Fluctuations in arousal reflect latent state transitions that facilitate behavioural optimization

Fluctuations in arousal reflect latent state transitions that facilitate behavioural optimization

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 05 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02533-1Li, Marble et al. examine how moment-to-moment fluctuations in arousal optimize behaviour by signalling environmental transitions and facilitate rapid adjustments of mental context.

dlvr.it

Spatiotemporal coordination of specialized cerebellar networks supports episodic memory in older adults https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.03.742395v1

THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE POWER ACCOMPLISHES! Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who wrote comments, contacted Congress, and yelled! This is OUR WIN! @standupforscience.net www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul

Language is included to delay the president’s move to put political appointees in charge of grant approval.

politico.com

This may dramatically slow down the attacks on science. It also provides a template for how to prevent the federal government from becoming a patronage state. It’s a big deal!

Politico@politico.com · 3d ago

Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul

Excited to share the lab's latest on leveraging what we're learning from developmental neuroscience about the role of parents in children's anxiety to optimize treatments for youth! Led by Elizabeth Kitt and now out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Our latest out now in @natneuro.nature.com led by @trangcao.bsky.social looking at the reproducibility of MRI morphometry phenotypes in psychiatric disorders. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thread: x.com/TrangCao2016...

The cross-site reproducibility of MRI morphometric phenotypes in psychiatric disorders - Nature Neuroscience

A large analysis of MRI studies in five psychiatric disorders reveals that maps of brain volume differences in psychiatric illness are rarely reproducible, highlighting the need for alternative approa...

nature.com

Cortical Sites Critical for Speech and Language Exhibit Distinct fMRI-Derived Network Features https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.23.740155v1

Awesome work here from @ariellekeller.bsky.social showing the existence of an "exposome network" in ABCD functional connectivity data--check it out!!

Arielle Keller@ariellekeller.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thrilled to share our new paper deriving an ”Exposome Network” of functional connectivity capturing multidimensional env. exposures in youth, now out in DCN! 🌟🧠 doi.org/10.1016/j.dc... Huge thank you Sarah Lichenstein, @yiplab.bsky.social & our amazing Connecticut Collab! ❤️ #devpsy #neuroimaging

🧠 New preprint! How does the brain build specialized, efficient representations as we grow up? We used manifold learning to track the "intrinsic dimensionality" (ID) of brain activity in ~800 participants (aged 3mo–53yrs), as they performed naturalistic tasks and rested/slept.

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2w ago

Developmental tuning of functional manifold dimensionality across the human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.24.740635v1

Thrilled to share our new paper deriving an ”Exposome Network” of functional connectivity capturing multidimensional env. exposures in youth, now out in DCN! 🌟🧠 doi.org/10.1016/j.dc... Huge thank you Sarah Lichenstein, @yiplab.bsky.social & our amazing Connecticut Collab! ❤️ #devpsy #neuroimaging

Arielle Keller@ariellekeller.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Happy New Preprint Friday!* Thrilled to share new results in collab with Sarah Lichenstein & @yiplab.bsky.social showing our brain's functional connections reflect the environments we grow up in! tinyurl.com/exposomeConnectivity #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #DevPsy #cognition *can this be a thing??

Trump administration admits, in court filings, that it canceled billions in federal grants not for policy or performance reasons, but because recipients lived in blue states. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

Further analysis of Packalen & Bhattacharya article, where they claimed #NIH-funded research was slow to pick up on new ideas. I argue that their approach is flawed, and I present an analysis that shows the exact opposite. pubpeer.com/publications...

Applying for an NIH grant is an extremely involved process that requires months of work per application. This is all so stupid but it's also pointlessly cruel to the people trying to have a career in science.

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 2w ago

NIH is testing their ability to terminate “unaligned” grants, with at least one new termination documented. Disgustingly, they awarded this grant simply so they could add a termination clause. Then they terminated it. From @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

This should be truly shocking, but unfortunately isn't.

Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (Gift Article)

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

nytimes.com

The Trump regime admitted to canceling over $7.5 billion in federal grants for clean energy projects in states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (Gift Article)

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

nytimes.com

1/ The world's songbirds sing in just 8 basic sounds. And where a bird lives decides which ones it uses. My first PhD paper is out now in @science.org (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6239) Here is what we found:

I co-sign this great summary from @dereklowe.bsky.social . The goal is to destroy academic science, and these are the reasons. And all the “gold standard” and “needs reform” and “not high risk” stuff is transparent bullshit to hide the ball on what they are doing.

