Biggest, potentially most important grant of my career submitted! what a relief. Time to have some fun!

Well that is new. We submitted a review article after a successful presubmission inquiry, only to be promptly desk rejected without review. I guess they changed their minds...

Slay the Spire 2 is so good. Been having a BLAST in multiplayer with my bestie. It’s not a game where my impulsivity pays dividends but it’s super fun to think about.

Finally ready to submit. Such a terrifically exciting application. We built a really unique network spanning metabolism, psychiatry, and neuroscience. If we get this it will take me into some fascinating new research domains. I truly enjoyed the deep dive into the metabolic and comorbidity lit! 🔥 🤞

The attention-modulated responses are summed across color-tuned cells, leading to a spatial priority map. This map is used as a probability distribution from which a stimulus is selected. The model then receives reward feedback based on its choice & updates its internal value estimates accordingly.

Uncovering the embodied dimension of the wandering mind | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New preprint from my lab! We study how reinforcement learning & selective attention interact. To do so, we built a set of models describing different ways that value & reward prediction error can modulate top-down attention. We compare model outcomes to monkey data from a color value learning task

Ok, this new brain mapping technique is kinda bonkers. They used RNA barcodes to map connections between neurons with single-synapse precision. Mapped over 1,000 neurons in mice, found new links. 🤯

My first foray into explicitly trying to bridge Marr’s levels, with @bealebrains.bsky.social. Inspired by Hahn and Wei’s models (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38360947/), we wondered how the brain could instantiate sensory inference with efficient /decoding/ properties. 1/

Another new one from the lab in J Neurosci: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Evidence accumulation is a core principle by which brains convert information into decisions. But what happens when the evidence the brain needs can't be directly read from an external stimulus or memory? 1/N

Interoceptive autonomic regulation in typical development and autism spectrum disorder: A computational model integrating multiple physiological systems www.biorxiv.org/node/5254336...

Have been in a deep hyperfocus for weeks preparing this NNF-LF brain body grant. Proud of our work, eager to finally submit and return to earth. The pushed work backlog is going to be immense. So many emails to address... Still, nice to be able to take the luxury of such deep focus.

GastroPy is now out in early beta! Please to share our Python toolbox for electrogastrography and stomach-brain coupling analyses. It includes tools for cleaning, visualising, and analysing EGG data, plus fMRI stomach-brain coupling workflows. Docs, code, and preprint below. osf.io/preprints/ps...

New discovery! Spoiler alert: Neural dynamics are key. Evidence for predictive computations in a brain hierarchy during a visual search task doi.org/10.64898/202... Work led by @pinotsislab.bsky.social #neuroscience

We develop a new TMS targeting algorithm and test it in an open label trial in a treatment-resistant depression population with high comorbidities. Preprints by @rubykong92.bsky.social Phern-Chern Tor 1. doi.org/10.1101/2025... 2. doi.org/10.64898/202... Our new approach ...

Really excited about our new work on aphasia! Even in fairly profound aphasia, we can recover semantic maps through visual stimuli and use them to decode language. This is a big step! Language BCIs in aphasia might be possible!

Interesting new preprint from UK Biobank data on blood biomarkers in psychiatry. In ~47,500 people, plasma NfL was modestly elevated in bipolar and depressive disorders, while GFAP was largely unchanged. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Out now in @natcomms.nature.com, our latest from @bodybrainbehaviour.bsky.social: Visual perception, oscillatory excitability markers, and network connectivity are modulated by the breathing rhythm - depending on how much you know about the stimulus. #brainbody #neuroskyence

1/8. New preprint! ✨ How spontaneous is spontaneous behavior? 🧠🐭 We found that whole-brain fUSi signals predicted spontaneous behavioral transitions seconds in advance. Inhibiting one node of this transition-prone state, the medial septum, facilitated switching! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Using time-resolved EEG/MEG decoding?🧠 Here’s a new approach! No feature engineering (decode from raw signals), but capturing info that standard decoding often misses (oscillatory/aperiodic activity, connectivity). Lightweight, INTERPRETABLE, and easy to use. (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Neural circuits encode prior knowledge of temporal statistics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just out! Expectations modulate stimulus-evoked recurrent, but not feedforward, processing, and this is attention-dependent. NMDA-dependent feedback specifically supports perceptual integration (illusory contours), rather than mediating expectations (base rate). www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Interesting new paper from @mtsakiris.bsky.social and colleaugues validating a new fully remote method of adjustment for heart rate estimation against our task and several others. Fascinating! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

An international mega-analysis of psychedelic drug effects on brain circuit function idp.nature.com/authorize?re...

