“I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.” 🤣🤣🤣 brilliant 👌🏽 open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...

A great resource! We've been using NSI to quality-control all of our recent data.

Happy to share that our paper on objective quality assessment for "precision" fMRI is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social A recap of what it does, what's new since the preprint, and code you can run on your own data. cell.com/neuron/fullt...

The Battle over the Constitution Has Spread to American Science. I'm out in the @theatlantic.com today about the new OMB proposed rule. It's just the longtime agenda of the the Supreme Court. US science and cancer cures now all depend on us picking up a fight with the Roberts Court.

Tremor is highly heterogeneous. Our new study in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social shows that rest and action tremor map to different networks within the motor cortex. By refining DBS contact selection, we can engage these circuits to optimize treatment for both. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Remarkable stability in functional brain networks over time!

A new Science study suggests variables linked to socioeconomic status—increased stress and reduced sleep—have strong relationships to brain structure and function in children. Brain differences observed are unrelated to genetic ancestry and may not be permanent. https://scim.ag/4opL5PF

Children living in areas with low socioeconomic opportunities have more tired and stressed brains, a new study finds

A new study found that the number one environmental factor influencing brain structure and function is the socioeconomic status of a child's family. www.statnews.com/2026/06/11/s...

Brain scans can predict a child's socioeconomic status better than they can predict the child’s IQ. #neuroskyence By @natmesanash.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...

Or perhaps a child’s SES better predicts their brain scans than their IQ does.

A study of more than 2,300 9- to 10-year-olds found that socioeconomic factors explained most differences in the preteens' brain development. n.pr/4xoA70O

Is zip code everything? A new study involving U.S. children found it influences brain function and structure—specifically, kids in lower socioeconomic opportunity areas had sleep deprived and stressed brains. New on @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/chil...

How can we acquire new knowledge and skills on a daily basis while remaining the same person? I'm excited to share our new preprint led by @hyejinjadelee.bsky.social & Ally Dworetsky tackling this question, just in time for #OHBM2026: doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇 #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky

This is one of the most socially important scientific findings I've ever been a part of. SES has a larger cross-sectional effect on brain function than any other variable. Prediction of IQ from brain data is actually mostly just predicting SES. Mind blowing.

In sum, SES dominates childhood brain organization. Zip code matters most. These findings have been at the forefront of my mind daily, with Darwin’s quote living rent free in my head: “if the misery of the poor not be caused by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great be our sin.”

This was evidence of shortcut learning, a well-known problem in machine learning & AI. Rather than models learning brain-IQ associations, they are learning links between the brain and SES. So much so that models trained to predict brain-IQ associations were better at predicting SES than IQ.

When the correlation between SES and IQ was r<0.1, brain-IQ prediction performance was poor (out of sample r < 0.1). This was not the case for varying the training sample by the p-factor. Brain-IQ predictions only performed well when IQ & SES were correlated in the training sample.

We first asked what happens if we control for SES in regression models? Tldr; the majority of brain-IQ associations became much weaker, so that 70% were no longer statistically significant. The strongest IQ associations were those most affected by SES.

The BWAS maps of SES, exposome, and IQ did not match those of known neurobiology related to higher-order cognition (fronto-parietal). Rather, they overlapped with arousal - norepinephrine receptors, sleep, & stimulant use.

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

Paying peer reviewers works. Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social: • 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews • ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript • no reduction in editor-assessed review quality • similar acceptance rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Andrew N. Van, Nico U.F. Dosenbach, et al: Frame-wise multi-echo distortion correction for superior functional MRI doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Excited to share our new preprint “Functional brain network correlates of pubertal timing and depressive symptoms in preadolescence” doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.22.727009 We examined how pubertal timing relates to whole-brain functional connectivity and depression risk in >9,000 youth (ABCD Study)

I assigned random gender/ethnicity labels to scientific abstracts from the literature and then asked Claude to do a thematic analysis. Claude identified a clinical versus computational split for female/male authors and a DEI focus for Black/URM authors. All in completely random data.

