GUESS WHAT WEEK IT IS

Against my better instincts, I have written some notes on how human probability judgements work and what you should expect from surveys that ask people to guess what proportion of the population is transgender. I hope never to speak of this matter again

For those interested in a neuroscience PhD - the University of Minnesota Graduate Program in Neuroscience www.neuroscience.umn.edu is hosting virtual open house events coming up on Oct 6th and Oct 30th. Learn about the program and meet students and faculty! Register here: forms.gle/kANEp4Fmd3ut...

A spatially resolved transcriptomic atlas of the primate amygdala (human, macaque, and baboon) now out in Science Advances (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). The amygdala contains 32 types of neurons with many neuron types specific to particular subdivisions. Lots of updates from the preprint!

I wonder why these farmers are having so much difficulty finding enough workers?

Excited to share that my PhD work has been published! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠🧪

Check out new work from our lab! We developed a new way to directly control the precise timing of interneurons during behavior and found that theta phase locking is a causal mediator of seizure susceptibility in both healthy and epileptic mice.

Come learn about the PhD and MS programs in Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on October 16 from 5:30-7 pm CDT! See below for information and registration. I'll be on hand to answer questions about our Neuroscience PhD program! uwm.edu/graduatescho...

I'm looking forward to speaking at Mount Sinai's Dean's Select Seminar Series on October 6. I'll be talking about the translational efforts in addiction research that contribute to the development of treatments 🧠 More information: friedmanbrain.icahn.mssm.edu/deans-select... See you there!

Brain stimulation without causing tissue damage or electrode damage. The most common approach to stimulating CNS tissue without causing tissue damage is the "Shannon limit". Shannon, R.V., 2002. A model of safe levels for electrical stimulation. 1/

"a gentle reminder"

Is brain connectivity associated with cytoarchitectonic/chemoarchitectonic parcellations of brain regions? Asking for a friend.

How do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience? Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall. Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!

A show of bipartisan support for NIH. Basically flat except for ARPA-H. The President’s budget proposal basically ignored (as it should have been).

To my psychiatry colleagues, here’s a helpful commentary on how to support and protect our trans patients rights and dignity in the face of current admin regime attacks. psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

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...

we have a new manuscript out! 🧵Lead by @sarayconley.bsky.social with significant contributions by @sarahsizer.bsky.social @madiganbedard.bsky.social and Sara Faccidomo and Clyde Hodge. We describe a tonic excitatory conductance in the BNST! link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...

C’mon Neuronerds, we can hit this goal. Next best thing if you can’t attend.

Public service announcement: Turn off generative AI features in Adobe Acrobat helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/usin...

Very excited to share this major update to our paper delineating VTA GABA neuron encoding of valence and decision conflict. Studies led by the amazing @margestelzner.bsky.social. We leaned in here, taking the opportunity to add a lot of cool new data. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cortical thickness changes precede high levels of amyloid by at least seven years https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.14.670398v1

A friendly reminder that the NIH Public Access Policy IS NOT “you must publish open access” but rather “you must ensure your copy of your paper is deposited into PubMed Central.” Yes, it is very confusing. Yes, you should be able to do that deposit yourself without paying anything to a journal.

how many neurons can fit in a voxel?

Delighted to share our latest paper in Communications Psychology on face pareidolia. doi.org/10.1038/s442...

I'm updating my advice that everyone should take a tests and measurement course in grad school to add a course in budgeting and finance, based on some of the commentary on here.

If you ran a company and one of your officers told you he did this with your resources, you would tell him to undo it ASAP or else he is fired. Such a large sequestration of research funds is utterly indefensible. The NIH extramural component of the appropriation exists to fund research.

Unrelated

Just a standard reminder that statistics is a stand-alone discipline because it’s really hard and it is very easy to get catastrophically wrong. (This example is p-curves, beloved of the reproducibility/scientific fraud warriors, absolutely indefensible in practice)

I'd argue that the complete story bullshit is not only slowing progress but is harming translational neuroscience Perfect stories on molecules and "circuits" that cause depression, addiction, PTSD and loneliness in mice using crude mouse behavioral phenotypes, have not been clinically translatable

Why publishing early and often advances science faster than complete story bullshit. This is related to replication and generalization. From the Archive: The many benefits of the LPU drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/t...

NIH no cost extensions no longer require a prior approval request grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Happy to have some good science news - our new study with @aqperkins.bsky.social is out in @plosbiology.org! dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

🐒 🐒 www.tiktok.com/@galenroe/vi...

putting in another new grant application cc @paf1984.bsky.social

The Neuroscience Dept at American University is hiring for a tenure-track position at the Assistant level with expertise in Computational Neuroscience. Apply by Sep 15: american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-... #FacultyJobs #AcademicJob #Neuroscience #CompNeuro #AI #ComputationalPsychiatry

An analysis shows that current deep learning models do not beat linear baselines in predicting gene perturbation effects, thus emphasizing the importance of further method development and evaluation. @const-ae.bsky.social @wkhuber.bsky.social @s-anders.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Backward Conditioning Reveals Flexibility in Infralimbic Cortex Inhibitory Memories https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.02.668258v1

Associating with Colossal should get you some combination of laughed/booed out of any serious academic setting. Frivolous attention-seeking nonsense but with a nasty undercurrent of sweaty investors.

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/w...

👀

Stay alert to OMB’s shenanigans.

to add insult to injury now my timeline is wall to wall with that horrible man's evil face

This paper has garnered considerable attention and has been used politically, including recently. Of course, this paper (which is a research finding) is itself false, limiting research to those where statistical tests can be applied and over-estimating the number of false positives. 4/n

I have thought on it and prayed about it, and I have decided: I am running to be the next U.S. Senator from North Carolina.