New paper from the lab: we use longitudinal fMRI over the first two years of school to test theories of conceptual development in the math domain. “Initial organization and progressive expansion of the math-responsive brain network during the first school years” PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Publication alert 🚨 & mini thread 🧵: Modulating corticospinal excitability with transcranial ultrasound stimulation: meta-analytic evidence of online and offline effects With @eester.bsky.social, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, & @nkonstantinou.bsky.social 1/5 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In-scanner thoughts contribute to resting-state functional connectivity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42365014/ I've long thought that this is the "elephant in the room" of resting state #fMRI esp. for comparing groups. If two groups think & feel differently in the scanner, of course rsfMRI will differ!

🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10

🚨New dataset just dropped🚨 Introducing Places in the Wild: 67,000 RAW-format photographs (45 mpix) densely sampled from 810 places (260 basic-level categories). This is 11x the number of pixels in ImageNet! Preprint is here: arxiv.org/abs/2606.02481 1/

If their goal is to choke off economic advantages from the US’s university system it’s hard to think of a more effective way. Scientists and other academics come to the US to study— then stay in the US often via green cards, to start companies, do unique work, and contribute to the US economy.

A big congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Yu (Joseph) Zhao. Feels great to have students graduate.

One year later - my reflections on what's happened to US science since the National Science Foundation grant terminations last year. The problem of misinformation isn't going away, but our ability to study and understand it is under attack. 1/ 🧪 www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

I’m in both boats, but my last download was a few weeks ago and my mechanism to turn in grades is through Canvas. This seems quite bad.

Yikes.

Another new one from the lab in J Neurosci: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Evidence accumulation is a core principle by which brains convert information into decisions. But what happens when the evidence the brain needs can't be directly read from an external stimulus or memory? 1/N

Very cool and inspiring! Progress toward a real application for brain decoding:

Happy Critical Thinking Day to all who celebrate

Did not have this in my radar.

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

We know about cosmological dark matter despite being unable to measure it because, without it, galaxies would fall apart. By analogy, let's talk about "cognitive dark matter" (CDM): brain functions that meaningfully shape behavior but are hard to infer from behavior alone. New paper! 🧵👇

Our work on bilingual language processing is now out in @pnas.org! Our fMRI study compares cortical representations btwn native and non-native languages. We find that representations are largely similar, but systematically modulated btwn languages www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New work from the Gallant lab mapping representation of semantic relations (has-a, is-a, found-at, etc) across the brain - super interesting stuff! V. related to one of the first topics I studied (tried to study) in grad school! Find the paper here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

If you haven't yet changed how you teach and evaluate thanks to AI, you probably need to. This is not something that educators asked to happen, but it is worth noting what is out there - in this case an OpenClaw tool designed to cheat.

Yes please.

NSD-synthetic, the out-of-distribution companion dataset of NSD consisting of 7T fMRI responses to 284 artificial images, is now published. #NeuroAI #CompNeuro #neuroscience #AI doi.org/10.1038/s414...

I finally got around to setting up a lab website! Have a look: the-steel-lab.github.io Just in time to start the new semester.

This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!

Well, this is an utter disaster for science. This gutting of peer review is very likely driven by Project 2025/OMB/Vought, very likely is about funding junk science, and very likely is coming for #NIH and biomedical research next. 🧪

*shudder* Also, I feel like there is an analogy to LLMs here…

"With the news that the administration plans to link the COVID vaccine to child deaths using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), it’s worth revisiting how we actually detect whether a vaccine is causing harm." Excellent explainer from @drjenndowd.bsky.social from 9/2025😷🛟🧪

I am glad about the election results, but yes this 👇👇👇

*siiiiigh* what hope do any of us have, in the face of this? www.npr.org/2025/10/31/n...

Not a Dodgers fan - but man, that was some good baseball

😞

Job announcement! UN Reno Psychology (Cognitive & Brain Sciences division) is hiring for a tenure-track position. Come join us! We have a great group! Deadline December 1. Please share! nshe.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UNR-external... #neuroskyence #neuroscience

Refreshingly clear: the hypocrisy is the point.

👇👇👇

I didn't take pics but the feeling of being in a group of people with no visible beginning or end was so thrilling. The opposite of online anomie, and a living counterpoint to the wary, isolated, compartmentalized world the shitheads want to make. It's simple and obvious I guess but it means a lot.

Hell yes Reno. #NoKings

💯

If you like this demo, you will love the great demos by @pezlarson.bsky.social that can be found here: larsonlab.github.io/MRI-educatio... (Complete with python code to generate them!)

Whoa dude.

Sometimes I just think things. Maybe talk with my wife or a friend about them. Phone doesn't even enter into it.

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

What an ugly world this administration wants to create. www.npr.org/2025/08/26/n...

This is upsetting and clear and true. Quoting the Declaration of Independence is spot on.

A pleasant surprise from the Journal of Neuroscience RE the application of the updated NIH public access policy (authors deposit accepted manuscript in PMC, journal retains license to final copyedited version, no requirement to pay OA fee) www.jneurosci.org/content/righ...

Truck Tetris

Hell yeah. Love this.

Tell me again about cutting waste.

📣 CALL TO ACTION - Yesterday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee that determines the funding for NSF proposed a 23% cut to NSF’s 2026 budget. If one of these members listed is your representative, use our link to easily call your rep & demand NO CUTS to NSF➡️ actionnetwork.org/call_campaig...

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