New @maxplanck.de study: We looked for left-right differences of gene expression and cell-type abundances in the brains of MICE 🐭using Xenium @10xgenomics.bsky.social. Possible clues to how functional brain asymmetry is supported !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Short thread below ⬇️

𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝘄𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Spatially distributed and regionally unbound cellular resolution brain-wide processing loops in mice 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀? Dynamical processing winding through most brain regions. Looks like a must read. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence

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.

Emergence of genetic variants linked to brain and cognitive traits in human evolution academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

💥🧠🧬Finally out!! Our new paper on the overlapping genetic basis of brain structures and psychiatric disorders has been published in Nature Mental Health. The full list of shared genetic loci is also available online. Thank you so much, Aaron and all co-authors. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️

Fascinating study suggests that left-right differences in the fly brain arise from asymmetrical twist of neurons www.biorxiv.org/node/4751792... Might also be true for human brains as we suggested here www.nature.com/articles/s41... after implicating microtubules in human structural brain asymmetry

Terrific new preprint charting structural brain asymmetry across the human lifespan By @aarona-b.bsky.social and collaborators 🧪🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out our latest work co-led by @dcsoto.bsky.social and @jmuribescr.bsky.social identifying hundreds of human duplicated gene families using the new T2T-CHM13 assembly, with a focus on those potentially contributing to brain evolution 🧪: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lTQtL7PXu...

Nobel prize winner loses Dutch nationality...

🎥🌍 Over 1,000 neuroscience talks now free on YouTube and published at @apertureohbm.bsky.social. 🧠 “Now anyone, anywhere can binge-watch brain science like a box set,” says @stephforkel.bsky.social: www.ru.nl/en/donders-i... @alfiewearn.bsky.social @sitek.bsky.social @sofievalk.bsky.social

Plus, we've begun to uncover how DNA variants contribute to connectivity of language circuits in the human brain, via largescale genomic analyses of resting-state functional neuroimaging data. Check out this @commsbio.nature.com paper by @jsamelink.bsky.social @clydefrancks.bsky.social & co. 🧬🧠🧪7/n

Ending the thread with one last illustration of novel avenues opened up by genomics of language-/reading-related traits. In a recent Science Advances paper, @clydefrancks.bsky.social's lab identified associations of dyslexia-disposing DNA variants with various aspects of human brain structure. 🧬🧠8/8

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...

Many congratulations to former member of my research group @zhiqiangsha.bsky.social , now setting up his own group in South Carolina! ⬇️

'A double-blind study was designed, in which the same set of research proposals and referee reports were assessed by two different committees.' I wonder how reproducible would be the funding decisions if different referees were involved, not only different committees? www.nwo.nl/en/news/nwo-...

Rare ‘ambidextrous’ protein breaks rules of handedness www.nature.com/articles/d41...

If you are interested in laterality and left-handedness, have a look at the second edition of „The lateralized brain“ 🧠 which came out in 2024: www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780323...

Presented my latest #PhD work at #BioSB2025 to the Dutch bioinformatics community. Had a great time connecting with all my colleagues! #imaging #language #genomics #brain

There are European and Global postdoctoral fellowships ⬇️

The call for MSCA postdoctoral fellowships is open until 10 September marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post... so please be in touch if you are interested in neuroimaging genomics and see a possible fit with my group in the Netherlands

New fully open access article published in @tandfresearch.bsky.social Laterality: „Limb preferences in non-human vertebrates: A new decade“ - After more than 10 years we give an update on our 2013 paper on limb preferences across vertebrates! Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Do mice🐭 show molecular and cellular differences between the left and right sides of their brains? If so they could be helpful models to understand brain asymmetry in human health and disease. Danielle Houwing will present our results using @10xgenomics.bsky.social Xenium data at NWO Life conference

Awesome news I think: Regeneron buy 23andMe investor.regeneron.com/news-release... HT @michelnivard.bsky.social

Are the asymmetries of body and brain linked [email protected] will present our latest work on the genetics of visceral organ asymmetry in relation to functional brain laterality at #ESHG2025 in Milan this weekend. Stop by his poster to find out!

Brain asymmetry in adolescence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

This is about NHANES, a great openly available study, the same dynamic is seen with Mendelian Randomization. I am reminded of the line: “Strange game, the only way to win is not to play”… the game being rigged is “peer reviewed publications” and we don’t have a consensus on abandoning those….

Great @nature.com paper on the early stages of human cortical development, led by @qianxuyu.bsky.social from C. Walsh’s lab, in collaboration with @drmingyaoli.bsky.social A wonderful new resource to probe area & layer specification 🧪🧠🧬

How Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power neurosciencenews.com/brain-hemisp... #neuroscience

Our gene discovery project on age at onset of walking is out today! Find the paper here www.nature.com/articles/s41... Huge thanks to the cohorts, collaborators & coauthors, in particular first author Dr Anna Gui 1/n

Development of functional differences between left and right auditory cortex in the mouse brain rdcu.be/ekRqR #laterality

The message here is that even when individual variation in a human feature seems simple on the surface, it’s not a guide to the genetics that lies beneath. Take right- vs left-handedness. When I began my career in genetics in the 1990’s, it was common to hear talk of “the gene for handedness”. 8/n

Non-right-handedness associated with various different diagnoses and other traits, from psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... @ocklenburg.bsky.social

Delighted to share our new preprint, the outcome of many years of collaborative work with Giuseppe Testa’s group, both at the bench & in front of the computer, probing human brain evolution using organoids. We tried something cool, and learned a lot 🧪🧫🧠🧬 [follow 🧵] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hard copy arrived!

Pleased to share new work from our group, led by PhD student Edward He. Edward joined the group as a summer student interested in the genetics of resting state functional connectivity, measured using graph networks. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hemispheric Asymmetry of Tau Pathology is Related to Asymmetric Amyloid Deposition in Alzheimer’s Disease www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper! Cognitive independence and interactions between cerebral hemispheres doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroscience

14T human scanner in the works ... Strongest MRI scanner in the world will be built in the Netherlands | Radboud University www.ru.nl/en/research/...

The molecular and cellular basis of human brain lateralization. Latest paper from @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social led by @loiclabache.bsky.social. @rutgersbhi.bsky.social, @cahbir.bsky.social

Increasing prevalence of autism is due, in part, to changing diagnoses www.psu.edu/news/researc... - many cases of what used to be called 'intellectual disability' are now being diagnosed as 'autism'

Article for secondary school kids about our research on genes, brains and #DYSLEXIA Link: whatayear.org/stories/the-... By Rebecca Kranz and Andrea Gwosdow

The more jargon you have in your paper the less citations you'll get. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

New article in @naturementalhealth.bsky.social with Annakarina Mundorf: Addressing the oversight of hemispheric differences in psychiatry research www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Nice to receive lovely gifts from China as PhD student Chenghui Zhang arrives for a 1-year research visit from Xiangzhen Kong's group at Zhejiang Uni, digging further into brain asymmetry and genetics!

Always thought we should use connectivity blueprints to investigate differences between human, chimpanzee, and macaque brains? www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... For Katherine Bryant’s latest masterpiece.

Chapter on ''Large-scale genetic mapping for human brain asymmetry' accessible here: tinyurl.com/wr4abt9r

Large-scale genetic mapping for human brain asymmetry. Chapter by @zhiqiangsha.bsky.social & @clydefrancks.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-443-15646-5.00029-4 Paper: tinyurl.com/wr4abt9r

Hot off the press: my review of Csaba Szabo's book Unreliable; deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/03/book...