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Zhishun Wang, Jack Grinband, et al: MEPrep: A robust pipeline for multi-echo fMRI denoising and preprocessing doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

New paper (with lots of cute animal videos!) Ever watch your dog "run" while asleep and wonder what’s going on in their brain? In Current Bio we suggest that those twitches aren't just leaky dreams—they’re a vital maintenance system for the most precise movements www.cell.com/current-biol...

This paper has been a long time coming. Instead of reanalyzing the same old resting-state fMRI datasets, we combined nearly all datasets around the world. Note that we didn't exactly find indisputable evidence for "default mode network disintegration." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My latest feature for @sciam.bsky.social explores the research connecting problems with interoception to a wide variety of mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders, eating disorders, & PTSD. This work is ultimately circling in on a central message: the body & mind are inextricably intertwined.

Journal Club - Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Breathing seems to break down into separable parts: sensing, interpreting, and feeling, each linked to different brain systems. In our Journal Club on Nikolova et al. (2025), we explore how this helps explain why the same breath can feel so different across people. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Appreciate this clear coverage of our “body-wandering” paper in Science News. www.sciencenews.org/article/mind...

🧠 Focused ultrasound changes emotional processing 🔊 In a new study published in Neuron today, we stimulated the human amygdala using transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) and show it plays a causal role in detecting and resolving emotional ambiguity.

I think this is a very powerful example of how 'the language network' comes about (or doesn't). See our paper on why we think 'the language network' is widely distributed in the brain: pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i... (same pic of simulation posted below w/ white background for those who use dark mode)

Very happy our first paper using ultrasound stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the human amygdala (BLA) got out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social today! 🎉🥳🔊Great FUN with co-first authors @mirunmigyu.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social in @mkflugge.bsky.social 's lab! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What makes a body feel like our own? The sense of body ownership is a core aspect of self-awareness, and it depends on the integration of multiple sensory signals. What role do visual predictions play in body ownership? Check out our new paper in Royal Society Open Science: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Preprint out arguing that we should build the techology to translate (compile) molecularly annotated connectomes into dynamics. I think this is incredibly important. arxiv.org/abs/2603.25713

New paper out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social 🎉 What determines contextual modulation in V1? Why does the visual surround sometimes facilitate and sometimes suppress a neuron's response to its preferred stimulus?

🥁🎉The Psychosis Collective proudly presents our first preprint 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐳𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬-𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝘈 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴 starring Le He & Harriet Feldman www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We wanted to understand how antipsychotics work. Thread🧵

Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron! Here is a download link (free for 50 days): authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH... Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social 🧵

I have been deep in an intensive hyper focus over a mission critical grant deadline. So I am afraid if you are waiting on me, it will be until after Easter. Now we go camping to let off some steam and enjoy Nature!

Just hatched: the first egg-cellent paper from @carvalhosantosz.bsky.social lab! 🥚🪰 A beautiful ovaries-to-behavior axis: Stalled egg production = a drop in Dilp8. This releases the protein appetite brake, driving the fly to eat yeast to unblock the system. biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The recording of Mel Goodale's talk at the MIT Consciousness Club is now available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kThw....

@jhennig.bsky.social has shown that dopamine exerts a real-time effect on conditioned responding, beyond its role in learning: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Another indication that dopamine is more than a learning signal! A joint effort with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social and @mhburrell.bsky.social.

Can your brain's white matter proxies of inflammation re-identify you like a fingerprint? Turns out: yes, and we used this to psychometrically evaluate diffusion basis spectrum imaging and to detect depression-related changes in the cingulate bundle. #neuroskyence 🩺 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Wait… localized norepinephrine transients in the awake visual cortex?! Who would have guessed this neuromodulatory signal is that spatially precise, right where visual processing is happening. Brain state control just got a lot more local. @ruedigersarah.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In Denmark, strict but powerful registry systems let you recruit entire diagnostic populations via national registers and e-Boks. This is often used for surveys, but has anyone managed to run an experience sampling study this way?

Do you censor high motion frames in fMRI? In two preprints by @twktan.bsky.social @mandymejia.bsky.social, we find that we may be censoring too much! doi.org/10.64898/202... arxiv.org/html/2603.07... Strict censoring leads to worse personalized TMS targets than no censoring, even with high motion!

Interesting work on “body-wandering” linking mind-wandering to interoceptive dynamics. It also resonates for me with #microphenomenological findings on evocation and sensorimotor re-enactment.

New paper in PNAS! When the mind wanders, it often drifts to the body. We call this "body-wandering". These thoughts are often negative, but are associated with reduced ADHD & depression symptoms, driven by a distinct interoceptive-allostatic brain signature. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123

Today in Nature Neuroscience we have published our exploration of neocortical development leveraging 100's of public datasets. You can interrogate the entire compendium of data at nemoanalytics.org/landing/neoc... and read the paper at www.nature.com/articles/s41....