It is summer, appropriations season in Congress. The House committee sent an HHS budget to the floor which is a modest increase in funding for NIH. In the Senate, Democrats are blocking committee action as Mitch McConnell is absent. 1/

The academic hiring system is simply not designed for candidates like me. It privileges a kind of performative intellectualism—the ability to stand at a whiteboard and extemporize about science as if you were some kind of 19th-century naturalist 😂 😂 😂 open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...

🚨PREPRINT ALERT!🚨 I’m delighted to share new work from Yau Lab @bcmneurosci.bsky.social addressing thermotactile interactions. What happens when your hands get cold? A common experience is for your sense of touch to be impaired by coldness. 1/n

I spent 10 years at UCSF, and Howard Fields was there the entire time. He counseled me many times, and I truly appreciate that nearly every time we spoke, although he was 20+ years my senior and 20+ times my h-index, he spoke to me as a peer, and with the best of intentions. I will miss him.

Michael Silver from UC Berkeley on science of psychedelics. Hopefully he makes a ton of progress. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnq0...

Update on NIH funding including multi-year funding. Here is the overall progress in terms of the number of projects (as opposed to the fraction of appropriated funds). The fiscal year 2026 curve lies below those for earlier fiscal years. 1/4

happy 2 see Dr Okihide Hikosaka elected to NAS Okihide has done an amazing amount of true discovery Think big contributions to understanding of mechanisms of saccadic control, chunking and skill formation, reinforcement learning, and more! Also a great mentor and friend.

Preprint alert! We've done the first ever wireless brain recordings from the high-level visual & motor regions (IT/PMv/PFC) in monkeys engaged in natural behaviors as well as during controlled screen-based tasks. Read below for a lay summary and the link for details! 1/8

For those who don't want to dig through a lot... When started EARLY in probable AD, very modest cognitive, clinical, and daily activities benefits relative to placebo are observed up to 18 months. Evidence after 24 months is not as positive. ARIA adverse effects are much stronger.

Anti-amyloid drugs, in a meta analysis, do not meet the risk:benefit tradeoffs necessary to recommend to patients, at least according to this Cochrane review. www.cochrane.org/about-us/new...

This conference is going to be so cool! Good science good people good location. Register ASAP! #neuroskyence www.fens.org/news-activit...

Article on the ReVision Implant brain implant originating from China (WeChat): WeChat eu.36kr.com/en/p/3729110... #BCI #NeuroTech #blindness

Please circulate widely! Open positions at the Vision Lab, Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) sites.google.com/site/visionl... How to Apply: forms.gle/vWa1PwUrcpWf... Deadline : March 31 2026

Or the rule in my lab: Never mix Excel and your data.

Today I received a note from a grad student who lives in Tehran. Her note gives you firsthand experience of what it’s like to live in a city that is being bombed, and what it’s like to be young and feel despair about your future. rezashadmehr.blogspot.com/2026/03/hope...

Neuracle Medical Technology (Chinese BCI company) has gotten market approval in China after 36 trial procedures. They make an epidural implant (looks like eCoG basis) for tetraplegia treatment. I will explain the significance. 1/ www.scmp.com/business/ban...

“Trans children are perfect.”

I thought that I was a good programmer (in Matlab 😳) and then I started reading "Better Code, Better Science" by @russpoldrack.org ... Let's say that there is room for improvement in my coding practices 😜 bettercodebetterscience.github.io/book/

My quote of the day Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality. Linus Pauling

The BCI market in China is ahead of the market in the US, and is accelerating away. The brain computer interfaces that ultimately improve the lives of people in the US will be developed and made in China, and the intellectual property profits will also go to China. techcrunch.com/2026/02/22/c...

If you calculate how many trials AI takes to learn an association and compare to a human, the AI takes orders of magnitude more to learn. LeCun has written extensively on this. If AI could learn like humans, it would be a huge advance. Until then, AI will use all the energy and water we have.

