💼 Job opening for a postdoctoral researcher specialising in gene-environment interplay at Amsterdam UMC to work with @aysuo.bsky.social and @dr-appie.bsky.social werkenbij.amsterdamumc.org/en/vacatures...

We’re excited to launch our discussion series Thinking Design! As part of the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026, we explore how design shapes perception, generates knowledge and influences social processes. More info: ae.mpg.de/ThinkingDesign-en

Of course, @gvallortigara.bsky.social is going to speak in Nijmegen, and I am not in town 😔 If you are ➡️ Thursday, 2 April 2026, 4 pm - 5 pm @dondersinst.bsky.social Lecture. Don't miss this opportunity!

Today's inspirational message:

in a sense I am an APS Fallen Star

When you know your supervisor may send your paper back "today or Monday"

Superb resource to study human brain development, out in @nature.com 🧪🧠 An atlas showing how patterns of functional connectivity between brain regions change from birth to old age “Functional hierarchy of the human neocortex across the lifespan” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Me & @aysuo.bsky.social are hiring a postdoc to study gene–environment interplay in health & social inequalities 🧬 You'll analyze genomic data as part of a collaboration with Uppsala & Oslo at @amsterdamumc.bsky.social (NL) werkenbij.amsterdamumc.org/en/vacatures... Please RT for karma points ♥️

Engaging and clear podcast from @hfsunde.bsky.social on what is assortative mating and why it matters 🎧

good morning welcome to hell here is your addictive game 100jumps.org

“Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science & poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or irresponsibility.” Ursula Le Guin 2014

I had a heritability joke, but it is still missing.

Set to become a classic 👌

I have a new PhD position available on any topic related to musicality or animal communication that aligns well with our current research programs. Deadline March 31: oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=795a... For more info about my Musicality and Bioacoustics group: oeaw.ac.at/en/ari/resea...

Yay! This week I started working at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt as a group leader. Lots of work ahead, but super exciting kind of work 🔥

We had a 'data forensics' lab meeting yesterday. We investigated everyone's close-to-submission datasets under the (false) assumption the data was faked & we had to find proof 🔍🧐 We found some mistakes & weirdnesses and it was such a good exercise in good data management! Highly recommend!

"If I say something, if I say something, if I say something after three times, you get irritated. But in music, we do that. You do that all the time. It’s always repetition. It’s nice." Another great Q&A with @musiccognition.bsky.social by @kristenfrench.bsky.social

"Where have the respondents gone? Perhaps we ate them all" Absolutely incredible title, 10/10, no questions asked.

The last four animated feature Oscar winners have been quite diverse picks now that Disney/Pixar has lost its stranglehold on the category

Excited to announce the release of The Human Genotype-Phenotype Map! * We processed 16k complex traits & 2.7M QTLs * Turned 49.3M significant colocalizations into 97k distinct groups * Upload your own GWAS to compare against all data Website: gpmap.opengwas.io Preprint: tinyurl.com/3ktsr9hw

“If I never heard music again, it wouldn’t be a particularly big loss” Musical anhedonia continues to intrigue, reminding us of the vast differences in our subjective experiences (Aka it’s okay not to like what everyone else seems to like)

Structural and functional brain asymmetry in relation to heterogeneous causes of situs inversus totalis. New paper by @meng-yun.bsky.social & al. with Nicole Ying Ting Ng, Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social , @clydefrancks.bsky.social doi.org/10.1007/s00429-026-03098-5

A beloved Oxford cinema is under threat from college expansion plans. Anyone who’s been will know how special it is. Join 10,000 supporters and sign the petition. www.change.org/p/save-the-u...

The 6x US memory champion – Nelson Dellis – can memorize a deck of cards in 40 seconds and knows the first 10K digits of pi. To figure out how, he let us peak inside his brain. Here is what we learned in our precision brain mapping study www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... youtube.com/shorts/MryMq...

❗ Two important announcements ❗ 1. Due to a large number of abstract submissions, the notifications of acceptance and travel funding, the 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 30.

🧠🧪🧵1/37 Our new paper on how pinniped (seal and sea lion) brains evolved to unlock vocal plasticity is this week's @science.org cover. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

32/37 We suggest a preliminary phylogeny (evolutionary map) for vocal learning brain traits in the pinnipeds. It starts with breathing adaptations that loosen restrictions on vocal plasticity. Then, in select species, more specific adaptations for vocal learning emerge.

