Sometimes, a family company splits in two, each part getting its own specialisation. That’s what happened to ‘owe’ and ‘ought’, once the present and past tense of one and the same verb. Its original meaning was “to possess”. They’re also related to ‘own’. Zoom in on my graphic to learn more:

I don't know who needs to hear this, but Iceland now has a female President, Prime Minister, Bishop, Rectors of all major universities, Head of Police, Director of Health, Speaker of Parliament, and Mayor of Reykjavík. You do not mess with Icelandic women. www.inspiredbyiceland.com/society/gend...

Our new paper is now in BioRxiv ☺️ See how the auditory cortex encodes vocalizations before the bat produces them 📣🦇🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... with @talking-bat.bsky.social and Dennis Röhrig!

Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics). More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #AcademicJobs #PhDJobs 🧬🧪

Unique opportunity to direct your own innovative long-term research programme on the psychology of language at @mpi-nl.bsky.social, a leading interdisciplinary Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Nominate yourself or a colleague by 19 December 2025. Please help us spread the word. 👇🧪

Recalling sequences from memory can explain the distribution of recursive structures in natural languages. New paper by Fenna H. Poletiek, Peter Hagoort & Bruno R. Bocanegra doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106244 paper: tinyurl.com/mvy4jkb5

So native speakers of English are basically Icelandic at heart...#ð

If you're in Barcelona, check out this open MusicGens event happening tomorrow! A roundtable about the musical genome with @musiccognition.bsky.social and more inspiring speakers! 🎵 🎹

The Manhattanplot of every GWAS is evolving. the top cluster/horizontal band is proteins, the second protein ratio's the third all kinds of microbiome GWAS (which have smaller N and less power, hence the almost empty third horizondal band). I might make this into an interactive shiny website...

We know GLP-1 drugs reduce brain inflammation. But I didn't anticipate bipolar disorder as a possible indication in the future www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Tell me you're a linguist without telling me you're a linguist"😃

Breaking News: In a win for Harvard University, a judge said that the government broke the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funds.

Interested in doing a PhD with me and lacns.github.io? Or with any of the incredible fellows in the IMPRS School of Cognition www.maxplanckschools.org/cognition-en - apply before Dec 1st at cognition.maxplanckschools.org/en/application

Nice piece by @mathiesoniain.bsky.social on polygenic prediction of human complex traits using ancient DNA (h/t @evobioclio.bsky.social ) 🧪🧬 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Important reading as you prepare for your semester

Different results than those found in preserved samples www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The full story on "stem-cell-based, tissue engineered trachea replacements" by @pmurray65.bsky.social and Peter Wilmshurst. Whistelblowers met with a wall of silence from the establishment drpeterwilmshurst.wordpress.com/2025/08/19/s...

Latest processing of UK Biobank brain imaging data - now with 82,000 usable first-scan datasets. Correlating brain IDPs with 13,000 non-imaging variables gives a rich manhattan-stye plot. 324,000 Bonferroni-significant associations.

👌

Developmental stuttering involves speech disfluencies (blocks, prolongations, repetitions). We sequenced all protein-coding genes of 85 parent-child trios in which the child stuttered, & found (likely) pathogenic DNA variants in 4 genes also implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders. New paper:👇🗣️🧬🧪

Delighted to see work led by Hayley Mountford @hayleymountford.bsky.social published today. rdcu.be/eA8G0 We used MTAG to increase gene discovery for dyslexia: 36 new regions; ~30 new genes from gene-based tests; several sig biological pathways @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @schoolofppls.bsky.social

This isn’t an impoverished regional school – this is the University of Chicago. Devastating.

Hello it is possible to have a background in both the humanities and STEM (👋) and I'd argue that being interdisciplinary leads to a more broad-ranging set of ideas. The STEM/Hums boundaries are imposed top-down and we need all of us to advance human knowledge.

Third: forum piece on the genetics of human communication, by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social

Some August highlights from Trends on music, communication, and genetics. First up: the review on music reward sensitivity as a model for understanding reward processing, by Mas-Herrero, Zatorre & Marco-Pallarés. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

This looks like a good read with lots of potential for Paper 2 discussion. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

“GPT-5 is the first time that it feels like talking to an expert in any topic — a Ph.D.-level expert,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.

