In the early years of my PhD I remember being asked if we'd ever treat or cure diseases like HIV or Huntington's. I remember saying maybe, but not knowing if I believed. Seeing research pay off as real impact on human lives is - incredible. www.bbc.com/news/article... www.bbc.com/news/article...

This is the list of NIH ICs which lack permanent Directors. It will be very interesting to see who is willing to take the roles, assuming NIH tries to fill the positions. (NIMH has an active search)

A spatially resolved transcriptomic atlas of the primate amygdala (human, macaque, and baboon) now out in Science Advances (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). The amygdala contains 32 types of neurons with many neuron types specific to particular subdivisions. Lots of updates from the preprint!

For chemist Kris Hansen, 3M was a family affair; her father was a creator of the company’s N95 face masks. Yet, after she found 3M’s forever chemicals in human blood, the company repeatedly doubted her work and stopped her research on the chemicals. (Published May 2024) By @fastlerner.bsky.social

Is it time to put rest to rest? A great article by @esfinn.bsky.social , which cleverly lays out some unfound assumptions in the field of and an integrated way forward: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... It should be required reading for anyone using #resting-state or task-based #fMRI!

Thanks @thetransmitter.bsky.social & @franciscorr25.bsky.social for featuring my lab in the "Liftoff" series!

The field of human neuroscience particularly benefits from studies conducted in large, diverse cohorts of participants, which produce findings that better generalize to the entire global population, writes @lucinauddin.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/funding/inte...

“Supporters of the proposal said it would effectively create a state version of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, two of the nation’s largest institutional funders of scientific and public health research.” 🧪 #giftarticle

Amazing. Hopefully they replicate NIH/NSF’s peer review process, which is the core magic of what makes US science work so well. While I’m at it, the abundance people are wrong about NIH not being high-risk. So is Joe Lonsdale: he’s naive, at best, about US science.

The Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge has a tenure-track position for a neuroscientist studying brain function across the life span in nonhuman animals. Join a terrific community of researchers in a beautiful part of the country.🧠🧪 Re-post uleth.peopleadmin.ca/postings/8586

🧠 New preprint: Why do deep neural networks predict brain responses so well? We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics. 📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Our exciting new preprint emphasizing the role of texture/local statistics in brain-DNN alignment (for EEG), online now!

Variance partitioning is used to quantify the overlap of two models. Over the years, I have found that this can be a very confusing and misleading concept. So we finally we decided to write a short blog to explain why. @martinhebart.bsky.social @gallantlab.org diedrichsenlab.org/BrainDataSci...

This looks like a potential death knell for the strict modularity assumption of cognitive neuroscience.

About this Florida vaccine story: When they were little - 1 yr and 3 1/2 - my two older boys, who’d had all their shots, got whooping cough. We asked their pediatrician what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been vaccinated. “Oh, they’d have died.”

It’s been a journey! I’m thrilled my book with @kevinh-phd.bsky.social is finally coming out this month! @barnesandnoble.com is offering 25% off pre-orders for FOOD INTELLIGENCE. Place your order at BN.com between now and Friday with code PREORDER25 #BNPreorder www.barnesandnoble.com/w/food-intel...

Many moons ago, @kevinh-phd.bsky.social and I talked about a book we wished existed. No fads, no weight loss hacks, no fear-mongering -- just the science of how food works in your body. Thrilled to share that we wrote it! Out September 23, pre-oder here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671334...

I'm accepting a phd student for this upcoming cycle! Happy to chat with anyone interested in numerical cognition, spatial cognition, mental rotation, intuitive physics, etc. Behavior and/or fMRI. You can find my contact info and more info about the lab at www.auletlab.com

I love looking at this graph, showing it to my students, and sharing it on social media, even though it unerringly brings out the trolls. This is the efficacy curve of Pfizer's mRNA COVID vaccine. This, people, is what ended the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic. Despite what RFK Jr says.

My quote of the day Nobody ever thanks you for saving them from the disease they didn't know they were going to get. William Foege

New fMRI study shows the hippocampus signals mismatches only when our expectations are based on episodic memories — not general knowledge. Challenges theories of the hippocampus as a domain-general comparator. We also explore how brain networks respond to surprise: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We have a decades of scholarship on how pro-democracy forces win in competitive authoritarian systems: they form a united opposition that brings together people with otherwise profound political disagreements.

