In 2011, my interests in cognitive neuroscience converged on one stubborn intuition: it made no sense that how the brain learns and how it pays attention should be two fundamentally different processes.

Fun discovery from the old EEG literature - the first proposal to call slow waves "delta" was a suggestion to use this name as a useful brief description "until their true nature be discovered" (in 1936). Oops - guess we're still working that one, new name coming any day now 😅

Delighted to share our new publication in @apertureohbm.bsky.social - the "Human Single-Neuron Pipeline" for managing human single-neuron research projects! It's an open-source resource of new & existing tools & resources curated for HSN projects: hsnpipeline.github.io

In early observations of REM sleep in EEG they thought the change in pattern was a technical issue and "fixed it" by taping the amplifier, waking the person up! Such an interesting anecdote of how wild it must of been to get started with EEG, with so little prior knowledge / expectations!

Does aperiodic activity index neural excitability? Single-unit and LFP recordings during optogenetic interneuron suppression show that aperiodic activity scales with firing, but it depends on context and oscillatory power. New preprint with @juliaveit.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

TIL that Gibbs & Grass, who first applied Fourier transforms to EEG recordings, then spent several years examining over 1700 EEG recordings (!!) and concluded that frequency analyses are no good for clinical recordings 😅 Their paper on this is worth a read: www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Three years into the AI era, educators say they face a major crisis. Bosses and clients replacing tutoring jobs with AI. Replacing *athletic coaching* with AI. Many students now cannot grasp why they would *not* use AI for schoolwork. And worse. The 5th installment of AI Killed My Job—educators:

📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚 “Recommendations for readings are welcome, especially in the history of cognitive science (prior to 1950s, and the older the better).” irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...

“Collection of Handwritten Letters from Children in Detention Center” sounds like an exhibit in the Holocaust Museum.

If I know you use this I will literally never cite your work again, because there is literally no way to trust it or you

Ripple oscillations are central for memory and sleep. But ripple detection in humans remains challenging. Here we introduce a simulation approach in @natcomms.nature.com as common ripple detectors mainly pick up 1/f noise and not genuine oscillations 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence

Had a blast hosting @tomdonoghue.bsky.social at our lab in Santiago. We went full aperiodic mode, with @gnboncompte.bsky.social . Very cool collab ideas!! Thanks Tom!!

Aperiodic activity reflects pathological waveforms in epilepsy (and not necessarily hyper-excitability or altered E/I-balance). The 1/f slope goes up *or* down as function of waveforms during seizures. New work by Laura Heidiri and Frank van Schalkwijk from the lab: www.jneurosci.org/content/45/5...

Another new paper from the lab: Predictive theories like the SR imply that navigators who navigate differently should have cognitive maps which differ in predictable ways. Here we show that this holds in mouse hippocampal CA1. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Finally got the job ad—looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year: www.gao-unit.com/join-us/ If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply! I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet 🏖️🌮

📜🎉 Our project on aperiodic neural activity during sleep, led by the wonderful @mosameen.bsky.social, is now published! This project shows how time-resolved measures of aperiodic neural activity track changes of sleep stages + lots of other analyses in iEEG & EEG! www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I'm blown away to see our 2020 spectral parameterization (fooof) paper is the 2nd most cited neuroscience paper of 2020 🤯 What an adventure it's been - now ~10 years on & ~8500 km from where I first started on the project, and still enthralled by the work! www.thetransmitter.org/publishing/w...

📣 🧠 We have a new PhD studentship at @fbmh-uom.bsky.social with Caroline Lea-Carnall & @tomdonoghue.bsky.social: Dopamine, brain networks & plasticity research. Computational modelling + multimodal neuroimaging: tinyurl.com/yr58xj8v Application deadline Nov 15th!

📜🎉 I'm happy to share that my review of clinical research investigating aperiodic neural activity is now published! It examines 177 reports of aperiodic activity in clinical disorders summarizing findings, discussion topics, & making some recommendations! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📜 New preprint led by the wonderful Weijia Zhang on place cells: specifically if & how different methodological approaches used across human & rodent datasets may relate to differences in identified populations and implications for cross-species spatial cognition! Check it out here:

I've been waiting some years to make this joke and now it’s real: I conned somebody into giving me a faculty job! I’m starting as a W1 Tenure-Track Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt in a week (lol), in the Faculty of CS and Math and I'm recruiting PhD students 🤗

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation and Ice detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

📜 I've updated my perspective piece covering a brief history of the study of aperiodic neural activity - adding a bit more work and adding an update of what I think this history suggests for future research. Preprint available on psyrxiv here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Neurociencias Para Todos brings neuroscience education to remote communities in Mexico. @analog-ashley.bsky.social‬ talked with founder Monica López-Hidalgo about the program’s efforts and the importance of making neuroscience accessible to all. www.thetransmitter.org/community/br...

