New, expanded preprint! Sensorimotor training makes a finger-extending exoskeleton feel lighter, suggesting active use helps wearable augmentation become perceptually transparent. Much longer, much better version now on bioRxiv: w/ Arina Schippers @mattlongo.bsky.social @lukemillerneuro.bsky.social

Sensorimotor training lightens the perceived weight of body augmentation devices

Wearable haptic and robotic devices must transmit useful forces and tactile information without remaining perceptually intrusive. Here we show that perceived weight provides a behavioral marker of thi...

doi.org

New paper in Science Advances! We show that congenital blindness reduces myelination in the human visual cortex, challenging the long-standing idea that thicker visual cortex in blind people mainly reflects disrupted pruning. (1/4) doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Congenital blindness reduces myelination in human visual cortex

Altered myelin and microstructure in congenital blindness illuminate how sensory experience guides human brain development.

doi.org

The #brains of #blind people reorganize differently than previously thought: a Polish-German team of researchers from the @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social & @lenastroh.bsky.social @nikweiskopf.bsky.social shows how the lack of visual experience affects the maturation of the brain. tinyurl.com/yrfa7scv

The brains of blind people reorganize differently than previously thought

The brains of blind people reorganize differently than previously thought

cbs.mpg.de

Lovely to see our eLife study in BPS Research Digest @bpsofficial.bsky.social @researchdigest.bsky.social! We studied how the brain adapts to finger extensions, finding three rapid phases of sensorimotor plasticity as users integrated them into body representation. www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Huge congratulations to Valeria Peviani on winning the Early Career Researcher Award from @bodyrepnetwork.bsky.social! 🎉 It is wonderful to see her creativity, brilliance, and impact recognized by the community. We are so proud! Congratulations, @pevianiv.bsky.social!

Happy to have presented at #ESCAN2026 in the symposium “When bodily signals are missing” chaired by Arianna Schiano and Sara Costa. I shared my work on cardiac interoception and occipital cortex plasticity in blindness, and on what blindness teaches us about links between the body and brain 👁️🫀🧠

Speaking at #ESCAN2026 🇮🇹 this Friday! S4-2: When bodily signals are missing June 5, 10:30–12:00, Room 8A I will present work on cardiac interoception and occipital cortex plasticity in blindness, alongside talks on limb absence, Bell’s palsy, and interoception. Come by! 🫀👁️

Enhanced processing of cartoons in infant visual cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.11.724345v1

Caregiver-infant interactions selectively shape emerging functional connectivity in the neonatal brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.13.724776v1

Infants develop helping behaviors through shared routines with caregivers, with early prosocial actions shaped by caregiver modeling, motor skills, and social understanding. doi.org/hb3s38

Tiny hands, big clues: How babies learn to help their caregivers

Does your infant put their arm through their sleeve when you get them dressed? As you sort laundry, does your toddler pick up the shorts you dropped?

sciencex.com

Just in time for #NCMKobe26, our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... Attaching an exoskeleton leads to rapid perceptual integration; ~20 min of training makes it feel even lighter. See supplement for model details! w/ Arina Schippers @mattlongo.bsky.social @lukemillerneuro.bsky.social 🦾🧠

Fave things, one title #interoception 🫁🧠❤️

Micah G. Allen@micahgallen.com · 4mo ago

Journal Club - Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Journal Club - Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception

Interoception, the perception of signals from the body, has become central to understanding why bodily states are felt differently across individuals. Rather than being unitary, interoception is best ...

jneurosci.org

If breathing has separable components, do they have separable brain bases? Evidence from qMRI suggests yes: insula & ACC for sensitivity, somatosensory cortex for affect, and midline & PAG for confidence. More in our Journal Club on Nikolova et al. (2025) 👇 www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception

Interoception, the perception of signals from the body, has become central to understanding why bodily states are felt differently across individuals. Rather than being unitary, interoception is best ...

jneurosci.org

Breathing seems to break down into separable parts: sensing, interpreting, and feeling, each linked to different brain systems. In our Journal Club on Nikolova et al. (2025), we explore how this helps explain why the same breath can feel so different across people. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1...

