true team effort. Deeply grateful to our participants! doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02221-3

Federally funded DEI training programs and grants are disappearing. Meet seven neuroscientists who are filling the gaps. By Paige Miranda #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/dei/we-still...

BREAKING: We reached a settlement that requires the Trump administration to permanently maintain medical research that had been erased on a government website. The government doesn't get to censor science.

Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions rdcu.be/eRVUk

So proud of @meganspurney.bsky.social and team for this exciting new paper from my lab! Younger adolescents' working memory performance benefits more from reward than older teens and young adults. This occurs even though all ages report similar preferences about reward value and cognitive demand.

My review with @caterinagratton.bsky.social is (apparently) open access for those who couldn't see it before: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... We discuss individual differences in brain network organization and how to home in on and talk about commonalities in the face of such differences

The cerebellum supports high-level language?? Now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, we systematically examined language-responsive areas of the cerebellum using precision fMRI and identified a *cerebellar satellite* of the neocortical language network! authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUU83BtfH... 1/n 🧵👇

Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter. How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need? Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.

Speaking of early leadership motivations, I'm thrilled that this paper is finally out - we establish the emergence of dominance and prestige leadership motivations in adolescence, and further show nomological networks identical to young adults onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

For anyone trying to keep up with the grant termination/delay litigation against NIH, the ACLU has a good page with summaries and links. www.aclu.org/cases/apha-v...

netneurotools: a trainee-oriented approach to network neuroscience | doi.org/10.1101/2025... Our lab’s internal toolkit for accomplishing everyday tasks in brain imaging ⤵️

Very happy to share our paper on the "summer slide" in kid's cognitive test scores is out now in @pnas.org! We find a replicable dip in performance across multiple domains of cognition in >23,000 kids across 4 datasets! Check out the 🧵 from @ariellekeller.bsky.social below! 👇

The APS Advocacy Task Force is mobilizing scientists to communicate their stories, their research, and the real-world impact of their work. Learn more about APS's #WhyPsychScience video competition and submit by Jan 12! #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky www.psychologicalscience.org/2025-why-psy...

This is a fundraising post! An anonymous donor is matching contributions to Children Helping Science up to 100K through the end of the year - if it's in your giving budget, please consider supporting open science infrastructure! giving.mit.edu/search/node/... Details below...

Had a great time talking to Maggie Penman about new research on lifespan brain development led by @alexamousley.bsky.social in @duncanastle.bsky.social's group. This is a great summary of the study and a broader discussion of what brain research can teach us about important developmental phases.

I'm so excited to be a Faculty Fellow in the newly formed Institute for Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern! iamh.northwestern.edu Learn more about IAMH's mission and research: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEyy... Stay tuned for many exciting opportunities to get involved in 2026!

Our new paper, now published in @natcomms.nature.com , asks a simple question: when two tasks share a common structure, does the brain learn them more efficiently? Surprisingly, this was not the case. Thread below (1/7) rdcu.be/eSwvU

First one out in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🎉 Can’t wait to read the full @fitngin.bsky.social special issue!

2 weeks left to apply!!

My paper is out! Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets. rdcu.be/eQjLN

On the subject of data, here is from an analysis that I did when I was at NIGMS. nigms.nih.gov/loop/2011/06... This showed that there were some quite productive grants with percentile scores at or worse than the 30th percentile. 5/13

🚨 New preprint on the first infant 7T MRI project in North America! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We showcase that by leveraging 7T for infants, we can improve data quality and thereby facilitate precision functional mapping in early development.

Sign up for our final winter session of Scan Camp!! Looking for teens in the Chicagoland area! 8-10 MRI scans at Northwestern's Feinberg campus. Wear an Oura ring and answer daily surveys. Earn up to $1,360, prizes, and a 3D-print of your brain! northwestern.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Scaling back DEI isn’t just a moral setback—it’s a loss of innovation. Bhalla, Trejo & @marymunson4.bsky.social in Nature Cell Biology: limiting who can participate in science “weakens research capacity and stifles discovery.” doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠 Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...

I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com

New lab paper in DCN! 🧠 We conducted interviews with adolescents to better understand their perceptions of neuroscience research and barriers to participation, w/qualitative data that is shaping how we design lab studies & efforts to increase representation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events. Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g... 1/14

Thoughtful and well-informed op-ed from @ianlmorgan.bsky.social Definitely worth a read! www.the-scientist.com/nih-leadersh... 1/2

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Delayed thank you to @fluxsociety.bsky.social for a wonderful meeting in Dublin earlier this month! Thank you to everyone who came to my poster on reward-motivated working memory across children, adolescents, and adults

🇺🇸 These dedicated public servants risked their careers to deliver an urgent message. 🚨 While the 1st amendment grants them the right to speak on matters of public concern, their protection is not guaranteed under an administration hostile to free speech. Please take the time to listen and boost 🔥