I am thrilled about this new preprint of ours! Using 7T fMRI of the spinal cord we uncover two different spinal response components – phasic and tonic heat responses – that map differentially onto superficial and deep layers of the dorsal horn! 🔥Long thread upcoming!🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Almost missed that this is out! Former postdoc Liz Necka led this long overdue FMRI study formally comparing two types of pain modulation: Placebo analgesia & predictive cues. TLDR: these are NOT the same! Placebo analgesia reduced cue effects, & brain mechanisms were nearly all dissociable. 1/4

The first study from my postdoc is now up as a preprint 👏🏻 we combined #EEG and #VR in a cool task (feat. 🦊) finding that lateralised ongoing pain affects predictive responses to phasic pain on the same side of the body. #Neuroskyence #cogsci #AcademicSky #PainResearch @benosaka.bsky.social

US Wissenschaftler*innen nach Europa locken? Besser: Strukturen in den USA solidarisch kritisieren und Bedingungen hier gründlich verändern. Oder: Den Text von @drkeichhorn.bsky.social lesen. Die argumentiert differenzierter.

Here is a recap of the Ukraine situation, for those choosing to reject propaganda and continue seeking truth: December 1994, Ukraine agrees to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for security guarantees from the US, UK, France, China and Russia.

We offer two PhD positions in Pain Neuroscience and Non-invasive neuromodulation. The positions are at the PainLabMunich (painlabmunich.de) and will be part of the EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network FRESCO4NoPain. See www.cnap.hst.aau.dk/fresco4nopai... for details.

Multimodal thalamus by Alex John and team! We found two axes organizing nuclei and linked this to microstructure and core-matrix models. Thanks to reviewers and coauthors for help and support and ideas for the Thalnado project www.nature.com/articles/s42...

EPISeg: Automated segmentation of the spinal cord on echo planar images using open-access multi-center data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.07.631402v1

That! I have also seen cases of papers that dumped DCM methods onto their existing fMRI data without a well-defined question.. using it to infer just any directionality and in too large model spaces, giving no specific insight. The strengths of the method are definitely elsewhere.

That's why I think we should go in the opposite direction. Empower junior scientists. Don't make junior PIs beg for grant funding in competitions decided by the opinions of senior scientists. Don't make them postdocs subordinate to their supervisors.

I posted the last version of this too hastily. I wasn't satisfied with the art so I added more yeast. Now I think I'm done with it.

New paper together with @tilmanstephani.bsky.social, @Emma Bailey, @Merve Kaptan, @Lisa-Marie Pohle, @Ulrike Horn, @André Mouraux, @Burkhard Maess, @Arno Villringer, @Vadim Nikulin, and @Falk Eippert. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/2