David Brang
@dbrang.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Psychology UMich. Cognitive neuroscience of multisensory perception, neural oscillations, and brain tumor physiology. 🏳️🌈 sites.lsa.umich.edu/brang-lab/
Super excited by this manuscript led by the amazing @brissend.bsky.social By combining fMRI, TMS, and modeling, we finally have causal evidence that the cerebellum is contributing to brain-wide working memory representations and recall performance! 1/n
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 3mo agoCerebellar perturbation impairs human working memory and degrades spatial tuning throughout cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.14.724968v1
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...
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...
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” ...
journals.plos.org
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.
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · last yr.Electrocorticographic Detection of Speech Networks in Glioma-infiltrated Cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.04.663249v1
Electrocorticographic Detection of Speech Networks in Glioma-infiltrated Cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.04.663249v1
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.
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.
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · last yr.Aperiodic neural dynamics define a novel signature of glioma-induced excitation-inhibition dysregulation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.23.655626v1
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...
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
github.com
Here is a link to 60 Minutes NIH segment... www.cbsnews.com/news/scienti...
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.
cbsnews.com
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).
Emily Cunningham@e-cunningham.bsky.social · last yr.A new preprint (brief report) with @dbrang.bsky.social is now live, examining CCEP evidence for direct projections between auditory and visual cortices in humans. (1/3) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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 $374k which is on the smaller end but devastating considering our other budget issues. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/8/
Estimated Single Year Loss of NIH Funding if 15% Indirect Cost Rate is Imposed
Based on analysis of 2024 NIH funding data. Sums are totals of losses in funding to programs if indirect costs had been capped at 15%
datawrapper.dwcdn.net
ATTENTION If you are someone who had an F31-Diversity (or similar) application submitted this cycle, please DM me here, contact me on signal (jeremymberg.78), or email me at jeremymberg@gmail.com. I will keep all information confidential. 2/n
And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
Another shoe drop. Early termination of FOA.
Margaret Crane, PhD@margaretcrane.bsky.social · 2y agoAnd the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
We're looking to hire a new lecturer in Psychology at the University of Michigan! The initial appointment is for 3 years and this person would teach our large Intro to Cognitive Psychology course along with smaller courses on topics within their expertise. apply.interfolio.com/160580
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
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!
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...
link.springer.com
Posted some of the lab's Open-Source Image Registration scripts onto github, useful for identifying where ECoG electrodes are located based on intraoperative photography alone, by registering/warping pictures of the brain with and without the ECoG grid. github.com/dbrang/Intra...
GitHub - dbrang/IntraOp_Image_Registration_Tools: Open-source tools for aligning intraoperative photos based on automatic and manual control point selection
Open-source tools for aligning intraoperative photos based on automatic and manual control point selection - dbrang/IntraOp_Image_Registration_Tools
github.com
I have not seen a starter pack for the study of brain rhythms. So, here's a start. go.bsky.app/A6zgHeE
my first preprint with @dbrang.bsky.social is now live. we tested whether mouth movement improves auditory speech onset encoding and ongoing speech envelope tracking with distinct or overlapping mechanisms (1/7)
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2y agoVisual speech enhances auditory onset timing and envelope tracking through distinct mechanisms https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.23.624953v1
First R01 for the lab! Grateful to have such amazing lab members and collaborators. We’re recruiting postdocs for this work and for an NSF grant (salary 65-70k; the postdoc could potentially live out of state and work remotely). More info at...
New preprint from the lab! "Auditory cortex encodes lipreading information through spatially distributed activity." We used fMRI (n=64) and intracranial recordings (n=6) to study how the auditory system represents lipreading information....
New iEEG paper from the lab testing what auditory features visual cortex is sensitive to (we've previously found that the auditory system sends sound onset timing and some coarse spatial information, but anything else?). https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00164.2021...