Breath, Belief, and Brain: A Tripartite Map of Respiratory Interoception

Interoception, the perception of signals from the body, has become central to understanding why bodily states are felt differently across individuals. Rather than being unitary, interoception is best ...

jneurosci.org

Job ad: Postdoc to work with me & @rogierk.bsky.social at the Donders on lifespan development questions from Sept onward! Profile: independent, good quant skills, interested in theory-driven work Please share widely www.careersatradboudumc.com/vacancies/po... #Postdoc #AcademicJobs

Vacancy — Postdoctoral researcher cognitive development

careersatradboudumc.com

Neuroscientists have created a continuous atlas showing how patterns of functional connectivity between brain regions change from birth to old age go.nature.com/47rmMtk

Charting the human brain’s lifelong functional organization

Neuroscientists have created a continuous atlas showing how patterns of functional connectivity between brain regions change from birth to old age.

go.nature.com

New paper led by @pevianiv.bsky.social! We show maps of a hand-held tool can be built with accuracy comparable to arm. Tool use did not change accuracy but affected precision. This suggests the sensorimotor system can extend body-like representations to tools. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Spatial maps of the arm and tool: Accuracy, precision, and the effect of tool use

There is evidence that the sensorimotor system builds fine-grained spatial maps of the limbs based on somatosensory signals. Can a hand-held tool be m…

sciencedirect.com

How dynamics arise from the structure is my biggest interest. In this study, we started with a small step and asked how structure constrains dynamics. Spoiler: would that it were so simple… (1/6)

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Inter- and intra-individual variability in structure-function coupling in human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.707886v1

We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨ 🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes

As body-augmenting technologies become more common, it is important to understand how the brain decides what counts as "the body", and how that changes over time. My first postdoc paper 🦾 now out in @elife.bsky.social 👇

eLife@elife.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The human body is remarkably adaptable, capable of integrating artificial enhancements from tools to prosthetic limbs. Researchers have used finger extensions to test how the brain updates its expectations over time. 🔗 buff.ly/HxxCzTz

The human body is remarkably adaptable, capable of integrating artificial enhancements from tools to prosthetic limbs. Researchers have used finger extensions to test how the brain updates its expectations over time. 🔗 buff.ly/HxxCzTz

How does the brain adapt to artificial body extensions over time? With a wearable finger-extension device, we reveal distinct phases of proprioceptive plasticity: during wear, after active use, and even after removal. Now in @elife.bsky.social: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

New paper led by @pevianiv.bsky.social! Using EEG and varied hand positions, we tested how the brain localizes touch. Neural gradients showed limb-specific, intrinsic coding emerging ~160 ms after touch, challenging extrinsic remapping theories. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/5...

The Spatial Coding of Touch Is Defined in Intrinsic, Limb-Specific Coordinates: An EEG Study

The brain computes the spatiotopic position of touch by integrating tactile and proprioceptive signals (i.e., tactile remapping). While it is often assumed that the spatiotopic touch location is mappe...

jneurosci.org

It's this time of the year again! Does anyone know of a cognitive neuroscience (or adjacent) travel grant for researchers based in the Netherlands, but presenting data from a previous position (e.g., PhD work)? Looking for options to support conference travel! Any leads appreciated 🧠

Super excited that our paper on velocity (longitudinal) normative modelling is finally out!

Andre Marquand@amarquand.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I am very excited about this new preprint! @likeajumprope.bsky.social presents an approach for charting growth velocity using normative models. It provides a fundamental framework for detecting individualised deviations from an assumed developmental trajectory. Enjoy! arxiv.org/abs/2601.07591

I am very excited about this new preprint! @likeajumprope.bsky.social presents an approach for charting growth velocity using normative models. It provides a fundamental framework for detecting individualised deviations from an assumed developmental trajectory. Enjoy! arxiv.org/abs/2601.07591

Charting the velocity of brain growth and development

Brain charts have emerged as a highly useful approach for understanding brain development and aging on the basis of brain imaging and have shown substantial utility in describing typical and atypical ...

arxiv.org

A bit belated, but here are some new papers! first, a conceptual framework for modelling extremes in neuroimaging data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Great work from the inimitable Charlotte Fraza!

Using Extreme Value Statistics to Reconceptualize Psychopathology as Extreme Deviations From a Normative Reference Model

Overview of our approach for extreme value statistics. First, we fit a normative model to imaging phenotypes, before employing a ‘peaks-over-threshold’ approach widely used in meteorology and finance...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Really happy to share that my talk on how spatial finger augmentation reshapes proprioceptive and tactile maps was accepted as an oral presentation at @ncmsociety.bsky.social meeting in Kobe 🇯🇵 I will present a computational framework for how artificial extensions integrate into body representation.