Targeting the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN) rather than motor regions doubles efficacy of TMS treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Seems that various DBS targets for Parkinson’s are selectively connected to the SCAN rather than effector-specific motor regions.🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The highlight of my week was the publication of "Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder" in @nature.com. It's a great paper that shows how conceptual changes in fundamental neuroscience - the discovery of SCAN - can improve treatment 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m very excited about this new work describing the specific cortical-striatal circuits that are altered in Parkinson’s Disease and that should be targeted for optimal PD treatment. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Michael Okun's take on the SCAN Parkinson's story: www.linkedin.com/posts/michae...

Happy to share a short but super cool video that gives a quick overview of our Nature paper on the somato-cognitive action of netwokr in Parkinson's disease www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Parkinson's disease affects over 10 million people worldwide. A new study led by WashU Medicine researchers is paving the way for more personalized, non-invasive treatment, tackling this neurological disorder at its root. @ndosenbach.bsky.social medicine.washu.edu/news/brain-n...

It’s time to rethink Parkinson’s disease. Our work reframes PD as a disorder of the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN), and shows that normalizing SCAN connectivity represents a shared mechanism across diverse effective therapies. rdcu.be/e2n4t @ndosenbach.bsky.social @gordonneuro.bsky.social

Non-invasive brain surface stimulation targeting personalized SCAN alleviated symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease. See the videos below.(www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

This 👇is the last revolution. We are working on the next one - and need your help. HIRING: Postdoc at NYU (Center for Psychedelic Medicine). Looking for strong neuroimaging, human subjects experience, a publication track record, and top scientistiness. Send CV to [email protected]

A specific brain network, the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN), has been identified as central to Parkinson's disease, offering new potential for targeted, noninvasive therapies.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... the original research article ... no paywall

An “extraordinary” brain network discovery shows that Parkinson’s disease may not be a movement disorder after all

A recently discovered brain network that links cognition and actions may have an important role in Parkinson’s disease and could improve its treatment, according to a study in Nature. go.nature.com/49VBuKI #Neuroskyence 🧪

Scientists just discovered a key brain network affected by Parkinson’s disease. The finding could change how doctors understand symptoms and lead to better treatments. 🧠 bit.ly/4qdpLMf

A recently discovered brain network that links cognition (thinking) and actions may have an important role in Parkinson’s disease and could improve its treatment, according to a study published in Nature: spklr.io/63320DMwOi #Neuroscience #Neuroskyence #Parkinsons 🧠 🧪

Check out our new work on the relationship between glioma and system-level functional networks! We identify that nearly all gliomas localize within a common brain functional network, Action-Mode Network (AMN) . biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697608v1

This is genuinely one of the most surprising neuroscience findings I've seen in years. Months after Weigang and Hesheng first showed me this result, I'm still not sure I've wrapped my head around what it means. But I do think it may represent a paradigm shift for research into this terrible disease.

This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!

Appreciate the excellent (as usual) science reporting by NPR's Jon Hamilton highlighting our work showing stimulants affect arousal and reward, without directly affecting the brain's attention networks! www.npr.org/2025/12/24/n... Read the whole story in Cell doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

It's about what your brain considers drudgery ... tedium ... boring; not your attention. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Stimulant drugs (Ritalin) wake you up & boost reward anticipation, they don't make you pay attention better. Since they help with ADHD, it begs the question ... is that a misnomer?

This is your brain on Ritalin. Got your attention? Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) do, but not in the way you might think. They don't act directly on the brain’s attention systems! Find out what's really happening in @cellpress.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Stimulant medications for ADHD primarily activate brain regions linked to reward and wakefulness, rather than directly targeting attention circuits, suggesting alertness and motivation play key roles. doi.org/hbgxbh

What if we've misunderstood how ADHD stimulants work? WashU Medicine brain imaging and child neurology teams joined forces to uncover where in the brain these drugs act — knowledge that could improve how attention disorders are treated. medicine.washu.edu/news/stimula...

We used Network Level Analysis @muriahwheelock.bsky.social to assess relative stimulant-related changes in attention, arousal, and reward networks. Attention was the least changed, arousal and reward the most. The effects on arousal were so great, stimulants negated the brain effects of drowsiness!

