Marcus Siems

In a metascientific review, Senden maps the structural organization of contemporary neuroscience, identifying dominant themes, emerging trends, and open questions: doi.org/10.52294/001...

@ohbmofficial.bsky.social
#FutureofPublishing #SpecialIssue

fMRI connectivity is dominated by recurring high-amplitude BOLD events (CAPs, QPPs)
But what originates these events? Many think neuromodulation is the culprit. Our new work offers a simpler take: cortico-cortical dynamics alone can generate CAP-like events! doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013995
🧵1/n

Hans Berger and an EEG recording

🧠 What if you could see thoughts?

When Hans Berger recorded the first human EEG, many scientists didn’t believe him. Today, EEG is one of neuroscience’s most important tools.

The story behind it is fascinating: 👇
www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/berger

Understanding Maximum Likelihood Estimation A tool to understand maximum likelihood estimation

Do you know any other cool interactive applications that illustrate some statistical concept?
#rstats #stats
@rpsychologist.com

rpsychologist.com/likelihood/

Can electrical microstimulation be used to steer cortical population activity on- and off-manifold? Our new preprint says yes — using data-driven control in macaque PFC. Joint work with @gbarzon.bsky.social, Anandita De, Isaac Moran, Conner Carnahan, and Luca Mazzucato.

1/ New preprint out! “Control of cortical population activity with patterned microstimulation.” We show that brief training with multi-electrode stimulation pulses is enough to steer prefrontal population activity along desired trajectories in awake macaques. tinyurl.com/3d6kv26w

1/5 Big news: the pre-print for my final postdoc paper is (finally) out!

Why did it take so long? We significantly expanded the manuscript thanks largely to the incredible work of one of my first undergraduates here at @uconn.bsky.social @uconnresearch.bsky.social 😀

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Snapshot of a figure from "Physiologically realistic gamma activity produced in silico by weakening the PING attractor state" showcasing a phase portrait of Wilson Cowan equations that yield transient gamma activity (illustrated via firing rate plots and associated spectral analysis).

Snapshot of a figure from "Physiologically realistic gamma activity produced in silico by weakening the PING attractor state" showcasing a phase portrait of a dynamical system with a co-existing stable limit cycle and stable focus.

3/5 We explain this phenomenon via mathematical analysis: these transient gamma events share a striking resemblance to dynamics caused by damped oscillations. While PING rhythms are traditionally associated with stable limit cycles, we also show that both phenomena commonly coexist.

Neurons around a recording ephys electrode

Diagram of monkey looking at a screen in a neuroscience experiment

Spike rasters for two units in response to a checkerboard shown in the screen. One is an ON neuron, the other is an OFF neuron

Waveforms of single neurons within a single ephys electrode sorted using K-means clustering.

Just uploaded some of my *hand-crafted* comp-neuro teaching materials, thought they might be useful to someone out there.

It's just some exercise notebooks for data analysis github.com/morales-greg...

Scientific Paper Planner - AI-Powered Research Planning Structure your scientific research with AI-powered guidance. From hypothesis to methodology, plan your research paper with intelligent mentoring.

You heard me talk about the app that helps scientists plan research (planyourscience.com) that I have been building. Join our webinar to talk with us about it. Signup here forms.monday.com/forms/5f4755...

Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz Nature Human Behaviour - Biba et al. show that episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz.

I am excited to share my first paper, showing that episodic memory formation is theta rhythmic, is now published in Nature Human Behavior! Check it out here: rdcu.be/e6pzS. Thanks to my PI, Katherine Duncan, and to my collaborators for their support on this journey! Stay tuned for iEEG follow up 🧠

AI agents are ‘aeroplanes for the mind’: five ways to ensure that scientists are responsible pilots As artificial-intelligence systems take on more of the scientific workflow, the central goal should not be complete automation, but designing platforms that preserve creativity, responsibility and surprise.

As artificial-intelligence systems take on more of the scientific workflow, the central goal should not be complete automation, but designing platforms that preserve creativity, responsibility and surprise.

go.nature.com/4lcIDKI

Lack of reviewers threatens robustness of neuroscience literature Simple math suggests that small groups of scientists can significantly bias peer review.

