Thomas Zaugg and I have posted our contribution to the lesion network mapping (LNM) debate on bioRxiv. Our main result: LNM can work even with a low-dimensional connectome, providing a mathematical explanation for its apparent success. Feedback and criticism welcome. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm happy I had a chance to contribute to this important paper on behalf of #SPM with Zita Patai and Jason Taylor. Kudos to the main team for completing this mammoth work. osf.io/preprints/me...

And were live! #optoDBS 2026 is oft to a great start here at Campus Biotech in Geneva. Christian Lüscher kicking off the conference - and since we are broadening the scope a lot: will we call it #optoMOD in the future?

If you missed the original version of our VTA study, we now have an updated preprint with a new title and some new analyses. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Electrophysiological Correlates of Reward Processing in the Human Ventral Tegmental Area

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is the principal source of dopaminergic input to the human prefrontal cortex and is hypothesised to play a central role in reward‑based learning. However, direct elect...

biorxiv.org

It’s not at the FIL but across the square but indeed all welcome!

Andreas Horn@andreashorn.org · 2mo ago

Excited to talk at the FIL this next Wednesday - everybody welcome: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc... Thank you so much @himanshutyagi.bsky.social for organizing!

It was a huge honor to spend 90 minutes talking with Karl Friston about the origins of human brain mapping, the SPM software, and the 'finishing school' at the FIL. Tune in here:

Stimulating Brains@stimulatingbrains.org · 3mo ago

It was a tremendous honor to speak with the one and only Karl Friston – not about the Free Energy Principle, but for a change about the history of SPM. Did you know the very first version of SPM was programmed in Excel? That and much more here 👇👇 stimulatingbrains.org/79-karl-fris...

We are pleased to announce that the SPM for MEG/EEG course hosted by University College London will take place from Monday, May 18th to Thursday, May 21st, 2026! Registration is now open via the UCL Online Store:

A recent @natneuro.nature.com paper analyzed lesion network mapping and raised concerns about the validity of the method. See below 👇 for our response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Michael Fox@foxmdphd.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A recent paper in @natureportfolio.nature.com raised concerns about the lesion network mapping method. Our team of 16 coauthors analyzed >1000 lesions and 34 symptoms and found that "The methodological foundations of lesion network mapping remain sound" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New @netstim.org publication alert: @bahnebahners.bsky.social in BRAIN out now: academic.oup.com/brain/advanc... A 🧵:

The deep brain stimulation response network in Parkinson’s disease operates in the high beta band

Bahners et al. identify a brain network linked to optimal therapeutic outcomes in patients with Parkinson’s disease receiving deep brain stimulation. This

academic.oup.com

On the importance of ethics and risk assessment www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...

Scientist gives himself BRAIN damage testing Havana Syndrome weapon

A scientist in Norway gave himself brain damage after testing an experimental weapon designed to disprove the existence of 'Havana Syndrome'.

dailymail.co.uk

We have released a subset of our simultaneous MEG and subthalamic LFP recordings from people with Parkinson’s with clinical metadata. The data cover rest and movement tasks, medication on and off states, and include MEG‑derived virtual electrodes for SMA and bilateral M1. doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

Sumultaneous subthalamic local field potentials and MEG-derived cortical activity in Parkinson's patients ON and OFF dopaminergic medication

This dataset contains simultaneous magnetoencephalography and subthalamic local field potential recordings acquired during deep brain stimulation surgery for Parkinson’s disease. Acquisition and preprocessing procedures are detailed in Litvak et al., Brain 2011 (doi:10.1093/brain/awq332) and Litvak et al., Journal of Neuroscience 2012 (doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0767-12.2012). All files are provided in FieldTrip raw format as defined in the FieldTrip data specification. Data from a subset of the original cohort are available due to ethical restrictions on data sharing.Recordings were obtained in two clinical states for each participant: after overnight withdrawal of dopaminergic medication and while receiving their usual medication. Clinical characteristics and medication doses are listed in subject_details.csv. Pre-operative motor scores were collected using standard clinical assessments.Experimental conditionsParticipants completed the following tasks:R: rest.SL: simple left-hand movement comprising a simultaneous button press with digits 2 to 4.SR: simple right-hand movement with the same gesture.CL: complex left-hand sequence consisting of successive presses of digits 2, 4 and 3.CR: complex right-hand sequence with the same pattern.Event timings for button presses are stored in the event channel.Recorded signalsThe dataset includes:Bipolar subthalamic local field potentials.Electro-oculography.Electromyography from the bilateral first dorsal interosseous muscles.Virtual electrode time series reconstructed from MEG for the supplementary motor area and bilateral primary motor cortices. Virtual electrode coordinates are reported in MNI space and were affine transformed to individual anatomy: SMA [−2 −10 59], left M1 [−37 −25 62], right M1 [37 −25 62].

doi.org

🚨 New research alert: What happens at the cortex during pallidal #DBS in patients with cervical #dystonia? 🧠 ⚡ ---> www.researchgate.net/publication/... <-----

Preprint alert!!! We recorded directly from the human ventral tegmental area (VTA), the principal source of cortical dopaminergic innervation, while patients performed an instrumental learning task. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

When I was entering the field of DBS, Ludvic Zrinzo said a few things that were simple in retrospect but formulated so clearly that they fundamentally changed how I think of the therapy. I am super grateful about this super insightful interview at @stimulatingbrains.org – tune in 👇👇

Stimulating Brains@stimulatingbrains.org · 6mo ago

It was a great joy to talk to Ludvic Zrinzo about DBS, lesioning and how it all may work: stimulatingbrains.org/74-ludwig-zr... Thanks to Niels Pacheco for producing the episode!