Derek Lowe@dereklowe.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thoughts on the various Trump administration proposals to revamp US science funding - and what they all have in common:

Congratulations to Theodore D. Satterthwaite, recipient of the Flux Society 2026 Linda Spear Mid-Career Award! Ted’s work advances multimodal neuroimaging to understand brain development, psychiatric illness, and reproducible neuroscience. Read more: buff.ly/QQeZUM5 #Flux2026 #DCN

buff.ly

Looking for a data analyst with good MRI skills and coding background 💻🧠👩‍🔧. Sorry but visa sponsorship isn't an option. Kindly re-post! Apply here: wd1.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

Data Technician

University Overview The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school co...

wd1.myworkdaysite.com

1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com

The cerebellum plays a role in motor learning and reinforcement learning. But does cerebellar learning generalize to all sorts of tasks? Here we test strong prediction: that cerebellar activity tracks passively learned sensory-sensory associations (statistical learning). See below for the answer!

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2w ago

Unsupervised nonmotor learning in the human cerebellum https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.22.740142v1

In this new preprint, @jocelynricard.bsky.social argues for a more intentional and principled approach to the measurement of neighborhood-level effects on brain development. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Area-level context and functional brain organization across the lifespan

The neighborhoods children grow up in are associated with cognitive and mental health outcomes across the lifespan. Yet how neighborhood-level factors are quantified, and how they relate to large-scal...

biorxiv.org

Once you understand that this is a model of science written by non-scientists who hate universities but love venture capital and redirecting money to political allies, everything makes a lot more sense. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/u...

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com

👇 Feature selection leads to divergent neurobiological interpretations of brain-based machine learning biomarkers | Nature Human Behaviour www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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

Across 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 ...

nature.com

Study in 30,000 kids shows that unpredictable early-life experience is a potent Adverse Childhood Event www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Just dropped in Nature MH, with an amazing team. 🧪🧠 And unpredictability is actionable! would love your thoughts. @cate-cholamine.bsky.social @drkoraly.bsky.social

Unpredictability is a childhood adversity that contributes to mental health problems - Nature Mental Health

In this population-based cohort study, Glynn et al. tested the contribution of childhood unpredictability to mental health outcomes in ~30,000 participants, examining the relative and additive roles o...

nature.com

Environmental enrichment has positive neurobehavioral effects in rodents, yet is vaguely operationalized & understudied in humans. In our @npp-journal.bsky.social Hot Topic, we outline how human enrichment research may translate into approaches to fostering psychiatric resilience rdcu.be/ftwpC

So excited to share that our study is out now in @natcomms.nature.com! 🧠🚨 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big shout out to coauthors @sidchop.bsky.social @ashleasegal.bsky.social @loiclabache.bsky.social Rowena Chin Kaley Joss & @avramholmes.bsky.social

Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease - Nature Communications

Cocuzza et al. show that brain network dynamics are less flexible in psychiatric illness, and these patterns predict individual symptom profiles better than diagnoses, highlighting brain dynamics as a...

nature.com

Nice write up of @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social's latest work using brain dynamics to study transdiagnostic symptom profiles. @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social, @rutgersbhi.bsky.social, and @rutgersu.bsky.social. Likely of interest to @hitop-system.bsky.social oriented folks.

Rutgers Brain Health Institute@rutgersbhi.bsky.social · 2w ago

New study in Nature Communications finds that reduced flexibility in brain network dynamics characterizes individuals with psychiatric conditions. www.rutgers.edu/news/why-bra...

Excited to see our paper out in Nature Mental Health: The neuroimaging correlates of depression established across six large-scale population datasets. doi.org/10.1038/s442...

A great new resource for future comparisons across model systems, species, and disease states, on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: a consensus atlas of human brain development, identifying cell type-specific maturation trajectories across the lifespan 🧪🧬🧠📈 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A consensus atlas of human brain development defines cell type-specific maturation trajectories across the lifespan

Human neurodevelopment is a continuous process that begins prenatally and extends into postnatal life. Current transcriptomic datasets are limited, fragmented across analytical frameworks, precluding ...

biorxiv.org