Next session of #IRCA Aphantasia Online Talk #19 is next Tuesday the 10th March at 11am (CET/Paris), by Derek H. Arnold @visnerd.bsky.social (University of Queensland).
Title: The hopeless quest for a reliable objective metric of visual imagery.
More details here: jianghao-liu.github.io/irca/
The "publish or perish" culture must perish. Scientists need time to think.
We just published our Slow Science Manifesto, where we argue that huge changes are needed in the way we fund, publish, and evaluate science.
Read more and sign here: www.slow-science.com
Our bilingualism paper is now published in PNAS. We used fMRI to compare semantic brain representations in English-Chinese bilinguals. Semantic representations are largely shared across languages, but finer-grained differences modulate how meaning is represented.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Lucina Q. Uddin - Brain dynamics and flexible behaviors
Monday, March 9, 2026 - Paris Brain Institute
We've posted a new fMRI study of semantic relations (has-part, is-a, made-of, etc.), a key aspect of language. We find that relations are represented in the same brain regions as are other semantic concepts, though voxels tend to be selective for only one relation or another.
doi.org/10.64898/202...
Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington's landscape and exploration of cellular behavior academic.oup.com/bib/article/... - really nice review of how big data and new computational methods and reviving an old conceptual framework
https://sites.google.com/view/irca-conference-2026/home
📢We're thrilled to announce the first-ever #IRCA Conference on #Aphantasia!
Call for abstracts is open, deadline: 17 April 2026
sites.google.com/view/irca-co...
This 3-day interdisciplinary conference aims to consolidate current knowledge and draw a future plan for aphantasia research.
Have you ever asked yourself, how insect brains represent places? And whether insects do have place cells? Then move to Germany this summer and start your PhD in my lab. We conduct tetrode recordings from bumblebees that freely forage laboratory mazes. 🧠🐝#BeeSpace @erc.europa.eu @neuroethology.org
neuroscience data often has a many-to-many data structure, e.g relationships across regions, which is hard to visualize. (connected edge graphs = chaotic & not that useful honestly 🙃)
treating time as an extra dimension like here looks pretty cool! @ this 'crawling seed' movie
#VisualizationInspo
A new #ScienceRobotics study describes a #bionic eye that can simulate irregular pupils such as a cat’s vertical pupil for precise focus while hunting and a toad's heart-shaped pupil for improved depth perception. https://scim.ag/4auJjWP
Here is the link to our "The Brain Resilience Study protocol," an ongoing project through the @sfuneuro.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A new study by SFI and MIT researchers shows that as systems grow, from cells to governments, the pace of adding new functions steadily slows. Though they vary in how much they invest in novelty, once new functions exist, subsequent growth follows a universal pattern known as sublinear growth.
if love is the answer, what is the question?
New Journal Club: Neural manifolds are maturing from visualization trick to biological claim. But if population activity lives on low-dimensional manifolds, what constrains the geometry?
Interested in cortical wave dynamics? Check out our review on the physics, physiology, and psychology of cortical waves led by J Cruddas with @jchrispang.bsky.social, out now in
@cp-neuron.bsky.social:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
DEADLINE REMINDER!
Abstract submissions for #ASSC29 in Santiago close on February 12, 2026 (11:59 PM PT).
Don’t miss it!
theassc.org/assc-29/subm...
@theassc.bsky.social
One of my favorite facts: neurons and skin cells are 'cousins'.
Intelligence is a phenomenon that lives at boundaries. The semipermeable cell membrane is where the ball got rolling.
I wrote an essay riffing on this idea.
yohanjohn.com/axispraxis/f...
main goal for this year: find a new job! 🙂
looking for a role with fun & complex technical challenges & within a great community. my main expertise is in signal processing/EEG/MEG, but topic-wise I am quite flexible.
science/industry both great! starting mid-year. nschawor.github.io/cv
Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻
Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.
