This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions. It does not. It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed. 🧵 1/

Amazing. UK leading the way . Finland in silver medal position ? and I predict Switzerland could join them on the podium at some point over the next year or two

I think it's a problem for the wider public that there are so few books talking about how science is done and the lives of those who do it. occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald...

A cubic millimetre of the human brain. The whole thing is about 960,000 times this size, giving you some idea of the mind-boggling complexity we have yet to encounter. But you have to start somewhere.

OpenSAFELY is open from today! Huge thanks to all who supported this vast collaboration: whole population GP data; in a productive platform; innovative privacy protections; unprecedented support from professions, privacy campaigners; &c Now it's over to users! www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02...

In this episode of the Under Review podcast, I talk to @andytattersall.bsky.social about research fraud detection, papermills, and that rat. open.spotify.com/episode/0pYD...

"we recommend that advice from independent clinical experts should be sought to advise what degree of adverse BOLD fMRI signal change between scans would necessitate withdrawal from the study" - UK Medicines and Healthcare regulatory authority to RCT sponsor #Medsky 🩺🧠 #fMRI #Neuroskyence

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

Our new meta-analysis & Mendelian randomization study shows that substance misuse, particularly cocaine, amphetamines, and cannabis, are associated with increased risk of stroke. Read more: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @cambridgecardio.bsky.social @camneuro.bsky.social @vpd-hlri.bsky.social

Does anyone use the Spanish version of the RBANS ("Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status")? If you are able to send us an original form, we would be happy to compensate you for it.

Preprint alert!!! We recorded directly from the human ventral tegmental area (VTA), the principal source of cortical dopaminergic innervation, while patients performed an instrumental learning task. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hot take: one of the main benefits of running data analyses in 🐬 Docker 🐬 isn't reproducibility, but saving yourself (or your lab) hundreds or thousands of pounds in computer costs*. Here's how... #datascience #docker #rstudio #python *for a very niche set of people

Pleased to be able to offer a summer placement at the Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics @cardiffuni.bsky.social through this scheme. Research Access Placements are open to undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds @gensocuk.bsky.social

I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc... Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.

I’ve had your words tattooed on my body. I need them there. They help me. I am so grateful for all you do 🙏🙏🙏💪💪💪❤️❤️❤️

Our paper, MR-link-2 has just been published! Offering pleiotropy robust Mendelian randomization from a single region! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

I am now hiring a PhD student in deep learning for medical images, to work at the Department of Biomedical Engineering (IMT) for our ELLIIT project on federated learning. Application deadline February 19. web103.reachmee.com/ext/I011/853...

See Jim’s comments and the whole thread.

Congrats to @torwager.bsky.social and Deanna Barch for the @nationalacademies.org Atkinson prize!! Within the umbrella of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, they recieved it for their work in the psychiatric space (Wager: emotion/pain; Barch: Schizophrenia). www.nasonline.org/award/atkins...

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? "High-resolution activity maps of PFC did NOT align with cytoarchitecturally defined subregions." Key tenet in neuroscience is that cytoarchitectonic boundaries correspond to functional ones. NB: study in the mouse #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1038/s415...

This is an excellent group, and look at all those videos you can find online 👀 So much stuff to learn! cls-data.github.io/CIIG/

I'm so sorry to share that Friedemann Pulvermüller, brilliant neuroscientist, has passed. He gave Embodiment ideas legs and worked tirelessly on treatments for stroke victims during his storied career. His kindness and wry humor made him sparkle.

Apply by Feb 9th to NICE to serve as professional committee member - Severe and enduring mental illness medsky #Psychiatry #Mentalhealth

🧠⚡️💊New @nature.com publication ! Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with a synthetic opioid gene therapy nature.com/articles/s41... @pennmedicine.bsky.social

Why do some individuals defy their polygenic score? In the largest study of its kind (402k UKB individuals; 7 continuous traits + 3 diseases), we asked: If your phenotype deviates from common-variant polygenic score prediction, what's driving that difference? www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 New preprint! Why do some insights from spikes translate to field potentials while others don't? In this paper we compare visual memory representations in spikes and LFPs to propose a general framework that answers this question. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵 (1/10) 🧠🟦 🧠💻

I've been thinking about the "virtual cell" concept and wanted to write up a few thoughts. Specifically on how I think the prior experience in GWAS informs the most likely way these models will be useful. andrewcarroll.github.io/2025/12/23/t...

