About 10 years ago I came across 'fractal dimensionality' as a measure of brain structure. Studying it's utility with healthy aging, clinical populations, and across species has led to 19 papers since then. The most recent paper is now online at Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ECR looking for a change in the New Year? We are recruiting a new Lecturer in Psychology at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social ! If you’d like to talk about life in the Department, please do feel free to get in touch. Deadline 8th Feb - More details below 👇 cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

A new study shows motor cortex stimulation eases chronic pain not via motor circuits, but through non-motor networks in the precentral gyrus. nTMS mapping can target these regions precisely, enabling more personalized and effective treatments for pain. (Nicolas Hubacz, M.S) #ChronicPain #TMS

I know we are all sceptical of university league tables, but this is the one that matters. @manmetuni.bsky.social is greenest university in Britain AGAIN. Come and join us, and marvel at our water-recycling and energy-efficiency systems!

This is really interesting, for UK-based people studying under-18s.

Strongly recommend following this account for highlighting absolutely mad research (I assume ironically?). This study is a peach of the genre - using a machine learning model to make a statement about human cognition, and (imho) getting the logic the wrong way round.

I'd say most researchers write some kind of code, and most of those researchers don't build in tests. If your environment allows it, look into "test-driven development" - it makes testing a key part of writing code, and will definitely save time and code-rage.

Now that's quite the reference.

RIP Paul Ekman... What an incredible contribution he made to the field - it is impossible to talk about facial activity without reference to his work. #affectscience www.paulekman.com/blog/the-pas...

This—on my former university, department, and advisor—is harrowing but required reading for all social psychologists. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I was considering going to an event, until I saw this wording 🤢 "Dress code: Smart-casual or whatever makes you feel your best [...] We cap attendance to keep the vibe friendly and focused."

I have beef with this, for the same reason I have beef with other (so called) evolutionary studies...

How sad. How close we came to never experiencing the full suite of cat poems.

Wow! 😮🤩 There's a new interactive map of Every Known Road in the Roman Empire!! 🤓 itiner-e.org We might have to have a lie-down.

Are you or do you have a PhD student who uses digital tools for monitoring any health condition OR who works in clinical psych or neuro, and who is interested in doing a research visit to Bristol? We have a small amount of funding available and I’m keen to host seis.bristol.ac.uk/~nb14397/phd...

Ooh great news for @rspbotmoor.bsky.social - one of the best wildlife reserves in the UK is getting bigger! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

Come to YSJ! A 12-month Maternity Cover role is advertised. “Candidates will primarily be required to teach Qualitative methods. It would also be an advantage if the candidate were able to teach health psychology from a qualitative perspective.” www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPF766/l...

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Apply now for #visceralmind26 #functionalneuroanatomy #summerschool! The course will run 7th-11th September 2026. Visit our website for an example timetable, more info on content, and testimonies: www.bangor.ac.uk/visceralmind. @psychbangor.bsky.social | @bangoruniversity.bsky.social

Ooh! ⚡🧠🧲

You know when retired physicists get bored and barge into fields like consciousness studies and spout a load of nonsense? Well this feels a little like that but for birds 🦤 (cc @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @alexanderlees.bsky.social)

One wonderful legal fact is that the provision effectively giving licence to agent to commit crimes abroad is... ...section 007 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/1...

I know the Green Party can promise whatever it wants because lol, but I don't think they've mentioned who's going to foot the bill for all this university education? If it's not the people who are directly benifiting, presumably it's the whole of society. That's fine, but that's tax.

Oh - this is sad. He had some really interesting ideas (and data). Saw him give a really good talk once that I still think about today.

Scientific Modeling Cheatsheet: #MATLAB vs #Python vs #Julialang Side-by-side comparison for: • Differential equations • Optimization • Automatic differentiation • Symbolic computing • More! Highlights ecosystem differences & best practices. sciml.github.io/Scientific_M...

New paper on 'A neuroecological perspective of prefrontal cortex' by Rogier Mars and Dick Passingham Click on the link below and you have free access before Dec 7th. OH THE GENEROSITY OF ELSEVIER! And they are so poor. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lyf5Y3M3l...

Solution (hopefully) to my question about downloading a subset of a data archive #neuroskyence

BIDS nerds: If I wanted to download only a portion of data from a large BIDS-format dataset, is there an easy(ish) way to do this? Specifically I want some T1 images from OpenNeuro (but not T2 etc.). If I have the json file can I set up specific downloads? #neuroskyence

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

"So this photo will be used to illustrate a story about therapy?" "Yep" "And nothing else, right?" "..."

I will never not repost this (Sound on for maximum effect)

I follow this account mainly to marvel at the sort of stuff that gets through ethics committees at other institutions.

A global expert panel – including Prof Sven Vanneste – developed RATES, a checklist for reporting transcranial electrical stimulation #tES studies (including tDCS, tACS, tRNS). Sven Vanneste Please read the full consensus in Nature Protocols: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-025-01259-0

Preprint is up for the first of my PhD studies on the menstrual cycle and its effects on cortical excitability and neuroplasticty. Feedback welcome! @paul-ansdell.bsky.social @nuneurofunc.bsky.social @elisanedelec.bsky.social @stuart-goodall.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How can we make sure that studies using transcranial electric stimulation (tDCS, tACS, etc.) are interpretable and reproducible? This new work is a consensus stement about what information is needed when reporting tES studies: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s happened again

Awful, shocking incident in Manchester today 😢

Reminder: we have a call for papers for a new virtual special issue in Cortex on Concept Knowledge. Our opening editorial, plus further information and guidance for authors can be found here: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

I have just become aware of Lovely Professional University, in Punjab, India. What a brilliant name. www.lpu.in

#TMS users, this needs your attention! EMG data are often collected in TMS experiments. BIDS can help us to annotate and share that data. Take a look!

The Biological Psychiatry family of journals is now officially on Bluesky! Follow us for the latest research in psychiatric neuroscience, cognitive neuroimaging, and global open science from our three leading journals.

I saw @behrenstimb.bsky.social talk about this work at @bacn.co.uk a couple of weeks ago, and it blew my mind. Absolutely lovely work.

Please head over to Magnetic Resonance, lots of papers of interest and this one is open for discussion: mr.copernicus.org/preprints/mr... Thanks!

Introducing FASTANS - Fast Targeted Functional Network Stimulation 🐍 Python implementation of the TANS approach (Lynch et al.). 🎯 Optimizes TMS coil placements for precise, personalized network targeting within minutes! 🚀 Code, instructions, and example data: github.com/mlueckel/FAS...

This is a very powerful effect - I have a very strong percept of a handgun next to the face on the right.

Dick has replies turned off (quite right), but I think infants are exposed to vastly more language than anyone thought (Elman gave a talk on this at Oxford in ~2005), plus a large amount of feedback from parents. The discrepancy with older nets is because the input data was tiny.

I don't usually share these things, but I actually feel we've had a pretty good year at Manchester Met. We seem to be weathering the storm in UK academia fairly well, and Psychology (my bit of the uni) is expanding student numbers and programmes. New BSc Psychology with Neuroscience in 2026!

Read narrowly, the Defence Secretary appears to be saying that the actions of Palestine Action have led to something positive (tightening security at a military base). IANAL, but that sounds a lot like expressing support for a "terrorist organisation". www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...