Arousal influences many behavioral outcomes. This paper suggests that arousal is more. It is a latent dynamical process, which is possible to observe "propagating" in time and space and interacting with other systems. Good!💯 Note to self: record pupil diameter in the next experiment.

I continue to read about freedom and determinism🤔🫠. This time, I read “A Metaphysics for Freedom” by Helen Steward. My opinion here www.alinastudenova.com/home/blog/bo...

Evoked response is how the brain responds to finger tap, Presented when someone's awake or in the midst of nap, Or to the picture or the face, that’s shown to the eyes, Or to the auditory tone, or to the smell of fries.

Homeostasis is often described as maintaining a stable 'set-point'; allostasis is adjusting some quantities to meet demands. Both involve feedback control. The author sells the idea that dynamical causal models can be used to analyze homeo- and allostatic mechanisms. Helpful!👍 Where do I start...

📆 updated for 2026! list of summer schools & short courses in the realm of (computational) neuroscience or data analysis of EEG / MEG / LFP: 🔗 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Intracranial recordings during auditory oddball showed 2 types of high-frequency responses (more pronounced for target tones): phasic and sustained. Phasic occurred in sensory-motor Yeo network, while sustained - in salience network. Nice!👍 Notably, only 22% of recorded sites showed the effect.

I'm interested in individual differences. Regarding resting-state alpha power, it is usually said that the power is high in occipital areas. However, not for everybody. Here, resting-state alpha power with eyes closed from participants of the LEMON dataset doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.308 #brainmovies

This week is ideal to draft your submission for the #MindBrainBody Symposium 2026 so that you can let it rest over the (potential) holidays and finalise it first thing in 2026 (deadline: January 8, 2026). 😉 Looking forward to seeing you there and - in case - happy holidays! 🎄🧠🫀🫁

fMRI can be measured quantitatively to estimate oxygen metabolism. This study compares classical BOLD with quantitative BOLD. And they are different, and the difference is both region and task specific. Negative BOLD not🟰 reduced metabolism. Cool!👏 High alpha power was associated with negative BOLD😬

Ok, this is nuts. Once you see it you cannot unsee it. Do you see it? (OP @drgbuckingham.bsky.social )

It is possible to differentiate left and right hemispheres using resting-state fMRI. Not surprising. Surprising is that classificator used not only language network but also default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal network. Cool!👍 I wonder whether lateralization of DMN matters for cognition.

Deep brain stimulation can improve Parkinson’s disease symptoms, but selecting the optimal stimulation contact still relies on laborious trial-and-error.

Thank you for the great work @willenjoy.bsky.social ! An important step towards understanding and correcting bias in source localizations and functional connectivity due to source leakage.

Our new preprint on promises and caveats of the extraction of M/EEG activity from ROIs is out (see more details in the reposted thread): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to @studenova.bsky.social, Ruben Eguinoa, Guido Nolte, @sparsity.bsky.social, Arno Villringer, and Vadim Nikulin!

I use EEG/MEG. When I meet like-minded researchers at conferences, the discussion always circles back to one thing: admitting that results may be confounded by leakage (also known as remaining field spread—RFS). In our new preprint, we quantify RFS in parcellated data using cross-talk function—CTF.🧵

Mice were exposed to odors, some of them novel. Dopaminergic (DA) neurons were recorded from midbrain. DA neurons were activated when a mouse was sniffing, also without odors. So DA neurons represent behavior that is associated (or not) with novelty. Cool!👏 It would be nice if we could ask the mice.

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) measures glutamate and GABA macromolecules in a living brain. Functional MRS measures macromolecules over time. Exciting!🤩 However, in this study, presentation of checkerboards didn't elicit measurable changes in the occipital cortex. What does it mean?🤔

Having our annual Cognition Academy @Harnack Haus in Berlin again! Great start today with talks and a Poster Session to get inspired and connect with colleagues! #passionforscience #maxplanckschools 🧠🥂

Axon radius measured in vivo with diffusion MRI correlates with tissue microstructure based on histology in the human corpus callosum. There seems to be a coarse low-to-high anatomical pattern in corpus callosum that drives the correlation. It's more variable at the individual level. V.interesting!👍

Dipole fit to somatosensory evoked response. Not ideal at every time point, but around 50 ms lands in the somatosensory cortex, as expected. #brainmovies

Stimulation of dopamine D1 receptors (and not D2) in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in mice influenced goal-directed behavior. Also, approach behavior was linked to a decrease of dopamine in ACC (less dopamine led to disinhibition of neurons). Cool!👏 Could it be related to EEG readiness potential?

Functionalism posits that consciousness is a function; the exact realising substrate doesn't matter. But realisers may matter. Ned Block points out that when we approach consciousness, we extrapolate from ourselves. It's easy when both function and realisers match ours and not when one is absent.💯

I'm a cognitive scientist, but my current research is about mechanisms of brain functioning. However, I really want to have a research project involving actual human behaviour. In preparation, I read a book. It's "IQ and Human Intelligence" by N. Mackintosh. www.alinastudenova.com/home/blog/bo...

#brainrhymes The first analysis wrapped up, It was an easy one. The second followed after that, And when this one was done, It had appeared to be quite clear, It’s different outcome.

Take a common pattern of functional connectivity in fMRI and remove it. What is left is the uniqueness of that participant. This paper suggests the "caricaturing" method—obtaining individual activations that are orthogonal to coactivations. Cool!💯 I agree. Individual differences deserve attention.

Expectations were explained by variance in deep cortical layers in primary auditory cortex and surrounding areas (7T fMRI). No laminar specificity for stimulus drive or repetition suppression. The authors interpret this in the context of predictive coding. Nice!👍 What does it mean for oscillations?