🚨Call for papers: Computational markers of psychosis - From latent states to neurobiological mechanisms! Special issue in Schizophrenia Bulletin🧠 Deadline extended to April 30, 2026 We are looking forward to your papers!!

Final #neuroskyence preprint of the year! We updated our big neuroinflammation project, studying psoriasis-like inflammation in both humans and mice. Main take-home: we see impaired thalamostriatal signalling in humans and mice alongside depression / anhedonia. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Use the Eisenhower matrix to help you with deciding when/if to do stuff. Not everyone can delegate, of course, but this is where sharing work, asking for more resources can be used as a replacement for delegate.

New study out today in Nature Comms: www.nature.com/articles/s41..., in which we set out to test whether ultrasound could influence the reward-related learning computations of the nucleus accumbens, building on decades of work on dopaminergic prediction error and reinforcement learning. And it did.

fabulous resource. are you a new PI? get yourself added to the list!

this is one of my favourite observations about sample size calculations. (afaik first articulated by Miettinen in 1985)

This chart (which applies even more to social media than it did to TV) lives in my head rent free. Social media enveloping traditional media means everything and everyone is now competing in the entertainment market. Boring stuff like policy that affects millions of lives doesn’t stand a chance.

📣🔥Thrilled to announce that 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference will take place in New Haven, CT, btw July 14-16 - www.cpconf.org @robbrutledge.bsky.social @drrickadams.bsky.social @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social @docqhuys.bsky.social @clairegillan.bsky.social Sonia Bishop More info to come soon!

Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit region-specific reductions in dendritic spine densities across cortical regions involved in visual-spatial working memory. ja.ma/48dYiTW

“GABA-glutamate corelease is functionally inhibitory or excitatory …., supporting a homeostatic role for GABA-glutamate cotransmission with broad implications for disorders of imbalanced motivation.”

Let me present the Spoon Illusion 🙂🥄 This has been in the works for over a decade when we were just goofing around testing sound localisation in my in-laws' kitchen... But we finally managed to do some reasonably controlled experiments on this. #psychscisky #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1177/0301...

1) INFO FOR RESEARCHERS: The charity ME Research UK (MERUK) has an open call for PhD-level research funding. Applicants should submit an Outline Proposal Form before Friday, 9 January 2026.

I wrote about my knee injury and recent surgery, Oliver Sacks's "A Leg to Stand On", and how a zombie Calvinism continues to distort the American health care system: open.substack.com/pub/kathrynp...

Our study aims to understand psychosis, and improve outcomes for individuals with psychosis. By intervening early, we will provide timely support and care, ultimately enhancing lives. We reached 250 participants! eim.digitrial.com @oxhealthbrc.bsky.social @cpftresearch.bsky.social

Beautifully written, funny, and important. Also ouch.

The importance of the departmental tea room where you can bump into anyone ....the importance of hearing diverse views. Today's post: The Importance of Community occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald...

For lovers of @ourworldindata.org - we have improved our search functionality! Great work by the team at the backend to improve user experience. Enjoy! ourworldindata.org/introducing-...

My review of #Crick by @matthewcobb.bsky.social has been published online by @science.org. The book is lucid, beautifully crafted, and compelling. It will instantly become the definitive guide to this extraordinary individual’s life and work.

Jonny Smallwood @themindwanders.bsky.social was a beloved friend and mentor. He was taken from us too soon. His was a beautiful mind who understood the beauty of minds. As ever before, his kind voice guides me and his work will continue. We miss you Jonny. www.cbs.mpg.de/news/obituar...

Addendum: I quickly wrote something partially about the results, and the potential for misunderstanding, but also about history's profound irony. open.substack.com/pub/arutherf...

at last. Expression of concern has appeared on BMJ stem cell paper with 44 comments pubpeer.com/publications...

That’s quite the entrance to bluesky Loic 😅!!