Drew B Headley

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

Motor cortex flexibly deploys a high-dimensional repertoire of subskills Skilled movement often requires flexibly combining multiple subskills, each requiring dedicated control strategies and underlying computations. How the motor system achieves such versatility remains u...

Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning - Nature Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.

This is an exquisite demonstration of using intracranial recordings in humans to validate our findings that amygdala neurons encode the value of exploring in NHPs.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How can your AI be superhuman if it can't even beat a mouse?Lots of updates for this 2025 NeurIPS competition. Get your submission in! robustforaging.github.io

Nov. 1 is the deadline. Please share widely. @garymarcus.bsky.social @dcower.bsky.social @tyrellturing.bsky.social @rowantmc.bsky.social

It will be on the dark side.

Infrequent strong connections constrain connectomic predictions of neuronal function Extensive measurements of visual selectivity in the fly optic lobe enable a broad assessment of connectome-based functional predictions. Strong connections possess an outsized share of the connectome’...

Very relevant for the downstream applicability of connectomics research:

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

#neuroscience 🧪

Orbitofrontal cortex computes gaze-dependent comparisons between attributes rather than integrated values When choosing between options with multiple attributes, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is thought to integrate across those attributes, aiding in value comparisons. This study shows in monkeys that OF...

Happy to have some good science news - our new study with @aqperkins.bsky.social is out in @plosbiology.org!

dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices

In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:

The butterfly-like/four circular labeling in the mediodorsal (top two) and submedius (bottom two) thalamic nuclei when retrograde tracers are infused in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats

Bonus: midline labeling are from retrograde tracers placed in the nucleus accumbens (nAc)

Examples of epifluorescence vs. confocal images of the BLA and axons leaving the BLA - note the lack of labeling in central amygdala (CeA)

Methods in the Philosophy of Science The last twenty years have seen multiple methodological revolutions in the philosophy of science: There has been increased diversity concerning the questions...

Methods in the Philosophy of Science: A User's Guide is now a real, live book. My chapter offers an appraisal of philosophy of science in its engagement with applied mathematics. With immense gratitude for the vision and execution of @phieveigl.bsky.social and @adrian-currie.bsky.social sky.social.

"people use it very differently".. this applies to so many concepts in neuroscience!
We (@irinapochinok.bsky.social and Simon Musall) put together a #BernsteinConference Workshop on exactly this and @juangallego.bsky.social will be one of our speakers!
@bernsteinneuro.bsky.social
shorturl.at/4kV00

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? Following up on yesterday’s whinesplaining about the relative difficulty of getting a NIH grant across pertinent career eras, I had some more thoughts on generational expectations and gasligh…

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/w...

Very excited about this work and very proud of @xiongbowu.bsky.social who did it all:

Based on 4 independent data sets (incl. EEG/iEEG, eye tracking, gaze manipulation & memory), we advocate for a new perspective on the function of the brain's dominant rhythm 🧠

Check Xiongbo's thread for more 👇

A scientist needs a calibrated balance of humbleness and pig headedness.

New paper from the lab, from Jeremy Biane and team, out today, characterizing the principles of stimulus feature coding in populations of ventral CA1 neurons.

Looks great! How long can you record before bleaching becomes an issue?

A hypothalamic circuit that modulates feeding and parenting behaviours - Nature Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of mouse hypothalamus and behavioural experiments show that specific hypothalamic networks regulate conflicting feeding versus parenting behaviours of female mice.

How do animals decide if they should forage for food or stay home to take care of newborn offspring? Whose needs come first? For my PhD work now out in Nature, we examined how hunger and parenting neurons interact and are reshaped postpartum in mice 🧵⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“What thinks?” Might be even trickier.

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

Check out our new review/perspective (w/ @juangallego.bsky.social & Devika Narain) on neural manifolds in the brain! It was a lot of fun to think through these ideas over the past couple of years, and I'm excited it's finally out in the world!

🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
📄: rdcu.be/ex8hW

Very cool! Looks similar to dynamic moving ripple or TORC stimuli used to probe auditory coding, e.g. www.jneurosci.org/content/22/1...

Hey, it's out!
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Aligning Big Brains and Atlases, ABBA in short, is published in Cell Reports @cp-cellreports.bsky.social . @biancasilvalab.bsky.social's lab added an analysis pipeline on top of it (BraiAn) and did all the relevant biological work. What is it ? Short thread:

When patch clamping go for the bouba neurons, avoid the kiki.

This is the typical result of a discussion about neural representation.

An inspiration to us all!

🚨Preprint!🚨 So excited to share my 1st major study as a postdoc at @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social!🤘

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Using a transdiagnostic framework, we found that brain network dynamics were able to discriminate individualized psychiatric symptom profiles with high accuracy 🧵1/9👇

Congratulations! Well deserved!

Critical intelligence: computing defensive behaviour Characterising the mechanisms underlying naturalistic defensive behavior remains a significant challenge. While substantial progress has been made in …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Despite some ups and downs at NIH, we do have an open position for a postbac and are considering candidates.
Our work is at the intersection of neuroscience and AI, and we aim to understand how the brain's densely connected recurrent networks operate. 🧪

Check out the new Handbook of Electrophysiology that covers all kinds of ways to record activity! Great working with @drewbheadley.bsky.social on standard equipment you need for in vivo physiology. Edited by @scimemia.bsky.social @ianduguid.bsky.social and @nwanaverbecq.bsky.social