Now out in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social! 📖 Read the open-access article: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... #Neuroscience #Neurology #Parkinsonsdisease #Parkinsons #DeepBrainStimulation #DBS #Neurotechnology #Neuromodulation #Neurophysiology #BasalGanglia #OpenScience #Reproducibility

There was a paper recently stating that functional connectivity in EEG/MEG is mostly aperiodic and not oscillatory. And I thought, what if it is oscillatory but from transients (that don't show clear peak in the spectrum)? This preprint suggests that it could be the case👏, at least for some tasks.

I use ICA for "source" extraction. For some participants, it works well, while for others, it miserably fails. Here, I tried to obtain the right and left M1/S1. #brainmovies

Propagation of activity in LFP was termed "traveling waves" (TW)🙂‍↕️. But then people took this concept and began calling EEG phase lags TW🤨. This review delineated these two types, introducing first-order and second-order TW. Also, the authors review possible origins of two types (distinct origins!).👏

In this study, alpha power was found to be decreasing over the course of the experiment, while previous studies demonstrated an increase over time. The manuscript is scarce in the methods section, so it's hard to tell what exactly has been done. But if it is true, it requires explanation.🤔

Aging mice and humans with multiple sclerosis have the same failure in the oligodendrocyte differentiation program. This study identified a transcription factor cascade that fails to drive oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Fascinating world of glia! Are white matter hyperintensities due to the same?

V. informative and practically useful piece! In fact, philosophy (epistemology) is factual field. The author lists 200 facts that he terms "epistemic preventable medicine"💯. Some facts are more obvious than others. My personal favorites are 38, 13-17, 165-168. I wish the same for philosophy of mind.

Today, I introduce developmental rhyme, What happens in the womb with brain parts over time? Let’s first consider stage when brain looks like three balls, That formed from neural tube, when neural plate was closed.

Objectively measured time can be very different from subjectively perceived time. However, Buzsáki argues that both time in physics and subjective time relate to motion (or speed, or change). He suggests that internal speed is attention.🙂‍↕️ This review also covers neuronal mechanisms of time-tracking.

Beta oscillations can be subdivided into low beta (13-20 Hz) and high beta (20-30 Hz). This paper nicely demonstrates dissociation using Hidden Markov Models. While low beta is completely suppressed during movement, high beta shows variability. Post-movement rebound is dominated by low beta. Cool!👍

Neurons x time points is higher-dimensional data. It can be reduced to a lower-dimensional manifold. This review gives an introduction, explanation, and summary of current evidence on neuronal manifolds. I appreciated the discussion of emergence: is the manifold more than the sum of its parts?

Plateau potential is exactly what it sounds like: the neuron membrane potential that increases a bit and stays in this depolarized state for ~500 ms. This paper found that pyramidal neurons in V1 L5 have those plateau potentials, and they are related to behavioral plasticity. V. weird but cool!👏

Recently, I was playing with extracting brain activity using ICA (I know that some use SSD, but I use ICA). Here's one example from the dataset with somatosensory stimulation. There are several components over the right somato-motor area (where the brain responds to stimulation).🧐 #brainmovie

Aperiodic spectra under anti-epileptic drugs (presumably reduced excitation). No good news for 1/f slope, but the offset was decreased. Cool!👏 Found something for myself: alpha power seems to be reduced under lamotrigine but not levetiracetam, and only in eyes-open but not in eyes-closed condition.🤔

Proposed model returns uncertainty representations (confidence) based on input sensory signals. Tested on auditory perception. Cool!👍 It means that if one has data without confidence ratings, the model can give at least an estimate. I wonder how easy it could be to adapt it to somatosensory domain.

I like this channel! Scrolling through titles and reading abstracts gives me a very unusual milieu. Not everything is directly related to my research, but there are gems like this👇

Last week I was being trained as a #MNE-Python TrainEErs at #PracticalMEEG2025 - it was a lot of fun to look behind the scenes and learn how to run a good workshop :) thanks to @cuttingeeg.bsky.social for hosting and Marijn van Vliet and @nschawor.bsky.social for organizing this amazing workshop!

Noradrenaline is involved in motor learning. And not just as a background unspecific signal but actually refined and precise, both temporally and spatially. This study demonstrated it using two strains of mice and optogenetic stimulation. Cool!👍 I wonder what part of this learning is attention...

Today at #PracticalMEEG2025 Nick @willenjoy.bsky.social and I will be conducting a tutorial on how to simulate EEG/MEG data with our toolbox meegsim. If you happen to be around, come to our virtual booth; we will tell scary stories.👻

Noise as a Signal – Moritz Gerster, Vadim Nikulin & Arno Villringer analysed data from 119 patients & discovered a new electrical signature of #Parkinson’s Disease, now published in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social: www.cbs.mpg.de/2412209/2025... #parkinsontherapy #clinicalstudy

Optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) can capture a 140 Hz retinal response to a flash of light. Super!👏 It's not that I study high gamma at 200 Hz or high frequency oscillations at 600 Hz, and it's not that I have convenient access to OPMs, but it's encouraging to see the OPMs' increased bandwidth.

Diazepam increases the effects of GABAa in the brain. It also changes alpha rhythm. The most pronounced change occurred in somatomotor regions. Good news!👏I wish they would have recorded structural MRI...

Another book summary/opinion. This time I read Andy Clark's recent book. The book is written well and reads fast. However, predictive processing as an explanation for everything sounds too good to be true. www.alinastudenova.com/home/blog/bo...

learn about advanced electrophysiology-related toolboxes (>20 to choose from) at this online event, in lectures or hands-on tutorials: 📅 Wednesday, October 30th at 2 pm (CET) cuttingeeg.org/practicalmee... very cool concept! 🙂 free but registration required. #PracticalMEEG2025