Check out these extremely interesting new findings from @benjaminkay.bsky.social. This has very much changed how I think about ADHD medication and stimulants in general.

as well as research articles on how stimulant medications affect arousal and reward rather than attention networks www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

This is the genius of the Portland protests - they make the claims of lawlessness look not just wrong, but comical

Is resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), cortical thickness (CT), or cortical volume more effective at capturing sex and gender differences in the brains of preadolescents? Check out our new article (doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...) now out in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.

Let's continue to build solidarity by peacefully opposing our tyrant-in-chief at No Kings Day 2.0 on October 18. There are currently over 2,000 events planned nationwide. More details here: https://www.nokings.org

Ever wondered if your interesting brain-behavior correlation was over- or under-estimated due to head motion, but were afraid to ask? We’ve created a motion impact score for detecting spurious brain-behavior associations, now available in Nature Communications! doi.org/10.1038/s414...

It took me 2 minutes to write about how this proposed rule would eliminate all foreign PhD students, who are a critical part of US science and technology, and drive US innovation and economic growth

It is really disheartening to see the men who are in charge of science and healthcare in the United States stand before us all and spew misinformation about autism. To claim that genetic background isn’t the overwhelming contributor to autism is egregious.

The FDA is taking their reviews of new drugs behind closed doors, with Director Marty Makary replacing vetted and publicly transparent deliberations with "panels of handpicked scientists who support his views." This is a miscarriage of science, and a betrayal of public trust in service of MAHA.

Is precision functional brain imaging in babies possible? YES! We show this in not one but two new preprints out of WashU and @umn-midb.bsky.social! 1️⃣: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 2️⃣: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🐣👶🧠

NIMH Data Archive is now also imposing NIST/ISO requirements (like NBDC). Not sure how many labs actually have the resources to meet these requirements. Is the golden era of open brain imaging data basically over?

Great write up of our @nature.com study by @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed? Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7 🧵1/18

"Simple" tools in the same loop as the experiment along with thoughtful, common sense approaches (like focusing on individuals instead of consortia). That's really powerful. That's how you translate. And there aren't a lot of groups that do all of experiment and tools and theory well. 7/

Be honest. You've written the same thing a dozen times. But in my defense, I felt like I did my part -- wrote about a tool. Made some observation. Now let other people figure out how to apply it. Fin [at least my contribution]. That's such a copout! How do we get away with saying these things? 3/

But every one of those papers has the same throwaway statement somewhere. It goes sort of like this: "in principle, this tool could be used in future studies for biomarkers or for helping better understand [your favorite disorder]." Those statements are trite and essentially meaningless. 2/

I've been thinking a lot about the preprint in terms of my own career. I grew up academically in computational labs. My papers were abstract early on and they only got more abstract as I progressed. The model was: find a new exciting mathematical tool. Apply it to brain imaging data. Write it up. 1/

A truly spectacular demonstration of the medical potential of precision mapping an individual patient's brain. I am so excited to be part of this work!

Precision Functional Mapping (PFM). 8 yrs ago some told us it wasn't interesting. Now it's helping cure depression as part of PACE (Personalized Adaptive Cortical Electro-stimulation), ... commercialized by @turingmedical.bsky.social. osf.io/preprints/ps... www.cell.com/neuron/comme...

This is the #Neurosurgeon who perfected the process to integrate seamlessly into typical workflows. Driving the work in both depression and pain… #AllHandsOnDeck 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

This is the future. The reality of biological #psychiatry. We listen to the patient, create a personalized map of their brain, use algorithms to disrupt stuck networks, and adapt the stimulation over time while continuing our quest to understand those networks.

From 30+ years of suffering to sustained relief thanks to personalized brain maps + adaptive stimulation PACE – an approach for a personalized brain pacemaker Insights on how decades of basic science in fMRI and cognitive science can lead to real breakthroughs in medicine

I still get chills Meet Mike *30+ years severe depression *first hospitalized @ 13y *20 meds *3 rounds of ECT *2 near-fatal suicide attempts Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE see videos, read paper, follow thread doi.org/10.31234/osf...

The language 🧠 areas are selective for language relative to many forms of reasoning (arithmetic, social, semantic, etc.). @hopekean.bsky.social has now shown that even formal logical reasoning—the domain that is perhaps the closest to language—neither engages nor requires the language system!

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...