The dominance of large-scale phase dynamics in human cortex, from delta to gamma The phase of cortical activity, measured in the gray matter, is organized at multiple spatial scales, with the largest scales explaining most variance in phase at a given temporal frequency.

Cortex is rhythmic: Brain rhythms coordinate over large distances. The strongest phase organization spans up to 8–16 cm of cortex.
The dominance of large-scale phase dynamics in human cortex, from delta to gamma
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
#neuroscience

Effects of 40-Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation on cognition and neural markers in Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized, sham-controlled trial - Alzheimer's Research & Therapy Alzheimer's Research & Therapy - Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by cognitive decline. Gamma-frequency (40 Hz) transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)...

Effects of 40-Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation on cognition and neural markers in Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized, sham-controlled trial

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨 New preprint from the lab led by Shenghan Wang! 🚨

Interesting suggestion: "rather than flat fees, a journal could offer a substantial prize for the most constructive review in a given period, preserving the social motivation while adding a material incentive."

Problem: could only apply to submissions that get *accepted* for pubn. 🧪🗃️

Related to the posts on reduced NIH Fellowship numbers, I note that I'm seeing graduate school admissions offers for one program that are at roughly 25-40% of the number of offers in the years just prior to 2025.

How have your programs been responding to the chaos? Any change in offer numbers?

The human amygdala in threat learning and extinction Ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human amygdala provides causal evidence for its role in forming persistent threat memories.

🧠 What makes threat memories so hard to forget? 🐍😱

Using focused ultrasound we provide causal evidence that the human amygdala drives rapid threat learning 🐍⚡ and determines how resistant those memories become to subsequent extinction 🐍🚫

🆕📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Precision reward/affect fMRI study out now in HBM! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

@dvsmith.bsky.social @olinotom.bsky.social @coopersharp.bsky.social and @shenghanwang.bsky.social

Intensively sampled task + rest fMRI data with behavioral manipulation openly available on OpenNeuro!
(1/2)

"Neighborhood street connectivity and hippocampus volume in older adults"

Impressive study linking hippocampal volume in later life and street connectivity:

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14 How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research

‼️ We are on track for a staggering 98% reduction in posted NIH funding opportunities this year relative to historical norms. Political review and red tape are blocking approval of funding announcements across the board. See Elizabeth Ginexi’s analysis:

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-re...

Intertemporal Choice Intertemporal choice involves decisions between rewards available at an earlier point in time and delayed rewards (delay discounting). Such decisions are common in everyday life, influencing outcomes ...

Our book chapter on intertemporal choice in Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions is now available. We review individual differences, dopamine, and methodological approaches from model-agnostic analyses to integrated discounting drift-diffusion models. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

📣 New publication 📣

Very excited to share our new paper "A neural signature of adaptive mentalization" out now in Nature Neuroscience (the project started all the way back in 2018!); with
@niklasbuergi.bsky.social
@drgokhanaydogan.bsky.social
@christianruff.bsky.social

(1/4)

GitHub - micahgallen/bsky_neurobrain: AI-curated Bluesky feed for neuroscience and cognitive science. Real-time firehose filtering with keyword prefilter + local LLM classifier + engagement ranking. AI-curated Bluesky feed for neuroscience and cognitive science. Real-time firehose filtering with keyword prefilter + local LLM classifier + engagement ranking. - micahgallen/bsky_neurobrain

NeuroBrain is now open source! Real-time AI pipeline that filters Bluesky's firehose into a curated neuroscience feed using a local LLM. Includes a step-by-step guide for building your own AI-curated feed on any topic. github.com/micahgallen/bsky_neurobrain

Excited to share our new preprint on how feedback improves pain assessment accuracy when people learn from nonverbal reactions! See @yilizhao.bsky.social thread below.

