We show that synesthesia is sensory and automatic in nature: the pupil scales with the brightness of experienced synesthetic colors. doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Now in its new dress @elife.bsky.social (convincing & valuable in round 1). If anyone wants to pick up the method, happy to share & explain!

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Synesthetes claim sensory experiences, such as seeing color when reading or hearing a (black) number. 
But how genuine are these reports and sensations? We introduce a rather direct measure of synesthetic perception: Synesthetes’ pupils respond to evoked color as if it was real color #vision! 👁️🎨🧪

Kudos to @science.org for this self-analysis of the peer review process. These kind of data are never shared and don't have to be. Wildly refreshing to see it out in the open. Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals

Analyses of deidentified data reveal complex interactions that quantify success at elite general science journals.

science.org

Come and join our replication initiative in visual neuroscience! Low bar for entry, ideal for anyone from a Master’s student looking for a thesis to faculty who want to get back to the bench. 🤓 re-vision-initiative.org

re:vision | Replication Initiative for Visual Neuroscience

Test whether published visual-neuroscience findings (NSD, THINGS, etc.) generalize to broadly-sampled natural images using the LAION-fMRI (LfMRI) 7T dataset.

re-vision-initiative.org

@re-vision-init.bsky.social · 4d ago

(1/6) Do our visual neuroscience findings actually replicate? And do they generalize beyond the datasets they were found in? We've lauched re:vision, a community-driven initiative to answer these questions, and we are looking for scientistis to participate. re-vision-initiative.org

Join our #PainHack project at @iasp.bsky.social and help us build a low-cost, open-source platform for measuring thermal pain withdrawal in humans. #IASP2026

International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)@iasp.bsky.social · last wk.

Early-career researchers: Marie-Eve Hoeppli and Saül Pascual-Diaz explain two ways to join Painhack at #IASP2026.~Co-design solutions in the Project Track or build leadership and communication skills in the Professional Development Track.~25–26 Oct.: bit.ly/4qx0aOI~#Pain...

New perspective out @thelancetneuro.bsky.social w Anna Latorre, Marie Vidhailet et al. – where we further develop the idea that appendicular dystonia preferentially maps to BG networks while axial/cervical forms to cerebellar interations. Check it out here 👇👇 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

A pretty good documentary on scientific fraud. Soundtrack in German or French, but English subtitles are available. Covers Piltdown Man, Stapel, Theranos, and more. www.arte.tv/de/videos/12...

Betrug in der Wissenschaft - Die ganze Doku | ARTE

Wissenschaft gilt als beste Erkenntnismethode der Welt – doch sie ist nicht unfehlbar. Immer wieder erschüttern Betrugsfälle die Forschungslandschaft. Ob manipulierte Daten, gestohlene Ergebnisse oder...

arte.tv

'Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective' by Andreas Strube @astrube.bsky.social & Diego Pizzagalli @diegopizzagalli.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Happy to see this paper out. It deals with a practical question in Bayesian causal inference: “𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨?” Short answer: you may not be. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

👁️🧠🧪 Vision takes time. But how does visual information flow through the human brain? Our new PLOS Computational Biology paper uses population receptive field (pRF) modelling to bring the spatial precision of fMRI to MEG, revealing the temporal dynamics of visual areas. 📖 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Non-invasive mapping of the temporal processing hierarchy in the human visual cortex

Author summary Vision doesn’t happen instantaneously, but unfolds over time. While we understand a lot about how the brain processes visual space, understanding how the brain processes information ove...

doi.org

Thanks to Kshipra Guranandan, my notebook on how to design efficient fMRI experiments (for activity, connectivity and pattern analysis) is now available in Python as a Jupyter notebook (as well as previous Matlab): github.com/RikHenson/fM...

GitHub - RikHenson/fMRIefficiency

Contribute to RikHenson/fMRIefficiency development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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

More than words: Experience shapes #placebo pain relief through additional brain pathways 🧠 We're excited to share our latest publication in @natcomms.nature.com! 🤩 🔗 Read the paper: rdcu.be/fuxmn #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #PainResearch #BrainImaging #TeamScience #Reproducibility

Excited to share my first #preprint with @matthiasnau.bsky.social on how gaze behavior shapes brain activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Gaze-dependent activity was widespread even during sleep, including in many visual cortices, and altered brain-wide functional connectivity! 🧵 1/8

Brain-wide gaze-dependent activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep

Gaze behavior and brain activity are tightly coupled during perception and mental imagery. Whether this coupling extends to eyes-closed states remains largely unknown, primarily because measuring eye ...

biorxiv.org

Out today on @nature.com! Connecting neural specialization, population geometry, and their functional implications across the cortical hierarchy. So grateful for this beautiful and fun collaboration with @shuqiw.bsky.social, S Muscinelli, L Paninski, and @stefanofusi.bsky.social!

Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy - Nature

Cortical circuits prioritize diversity over categorical structure, supporting a computational regime geared towards high-dimensional, highly separable neural representations.

nature.com

Today we launch the first stable release of RegCheck: v1.0.0. RegCheck makes it easier and quicker to compare study registrations to published papers for consistency - something we know is important in principle, but rarely done in practice. A 🧵 on what's new: regcheck.app

RegCheck

RegCheck is an AI tool to compare preregistrations with papers instantly.

regcheck.app

Very happy to see this Review with @diegopizzagalli.bsky.social out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/neuro... This piece brings together a lot of what we’ve been thinking on depression, predictive processing and EEG. Many thanks for the support from @sfb-trr-289.bsky.social

Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective

Depression is marked by anhedonia, social withdrawal, and a diminished capacity to learn from positive experiences—features that can be framed within predictive processing. Here, we review findings fr...

cell.com

We're finally getting the tools to study replay in humans. But why bother? What can we learn from it that we don't know from rodent recordings? Our thoughts are now out in a new TICS Forum Great fun writing this w @smfleming.bsky.social + @maritpetzka.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

What can we learn from studying replay in humans?

Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often …

authors.elsevier.com

"what I felt in the middle of that group of protesters was something missing from German politics for far too long: hope. Until now the rise of the AfD has felt inevitable and irresistible, and Germany’s mainstream parties have largely responded to it by chasing the same voters."

"But the movement I joined achieved something Germany’s mainstream political parties have failed to do: convince thousands of ordinary people that democracy is something you have to put your body on the line for." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Through the teargas, I saw something missing from German politics for too long: hope | Scott Roxborough

I joined thousands of people blockading the AfD’s congress. A civil disobedience movement is showing how to beat the far right, says the journalist Scott Roxborough

theguardian.com

Über 333.000 Unterschriften sind’s bereits! Die Zivilgesellschaft lässt sich die Zerstörung der Informationsfreiheit in D nicht gefallen. 💪 Falls Ihr noch wen mobilisieren wollt: Das Video mit @arnesemsrott.bsky.social im Post unten erklärt verständlich, warum das #IFG so wichtig für Demokratie ist.

SPD, stoppt den Frontalangriff auf die Informationsfreiheit!

Wir alle haben das Recht auf staatliche Informationen. Seit 2006 müssen Behörden auf Antrag nach dem Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (IFG) Dokumente herausgeben – seien es Verträge, interne Weisungen oder...

weact.campact.de

Amrei Bahr@amreibahr.bsky.social · last mo.

Reform des #IFG als Korruptions-, Demokratie- & Sicherheitsrisiko: Wie das Gesetz zig politische Skandale ans Licht gebracht hat, warum vorgebrachte Argumente für Reform nicht überzeugen & wie wir durch Reform unser Recht auf Transparenz verlören, erläutert @arnesemsrott.bsky.social in gut 5min.

Is spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How does the human brain extract abstract structure from experience? We show that sensory-independent relational representations emerge in mPFC over several days. Work with @mgarvert.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Glad to announce that our paper investigating the effect of action-outcome uncertainty on pain modulation is now out in @painthejournal.bsky.social 🧠💻! Super briefly: Learned certainty in what action lead to pain relief exagerates perception of pain relief. journals.lww.com/pain/fulltex...

The AfD is predicted to become comfortably the largest party in elections in two German states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in September....The party is also currently leading in polls of voters at the national level.' 1/4

Scientists fight back against far-right plans to restrict academic freedom in Germany

With the far-right Alternative for Germany leading in polls for national and state elections, institutions are facing up to proposed restrictions on academic freedom.

nature.com

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

Our first Impact Factor is 3.0 — an important milestone for a new journal. As with most new journals, the first IF is affected by the smaller publication volume in the launch year. Latest citation data are encouraging, and the journal’s IF is set to rise in 2027.

Interested in human replay and solid methods? Jointly with @skjerns.de we're releasing a benchmark dataset with known ground-truth neural sequences in MEG & fMRI, for developing & validating replay methods. First test: existing methods show similar effect sizes, but room to improve shorturl.at/6TgIr

FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging using a combined MEG and fMRI dataset

Studies in rodents and humans using invasive electrophysiology have established that neural replay is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the brain that is associated with a wide range of cognitive functions, ...

shorturl.at

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/...

1/11 Happy to share our TICS paper on using the flexibility of one of the most basic cognitive functions, perception, to understand one of the most complex cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric conditions (also my first formal work in computational psychiatry 🎉) 📄: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 🧵 : 👇

Perceptual multistability: a multifaceted window into brain dysfunctions

Perceptual multistability, observed across species and sensory modalities, offers valuable insights into numerous cognitive functions and dysfunctions. For instance, differences in temporal dynamics a...

cell.com

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Online Now: Perceptual multistability: a multifaceted window into brain dysfunctions