2/37 I started daydreaming about this project as a graduate student over 15 years ago when working at the amazing Pinniped Lab at UC Santa Cruz (pinnipedlab.ucsc.edu) - so remember kids, write down your crazy-sounding science ideas, they may pay off in 1.5 decades or so ⏳ 👨‍🦳

🧵 on cool choices of image headers (and titles) all from @sashagusevposts.bsky.social's Substack 🔗 at the end 'Beneath the surface of the sum' Genetic interactions may look like the thing they deviate from Interaction (1964) by Julian Stanczak

"Through evolution, these capacities may have become integrated into a coherent system — a biological platform for organizing and appreciating patterned sound". Great essay by @musiccognition.bsky.social on the biological capacity that enables humans to perceive, produce, and enjoy music.

"Current findings—such as activation in the reward system—offer little insight into how these distinct affective responses are represented or computed." Lin et al. argue for a multidimensional, integrative science of aesthetic experience, moving away from end-state judgments

Douglas Adams' birthday, time to launch my new business. Cappuccinome, the coffeeshop of today. On entry you spit in a tube, the barista (a skilled bioinformatician) analyses the DNA, derives your innate taste preferences & delivers a cup of liquid that's almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee.

You were (very likely) born because your parents mated 😅 Title and sub-heading aside, great piece by @kristenfrench.bsky.social on the genetics of individual differences in sensitivity to music and art

Had legit fun being interviewed by Conor & Gabe about our study on the genetics of chills from art and music Jump in at minute 15 for loads of aesthetic chills chat

"Through evolution, these capacities may have become integrated into a coherent system — a biological platform for organizing and appreciating patterned sound". Great essay by @musiccognition.bsky.social on the biological capacity that enables humans to perceive, produce, and enjoy music.

𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻: 𝗠𝗮𝘅 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗸 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗪𝟮) An exciting opportunity for outstanding researchers ready to lead an independent research group and shape the future of multimodal language research. Learn more and apply here: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11. www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

Landscape with a rider (unfinished) - 1966 https://botfrens.com/collections/61/contents/20512

The @scilifelab.se Ancient DNA Unit is recruiting a (permanent) Research Engineer for planning user projects and generating #aDNA 🧬 data: Application deadline: March 25th 🧪🏺 www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

How does music become pleasurable? A nice article (in Italian) on recent research suggesting that musical pleasure comes from the interplay between the brain's auditory and reward centres, including our research on the genetics of music enjoyment www.ilpost.it/2025/08/13/p...

Well, look at that. My BBC documentary on the science of sound from years ago has just popped up on the BBC Earth Science channel. If you fancy some cool sound science in your day, here you go: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp_u...

Horizons and highways: Franco Fontana’s stunning photographic experiments – in pictures

In this new review in Nature Reviews Psychology our researchers Judith Holler and Anna K. Kuhlen argue that conversation is not simply one person speaking while another listens. It is more like a partnership between minds. www.mpi.nl/news/why-con...

ORIGINAL SIN comes out on Tuesday! If you’re in the US & want a signed copy, order from Black Pearl Books in the next week. Just be sure to note that you want it signed (& any instructions about the inscription) in the order notes at checkout. shop.blackpearlbookstore.com/item/ymASTSS...

Per protocol analysis strikes again! Folks, if you randomize but then don‘t analyze some of the people who got randomized (maybe because they didn’t adhere to instructions, maybe because they dropped out), randomization will no longer do all the heavy causal inference lifting.

A particular moment in my favourite Radiohead song always gives me goosebumps every time I play it. Turns out susceptibility to such “chills” (induced by music, poetry, art) varies between people & that genetic differences play a part. Check out our new paper, led by @giacomobignardi.bsky.social. 👇🧪

"what if English isn't the student's first language, why wouldn't they use google translate, claude, chatgpt etc". that's all good. as with much AI hate it's good to be specific: "written by ChatGPT" is v different to "written by the student with a bit of translation help" only one of those is OK

I have an opening for a staff scientist or bioinformatician in my group at the Sanger Institute (closing date 24 March). Our current projects focus on disentangling rare and common variant contributions to rare neurodevelopmental conditions and to neurodevelopmental and perinatal traits. 1/2