Could the Parkinson’s drug levodopa prime the brain to respond better to intensive rehabilitation following a stroke or injury? Enter the idea: Let’s give dopamine pills after a stroke? Spoiler alert: This new large, randomized trial published in JAMA revealed no added benefit in recovery.

Honored to moderate a panel on noninvasive mapping of human brain circuits at MGB Neuroscience Day. Great insights from @anastasiayendiki.bsky.social @mghmartinos.bsky.social, @fredschaper.bsky.social @braincircuits.bsky.social, Alex Golby and Pravan Nanda @mgbneurosurgres.bsky.social.

Boom: The results of the ADAPT-PD personalized brain stimulation trial showed promise for treating Parkinson’s. First longer-term results for adaptive DBS in PD. Adaptive stimulation automatically adjusts in real time to a person’s brain signals. @parkinsondotorg.bsky.social

What is the update for skin biopsies to differentiate Parkinson's vs. MSA? Spoiler alert: under confocal microscope, skin biopsies look different in PD vs MSA. Donadio and colleagues describe in a new paper in Brain the uses of intraneural phosphorylated α-synuclein. @parkinsondotorg.bsky.social

In #DeepBrainStimulation the two major developments across the last decade have been 1. Adaptive DBS and 2. Connectomic DBS In a @natrevneurol.nature.com article with @julianneumann.bsky.social, we ask: Could the two be united into a common framework? www.nature.com/articles/s41... A 🧵

Can connectomic DBS go beyond where to stimulate to inform who and when? Great discussion @dbsthinktank.bsky.social with @rolstonjohn.bsky.social @julianneumann.bsky.social suggest yes! @braincircuits.bsky.social

🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget! House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion. To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle. YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!

A nasal spray reduced the risk of Covid infections in a double blind, placebo controlled randomized trial jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Remarkable. Uncontrollable laughing or crying can happen *without* emotion ("pseudobulbar affect"). Here's a video of one individual whose crying is triggered by real or imagined rubbing of his finger & thumb. Intense response but not sadness. /1 static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10...

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨 “Translating the Transcriptome: A Connectomics Approach for Gene-Network Mapping and Clinical Application” 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...  🧵 A short thread:

Sending off 2 of our best research assistants ‬to graduate programs that are lucky to have them. Congrats Grace and Jessy and we look forward to your ongoing success! @braincircuits.bsky.social

News from ENIGMA-Epilepsy! 🧠 Our latest study links polygenic risk for TLE-HS to cortical thinning in kids—mirroring patterns in adult patients. Early imaging-genetics insights could reveal interplay of epilepsy risk and phenotypes before symptoms emerge. Read more 👉 doi.org/10.1093/brai...

🚨 New Preprint 🚨 Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects By Cyr et al. *** Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES? A: Yes! 🧵:

Can specialized physical therapy help you to live longer with Parkinson’s? What if physical therapy did more than improve balance and reduce falls? Specialized physical therapy, like that provided through the PDNet model linked to a modest but real reduction in mortality for people w/ Parkinson’s.

Is there a brain circuit target for restoring consciousness after brain injury? New work by @rolstonjohn.bsky.social @braincircuits.bsky.social says yes!

Just dropped in @natcomms.nature.com: we show that re-engaging a thalamic–ventral tegmental circuit with deep brain stimulation can reignite consciousness in patients with severe brain injury. Work led by Aaron Warren, with @andreashorn.org @foxmdphd.bsky.social @ others! tinyurl.com/4kz8j89b

Honored to highlight our work @braincircuits.bsky.social @massgenbrigham.bsky.social Neuro Research Day. Thank you @shansiddiqi.bsky.social @fredschaper.bsky.social Sheena Baratano and Sam Snider for sharing your experience.

Can dogs really smell Parkinson’s? Spoiler alert: Yes. A new study by Rooney and colleagues in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease confirms what many people have long suspected. Dogs can be trained to detect Parkinson’s just by sniffing oily skin swabs. @parkinsondotorg.bsky.social #parkinson

Can we rewire and recover from an eating disorder? We must understand the actual underlying brain circuits. A terrific review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience urges us all to rethink eating disorders, not just as psychological struggles, but rather as disorders of brain circuitry. #bingeeating

Say cheese to detect Parkinson’s? Can AI see what doctors and healthcare providers miss? What if a simple smile could screen for Parkinson’s disease? A new study just published in NEJM AI shows that AI can potentially spot Parkinson’s simply by analyzing facial expressions. #parkinson

Alert!!!! “An Action Networks Model for Pain” We propose a new model for chronic pain — and highlight two functionally connected cortical networks that could revolutionize how we treat it. 👉 thread below 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Massive, Herculanean work by @laurenahart.bsky.social and Garance Meyer to compile and integrate findings from DBS for epilepsy (20 targets!) including meta-analytical evidence for optimal stimulation sites for the two main targets (ANT & CM). Preprint out now 👇👇

Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain | doi.org/10.1038/s415... What is the best measure of functional connectivity (FC)? led by @zhenqi.bsky.social in @natmethods.nature.com ⤵️

Thrilled our ADHD network mapping work is now out in Annals of the Child Neurology Society, and honored to be featured on the cover! 🔗 Full article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @childneurosoc.bsky.social @bostonchildrens.bsky.social @simonwarfield.bsky.social @braincircuits.bsky.social

Can a brain injury lead someone to commit a crime? Brain imaging is increasingly introduced as evidence in criminal trials but it remains unclear which structural injuries play a causal role in criminal behavior. @braincircuits.bsky.social @foxmdphd.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@foxmdphd.bsky.social's legendary anticorrelation paper has now been cited over 10.000 times and this was reason for a dedicated PNAS cake. Congratulations again, Mike, for this unbelievable pioneering effort that opened up the then novel field of resting-state fMRI! @braincircuits.bsky.social

Thank you @andreashorn.org @braincircuits.bsky.social for the wonderful celebration. Thank you to everyone who cited this paper.