"Pediatric Brain Cancer Trial Group to Be Phased Out" "A network of hospitals and cancer centers dedicated to early phase trials of novel treatments will no longer receive federal funding." 🎁🔗 Nina Agrawal for @nytimes.com

Survey of 813 scientists finds that Bluesky is the more useful social media platform for professional scientists. As anecdotal support, this journal article itself is references by 2731 Bluesky users and has 43 X posts (Altmetrics data, when posting this). #sciencesky #academicsky #science

Quantifying memory recall is hard! Luckily, natural language processing (incl. #LLMs) offers new, automated, and scalable ways to do that! Great new review by Fenerci & @signysheldon.bsky.social in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

This one is me!

Co-first author paper with Tina Liu out now in @commsbio.nature.com Our longitudinal fMRI data of child epilepsy patients with occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) resection show deviations from the expected topography in preserved cortex, demonstrating plasticity. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

"In August 2025, BLS announced larger than usual monthly revisions to estimates of employment change in both May and June 2025; nearly half of these employment revisions were due to revisions in government employment (largely in local government education and state government education)."

We're hiring!!! Princeton Psych has an Assistant Prof search in cog neuro (joint with @princetonneuro.bsky.social). Apply apply apply! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Our latest profile just dropped! Dr. Emily Jacobs (‪@emilyjacobs.bsky.social‬) studies how hormonal fluctuations influence the brain. Follow the link below to listen to the full interview! www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202... #WomenInNeuroscience #StoriesOfWiN

I'm curious if any senior nonhuman primate Neuro-AI researchers would be interested in joining Queen's University if we were to obtain a research chair position (full professor level)? Could you please send me a confidential message to indicate your interest? [email protected]

Come work with us! @princetonneuro.bsky.social and the Department of Psychology at Princeton University are searching for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the area of human cognitive neuroscience, to be hired jointly in Psychology and Neuroscience: puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

This is an excellent explainer about the US scientific ecosystem. It covers a lot of points I often hear non-scientists asking about: about talent, the dynamics of the academic research environment, Germany, the USSR, history of NSF, NIH. Worth a read. 1/

This is a really interesting point .. and idea.

After preparing for a full year together with @neurosteven.bsky.social and all other amazing organizers of @cogcompneuro.bsky.social, #CCN2025 is finally here! While I'm proud of the entire program we put together, I'd now like to highlight my own lab's contributions, 6 posters total:

"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." – Dwight D. Eisenhower, Germany, 1945

Scientists! @skypeascientist.bsky.social matches scientists with classrooms, libraries, & more for virtual Q&As! It's easy and fun! We are looking for 750 more volunteers by 8/15 If you're down to chat with 1-5 classrooms this semester, sign up here www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

Nice work by @yoichimiyawaki.bsky.social showing the fMRI hemodynamic response contains enough info to decode stimulus type within 2sec. Happy to have helped with this project. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We now have a Society for the Neurobiology of Language Bluesky account @snlmtg.bsky.social! Follow for updates on the meeting. I'm really excited for our fantastic lineup of speakers! #SNL2025

The Neuroscience Dept at American University is hiring for a tenure-track position at the Assistant level with expertise in Computational Neuroscience. Apply by Sep 15: american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-... #FacultyJobs #AcademicJob #Neuroscience #CompNeuro #AI #ComputationalPsychiatry

The entire business model of R1 public universities rests on 4 revenue sources: 1. Federal grants 2. Private gifts/endowments 3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students) 4. State $ For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.

Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168

One thing I would like more people, and I mostly mean my fellow men, to understand is that no matter how smart you are, other people are also smart and some of them have tried to work on the same problems you’re working on. If a simple solution hasn’t been found yet, there probably isn’t one.

Microsoft just released a study w/ the 40 jobs most and least likely to be replaced by AI. On the most likely: Mathematician, political scientist, and journalist. Sorry to the authors. But anyone who thinks these fields will be supplanted (helped) by AI knows little abt both these fields, and AI.

🧠 New paper on breathing and the brain, out now @plos.org Computational Biology! 🫁 "The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making" doi.org/10.1371/jour... We show how respiratory 'tidal computations' alter our decisons!

From farm to faculty. Writing home to his community in Minnesota, Prof Jim Magnuson explains that the powerhouse behind U.S. research is the infrastructure, paid by “indirect costs”. “This system has made U.S. science the strongest in the world.” 🧪🏠 www.hometownsource.com/county_news_...

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

There is no gain in defunding early career scientists, making cancer research harder, cancelling vaccine science etc.. We all lose. The dismantling of the American scientific enterprise will go down in history as the most short sighted thing and destructive decision. www.science.org/content/arti...

So for the hell of it, I went poking around on the FEC website about a high text PAC, and learned they had almost $6 mil in donations so far this year that appears to have been largely generated by small donors. Amount they have donated to races or to DCCC, DSCC etc.? $212,000. 3.5% of total.