Joel I Berger

Cortical deviance detection represents a canonical difference signal Context modulates neural processing of sensory stimuli. Neural responses are suppressed to stimuli that are typical in their context and augmented to stimuli that deviate from their context. The latte...

Our new preprint is out!

We show that deviance detection in auditory cortex conveys the theorised comparison of internal prediction to sensory input. Our data confirm this key assumtion that links theoretical models of sensory processing to experimental data.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Please repost: we're hiring!

Apply now! 👉 can-acn.org/professor-re...

Are you curious about electrogastrography, but keep getting chicken-related results when googling "EGG"? We have the preprint for you!

In this tutorial, we describe how to acquire and analyse gastric data from human participants. Plus FREE software! Read it here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.17260

fMRI signals “up,” but neural metabolism might be going “down.”

In our @natneuro.nature.com paper, we demonstrate that about 40% of voxels with robust BOLD responses exhibit opposite oxygen metabolism, revealing two distinct hemodynamic modes.

rdcu.be/eUPO8
funds @erc.europa.eu
#neuroskyence 🧵:

Fully agreed 😊!

I'm sorry to hear it Micah. Had the same thing here over the past couple of weeks.

These results also constitute some of the only - if not the only (to my knowledge!) - reports of single neurons from human anterior insula. Reports from auditory cortex and posterior insula are also surprisingly scarce. Thanks as always to our amazing patients and my co-authors. (5/5)

Overall, these results are consistent with what others have shown in LFPs, though usually those are examined in behaviorally-relevant contexts. These findings highlight that insula cares about fundamental sound attributes, which is important to know when considering responses to other stimuli. (4/5)

Many of these neurons also showed clear preferred tuning to particular tone frequencies - completely unsurprising for auditory cortex, but an interesting finding for insula. An important aspect is that there was no task required, so there was no behavioral context for these stimuli. (3/5)

We find that the activity of ~30% of posterior insula neurons and up to ~15% of anterior insula neurons is significantly modulated in response to these basic sounds. The latencies of these responses are very similar to primary auditory cortex, though the responses are much more transient. (2/5)

The human insula reimagined: Single neurons respond to simple sounds during passive listening The insula is critical for integrating sensory information from the body with that arising from the environment. Although previous studies suggested that posterior insula is sensitive to sounds, these...

Our paper is out now in J Neuroscience (currently in "accepted paper" form). We directly record single neurons in human insula, as well as primary auditory cortex, while participants passively listen to simple sounds. @sfnjournals.bsky.social www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... (1/5) 🧠📈🧵👇

New paper just published with @evelinaleivada.bsky.social @garymarcus.bsky.social, Vittoria Dentella, Raquel Montero and Fritz Günther

Fundamental Principles of Linguistic Structure Are Not Represented by ChatGPT

bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bi...

My wonderful co-authors (including
@alexjbillig.bsky.social) & I have just published a case report of acquired misophonia & amusia following right temporal resection (including posterior insula). This represents the first case of acquired misophonia. Please find the paper freely accessible below🧠📈

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As it's hiring season again I'm resharing the NeuroJobs feed. Add #NeuroJobs to your post if you're recruiting or looking for an RA, PhD, Postdoc, or faculty position in Neuro or an adjacent field.

bsky.app/profile/did:...

@suthanalab.bsky.social outstanding talks at HSN and SfN. Really amazing work!

Thank you very much!

For sure!

Thanks Elliot! I hope you're very well. I really enjoyed your recent Brain Stimulation article!

Overall, these results show that even low-level auditory working memory (i.e. not involving semantic features or high-level representations) engages a distributed network of brain regions, which includes strong involvement of the hippocampus. (5/5)

State space analyses showed that task phases were clearly separable based on population activity, with neurons reaching an attractor-like state during maintenance and adjustment phases. Better task performance was associated with an increase in the number of neurons showing modulation. (4/5)

Neurons in all the aforementioned regions (and others) showed modulation during the maintenance and adjustment phases of the task, with the highest proportion modulated in posterior hippocampus in the maintenance period. Strikingly, suppression was the dominant pattern of activity. (3/5)

We recorded single neurons while participants performed a task that involved keeping a simple tone in mind and then adjusting ongoing tones to match following a maintenance period of 3 seconds. We recorded a wide variety of regions, including hippocampus, cingulate, insula. (2/5)

Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, w...

I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)

I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Memorability of novel words correlates with anterior fusiform activity during reading - Nature Communications To learn new written words, we need to be able to remember their associated letters. Here, the authors show the factors that predict how memorable or forgettable new words are and show a region of hum...

Out now in Nature Comms. To learn a new word, we need to remember it. We track factors driving memory of novel words, showing which words we remember or forget is predictable across people, and isolate a distinct region of fusiform cortex sensitive to this memorability.

🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬

🧵👇

These results also constitute some of the only - if not the only (to my knowledge!) - reports of single neurons from human anterior insula. Reports from auditory cortex and posterior insula are also surprisingly scarce. Thanks as always to our amazing patients and my awesome co-authors. (5/5)

Overall, these results are consistent with what others have shown in LFPs, though usually those are examined in behaviorally-relevant contexts. These findings highlight that insula cares about fundamental sound attributes, which is important to know when considering responses to other stimuli. (4/5)

Many of these neurons also showed clear preferred tuning to particular tone frequencies - completely unsurprising for auditory cortex, but an interesting finding for insula. An important aspect is that there was no task required, so there was no behavioral context for these stimuli. (3/5)

We find that the activity of ~30% of posterior insula neurons and up to ~15% of anterior insula neurons is significantly modulated in response to these basic sounds. The latencies of these responses are very similar to primary auditory cortex, though the responses are much more transient. (2/5)