MR guided focused ultrasound surgery is an effective and uprising treatment option for Essential tremor. But where is the optimal site to sonicate? Which spots to avoid due to side-effects? @science.org @braincircuits.bsky.social @netstim.org – a thread🧵! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Can brain injury cause the loss of visual imagination? We studied #aphantasia due to brain injury. Lesions were in many different regions but 100% were connected to the fusiform imagery node - a region active during visual mental imagery @braincircuits.bsky.social www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Is there a shared brain circuit target for tremor that transcends diagnosis and DBS site? New work by @lukasgoede.bsky.social @andreashorn.org @braincircuits.bsky.social says YES

This was a huge team effort - combining datasets across disorders, continents, and methods. We hope this work helps advance neuromodulation toward guided, symptom-specific treatment. Full paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tremor is a common symptom across many neurological disorders. But is there a shared tremor circuit across disorders - one that could guide treatment, regardless of diagnosis? We think: yes. Our study is out now in @natcomms.nature.com: 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 A thread.

A neuroscientific model of near-death experiences Near-death experiences are episodes of disconnected consciousness that occur when you are on the brink of death. These experiences are characterized by rich content and prototypical mystical characteristics. 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This week's genome editing triumph is a big deal. Here's why erictopol.substack.com/p/the-first-...

Early results of an Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation trial show promising improvements in speech, movement and quality of life for patients with #Parkinsons. Learn more through the eyes of patient Fabio Dywer and #TeamUHN neurologist Dr. @alfonsofasano.bsky.social Fasano: bit.ly/3F4bTCB

First post on an exciting new manuscript online today @natneuro.nature.com - in collab with @lucinauddin.bsky.social and Catie Chang. We take a fresh look at the physiological dynamics associated with the global signal 🧠 ... www.nature.com/articles/s41... Read here: rdcu.be/ek01F

Check out this new open data resource led by the amazing @juliettebrook.bsky.social and @tsalo.bsky.social with @pennlinc.bsky.social and stellar collabs. Imaging data includes multi-echo fMRI, compressed-sensing dMRI + advanced ASL-- both unprocessed + fully-processed imaging in BIDS!

Engaging article about ADHD and the risks of pathologizing the tail of a normally distributed behavior that then justifies the widespread use of methamphetamines in kids. Particularly impressed by investigators questioning decades of their own work (not easy to do). www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/m...

The scientific community needs to develop processes to support, hire and retain researchers whose work sits between traditional fields of study, writes @avramholmes.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/future-of-fm...

Very hard to say goodbye to these fantastic people. I will miss you guys! @braincircuits.bsky.social!

Probably the most insightful and most important paper on physiomarkers of subthalamic DBS in a long while. Bravo @julianneumann.bsky.social @tsbinns.com and team!! Out at @natcomms.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Using direct, intracranial brain recordings in humans, a new study in Science finds that the thalamus, a small region located deep within the brain, plays a pivotal role in conscious perception.

When we use TMS to treat depression, we think it alters neural activity in a deep brain structure known as the subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC). But this is hard to test directly, until our preprint with @coreykeller.bsky.social, @neuro-engineer.bsky.social, Nick Trapp, and Aaron Boes (UIowa) 1/

Very honoured to receive the 2025 AAN Norman Geschwind Prize for my research trying to better understand disorders and phenomena at the interfaces of Neurology and Psychiatry Very grateful to all my mentors and colleagues @sunnybrookhsc.bsky.social @uoftmedicine.bsky.social @harvardmed.bsky.social

I just watched a webinar by Conor Liston, who is testing TMS parameters using mouse optogenetics. Brain-wide survey of activated areas points to frontal-insula connections as key to anti-depressive effects. The talk is promoting Curio transcriptomics but is also scientifically very interesting.

Does conventional spinal cord stimulation improve Parkinson's in the human? Insert nail in coffin. Dis aliter visum – the gods thought otherwise. A randomized crossover double-blind study says NO. Let's pivot to other approaches as Cury and colleagues enlighten us in the journal Movement Disorders.

A major paper @nature.com this week found a significant decline in dementia after an outdated Shingles vaccine. I've reviewed the study and many other relevant ones here erictopol.substack.com/p/the-shingl...

Congratulations to *Dr.* @barbarahollunder.bsky.social for a summa cum laude in her PhD earned at Charité today! Barbara is already a rock-star with multiple awards including the @dbsthinktank.bsky.social rising star award, an @ohbmofficial.bsky.social merit award and multiple German awards. …