Csaba Orban

🚨 New preprint: Objective Quality Assessment for Precision fMRI

Precision functional mapping (PFM) enables individual-level brain network studies — but demands more, and better, data.

We introduce an objective framework to determine when a dataset truly supports interpretable, replicable PFM.

Preprint on PANDORA by Aslan Abivardi:

A massive archive of UK Biobank brain imaging from 82K subjects. For each of 98 sub-modalities (e.g., FA from dMRI), the images are collated into a convenient subjectsXvoxels HDF5 file.

pages.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/pandora/web/

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Check out our new work on the relationship between glioma and system-level functional networks! We identify that nearly all gliomas localize within a common brain functional network, Action-Mode Network (AMN) .

biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697608v1

This is your brain on Ritalin. Got your attention? Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) do, but not in the way you might think. They don't act directly on the brain’s attention systems! Find out what's really happening in @cellpress.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️
#PsychSciSky #DevPsy
🧵👇

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

Adenosine signalling drives antidepressant actions of ketamine and ECT - Nature Adenosine signalling is identified as the central mechanism of action of the antidepressant effects of ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy, and newly developed analogues of ketamine exhibit improved antidepressant efficacy with reduced side effects.

Nature research paper: Adenosine signalling drives antidepressant actions of ketamine and ECT

go.nature.com/3Ln1gh6

Congrats @chen-zhang.bsky.social !

Preprint is now published! doi.org/10.1002/hbm....

Thanks to co-authors @chen-zhang.bsky.social @anlijuncn.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social

Preprint is now published: doi.org/10.1002/hbm....

Special thanks to co-authors @twktan.bsky.social @kimnganngt.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social

Launched in 2023, Imaging Neuroscience is now firmly established, with full indexing (PubMed, etc.) and 700 papers to date.

We're very happy to announce that we are able to reduce the APC to $1400.

Huge thanks to all authors, reviewers, editorial team+board, and MIT Press.

This looks pretty cool: ultrasound can now see through the skull! 🧠🔊

The skull has long been a barrier to ultrasound. This reprint shows how to make it quickly transparent → enabling full-depth, high-res fUSI in mice (& humans! 🤯🤯)
Huge congrats to the authors!!!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What started as a journal club on layer decoding turned into a project thanks to @karolisdegutis.bsky.social. Our preprint challenges a widespread assumption in the field: MVPA is not immune to vascular confounds in laminar GE-BOLD decoding, as shown using a mechanistic laminar response model.

This image is figure 1 showing the longitudinal investigation of participants with planned arm amputations.

Longitudinal neuroimaging of participants with planned arm amputations shows that the cortical body map remains stable after amputation. The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, challenge long-standing theories of brain remapping after limb loss. go.nature.com/4oLSyYO 🧪 #Neuroscience

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨
“Translating the Transcriptome: A Connectomics Approach for Gene-Network Mapping and Clinical Application”
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 

🧵 A short thread:

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com

What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed?

Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation

www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7

🧵1/18

Great write up of our @nature.com study by @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

I still get chills

Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts

Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE

see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨 New Preprint 🚨

Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects

By Cyr et al.

***
Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES?

A: Yes!

🧵:

Neural anticipation of virtual infection triggers an immune response - Nature Neuroscience Serino et al. show that seeing an infectious avatar approach the body in virtual reality triggers an immune response, indicating that the brain prepares the body to fight infections even for perceived...

Did you know that seeing virtual avatars with coughs or rashes can trigger your brain's immune response? Read more in this fascinating Nature Neuroscience paper @natureportfolio.nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stomach–brain coupling indexes a dimensional signature of mental health - Nature Mental Health Using a relatively large and diverse sample of mostly young adults, this study by Banellis, Rebollo and colleagues examines associations between regional stomach–brain coupling and mental health and i...

I’m elated to share our latest publication - out now in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s44... - tour de force by @leahbanellis.bsky.social @brainandstomach.bsky.social and the rest of the VMP team!

For me, this work is a classic @ohbmofficial.bsky.social story: In 2023 I wasn't working with @bttyeo.bsky.social but I overheard him at his poster pointing to some accuracy curves saying "I don't why they have this particular shape". That kicked off the collab that led to these results.

🚨Thrilled to share our latest work just published in @nature.com where we looked into the optimal fMRI scan time for brain-wide association studies (BWAS) 🧠⏱️! Full thread below👇:

Super thankful to @bttyeo.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social and @shaoshiz.bsky.social for pouring in all the effort to make this work possible!

1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social

AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements...

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep - Nature Research on Drosophila neurons shows links between the need to sleep and aerobic metabolism, indicating that the pressure to sleep may have a mitochondrial origin.

—Why did you go to sleep?
—My mitochondria made me do it.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Alert!!!!

“An Action Networks Model for Pain”

We propose a new model for chronic pain — and highlight two functionally connected cortical networks that could revolutionize how we treat it.

👉 thread below 🧵

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Convergent and divergent brain-cognition relationships during development revealed by cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses in the ABCD Study How brain networks and cognition co-evolve during development remains poorly understood. Using longitudinal data collected at baseline and Year 2 from 2,949 individuals (ages 8.9-13.5) in the Adolesce...

Our new preprint is out!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

How do brain networks and cognition co-evolve as children enter adolescence?

Autonomic physiological coupling of the global fMRI signal Nature Neuroscience - The brain and body are necessarily connected. Here the authors show that brain blood flow and electrical activity are coupled with systemic physiological changes in the body.

First post on an exciting new manuscript online today @natneuro.nature.com - in collab with @lucinauddin.bsky.social and Catie Chang. We take a fresh look at the physiological dynamics associated with the global signal 🧠 ...

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

Read here:
rdcu.be/ek01F

While the world burns, we cook up a new preprint! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Biophysical modeling is a key tool to derive mechanistic insights into the brain. These models are governed by biologically meaningful parameters (unlike artificial neural networks), but the dirty secret ... 1/N