I'm looking forward to #CCN2026 Check out the posters from our lab!

My latest post to Neural Flows! “What’s generative about generative network neuroscience" Introducing a new field of network neuroscience covered in my forthcoming book Brain Flows Gaining fundamental understanding of cognition by modeling connectivity-constrained neural generative processes

What’s generative about generative network neuroscience

Getting to a new level of understanding in neuroscience and cognitive science

neuralflows.substack.com

My latest post to Neural Flows! “Generative network neuroscience" Gaining fundamental understanding of cognition by modeling connectivity-constrained neural generative processes A perspective shift in neuroscience and the (other) cognitive sciences

Generative network neuroscience

Gaining fundamental understanding of cognition by modeling connectivity-constrained neural generative processes

open.substack.com

The Cole Neurocognition Lab has a poster at OHBM 2026 It's poster 2206 (June 17 & 18): Network flow dynamics linked to dimensionality via collider motifs in human visual cortex ohbm.floq.live/event/ohbm-2...

The OMB has proposed rules that would, among other things, have political appointees override peer review and allow sudden grant termination. This morning I wrote a comment on this proposal in my own words. It only took a few minutes. You can do the same: www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

Megathread resources now compiled in a Google doc. Send it to your friends. Share with your departments and trainees. And share with non-scientists! I also have a template for non-scientist comments, because this is an all-taxpayer, all medical service user issue. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Submit an OMB Comment!

SAVE AMERICAN SCIENCE (Please! 💜 Annika @annikabarber.bsky.social) What are the proposed changes to scientific grant review and award? Read the Federal Register directly here: Regulation for Federal...

docs.google.com

Annika Barber@annikabarber.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Megathread about responding to new OMB grant funding rules (feel free to add/link more!) I was collecting these for me, but figured I'd round 'em up for everyone 🧪 What's the problem? arstechnica.com/science/2026... elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

My latest Neural Flows newsletter post! “Enhancing scientific inference with evidence quality maps” Automated inference as a scalable engine of discovery

Building evidence quality maps to transform science

Automated inference as a scalable engine of discovery

neuralflows.substack.com

My latest Neural Flows post: “Living in a compositional universe is a prerequisite for intelligence” Brain flow dynamics take advantage of our environment’s compositionality to accomplish goals

Living in a compositional universe is a prerequisite for intelligence

How brain flows take advantage of our environment’s compositionality

neuralflows.substack.com

Why do our visual systems have “shortcut” connections (V1-V4)? What do they add beyond the classic hierarchical (V1-V2-V3-V4) pathway? 

The lab’s latest study takes activity flow modeling to the next level to answer this question, led by @alextzalav.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Opposing BOLD signals and oxygen metabolism largely arise from statistical uncertainty in metabolic estimates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.21.719913v1

My latest Neural Flows post: “Using evidence quality to restructure incentives in science” Metrics will inevitably bias science, so let’s use metrics that reflect what science should be biased by

Using evidence quality to restructure incentives in science

Metrics will inevitably bias science, so let’s switch to metrics that reflect what science should be biased by

open.substack.com

My latest post to Neural Flows! “Reorienting neuroscience around brain flows” A perspective shift to enhance both activity-focused (e.g., manifold, representations) and connectivity-focused (e.g., connectome) neuroscience open.substack.com/pub/neuralfl...

Reorienting neuroscience around brain flows

A perspective shift to enhance both activity-focused (e.g., manifold, representations) and connectivity-focused (e.g., connectome) neuroscience

open.substack.com

I think we finally made really significant progress on the biggest unsolved "developmental AI" problem: learning from human-scale data. Key idea: zero-shot world models that support concept extraction via approximate causal inference. amazing collab w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social @khaiaw.bsky.social

Khai Loong Aw@khaiaw.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Children exhibit visual understanding from limited experience, orders of magnitude less than our best models. We introduce the Zero-shot World Model (ZWM). Trained on a single child's visual experience, BabyZWM rapidly generates competence across diverse benchmarks with no task-specific training. 🧵

Today I am relaunching my newsletter as Neural Flows, inspired by my forthcoming book "Brain Flows" The newsletter asks: How does the improvised symphony of flows inside our heads generate our minds? Check out the intro post to the new newsletter here: open.substack.com/pub/neuralfl...

Welcome to Neural Flows

A newsletter inspired by the book Brain Flows

open.substack.com

Quick bit of advice for everyone on Bluesky: We should switch to using the For You feed as our default feed. It will make things better

James Ball@jamesrball.com · 4mo ago

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

Inspired by Edinburgh’s legacy of big ideas (e.g., Hume), on a train leaving the city, I crafted a proposal for a book about big ideas in network neuroscience—how brain activity flows generate representations that together compose our minds. The rest is history, and this new book: shorturl.at/3p100

Brain Flows

A pioneering theory of how brain network flows compose the neural symphonies that make us who we are

press.princeton.edu

Inspired by Edinburgh’s legacy of big ideas (e.g., Hume), on a train leaving the city, I crafted a proposal for a book about big ideas in network neuroscience—how brain activity flows generate representations that together compose our minds. The rest is history, and this new book: shorturl.at/3p100

Brain Flows

A pioneering theory of how brain network flows compose the neural symphonies that make us who we are

press.princeton.edu

How does the visual cortex coordinate neural activity over spatial and temporal scales? We found broad θ waves organize local γ bursts and spiking, forming a flexible spatiotemporal code to multiplex feedforward/feedback signals. Now out in full @natcomms.nature.com: doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🧵

Our recent study, "Distributed cortical network dynamics of binocular convergent eye movements in humans" is out in Network Neuroscience, where we move beyond simple brain mapping to show that binocular convergence is driven by the flow of activity across distributed neural networks. 1/8

This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!

Eiko Fried@eikofried.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

10) Please check out the full paper here: “Dynamically shifting from compositional to conjunctive brain representations supports cognitive task learning”, doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Dynamically shifting from compositional to conjunctive brain representations supports cognitive task learning - Nature Communications

Learning shifts multi-task representations from compositional to conjunctive formats. Cortical conjunctions uniquely associate with effects of practice, and index switch costs. Subcortex is critical f...

doi.org

Excited to see our paper with @mwcole.bsky.social finally out in peer-reviewed form @natcomms.nature.com! We examine how the human brain learns new tasks and optimizes representations over practice…1/n

2/3 Imagine if NFL coaches were hired because they were friends with the White House. You’d end up with bad football teams pretty fast. Same deal with NIH IC Directors and science.

Wanna better understand what society has gained from research? This website crowd-sources societal benefits that stem from US government-funded research publicusaresearchbenefits.com

Lab’s latest is out in Imaging Neuroscience, led by Kirsten Peterson: “Regularized partial correlation provides reliable functional connectivity estimates while correcting for widespread confounding”, where we demonstrate a major improvement to standard fMRI functional connectivity (correlation) 1/n

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Malte R. Güth, Travis E. Baker, et al: Right posterior theta reflects human parahippocampal phase resetting by salient cues during goal-directed navigation doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to critical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your planet. - Carl Sagan.

I still get chills Meet Mike *30+ years severe depression *first hospitalized @ 13y *20 meds *3 rounds of ECT *2 near-fatal suicide attempts Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE see videos, read paper, follow thread doi.org/10.31234/osf...

“Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures” doi.org/10.1038/s415... Small contribution in this piece by @frosas.bsky.social and colleagues on how we need both types of research culture in neuroscience. #neuroskyence

Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168