🚨Open postdoc position 🚨supporting my upcoming project on non invasive vagus nerve stimulation for improvement of speech production and respiratory control in individuals post brain injury. Reach out with questions and interest!

It’s been a roller coaster of a year. At some point, I’ll post a by-the-numbers for the lab, but right now I’m going to take a step back and reset for the new year. I hope everyone is able to do the same as we prepare for 2026!

Career Advice | 10 Dos and Don’ts for Ph.D. Applications Common mistakes can undermine your chances for admission. https://bit.ly/442KytF #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

Good for you, MIT! Proud to have spent some of my postdoc years there.

Postdoc opening!! We’re looking for a postdoc to support our DoD funded study, using noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation and EEG to study speech in noise perception in veterans with TBI. Please share and reach out to start the conversation if interested! bit.ly/478e3ME

Congrats to @drsrishtin.bsky.social and team!!!

The world continues to make my heart hurt. To fill my cup and bring back some optimism, I’m excited to attend my favorite conference @snlmtg.bsky.social Search my last name to find the lab’s two EEG + dyslexia posters, one on musical training and one on inverted text processing.

Delighted that PINE Lab will be accepting applications for PhD students to start Fall 2026! Please share with applicants looking for developmental & neuroscience programs? Our website is updated with current studies, questions, and guidance about fit: www.plasticityinneurodevelopmentlab.com/join-us

Say it again.

In typical fashion, I couldn’t help myself and looked at the data from the first three participants in our new taVNS optimization study. The data fall exactly as I expected. I know, I know, WAY. TOO. SOON…but still kinda nice to have some validation of the hypothesis, right?

We now have a Society for the Neurobiology of Language Bluesky account @snlmtg.bsky.social! Follow for updates on the meeting. I'm really excited for our fantastic lineup of speakers! #SNL2025

The danger of the “at first I said nothing because they came for someone else…” policy. Eventually, they will come for everyone.

Another reason open science is important!

Grant funding still exists! After many weeks of delays, I’m so relieved and excited to share that we just received NOA on a 2-year DoD project to investigate speech in noise deficits in veterans with TBI, and explore non-invasive vagus nerve stim as an intervention. 🍾🎉

Officially feel like faculty. My #SSSR2025 talk is tomorrow morning and it’s still not done. Come see me present about rat models of dyslexia genes in the 10:30 symposium!

It’s been a rainy but beautiful welcome in Calgary! Attending SSSR? Come see my talk on Saturday in the 10:30 panel on white matter structure and reading development!!

Great to see our work on taVNS highlighted in this new article! Some exciting projects ongoing - can’t wait to share findings!

Never thought I’d see the day where I regularly watch c-span…yet here we are.

#JobPosting for a full-time OPS Laboratory Technician. This position will mainly support two projects, both of which evaluate the effect of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation on speech in noise perception. Please share! For more details, please see bit.ly/4jdiEjs

#Pitch perception deficits may interfere w/ complex #acoustic categorization & persist in some individuals w/ #dyslexia despite prior music experiences. on.asha.org/4moYaay @tmcentanni.bsky.social @sigperspectives.bsky.social @csdisseminate.bsky.social #AUDPeeps

Congratulations to lab PhD student, Delaney Kelemen, on the publication of her first first-author paper in JSLHR! She found that young adults with dyslexia performed worse than their typically developing peers on both simple and complex pitch perception tasks. 1/n

It always brightens my day when I get to pilot new things. Testing out our combined taVNS + EEG setup during a task so I can validate the artifact removal process. Now we just need the NOA for this project to officially come though….🤞🤞🤞

Applications for the MBI Gator Neuroscholars postdoc fellowship are due 7/13! I’d love to work with someone interested in non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation for communication or cognition. Please reach out if you’re interested in applying to work with me!

Neurons are so cool 🤓

The arcuate fasciculus = a key white-matter tract implicated in human language. A study of chimpanzees in @natcomms.nature.com links individual variation in anatomy & asymmetry of the tract to individual diffs in use of both communicative gestures & sounds under volitional orofacial motor control.👇🧪

Took a few minutes today to join my kids for a nap in the sun while working from home. Time well spent.

Lab PhD student Delaney Kelemen closed out PHHP Days with a great talk on her work on pitch perception in dyslexia. Her paper on this work was recently accepted at JSLHR!

First day of PHHP Days! Our two Honors students presented their work and killed it!!!

🚨 You can join our conversation about starting a lab as a new PI during (inter)national crises this Friday 4/18 at 1pm EST! Reply with your email here if you'd like the zoom link. This conversation is part of our Resources for Researchers talk series

Important neuroscience news: I finally got my nerdy brain tattoo!

Ten Simple Rules for Graduate Students journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Senator Cory Booker on the economic value of the NIH and what we stand to lose with the Trump administration destroying scientific research

These are their names. You may not agree with every action these people have ever made. But please recognize that this is ideological persecution, likely aided by digital surveillance evidence, and with no due process. 1/ Mahmoud Khalil (Columbia) (still detained) www.aclu.org/.../a-letter....

Another brick falls. This is not how you restore faith in science. This is how you give pseudoscience a seat at the table.

Lab outreach day at the Cade Museum’s community brain day! The students are doing live demos of brain waves using our portable EEG system.

Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.

🚨upcoming #postdoc job alert!! We are expecting NOA shortly for a new DoD grant focused on noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation and EEG for speech perception. A 1-2 year postdoc position will be funded by this award. Interested? Know someone who is? Please reach out! Official job posting coming!!

Got into the lab today to pilot something for a new project. In the midst of *waves hands*, it was exactly what I needed to ground me back to science and the love of it. It’ll be nice to have an experimental design challenge to focus my energy on for a little bit.

Does your research investigate how the brain communicates using language? Consider the Neurobiology of Language journal for your next submission. We are fully open access with reasonable APCs. Check out our latest papers direct.mit.edu/nol

Happened to a family friend’s daughter this cycle…

Remember in V for Vendetta, when they discovered that the government had created and unleashed a virus on their own people just so they could swoop in and be the heroes with the (lucrative) cure? Just saying.

Guess I won’t hold my breath for that grant application I submitted over the summer. 🤬

So honored to have been asked to lecture all day today at the G Paul Moore Symposium at UF. It was a long day, but an amazing one. Such a useful and timely reminder that science is an amazing job and Im lucky to be able to do what I do.

Very excited to share a new preprint from the LEAD lab on Inclusive Practices for fNIRS Research with Participants with Afro-Textured Hair, an amazing mixed methods study by Abria Simmons, @gavkhar-a.bsky.social & @elliektaylor.bsky.social! Check it out and share! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Not surprising since it is plainly unconstitutional

👀

Because we all need some cuteness to balance out the *waves hands*, here are my two girls napping in the sun. The gelding was off having a snack

I wish I could say I was surprised. Disheartened to see this mechanism apparently going away and worried about what will disappear next.

We luckily didn’t get the ice or snow predicted, but campus was closed half the day anyway. Can’t complain about being able to watch a research talk from home with a bulldog in my lap. Highly recommend.