Finally, today is the day: Josefine Zerbe will present and release our new multi-echo 7T fMRI dataset LAION-fMRI during #VSS2026, with >30 fMRI session per subject and unprecedented stimulus diversity. Come to Talk Room 1 (Scene perception) today at 5:15. Details will follow in a separate thread!

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...

Investigating individual-specific topographic organization has traditionally been a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. But what if we could map visual cortex organization in thousands of brains? Here we offer the community with a toolbox that can do just that! tinyurl.com/deepretinotopy

Our team's new publications cover the Nature portfolio! 🧪🧠 - Vision & touch (Nature, rdcu.be/eSsZR) - Psychedelics (Nat Commun, rdcu.be/eSsZ2) - Binocular rivalry (Nat Hum Behav, rdcu.be/eSsYW) - CSF mobility (Nat Neurosci, rdcu.be/eSs0c) - Numerical cognition (Commun Biol, rdcu.be/eSs0p)

Nature research paper: Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain go.nature.com/4839zaL

Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain - Nature

A mode of brain organization that connects visual and bodily reference frames may translate raw sensory impressions into more abstract formats that are useful for action, social cognition and semantic processing.

go.nature.com

New today in @Nature: your visual cortex contains touch-based body maps. bit.ly/VisualBodyMaps Your brain transforms what you see into first-person, body-referenced codes: A previously unknown bridge between vision and touch.

On the nose

Eiko Fried@eikofried.bsky.social · 8mo ago

NL funder NWO recently changed rules for grant applications to endorse more modern recognition & reward practices. But in my reading, the updated preproposal rules (CV, output, & just the slightest teensy weensy hint of a research idea) fully lean into Matthew effect. Thoughts?

Very proud of Marco’s work in this project!

Marco Aqil@marcoaqil.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Our new paper is out in Nature Communications! nature.com/articles/s41... We combined psychophysics, 7T fMRI, and computational modeling of vision with placebo, 5mg, and 10mg psilocybin, in the same group of participants, to clarify the computational mechanisms of psychedelics. 🧵

The paper demonstrating that #psilocybin alters contextual computations is out in @natcomms.nature.com : doi.org/10.1038/s414... Thanks to the reviewers and coauthors : @marcoaqil.bsky.social , @tknapen.bsky.social , @gillesdehollander.bsky.social , and Nina Vreugdenhil

Psilocybin alters visual contextual computations - Nature Communications

This study finds psilocybin alters visual contextual brain processes and perception, suggesting a generic mechanism through which psychedelics influence brain function and subjective experience.

doi.org

Serge Dumoulin@sergedumoulin.net · last yr.

Psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, alters perception and induces hallucinations. In this preprint, we show through visual illusions, fMRI and modeling that psilocybin affects contextual computations, a potentially general mechanism of psychedelics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hey everyone at @vssmtg.bsky.social! If you’re interested in pRF fitting, go visit Garikoitz Lerma-Usabiaga’s poster on pRF fitting methods! For our development of these tools, we’re very interested to hear you want in these tools. Please fill out our questionnaire: forms.gle/fx5UMs1362jv...

pRF fitting toolbox wish list

With this form we are taking stock of the field's wishes when it comes to pRF fitting software implementations. We will be presenting the results from this form in our kick-off meeting, and will use t...

docs.google.com

𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯, 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘨𝘢, 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘵, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘴𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘴 “𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘴”

A thread motivated by a new paper on body representations in the human brain at a fine-grained (multi-unit) level, spearheaded by J Garcia Ramirez, T Theys, and P Janssen, where I was a small part of a bigger collaboration that also included S Bracci, R Murty and @nancykanwisher.bsky.social. 1/n

Since I need a first bsky post, here's a rehash of @nickhedger.bsky.social's thread announcing our preprint with Kendrick Kay & Thomas Naselaris. TLDR; High-level visual cortex is tiled with maps 'multiplexing' vision and touch. tinyurl.com/seesoma 🧵 1/n