A recent paper in @natureportfolio.nature.com raised concerns about the lesion network mapping method. Our team of 16 coauthors analyzed >1000 lesions and 34 symptoms and found that "The methodological foundations of lesion network mapping remain sound" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Journal of Neuroscience: 46 (8)

Very excited to share a Special Collection at the Journal of Neuroscience (@sfnjournals.bsky.social) - Central Questions for Social Neuroscience Research. This issue includes some of the latest perspectives on social neuroscience research. Please check it out!👇

www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8

We have a new paper out on how the AI boom is creating a scientific monoculture! Everything AI.

"The task for social science is to ensure that, in navigating this moment, we do not become artificial ourselves."

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Led by the brilliant @cecilietraberg.bsky.social

Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology.

We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

Opinion | The Human Cost of Trump’s War on Science

NIH is “…the largest government-funded biomedical research agency in the world, and until recently was the envy of scientists across the globe.

The president’s attacks on this legacy have been relentless and all-encompassing…”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

The role of comorbidities in the associations between air pollution and Alzheimer’s disease: A national cohort study in the American Medicare population In a national cohort study of US Medicare beneficiaries, Deng and colleagues investigate the association between air pollution and Alzheimer's Disease.

Air pollution may directly contribute to Alzheimer’s disease

"Exposure to air pollution, particularly PM2.5, has been linked to an increased risk of AD, likely through pathways such as neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and vascular injury."

journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

New paper in Current Directions in Psych Science: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

After countless arguments about what tasks ppl should/should not offload to AI, we instead argue that genAI can be used *augment* research protocols in novel ways. I.e. use AI to make better psych experiments!

"Dow 50,000" Sound Nice. Until Justin Wolfers Shows You That U.S. Markets Are Coming 21st Out of 23. What does “Dow 50,000” actually tell you—anything about the economy, or just that a number got bigger? Dow 50,000 is a milestone, not a measurement. The level of the Dow is basically arbitrary: it’s…

The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000.

So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000.

Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

we shall see

Something big is happening in AI — and most people will be blindsided | Fortune It’s not like a light switch... more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.

“Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And many people in the industry think he’s being conservative.”

fortune.com/2026/02/11/s...

Attention Dynamics: Antecedents to Consumer Choice This chapter reviews four decades of research on consumer attention and decision-making, focusing on how visual information influences preferences, attitudes, and choice. It traces methodological adva...

The new book, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions" is out! Here is my chapter on consumer attention. 👀Thanks to @dvsmith.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social @dfareri.bsky.social for their excellent leadership as editors.
#science #attention #eyetracking #marketing

The Role of Memory in Temporal Discounting A widely observed phenomenon in intertemporal choice is temporal discounting; people prefer to have rewards sooner rather than later, even if the delayed rewards are larger. Despite the universality o...

So excited that this textbook, edited by @dfareri.bsky.social @dvsmith.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social is out now! And so happy to have been invited to contribute. Here’s my chapter on the role of memory, esp. semantic memory, in temporal discounting: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

New work from the lab! With @jameswyngaarden.bsky.social

Ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate restores neuronal Tau proteostasis via ketolysis-independent mechanism www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01...

Emotion and Choice: The Integral Role of Emotion in Constructing Value In the centuries-long history of decision-making research, emotion’s role in choice has only been investigated relatively recently. Early theories of decision-making, which conceived of emotions...

Check out @orielf.bsky.social & I's chapter "Emotion and Choice: The Integral Role of Emotion in Constructing Value" in the new volume, Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions, edited by @dvsmith.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social & @dfareri.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Decomposing Economic Choices with Drift-Diffusion Models Many decisions arise from a dynamic process of information accumulation and comparison. Thus, to fully understand decision-making, we must decompose the choice process into its parts. Here, we review ...

Chapter 📖 "Decomposing Economic Choices with Drift-Diffusion Models" with @krajbichlab.bsky.social and Xiaozhi (Taro) Yang is out in, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions" edited by @dvsmith.bsky.social, @thepsychologist.bsky.social, @dfareri.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/yey56tup

New discovery! Value-based decisions reorganize neural state space. Options are first encoded in orthogonal subspaces Then the selected option rotates into a "readout subspace".
Neural subspace reorganization reflects value-based decision making.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#neuroscience