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

Apparently in (Northern?) England it's common to name fast food places by putting "{American place name} Fried Chicken". Just today I've walked past places called {Atlanta, Arizona, California, Georgia, Orlando, Michigan, Virginia} Fried Chicken - and my personal favourite: "Toronto Fried Chicken"

I’m sorry but the “should scientists be activists” train left the station for the last time when we started spending billions to build concentration camps. I feel like you guys are engaging with the science stuff as though the camps thing is like, happening on a different TV show

I've updated my literature review of studies of aperiodic neural activity in clinical disorders, adding ~30 papers, taking it to 177 reports across 38 disorders! It's got a review of results so far, discussion of themes & issues, & recommendations for future work! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

At this point, I am ready to become a dedicated patron to brands and businesses that have a principled stand against pushing AI as part of their offerings and vocally commit to smooth, lean/unbloated, pleasant basic customer experience.

We have an opening for a post doc to help us quantify neurovascular coupling with simultaneous EEG/fNIRS data -- spread the word! With David Boas and Mike Esterman

NWB just turned 10 years old! Researchers worldwide have downloaded 1.9 PB of NWB data from @dandiarchive.org. This animation shows the reach of NWB, facilitating collaboration across the globe. What impact has open neurophysiology data had on your science? Share your stories! 🧠 @openscience

Seems as good a time as any to re-share the "OpenLists" collection - an openly accessible set of lists of available resources in / for Cognitive Neuroscience! Includes open M/EEG & iEEG datasets & open software / analysis tools, and resources for DSP, Python, git, etc: openlists.github.io

Excited to share our new paper on theta-phase locking of single neurons during human spatial memory: www.nature.com/articles/s41... With @lukaskunz.bsky.social, Joshua Jacobs, and our colleagues from the University of Freiburg

Manchester observations so far part 2: - “Hiya” - Zero based indexing for building floors - Meal deal supremacy - Triple checking every crossing for whichever side cars are on - For real though, why is half of every store pre-packed sandwiches - Surprise: tram on the road! No, the other side

I have now started at the University of Manchester as a lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor)! I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone here and getting started on the next phase of my research!

Sad to hear that Margaret Boden, pioneer in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, has passed away. Just a few days ago, someone reactivated the post below. I warmly recommend watching the video. Thank you Margaret for founding and shaping our field. www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re...

Israel committing genocide in Gaza, say Israel-based human rights groups

Miscellaneous notes from 2 days in Manchester so far: - friendly strangers - unrefrigerated eggs - kettles are so fast - fairy liquid - finding the pedestrian crossing light - "please place your item in the bagging area" - buying deodorant without having to break it out of pharmacy jail first

🚨😷🧪 NEW: A growing body of evidence shows that pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are part of a broader polycrisis - but there are no simple solutions. A sweeping overview of "Pathogens and planetary change" for the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, out now 🔓 rdcu.be/d6lHl

🧠 Paper out! We investigated how hippocampal and cortical ripples support memory during movie watching. We found that: 🎬 Hippocampal ripples mark event boundaries 🧩 Cortical ripples predict later recall Ripples may help transform real-life experiences into lasting memories! rdcu.be/eui9l

AI is being used to justify firing workers at major tech companies, leaving those that remain to pick up the pieces. AI code is being shoveled into crucial Google products, replacing trainers at TikTok, and worse. This, in tech workers' own words, is how AI is killing jobs in Silicon Valley.

so cool how our response to this is to build a ton of new fossil power for data centers and pretend we need more oil and gas production for energy independence when we could just go mad with electrification

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander was just arrested by Trump’s ICE agents because he asked to see a judicial warrant. This is fascism and all New Yorkers must speak in one voice. Release him now.

On this day 2y ago we announced our move away from the huge profits that NeuroImage makes for Elsevier. Things at Imaging Neuroscience have progressed fantastically thanks to the support for this move by the brain imaging community and @mitpress.bsky.social. 565 papers published already!

I can't wait for the Modeling Extracellular Potentials Workshop on July 9 after the #CNS2025 conference in Florence! nicolomeneghetti.github.io/ECP_CNS2025_...

New paper with Shawn Hervey-Jumper's lab! As only PART of this project, it validates the relationship between aperiodic slope and cortical excitability using ECoG and single-nuc RNA sequencing in humans. Tissue samples with more excitatory neurons showed flatter aperiodic slope.