See below for + details and retweet 🙏
Paper on developing concepts for neuroscience now published open access:
doi.org/10.1111/ejn....
We argue that the success and failure of concepts fundamentally depends on epistemic goals.
#cogsky #neuroskyence #cognitiveneuroscience #philsky #philsci #philosophysky #cogsci
a few that I remember now:
- The Hodge's Harbace Handbook
- Language, Music, and the Brain
- Theoretical Neuroscience: Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Neural Systems
- Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos
- A New View from the Thalamus
- A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
Can we ever truly understand animal languages—and even communicate with other species? Recent advances in artificial intelligence, especially large language models, have reignited the belief that this dream may soon be within reach. www.cell.com/current-biol... @odedrechavi.bsky.social
Are connectome-based network mapping methods and the >200 papers that have used it invalid?
New paper out in
@NatureNeuro
says YES. nature.com/articles/s41...
I have concerns about this new paper's methods and conclusions, but am biased. What do others think?
A hitchhiker’s guide to information theoretical measures in psychology Niels van Santen, Yves Rosseel, Daniele Marinazzo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2025.102969 Highlights • Information theory and psychology have a rich history • Information theoretical measures can be disconnected from information theory • These measures complement variance-based measures of variability and association • They are more general with respect to interpretation and possible data types • There are many extensions towards the investigation of higher-order interactions. Abstract In psychology, as in other sciences, information theory can be used as a tool to complement more standard regression-based methods of data analysis. It is important to see the potential of information theoretical measures as statistical tools without implying a connection to their origins in communication theory and engineering. The use of these measures may provide us with additional insights due to their sensitivity to non-linear relationships, their flexibility to the mixing of data types, and their more straightforward generalization towards investigating higher-order interactions. We briefly reintroduce information theory and compare several measures such as mutual information and co-information with correlation and regression-based methods for the investigation of variable dependence.
A hitchhiker’s guide to information theoretical measures in psychology
by @nielsvs.bsky.social with me and Yves Rosseel
authors.elsevier.com/c/1mOwr53na-...
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Brainhack Marseille is a fun, inclusive, and productive event. Register and submit a projet !
brainhack-marseille.github.io
Exactly. Whenever broad claims arise in fMRI (ANN-like feedback without specifying + or - sign, an asymmetric point process reducible to a linear state model, etc.), there is the early visual cortex with quantitative, testable responses to examine. A BOLD palimpsest, a lovely old idea, may help here
there is pretty solid evidence about a mismatch here (see Buzsáki et al. (2007) on the relative contributions of glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation to BOLD signal and why inhibitory activity, may not be fully “seen” with fMRI), regardless of what one may think
Top: Experimental set up. Single pulses of TMS were applied to the hand area of the right primary motor cortex with an inter-pulse interval randomized between 6 and 10 s. Simultaneously, the neuronavigated coil position (yellow), electrocardiogram (red), respiratory signal (blue), electrogastrogram (green), and electromyography from the left hand (gray) were recorded. The figure shows traces of a 20-s time segment from one participant of the cardiac (raw), respiratory (filtered), gastric (filtered), and EMG (raw) signals. The experimental measure was the Motor Evoked Potential amplitude measured on a hand muscle (first dorsal interosseous), analyzed against the phase of the cardiac, respiratory, and gastric rhythms. Note that the three rhythms have very different periods (~1 s for the heart, ~ 5 s for respiration, and ~20 s for the gastric rhythm). Bottom: Artwork illustrating how rhythms of the internal organs interact with the moment-to-moment fluctuations observed in corticospinal motor excitability. Image depicts an outline of a brain with representations of the three rhythmic organs influencing the motor system: the heart, lungs, and stomach. Image credit: Tahnée Engelen.
How do internal bodily rhythms influence #brain activity & motor function? @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social &co show that #cardiac, #respiratory & #gastric rhythms independently modulate motor excitability, revealing distinct #interoceptive profiles across individuals @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4nMtpLT
