Posting on behalf of Brendan:

Common feature selection practices may capture only the “tip of the iceberg” of distributed brain–behavior relationships

Specifically, typically discarded features can predict behavior just as well as top-ranked ones, yet produce diverging interpretations

Feature selection leads to divergent neurobiological interpretations of brain-based machine learning biomarkers Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02447-yAcross more than 12,000 MRI scans, the authors show that features discarded during feature selection can rival top-ranked ones in predicting behaviour yet imply different brain circuits, warning that focusing only on top features can mislead neurobiology.

Feature selection leads to divergent neurobiological interpretations of brain-based machine learning biomarkers

Way to go @noemirubau.bsky.social and team! This study is going to yield such important and much-needed data!

#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #neuroimaging

Imagine we could characterize neurobiological vulnerability to perinatal mood disorders (PMADs)…even before conception🤯? At the TReNDS Lab, we’re building a multimodal dataset following individuals at elevated risk for PMADs from preconception through postpartum.🧠🤰Check out our preprint!
🧵👇

Introducing...the PMADS Study!! Check out our preprint and below thread describing our multimodal study protocol integrating MRIs at 3T and 7T, biofluid collection, and clinical and cognitive assessments to characterize risk for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Congrats @noemirubau.bsky.social!

✨Excited to share that our new preprint, "Mapping developmental patterns of intrinsic timescale", is now available on bioRxiv!!
📚 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Increased Reporting of Speech in Degraded Stimuli in Schizophrenia: A Case Control Study with Sine-Wave-Speech AbstractBackground and Hypothesis. People who hear voices may have strong prior expectations of speech, so that noisy auditory signals are resolved as spee

New from the lab - led by Santiago Castiello - patients with schizophrenia detect speech in sine-wave stimuli and those who hallucinate benefit most from the templates: academic.oup.com/schizophreni...

Revamping neuroimaging analysis to reveal biomarkers of adolescent mental health - Nature Mental Health Neuroscience research struggles to link neurobiological phenotypes with real-world mental health experiences, especially in youth. Here the authors challenge assumptions in functional neuroimaging stu...

New Perspective out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! We consider why neuroimaging analyses struggles to predict adolescent mental health, discuss approaches for improving prediction, and provide open-source implementations and tutorials: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.

I’m a Nobel Prize-winning immigrant. I can no longer recognize this country. Attacks on science and immigrants are destroying America.

Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak “This country has given me endless opportunities…: The America we inhabit today bears almost no resemblance to the country I chose all those years ago” newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-nobel...

New discovery! Spoiler alert: Neural dynamics are key.
Evidence for predictive computations in a brain hierarchy during a visual search task
doi.org/10.64898/202...
Work led by @pinotsislab.bsky.social
#neuroscience

We have a new Postdoc position, exploring how genetic factors and environmental factors (e.g., early life stress) influence brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism) based on brain MRI data. Welcome!

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Clara J. Steeby, Alexander L. Cohen, et al:

Naturalistic movie viewing is an effective functional localizer of the fusiform face area in adolescents with and without autism

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

We develop a new TMS targeting algorithm and test it in an open label trial in a treatment-resistant depression population with high comorbidities. Preprints by @rubykong92.bsky.social Phern-Chern Tor
1. doi.org/10.1101/2025...
2. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Our new approach ...

Incredible work by the absolutely stellar @bsevchik.bsky.social and @parkersingleton.bsky.social — the second installment of our open-science living meta-analysis of psychedelics for mental health.

Thalamocortical constraints on areal connectivity in the developing human brain www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member

Initially welcomed in Minnesota, immigrants fleeing violence are finding it harder to stay The Trump administration’s changes to work permits and humanitarian programs are squeezing legal immigrants.

For more than half a century, Minnesota welcomed immigrants fleeing war, ethnic violence and famine.

But over the last year and a half, the Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to make it harder for legal immigrants to work and stay in the United States.

And here's our second installment of sypres.io, co-led by the brilliant @bsevchik.bsky.social !!

All of this and more can be easily accessed through sypres.io

📣 📣 I am beyond excited to announce I will be joining the Yale Dept. of Psychology as an Assistant Professor in July 2027!

Deepest gratitude to my colleagues and mentors, without whom this would not have been possible.

More to come—I'll be recruiting students and hiring staff this coming year!

🍄 Our new living systematic review and meta-analysis on psilocybin for depression is out now in Nature Mental Health. Here's what we found and the open science infrastructure we built to support it 🧵

Open-Access Link: rdcu.be/fbU5V

Beyond delighted to see this paper -- our first from the SYPRES initiative -- now out at @natmentalhealth.nature.com. Check out Parker's awesome thread below, w/ links to dashboard + all code + data.

NEWS: Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration

"It's an extinction-level event for science".

This would decimate the world's leading scientific system, from NASA to NIH, and eliminate social, economic and behavioral science at NSF
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An example of the perils of presidential control over science agencies.

This Budget Request is dictated by the White House, Vought, and the P2025 OMB, not NSF.

We have an imperial presidency, the dream of John Roberts and Charles Koch since the 80s. And it is incompatible with successful science.

NIH would get $5 billion cut under Trump’s 2027 budget, but Congress unlikely to go along The White House is asking Congress to cut $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health and downsize the number of institutes and centers from 27 to 22

STAT story on the President's NIH budget request

www.statnews.com/2026/04/03/t...

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www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Cortical maps diverge, representations converge along cortical hierarchy

Paige Amormino - Saving SBE starts before the bill is written. Right now, NSF SBE does not have its own separate line of funding in the FY2027 budget structure. This matters because if SBE is not specifically protected ...

In light of the recent announcement to disband NSF's SBE program (which includes much of what would cover basic social psychology research), EMP Lab postdoc @amormino.bsky.social put together this advocacy resource guide. Please take a look, share, and let's advocate
www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337

Slasher sequel: Trump again proposes major cuts to U.S. science spending Science advocates urge Congress to reject 2027 budget plan

See also reporting by Science's staff:

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

I will say this again: Science isn’t just something that nerds do, it’s the foundation of the modern world.

It’s why this app exists. It’s why child mortality rate isn’t 50% anymore. It’s how we’re able to launch people to the moon. It’s how we’re able to grow food that feeds half the world.