Look at that cool cover of @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social featuring my forum article on genetics of human communication 🎯 The article is short and accessible, see link in 🧵

Well this is bad. Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations exposing sensitive user data I tried a few quick searches. I found someone's chat where I can see their api key I found some building their resume. Their name, email and phone numbers are exposed. www.fastcompany.com/91376687/goo...

Holy shit. This guy saved a PNG to a bird. (he drew a bird into a spectrogram, played that sound to a starling, and the starling reproduced it back to him with enough accuracy he got his bird drawing back in their call's spectrogram) www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQC...

Language is a wonder. As in: We wonder what makes it all work. So we're talking to linguistic lion Stephen Levinson of ‪@mpi-nl.bsky.social about his new book The Interaction Engine. (The book is open source, by the way!) Episode coming soon.

We're happy to share that TiG's Impact Factor is now 16.3 -- the highest it's been in 25 years! Many thanks to our dedicated authors, reviewers, and readers for continuing to make TiG a favorite source of thought-provoking and forward-looking reviews and commentaries.

Highly recommend this superb forum article on genomics of human communication traits, free to read in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social. Beautifully succinct & accessible overview by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social on where the field is now & where it's heading. 🗣️💬🧠🧬🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I sincerely hope that biobanks start considering language and communication as important phenotypes for GWAS. I outline the way forward in the TiGs Forum piece below. Special thanks to Kári Stefánsson, who introduced me to genetics 10 years ago 🫶

I'm so excited to see this online now in TRENDS IN GENETICS: Advancing GWAS of Human Communication. I review latest developments in genetics of speech and language and highlight opportunities for research on genetics and evolution of human communication. authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHgMcQbJF...

As I've been saying over and over on our book tour for The AI Con, the inevitability argument (including in the form of "AI is here to stay") is an attempt to steal our agency. We don't have to accept that and I encourage everyone to refuse it.

End of an era. I spent 10 years working with Kári at deCODE and will always be grateful for the opportunity to do research in such a creative and free-spirited place.

New TLL podcast episode with the talented Sólveig Hilmarsdottir on the complexities of Latin FEMVR! tllpod.podbean.com/e/femvr-solv...

Our manuscript is desk-rejected; editor says it doesn't fit journal scope. We submit elsewhere. [days pass] Unsolicited email from editor of original journal; they stumbled on our exciting BioRxiv preprint, think it's a great fit, & would we consider submitting to them? Reader, it's the same paper.🙄

Looking at promising ERPs is a great way to enter the weekend 🤩 #auditory #neuroscience #misophonia

Trump in 2024: we are going to deport illegal immigrants, who committed crimes, to their home country Trump in early 2025: we are sending legal immigrants, with no criminal record, to random foreign gulags Trump in midway through 2025: we are going to deport legal visitors studying at Harvard

Stimulants helped children with ADHD or insufficient sleep do better on cognitive tasks. They seem to mask the effects of fatigue and elevate the perceived salience of goal-oriented actions, helping you do tasks you find boring without directly affecting your capacity to pay attention.

My med school textbook says stimulants like Ritalin treat hyperactivity by “stimulating” the brain’s attention and cognitive control systems. We studied children taking stimulants in the ABCD Study, and the largest differences were actually in arousal and reward networks! Check out our preprint!

Apparently people who take lots of drugs like complex music... I also appreciate the 'Groove Rating' metric. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nominations are now open for the 2025 International Vigdís Prize! The prize (6 million Icelandic kronas) spotlights exceptional achievements in the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity, multilingualism, and translation. vigdis.hi.is/en/vigdisprize #LinguisticDiversity #Literature

Oooof. Those direct air capture machines built by Climeworks in Iceland, to pull carbon dioxide out of the air? Turns out ... they have generated more CO2 than they have captured.

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants. Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

Kári Stefánsson, founder and CEO of deCODE Genetics, the Icelandic company wholly owned by Amgen but operated largely independently, has been fired. www.mbl.is/frettir/innl...

The CEO of Ikea was just elected Prime Minister of Sweden. The first thing she’ll do, obviously, is assemble her cabinet.