Another fantastic Turing Seminar last week! 👨‍🏫 Giovanni Petri @lordgrilo.bsky.social from @northeasternu.bsky.social and @nunetsi.bsky.social delivered a very captivating talk, Tracing the Cultural Fabric of Sperm Whale Societies.

It finally happened. I found a place in London that gives you your espresso within 30secs of ordering it. 🤯🤯

🚨 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗦𝗰𝗶 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻! Secure your spot at the flagship conference of the Network Science Society and take advantage of the early bird registration special - www.netsci2026.com/registration 📅 June 1–5, 2026 | Hyatt Regency, Cambridge, MA Join us as we celebrate 20 years of NetSci!

The Turing Liaison Team is excited to host @lordgrilo.bsky.social, who will deliver a seminar entitled 'Tracing the Cultural Fabric of Sperm Whale Societies.' 📆 5 November ⏰ 13:00 - 14:00 📍Biomedical Building, C42 at the University of Bristol Find out more here: tinyurl.com/mrxp5h2n

Lots of higher-order interactions at the joint @beyondtheedge.network and RUNES workshop at AMU in Marseille this week. Thanks to @alainbarrat.bsky.social and @lordgrilo.bsky.social!

Exciting things in Topological Neuroscience! #NetSI_London @lordgrilo.bsky.social co-organized the “Topology of Human and Synthetic Minds” workshop at King’s College London, launching a new collaboration to advance this field. #KIHSM 🔗 tinyurl.com/4zhs2m83 #NetSI_London 🔗 tinyurl.com/25ts6as4

Federico Turkheimer introducing the King’s institute for Human and Synthetic minds and opening the workshop

Topological signal processing works! :P Check out out latest one out!

Latest work at #EUSIPCO25!🚀 We bring Topological Signal Processing to the brain 🧠 — showing that edge-based approaches outperform classical GSP in task decoding. Great collab with M.Nurisso & @lordgrilo.bsky.social 🙌 Paper 👉 eusipco2025.org/wp-content/u... #Neuroimaging #SignalProcessing #TSP

Next week (on the 15th and 16th), with @yasserroudi.bsky.social and Federico Turkheimer we will organize a workshop on the "The Topology of Human and Synthetic Minds" Please do join us! (Registration is free but required for access/catering!) lordgrilo.github.io/topology-nat...

BeyondTheEdge at the School of Complexity on "Higher-order interactions: mechanisms, behaviors, and networks" by our own @lordgrilo.bsky.social and @gin-bianconi.bsky.social with @aliceschwarze.bsky.social, @danielemarinazzo.bsky.social. Great perspectives! www.beyondtheedge.network/articles/bey...

Rosemary Braun introducing organization in time of complex systems, with a really good slide. Love it.

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Lots of NPL at @ConfCompSys 2025. Thread below!

The #CRAB2025 🦀 programme is out! Join us in Siena on Sept 3 at #CCS25 for the 2nd edition of the Complexity Research in Animal Behaviour satellite 🐜🐦🦋🐳🐙🐝 🧑‍🏫 Invited talks by S. Melillo & P. Bartashevich Full programme: sites.google.com/view/crab202... @jbbrask.bsky.social @saraneven.bsky.social

Two new labs at the Network Science Institute! NET Lab in #Boston explores team networks advance the frontier of science. BRAN Lab in #London studies behavior & mental health through brain, social, and environmental dynamics. 🔗 Learn more: #NetLab bit.ly/46SqOv6 #BranLab bit.ly/4f13hu9

So it begins. Late and with screen problems but it does 🤓🤓 😂😂#cns2025

Is criticality a unified setpoint of brain function? Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... #neuroskyence

If you’re curious about how the shape of brain networks encodes identity and information, take a look at the full paper here: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 10/n

This balance between redundancy and synergy, woven into each person’s unique topological scaffold, may offer a new lens on individual variability, and a powerful pathway for identifying cognitive or clinical biomarkers. 9/n

Third: most intriguingly, we found that the scaffold's structure dictates its information flow. The borders of loops handle redundant information, while the connections spanning these loops exhibit high synergy. It's a beautiful metaphor: integration happens within the voids. 8/n

Second, while FC fingerprints often draw from features confined to particular brain networks, scaffolds gain their power from inter-network connections. In other words, identity seems to live in how different large-scale brain systems interact 7/n

First, scaffold-based fingerprints achieved near-perfect identification accuracy (~100%), outperforming FC-based methods (~90%). Even more 🤯, they remained robust across different preprocessing strategies, brain atlases, and dramatically shortened scan times. 6/n

We tested this approach on resting-state fMRI data from 100 unrelated individuals in the Human Connectome Project. The results were striking. 5/n

To better capture this richer structure, we use homological scaffolds. Picture incrementally building a brain network by adding connections in order of strength. As we do this, loops begin to form. The scaffold is made of all edges that participate in these mesoscale loops 4/n

