Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is important for signal processing but isn't always intuitive. I made a demo to generate EEG, run ICA, and remove blink components, that also works with wav files, letting you move the speakers/mics around to control mixing.
dbrang.github.io/EEG-ICA-Demo/

EEG requires many neurons aligned so that their electric fields can positively sum to spread up to the scalp. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how "open fields" contribute to EEG recordings.
dbrang.github.io/Open-Closed-...
Github: github.com/dbrang/Open-...

Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap.
dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-D...

Github page: github.com/dbrang/EEG-D...

We (I and @willenjoy.bsky.social) created a toolbox for simulations of EEG/MEG because we needed to simulate data. Our initial aim was to simulate connectivity. For this short clip, I simulated two sources with phase connectivity using our toolbox.
#brainmovie
meegsim.readthedocs.io/en/stable/in...

Near-random connections support top-down feature-based attentional modulations in early sensory cortex Author summary In everyday life, we focus on what matters—like finding our car keys on a messy desk—by sending signals from higher control brain areas to earlier sensory brain areas. These “top-down” ...

I gave a talk in 2009 about feature-based attention and a famous vision scientist asked how top down signals from PFC could possibly target the right sensory neurons. The best I could do was "uh, dunno". sunyoungp.bsky.social has a much more thoughtful answer journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

I'm not seeing of them up yet. Ours was just approved so they might be delayed; even it is not showing on careers.umich.edu yet. Ling should have their's up here at some point lsa.umich.edu/linguistics/...

Our department is recruiting! New tenure-track, open rank faculty position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan (emphasis on human cognition and artificial intelligence).
apply.interfolio.com/169170

New paper with @herveyjumper.bsky.social and Vardhaan Ambati! It shows that causal (DCS+) language cortex in glioma patients has greater ECoG information encoding (higher entropy and linguistic decoding). DCS+ sites showed stronger oscillations and high gamma, enabling prediction of DCS sites.

Electrocorticographic Detection of Speech Networks in Glioma-infiltrated Cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07....

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Tissue samples were from healthy cortex (e.g., insular tumor resection), allowing transcriptionally defined neuronal subclasses, including numbers of glutamatergic + GABAergic neurons. This link better enables aperiodic (1/f) slope from EEG/ECoG to be used as a surrogate for cortical excitability.

New paper with Shawn Hervey-Jumper's lab! As only PART of this project, it validates the relationship between aperiodic slope and cortical excitability using ECoG and single-nuc RNA sequencing in humans. Tissue samples with more excitatory neurons showed flatter aperiodic slope.

No other tools currently exist specifically for intraOp ECoG registration. This was a multi-year collaboration with the amazing lab of Shawn Hervey-Jumper and included @senaoten.bsky.social, @sanjeevherr.bsky.social, Vardhaan Ambati, @ysibih.bsky.social, Katie Lu, and Jasleen Kaur.

Localizing ECoG electrodes from photos alone is challenging (particularly with small craniotomies) and novice undergrads/medical students showed high variability (mean error = 16mm, ICC = .40), compared to experts with neuroanatomy training (mean error = 4mm, ICC = .93).

ExtraOp ECoG/sEEG localization require a postOp MRI or CT that are unavailable in intraOp contexts. As an alternative, we used preOp MRI imaging, vascular reconstructions, and intraOp photos to place grids along cortical reconstructions, in conforming electrodes to the brain.

GitHub - dbrang/BrainTRACE: An IntraOp ECoG electrode registration tool. Developed by Abbey Roelofs, Michael Egan, Tyler Slouf, Sena Oten, Shawn Hervey-Jumper, and David Brang An IntraOp ECoG electrode registration tool. Developed by Abbey Roelofs, Michael Egan, Tyler Slouf, Sena Oten, Shawn Hervey-Jumper, and David Brang - dbrang/BrainTRACE

New preprint + toolbox! BrainTRACE is a MATLAB tool for localizing intraOp ECoG electrodes. It was designed for brain tumor patients, but appropriate for all ECoG implants.
github.com/dbrang/Brain...
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Scientists fear Trump administration cuts to NIH could impact the health of Americans for generations Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, who abruptly left his NIH research lab in February, fears aggressive downsizing could impact Americans' health.

Here is a link to 60 Minutes NIH segment...

www.cbsnews.com/news/scienti...

Fourier Wave Explorer lets you create a waveform from 5 sine waves that vary in frequency and amplitude, then shows the individual and composite waveforms, along with the PSD.

Github pages:
github.com/dbrang/Fouri...
github.com/dbrang/Fouri...

Features inspired by: github.com/Jezzamonn/fo...

Fourier Wave Creator lets you either select example waveforms (e.g., square wave, 10hz + 3hz sine wave) or draw your own waveform, then shows the sine waves needed to reconstruct that complex waveform, along with the PSD. You can suppress frequencies to show the effects on reconstruction accuracy.

I'm teaching an undergrad EEG/MEG/iEEG methods course and created a pair of interactive webpages to help build intuition about the Fourier Transform.
dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave...
dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave...

At #CNS2025? Come by our posters from the Cognition, Control, and Action Lab!

SAT 3-5pm
A126 Modeling the temporal dynamics of cognitive control
A149 Cognition-Action links in Parkinson disease (TMS-fMRI)

SUN 8-10am
B30 Causal role of the cerebellum in spatial working memory (TMS-fMRI)

New study from my PostDoc Emily Cunningham! We used ECoG with stimulation of the STG to test for direct (potentially monosynaptic) A-to-V connections in humans. 112 out of 231 visual electrodes (across 19/23 patients) exhibited early responses to STG stimulation (as early as 18ms after stimulation).

Estimated Single Year Loss of NIH Funding if 15% Indirect Cost Rate is Imposed Based on analysis of 2024 NIH funding data. Sums are totals of losses in funding to programs if indirect costs had been capped at 15%

Helpful table to determine how much your University or health system is set to lose if the NIH indirect cap is suddenly lowered to 15%. For SJSU it is $374k which is on the smaller end but devastating considering our other budget issues. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/8/

ATTENTION

If you are someone who had an F31-Diversity (or similar) application submitted this cycle, please DM me here, contact me on signal (jeremymberg.78), or email me at jeremymberg@gmail.com.

I will keep all information confidential.

2/n

And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Another shoe drop. Early termination of FOA.

We're looking to hire a new lecturer in Psychology at the University of Michigan! The initial appointment is for 3 years and this person would teach our large Intro to Cognitive Psychology course along with smaller courses on topics within their expertise.
apply.interfolio.com/160580

The forced-response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing - Behavior Research Methods Despite long-standing concerns about the use of free reaction times (RTs) in cognitive psychology, they remain a prevalent measure of conflict resolution. This report presents the forced-response meth...

Excited this one is finally out!

The forced response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing
with @hanzhang.bsky.social

link.springer.com/10.3758/s134...

Can we better study how the conflict between goal-directed and habitual/automatic actions is resolved? Read on!

Transition GIF showing the photos with and without the grid registered together. {Warning: these are intraoperative photos}