On second thought, the functional connectivity results make more sense. The electrically determined connections are a subset of the functional connectivity estimates. The correlation derived maps likely reflect recurrent connectivity of broader networks. Which is what a lot of us assume anyway.

New preprint as my first post! "Monosynaptic connections link functionally similar regions in human cortex." We use electrical stimulation + fMRI in epilepsy patients to map whole-brain monosynaptic connectivity at 42 cortical sites. doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n

This is one of the most exciting pieces of science I have had the privilege to be involved in, led by @rui-xu.bsky.social‬, Bob Desimone, and Mark Richardson: the discovery of actual long-range monosynaptic connections in the human brain! For example the FFA connects to the rTPJ, how cool is that?

A recent paper by Epp et al. in NN claimed that ~40% of reported BOLD findings could be misinterpreted. In our reanalysis, we identified several statistical issues that, in our view, undermine these conclusions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 👇 1/11

In a meta-analysis of 210 biomedical AI studies that statistically compared models under cross-validation, 97% used invalid statistical tests. Here's our new preprint doi.org/10.64898/202... led by @tianchu.bsky.social @hetuli.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social @nichols.bsky.social 1/N

Robust lesion network mapping reveals genuine symptom-specific networks https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.18.725812v1

Very excited about this project, led by @zachladwig.bsky.social We show that an individual’s lateral prefrontal cortex has reliable and highly detailed network organization missed in past group approaches. Full🧵 coming soon!

Ultrasound-mediated focal serotonin delivery causally modulates motivation in primates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.11.724324v1

There Is No Hard Problem of Consciousness www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-... #neuroscience

Since ChatGPT came online in late 2022, grant application numbers across 12 UK and EU funding bodies have increased by *57%*. For MSCA fellowships the number is *+142%*. I do believe that what we’re doing is insane and that we need to stop doing it IMMEDIATELY. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

A new organizing principle of the cortex - the patch-chain? "Patch-chains densely tile prefrontal cortex... patches of the same chain connect to the same striatal location." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Is the brain mainly a domain of chains?

Opposing BOLD signals and oxygen metabolism largely arise from statistical uncertainty in metabolic estimates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.21.719913v1

My thoughts on Director Bhattacharya's Fireside Chat at the NAM workshop (a long 🧵) Overall (1) He clarified what he said that NIH is doing with regard to improving replication. While these are concrete steps, they seem either naive or dependent of unproven technology. Time will tell. 1/30

In this framework, architectonics must not be ignored or de-emphasized, as they represent the fundamental processing steps of cortical function that interact to process information. The fact that distinct processing streams share a processing step may provide critical clues about an area’s function.

I love this one. This might be the one i've been searching for. I've been saying the brain isn't organized alphabetically, it's organized by topic ... and just get stares. I love object-oriented. ... & Douglas Hofstadter argues that analogies are understanding www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Evidence for repeating chains of function in cortex, especially PFC! ⛓️⛓️🧠

Incredible shots of the exchange between Rep. AOC and RFK, Jr. at today’s congressional hearing. (image credit: WSJ reporter @lizessleywhyte.bsky.social)

Function & cytoarchitecture don't overlap ... they're orthogonal. Prefrontal cortex is plastered with chains of functional patches previously mostly known from face processing. Why multi-modal parcellations are wrong ... and other insights hidden by group-averaging of fMRI data. great explainer👇🏻

This is going to be my conversation starter at #ohbm2026 @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

I always assumed that brain function had to line up with cytoarchitectonics. It turns out I was wrong. Human cortex, especially PFC, is tiled by chains of functional patches that subdivide and interlink architectonic areas into parallel processing streams. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣 📣 I am beyond excited to announce I will be joining the Yale Dept. of Psychology as an Assistant Professor in July 2027! Deepest gratitude to my colleagues and mentors, without whom this would not have been possible. More to come—I'll be recruiting students and hiring staff this coming year!