Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain — a Perspective by Lisa Feldman Barrett & Earl K. Miller
@lisafeldmanbarrett.com @earlkmiller.bsky.social
#neuroscience #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dopamine takes a hit: how neuroscience is rethinking the ‘feel-good’ chemical. (Bonus Omar Little quote included.) www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Jeff Bezos
The National Institutes of Health promised to protect children’s sensitive data in a federally funded project to track brain development. After it failed to do so, fringe researchers co-opted the children’s data, giving fodder for racist claims on social media and white nationalist message boards.
A must-read review. It argues that brain areas are only one of several organizing principles and are not especially central, given their weak correspondence to function. Cytoarchitecture and connectivity are a starting point, not the endpoint.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience
Top left: Illustration showing the location of Utah arrays implanted into FPC of M1 (32 channels, blue) and M2 (64 channels, red); poststudy analysis confirmed both arrays implanted in the most rostro-lateral portion of FPC, with the entire array located rostral to the anterior tip of Principal Sulcus. Top right: Choice-aligned spectrogram showing a strong gamma frequency response (top). Array maps showing choice responses across the arrays implanted in M1 (blue) and M2 (red). Electrodes with significant gamma responses aligned to choices outlined in cyan. Red crosses indicate reference electrodes. Bottom left: Example spectrograms showing choice-aligned activity recorded from FPC following high-frequency stimulation (upper) or in the absence of stimulation (lower). Spectrogram calculated by averaging over the fifth to eighth trials after stimulation. Nonstimulation spectrogram calculated from the average spectrograms of trials from the last four trials of four nonstimulated blocks (i.e., same relative block epoch). White box indicates the 400 ms period used for further analysis. Bottom right: Illustration of the trials included in the analysis of changes in LFP activity recorded from FPC caused by electrical microstimulation. In stimulation blocks, the 10 trials before and 10 trials after the poststimulation block change were included (white box). In nonstimulation blocks a corresponding window of trials was selected.
What's the role of #FrontopolarCortex (FPC) in evaluating alternative goals? @markboxf.bsky.social &co show that FPC activity tracks the value of #counterfactual rules via gamma & beta bursts; targeted FPC stimulation alters both neural signals & #DecisionMaking @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4ppd5lL
"An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients...Prof Tabrizi says this gene therapy 'is the beginning' and will open the gates for therapies that can reach more people."🧪⚕️
Since start of 2025, as compared to the same period in 2024, Johns Hopkins has received 40% fewer federal awards, a decline of ~50% in research funding, a reduction of $500 million.
University wide, international graduate student enrollment is down by 8% since last year.
"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."
Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.
I wrote about my decision in TIME.
time.com/7285045/resi...
Neuroscientist Sarah Heilbronner is a proud product of Martin County schools in Florida 🌴. However, federal budget cuts threaten important work she's doing in brain research. 🧪🏠
@srheilbronner.bsky.social
www.tcpalm.com/story/opinio...
“The devastation of losing something like [the Paleontological Research Institution] is monumental … It can never be replaced.” scim.ag/4ibbAUB
I wrote a column in my hometown newspaper about the importance of keeping SCIENCE FUNDING in our community 🧪
More soon about the power of writing back HOME 🏠
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/15/g...
Kudos to Matt Ainsworth and Juan Galeazzi who are joint first authors on our preprint (and fond remembrance to our dear departed colleague Mark Stokes, also co-author).
Column by Thomas Boswell | Don’t despair over Juan Soto’s megadeal: The Mets and their big-spending owner will get what they deserve.
The title page of the special issue, which reads "Introduction to the special issue on visual cognition and visuomotor control: A tribute to Mel Goodale" The authors of the Intro are: Jody C. Culham, Gavin Buckingham, Monika Harvey, Irene Sperandio, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
I feel so honored by the publication of this special issue of Neuropsychologia. Thanks so much to my friends and colleagues who put this together. And thanks to all the contributors. There are so many wonderful articles. I can't tell you how delighted I am. 🧪🧠 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Neuroscientists are flocking to Bluesky, but X still has ten times more users. My story on the migration, featuring @nicolecrust.bsky.social @russpoldrack.bsky.social @charan-neuro.bsky.social @therealdrdukes.bsky.social @wiringthebrain.bsky.social + more! www.thetransmitter.org/community/hu...
hello neuroscientists! I am working on a story for @thetransmitter.bsky.social about the X to Bluesky migration and I would love to hear why you switched platforms (and what you make of bluesky so far). DM me or email me calli@thetransmitter.org if you'd like to comment for the piece. Thank you!
Thrilled that our paper on the role of the rat prelimbic cortex (PLC) in decision making is finally out! Three main findings are described in this thread
Co-authors: Jensen Palmer, Samantha White, and Kevin Chavez Lopez
doi.org/10.1523/JNEU...
26 years after Larry Swanson emphasized “the amygdala is neither a structural or functional unit” we used sn-RNAseq to answer the question:
“What is the [primate] amygdala?”
Check out the preprint 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
I've been interested in this point for a long time. It would be valuable, I think, to explore it systematically, the way I imagine a sociologist might. For example, what are the career outcomes for student-generated vs. mentor-generated research? Maybe someone has already done something like that.
#neuroskyence This book is available in ebook format at a discounted price in November.
www.amazon.co.uk/Understandin...
Oxford University Press has made Chapter 1 of my book, Cortical Evolution in Primates, available free of charge: fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...
I'm retired now, but it is the activity I miss most. Because the reviewers are almost invariably wrong, it's usually more like a victory lap than an argument.
Elon Musk’s first human experiment with the computerized brain device Neuralink developed significant flaws. But Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed and the first patient to take part in the human clinical trial, said he has few regrets.
Widespread adoption of open-source tools calls for more support and training.
By @alexxai.bsky.social and @marklaubach.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/open-neurosc...
