This essentially organizes the findings from our Nature and Nature Neuroscience papers into one picture. nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10059-1 nature.com/articles/s41...

Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder - Nature

The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.

nature.com

Honored to be named the runner-up for the Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation, with my essay now published by @science.org science.org/doi/10.1126/... The essay lays out how mapping the brain's functional circuits lets us move neuromodulation from deep toward the brain surface.

From @ndosenbach.bsky.social @washuneurology.bsky.social, @smarek0502.bsky.social @washu.edu and team: A family’s financial situation + neighborhood resources/opportunities had the strongest connection to brain development, and IQ had no correlation with brain structure/function.

Socioeconomic factors linked to lasting imprint in kids’ brains | WashU Medicine

Sleep, screen time and stress — but not IQ — are also linked to children’s brain features.

bit.ly

ICYMI: Timothy Miller, MD, PhD, spoke to @stlmag.bsky.social about his work on tofersen, a treatment for a genetic form of ALS. "Washington University is an incredible environment to do neurodegenerative disease research." Read the article and listen to The 314 Podcast now: https://bit.ly/4ecTfGi

New research from Nico Dosenbach, MD, PhD, and colleagues published in @science.org found that socioeconomic status is one of the biggest factors impacting the development of kids' brains — more than even IQ, parenting style or health history. Read more: https://bit.ly/4eelc1K

Randall Bateman, MD, & David Holtzman, MD, received the 2026 American Innovator Award from the Bayh-Dole Coalition. It honors their decades of work that has transformed Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. https://medicine.washu.edu/news/bateman-and-holtzman-receive-2026-american-innovator-award/

Statement by @sciamunion.bsky.social on Springer Nature's sale of Scientific American and massive editorial layoffs right before a successful union vote is counted. www.wgaeast.org/wgae-scienti...

WGAE-Scientific American Union Statement on Springer Nature’s Sale and Layoffs | Press Room

The following is a statement from Writers Guild of America East members at Scientific American on today’s decision to sell Springer Nature and lay off staff: “Earlier today in an all-staff meeting we ...

wgaeast.org

A great resource! We've been using NSI to quality-control all of our recent data.

@cjl2007.bsky.social · last mo.

Happy to share that our paper on objective quality assessment for "precision" fMRI is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social A recap of what it does, what's new since the preprint, and code you can run on your own data. cell.com/neuron/fullt...

The Parkinson's Plate: A Health and Diet Guide to Manage Your Journey. Pre-order is now open for October 1st on Amazon. cutt.ly/Jt2RlrzH

What's the bottom line? @smarek0502.bsky.social on @smerconish.bsky.social about what affects children's brains the most science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Someone asked for stats comparing the two panels, which made me realize they hadn't paid attention to the axis labels. So I replotted the data with a tweaked logic. If the model predicts the variable it was trained on better left upper triangle, if it predicts the other better right lower. 💥💥💥 Boom!

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Scott Marek@smarek0502.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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/...

How does the brain build sentences? A recent @nature.com paper combined wide-scale recordings of single neurons with natural language processing models and found that there are specific neurons that only care if a word is a noun, or if a phrase is ending 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mapping the neuronal building blocks of human language with language models - Nature

Wide-scale recordings reveal neurons in the human brain that encode fundamental components of language such as the grammatical relationships between words, their parts of speech and the...

nature.com

$$$ is more strongly associated with the brain than IQ: science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502 @smerconish

oh so I'm losing my capacity to think because of life stress? yeah that tracks, that adds up. makes more sense than blaming it on long-COVID I think

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

🧠‼️ Socioeconomic variables show the strongest associations with the brain out of 649 measures—surpassing cognition and mental health. Grateful for the chance to write a perspective with @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social about @smarek0502.bsky.social and team's important findings! tinyurl.com/bdhk6bc8

Childhood environments shape the brain

Socioeconomic factors top the list of influences on children’s brain structure and function

science.org

Scott Marek@smarek0502.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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/...

A 20 year study on 2 NIH diversity programs in Science Advances shows they doubled undergrads' odds of getting a Ph.D. That is, before the funding for those programs and for the study itself was terminated last year: www.statnews.com/2026/06/17/n...

NIH diversity programs doubled undergraduates’ odds of getting a Ph.D., 20-year study finds

A new study found that two diversity-oriented programs supported by the NIH doubled the odds that an undergraduate would earn a Ph.D.

statnews.com

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/...

🧪Team provides valuable insights into the effects of the environment on brain development. In Science Magazine it found that across adolescents, neighborhood-level socioeconomics have the strongest brain-wide association: https://ow.ly/30Nx50ZcijN Nico Dosenbach Brenden Tervo-Clemmens Damien Fair

🚨 New Preprint! 🧠 We gave an AI model one simple rule: rearrange your neurons so that nearby ones respond alike. We never told it what a face, a voice, or a sentence was. It grew brain-like maps for all three anyway. 🧵👇 🌐 Website: topo-omni.epfl.ch

This clip briefly mentions that the genetic basis of IQ is complicated, but I am going to link a study that shows that socioeconomic status has a MUCH stronger effect on IQ than brain regions. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Patterns of brain-wide associations reflect socioeconomics

Previous brain-wide association studies (BWAS) have linked specific environmental and behavioral variables to brain variability. In this work, we mapped 649 variables to children’s brains and compared...

science.org

Mother Jones@motherjones.com · 2mo ago

Some of the same billionaires who bankrolled AI now admit the technology could one day kill us all. And they’re funding a new plan to stop it—genetically engineered genius babies.

Timely. bsky.app/profile/smar...

Scott Marek@smarek0502.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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/...

this has been scaring the shit outta me ngl

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

lol incredible that your post and this one were right next to one another in my feed

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

This is mind-blowing

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Someone asked for stats comparing the two panels, which made me realize they hadn't paid attention to the axis labels. So I replotted the data with a tweaked logic. If the model predicts the variable it was trained on better left upper triangle, if it predicts the other better right lower. 💥💥💥 Boom!

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Today in IQ is BS!

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

sharing to read later (h/t @grimalkina.bsky.social)

Nico Dosenbach@ndosenbach.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

This feels huge. Scientific proof that being poor makes you stressed out all the time, and being stressed out all the time makes you dumber. Fuck.

Patterns of brain-wide associations reflect socioeconomics

Previous brain-wide association studies (BWAS) have linked specific environmental and behavioral variables to brain variability. In this work, we mapped 649 variables to children’s brains and compared...

science.org