The Rev Jesse Jackson. Oct 8 1941 - Feb 17 2026 May he rest in peace knowing the world is a better place from his actions. My favorite bit from him is comedy, something his children encouraged him to do. youtu.be/A1mqg4C0awA?...

open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi... A closer look at the FDA's recent kill shot against an mRNA influenza vaccine.

I perform these calculations regularly as part of work. If you want to apply stimulation with a platinum iridium electrode that applies 100 microamps for 100 microseconds per phase... The Shannon limit for surface area will result in an upper limit on impedance, of 20 kOhms. 1/

Are you interested in Educational Measurement? We are looking for two postdoctoral fellows. Join our Centre of Excellence at the University of Oslo! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

I think that any senior author that publishes in a journal should review for that journal AT LEAST six times in the next year. I have a similar view on NIH grant recipients and study section review. If you abstain from review, your proposals should be canned.

I tend to frame AI's utility in my experience using it in coding, and in driving my car which uses OpenPilot. 1/

Former colleagues helped with a study that used brain fitness in older subjects, and tracked conversion to AD later. The risk reduction for one fitness game was 25% with 23 hours logged playing. #brainhq www.nbcnews.com/health/aging...

RFK Jr cannot possibly do more damage with his MAHA agenda that that which he has already done…. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/u...

@jeremymberg.bsky.social @standupforscience.bsky.social @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social @drugmonkey.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

There is an OHSU board meeting on the 9th at which this will be discussed.

House passed the budget bill. NIH will re-open tomorrow with a budget until 9/30.

Copy and paste this link to see ad: "https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/312675"

NIH is in a shutdown. The Senate passed a bill that is reasonably good for NIH funding (except that multiyear funding is limited to FY25 levels rather than FY24), but the Senate bound a new 2 week CR for DHS to the funding bill. That forces the House top pass it or start over. 1/

Saying the quiet part out loud. Grad students are striking, or about to, in multiple universities. They mostly want more money and less time required working. But they are creating a very poor economic disincentive. 1/

Choosing to train with someone like Seth would be a VERY good career move.

It is reported that Democrats and Republicans struck a deal. Budget for everything except DHS passes as in the House. DHS gets a short CR once the House returns to pass it.

In the Senate, 7 Republicans voted against cloture on the budget bill. Cloture failed 45-55. Talks are underway to split the bill - DHS and everything else. Pass everything else. Pass a continuing resolution on DHS (which includes ICE) to keep it open. Full year DHS bill would be later.

Translational neuromodulation panels at Winter Brain were great fun. Ferrera did not join for dinner, but the other 7 speakers did. And a few other good people.

Aging macaques bridge the translational gap in perivascular space biology https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.14.699534v1

Vervet monkeys loose in St Louis. Their owners/origin are unknown currently. www.cbsnews.com/news/monkeys...

A new paper on aged macaques came out, some notes. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 1/

He is without a doubt on the list of my top five favorite scientists in Canada.

The Senate put forth a minibus appropriations bill yesterday, but it did not include Labor/HHS which means the NIH budget is still not lined up for a vote. And HHS figures to be problematic with ACA subsidies under debate.

We are leading two panels/symposia on Jan 27th at Winter Brain with a focus on translational neuromodulation that impacts the brain, with most of the work in NHP models. We would love to see you there and expand the scope of our conference panels on this topic in the future.

Portrait: David Schoppik @schoppik.com in Times Square bryanwjones.com/2025/11/port... #Scientist #BalanceScientist

Our new article in Nature Communications, led by Kevin Cheng here at WITNe. Neurotech Reports was kind enough to call this "a solution towards a holy grail of bioelectronic medicine: small fiber selective vagus nerve stimulation." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are leading two panels/symposia on Jan 27th at Winter Brain with a focus on translational neuromodulation that impacts the brain, with most of the work in NHP models. We would love to see you there and expand the scope of our conference panels on this topic in the future.

What is the status of DBS for epilepsy? Find out in our new review/metaanalysis spearheaded by @laurenahart.bsky.social & Garance Meyer in JNNP: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40666371/ A 🧵 — please RT for reach! 🙏

"NeuroXess has completed 54 human BCI implantations since its establishment four years ago"