Broad peer review is crucial for a healthy scientific literature, but neuroscientists turn down review requests too often. Simple math suggests that small groups of scientists can significantly bias the literature, writes @jvoigts.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/publishing/l...

A Movement-Independent Signature of Urgency During Human Perceptual Decision Making - PubMed How does the brain adjust its decision processes to ensure timely decision completion? Computational modelling and electrophysiological investigations have pointed to dynamic 'urgency' processes that serve to progressively reduce the quantity of evidence required to reach choice commitment as time e …

Check out our new paper which isolates a human brain signal that specifically tracks the growing urgency to commit to a choice pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41611534/. This one was a long time coming! Sterling work from @harveymccone.bsky.social and a bunch of past lab members!

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Leon von Haugwitz, Edmund Wascher, and Mauro F. Larra:

Cardiac phase modulates behavior and response related lateralization in visual spatial conflicts during change detection

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

How do we balance external attention to the outside world and internal attention to our thoughts & memories?

We review evidence that external and internal attention can compete, unfold concurrently, or cooperate!

Loved working on this with @samversc.bsky.social & @tobiasegner.bsky.social!

Excited to share our new paper in @pnas.org with @bnmorillon.bsky.social &
@valentinwyart.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
We study three core inference systems, and how their interaction shapes human learning and decision-making.

How dynamics arise from the structure is my biggest interest. In this study, we started with a small step and asked how structure constrains dynamics. Spoiler: would that it were so simple… (1/6)

cool people, follow them!

I built a bluesky labeler for neuroscience methods.

1️⃣ follow/subscribe to: @neuromethods.bsky.social
2️⃣ like the post with your favorite method
➡️ get a shiny methods label in your profile/posts. 🌟

Neural Oscillatory Signatures of Predictive Processing in Visual Statistical Learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.707965v1

Ultrasound gives our brain a nudge in the right direction 🧠

👀 Look to your left, look to your right!

We used #ultrasound to stimulate the brain and it changed human choice behavior within a fraction of a second. No surgery, no implants.

Link to paper ⬇️

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

10 PhD positions at JLU Giessen in the new Research Training Group "PIMON"! We will explore how humans perceive and interact with materials and objects in natural environments.
More information on the project, the PIs, and how to apply here:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
Please share!

Ausschreibung 2026: Young Academy Fellows

Jetzt bewerben! 📣

Die Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg sucht bis zum 7. April 2026 nach herausragenden promovierten jungen Forschenden (m/w/d) aus #Norddeutschland für das Young Academy #Fellowship! 🎓✨

Details zur #Ausschreibung 👉 www.awhamburg.de/nachwuchsfoe...

a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application ALT: a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

🚨 JOB alert: 📢
We are looking for a PhD student to work on our international @wellcometrust.bsky.social project on information gathering in OCD and Schizophrenia!
If you have a background in computational psychiatry / neuroimnaging and speak German, apply here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...

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

New preprint 🚨

Across multiple tasks, we show that higher-level info is more readily accessible in WM before evidence accumulation begins. Attention then boosts perceptual detail.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A lot of fun with my colleagues @ckerren.bsky.social and @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social

"You see what you look for, and you look for what you know."

We are proud to release FOCUS: a 100 μm deformable human subcortical atlas precisely registered to MNI space.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🔎Updated preprint "Humans use a dual policy to improve inferences during epistemic information seeking" by Yinan Cao, Clémence Alméras, Junseok Lee, Inès Maye, and Valentin Wyart. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A confound-free method to manipulate pupil size in psychological experiments - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Researchers are increasingly showing interest in the ways in which various cognitive processes are influenced by the size of the pupil. However, this realm of research is complicated by the pupil’s no...

🚨Pupillometrists!

Reviewer2: “But what if changing pupil size unintentionally affected arousal?” 👁️

Now we give you the answer! In collaboration with Snell lab www.snelllab.eu, we show that you can safely manipulate pupil size, via ipRGC activation, without unintentionally altering arousal!

Neuronal spiking in the mammalian forebrain is dominated by a heterogeneous ground state Neuronal firing patterns have significant spatiotemporal variability with no agreed-upon theoretical framework. Using a combined experimental and mode…

With this one in print, I think I finally earned that PhD... 😅
Presented for the first time at the cosyne when the world ended (March 2020). I'll bring over a summary thread from twitter when it was still twitter...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...