Traditional approaches to brain fingerprinting typically rely on Functional Connectivity (FC), which measures pairwise correlations between brain regions. But brains don’t just operate in pairs—networks of regions interact in complex, higher-order ways that FC often misses. 3/n

We show that the topological structure of brain connectivity—, homological scaffolds—offers a powerful and highly robust way to identify individuals based on their functional brain organization. 2/n

Thrilled to finally share a huge piece of my PhD project! Our paper “The Topological Architecture of Brain Identity” is now out on bioRxiv: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/n

Huge thanks to my amazing co-authors: @h-merritt.bsky.social, @andreasantoro.bsky.social, @grabuffo.bsky.social, Demian Battaglia, Francesco Vaccarino, Manish Saggar, @brovelli.bsky.social, @lordgrilo.bsky.social

Huge thanks for this fun collaboration to past and present members of the NPLab — Matteo Neri, @poetz.bsky.social, Davide Orsenigo, Matteo Diano, @marilyngatica.bsky.social, @lordgrilo.bsky.social 🙌🧠

14/ This work takes an important step toward a unified roadmap for navigating the complex, fragmented landscape of higher-order brain connectivity.

13/ In short: ✅ HOIs provide richer, biologically grounded insights into brain function ✅ The research landscape is now organized — synergy, redundancy, topology ✅ HOIs better capture traits; FC better captures states ✅ Tools are available for broader use (HOI toolbox, TDA code, etc.)

12/ One standout: topological scaffolds. They act as integrators — capturing synergy in nodes, and structure-function coupling at edges. They're central in linking connectivity patterns to behavior.

11/ Even dopamine levels relate: lower dopamine -> more flexible task-related reconfiguration.

10/ HOIs also help explain how the brain reconfigures during different tasks. Social/emotional tasks show more synergy, while sensorimotor ones lean on redundancy.

9/ This shows a key trade-off: 🔍 If you want to understand who a person is (trait-level): use HOIs ⚡ If you want to know what they're doing (state-level): FC is often enough

8/🧠 For task decoding, though, classic FC is still one of the top methods.

7/ When it comes to applications, HOIs show their power: 🎯 For brain fingerprinting (ID'ing individuals), HOI metrics outperform classical functional connectivity (FC)

6/ But there's more. These metrics also reflect the brain’s neurochemistry: • Redundant metrics correlate with metabolic maps • Synergistic & topological metrics align with receptor distributions

5/ Despite different math, rank differences of all HOI metrics align with the brain's core hierarchy: from sensory (unimodal) to associative (transmodal) cortex. This "HOI axis" reflects fundamental computational principles embedded in the brain’s layout. 🧭

4/ First big insight: HOI metrics fall into 3 categories: 🔴 Redundant: capture overlapping info (e.g., within sensory networks) 🔵 Synergistic: capture integrative info (e.g., across systems) 🟣 Topological: bridge the two, identifying mesoscale structures

3/ Yet with all these new tools — PhiID, O-information, PED, persistent homology, triangles, scaffolds — no one knew how they compared, what they captured, or when to use which. This paper tackles this directly with a comprehensive comparison across 10 HOI metrics.

2/ Brain models often focus on pairs of regions, but real interactions might involve groups acting together HOI methods aim to capture this, from detecting synergy and redundancy using different information-theoretic approaches to mapping topological cycles in brain networks.

🧵 1/ Over the past years, brain connectivity research has moved beyond simple pairwise interactions. A wide range of higher-order interaction (HOI) methods — from information theory to topological data analysis — have emerged. But the field is quite fragmented. Let's dive in. 🧠

🧠 Want to understand how different higher-order methods compare in brain connectivity analysis? Check out our new preprint — a fantastic collab with past & present NPL members @lordgrilo.bsky.social : 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A thread🧵

Our preprint is out and I couldn’t be more excited! 🔥 Huge thanks to such an incredible team 🙌🏻 @andreasantoro.bsky.social Matteo Neri, @poetz.bsky.social, Davide Orsenigo, Matteo Diano, @lordgrilo.bsky.social @nplab.bsky.social 👇👇👇

Linda Douw opening with strong lines: “when I met network theory, I was completely hooked. I thought, this is the way”. Oh yes, fellow Mandalore, this is the way.

📢 New preprint alert! With an incredible crew: Carlos Coronel @rherzoga.bsky.social & Matteo Neri We propose a computational framework for diversity-sensitive brain health combining: • Brain clocks • High-order interactions • 🧠 Whole-brain modeling 👇👇👇 www.authorea.com/users/825533...

A recent episode of @marketplace.org highlights the economic boost from post-pandemic urban growth. As @estebanmoro.bsky.social, Director of #SUNLab at @nunetsi.bsky.social, notes: nothing beats being around others “in terms of job creation, opportunities, and innovation.” 🎙️https://bit.ly/4mGSpox

@maximelca.bsky.social dropping the hard questions 😂😂 @netsciconf.bsky.social