I’m looking forward to the debate around this important paper. But even if some results from @andreashorn.org, @foxmdphd.bsky.social and other brilliant and hard-working colleagues turn out too good to be true, the field will correct itself and emerge stronger. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What is the status of DBS for epilepsy? Find out in our new review/metaanalysis spearheaded by @laurenahart.bsky.social & Garance Meyer in JNNP: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40666371/ A 🧵 — please RT for reach! 🙏

See you in Geneva! We have such an incredible line up of speakers this year! #optoDBS2026 – registration now open at www.optodbs.ch As last time, we are expanding scope way beyond just DBS and optogenetics – for instance including TMS and LIFU applications this year!

Deep brain stimulation and psychosis: A case series and two candidate causal brain circuits https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.18.25340443v1

@orcid.org alerted me to the fact that my PhD thesis from 2006 is available online via OSF. I'm not sure how it got there, but it was quite nostalgic to flip through those long-forgotten pages again and remember the good times in Haifa and Würzburg. Enjoy! doi.org/10.31237/osf...

And one can definitely learn from it how to write the most useful review.

Prof. Vladimir Litvak@vlitvak.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I’m really impressed with qedscience.com. Not perfect but the best qualitative jump I’ve seen in AI output since the original ChatGPT. Even the kind of dumb things it sometimes says, a human reviewer could say as well, but many of the points are spot on.

I’m really impressed with qedscience.com. Not perfect but the best qualitative jump I’ve seen in AI output since the original ChatGPT. Even the kind of dumb things it sometimes says, a human reviewer could say as well, but many of the points are spot on.

q.e.d Science

Critical Thinking AI for constructive criticism and science evaluation

qedscience.com

#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺 This Friday, October 24th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Terence Sanger, MD, PhD. This talk will be online only. 12 Queen Square Seminar room (4th Floor) will be available if you need a space to watch the stream. For more information: www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event

Who says a scientist’s life is boring? Was nice to see some friends from times long gone in this movie. youtu.be/46svA-C939s?...

Bat Island: The New Era of Science

YouTube video by Weizmann Institute of Science

youtu.be

Looks amazing! Congratulations!

Wolf-Julian Neumann@julianneumann.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering by @timonmerk.bsky.social ! We built a platform that unites AI-based brain signal decoding with connectomics across 123 hours of recordings from 73 patients. A step toward adaptive, network-level neurotechnology. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A birthday is a good time to reflect! To mark SPM @ 30, this month's issue of Cerebral Cortex features deeply insightful commentaries on neuroimaging analysis from Ed Bullmore, Peter Bandettini, Peter Fox, Pedro Valdes-Sosa, Klaas Enno Stephan, Viktor Jirsa, et al [1/2] academic.oup.com/cercor/issue

Issues | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic

Publishes papers on the development, organization, plasticity, and function of the cerebral cortex, including the hippocampus.

academic.oup.com

DBS Think Tank @dbsthinktank.bsky.social taking place next week is always the highlight of my year. Its Rising Stars event showcasing the work of talented early career DBS researchers starts in an hour. Don’t miss. ufl.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: DBS Think Tank Rising Stars Challenge. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

DBS is a rapidly developing area of neuroscience that has revolutionized the treatment of a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders. From Parkinson’s disease to depression, DBS has the poten...

ufl.zoom.us

This is very exciting as it could provide a way to identify stimulation targets for syndromes for which no stimulation data exists at all as long as there is some genetic data. Congratulations!

Andreas Horn@andreashorn.org · 12mo ago

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨 “Translating the Transcriptome: A Connectomics Approach for Gene-Network Mapping and Clinical Application” 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...  🧵 A short thread:

Great news! Ningfei is a great scientist and a highly valued collaborator. I’m looking forward to working with him in the new capacity.

Andreas Horn@andreashorn.org · 12mo ago

Super excited for Ningfei Li to receive the highly prestigious NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund – as of yesterday, Ningfei is Full Professor at the Xian University and has joined a new AI institute! We are both excited to continue our collaboration on @lead-dbs.org and connectomic DBS!

We are recruiting a new PI at the FIL @imagingneuroucl.bsky.social, Associate or Full Professor. This is an amazing place to do cognitive neuroscience, in the heart of London. If you or someone you know might be interested, please pass it on. #neuroskyence www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk

🧠 New preprint alert! medrxiv.org/cgi/content/... SEEG in epilepsy affords a rare opportunity to record and stimulate in brain regions that are difficult to access, including the white matter. Could we leverage this to map circuits relevant to psychiatric symptoms? If so, where would one start? 👇