figure 1 from the paper linked in OP - similar prevalence of self-reported imagery scores across auditory and visual domains

new preprint from PhD student Gage Quigley-Tump, reporting a survey of 200,000 ppl on themusiclab.org about auditory imagery or the lack thereof ('anauralia', the auditory version of aphantasia)

osf.io/cm85z

some findings:

(1) self-reported imagery ability similar across auditory & visual domains

Congratulations Donnisa Edmonds! @donnisa.bsky.social

If they're near the canonical FFA then it could well be in the overlap area

Yes I completely agree - the plot thickens :)

Thank you for the kind words!

For instance, I liked @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social 's perspective, implying that if we'd asked subs to imagine features that are actually encoded in earlier regions (eg orientation, items in specific receptive field locations, etc), we'd be more likely to see earlier regions reinstated

Yes it's very interesting. Hard to tell how far along VTC the recordings were, to assess whether they'd be in the overlap regions we see. But other studies have decoded imagined content from earlier visual areas, so (as we mention in the paper) there's likely more going on beyond the overlap.

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

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 ...

Saving SBE starts before the bill is written.

SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates:

www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337

Our paper is out! This has been years in the making.

We found that mental imagery and perception do share a neural substrate, but we see it in in higher-order transmodal networks rather than earlier sensory systems. Check it out!

doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Thanks Micah!

Thank you!

But there is a deeper implication: if both perception and imagery rely on the same transmodal systems despite clear differences in sensory input, then what is shared between them cannot be the input itself, but the way experience is organized beyond that input.

We dedicate this paper to Jonny Smallwood (1975-2025), who was instrumental in this project from inception to submission.

Jonny thank you for your mentorship & you are dearly missed!

The principle was seen for imagining scenes or speech, even though different sensory systems (visual, auditory) and transmodal networks (DN-A, LANG) were implicated in each.

Full thread above, but in summary:

When we imagine we re-activate brain regions used during perception, an idea called "sensory reinstatement". However, our results suggest this overlap is actually in transmodal association networks, not sensory areas.

Perception culminates in transmodal networks

Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron!

Here is a download link (free for 50 days):
authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH...

Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social

🧵

Of course, rest is much easier from a data collection perspective (coding, testing, training,etc) so given they do converge, lots of advantages to collecting rest! Including for those who cannot perform certain tasks

Within-individual precision mapping of brain networks exclusively using task data Precision mapping of brain networks within individuals prevailingly relies on functional connectivity analysis of resting-state data. Here, we explore…

Congrats! I agree there’s no reason to think “rest” is particularly privileged. This may be of interest:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My understanding is with enough data fc estimates from tasks or rest will largely converge, but very plausible that tasks may reach stability sooner

@caterinagratton.bsky.social @ariellekeller.bsky.social @jingnandu.bsky.social Andre Zamani & Chuck Lynch

Wonderful time at the #CNS2026 Individual-level precision fMRI symposium yesterday with this lovely lineup. See you at the next one!

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.

It’s out!

The bags kept piling up and eventually someone called the police, who rounded up the bags, even as more kept arriving. It made me realize that the code must have gotten stuck in a loop, and the humans were carrying out the functions in the real world, repeatedly, pointlessly. A real-world error log

One day last month, I watched as car after car after car stopped by my neighbor’s house and dropped off a bag of vitamins each. It went on for hours, and almost as soon as one person had finished delivering and was walking away, another car arrived with another bag, etc etc

Why?

3 funding rejections in a week 🙃

Dense Phenotyping of Human Brain Network Organization Using Precision fMRI The advent of noninvasive imaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) transformed cognitive neuroscience, providing insights into large-scale brain networks and their link to cog...

My review with @caterinagratton.bsky.social is (apparently) open access for those who couldn't see it before:

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

We discuss individual differences in brain network organization and how to home in on and talk about commonalities in the face of such differences

Happy to have you with us!

going through months of figure edits feels worth it when one ends up on a text book cover! thanks to @bradpostle.bsky.social and @rodbraga.bsky.social