Gregory B. Cogan

@davidpoeppel.bsky.social receiving the well-deserved @snlmtg.bsky.social Distinguished Career Award

David has had a lasting and deep impact on the field and on his many successful trainees. David is also known for his enjoinders to engage positively with the world.

#SNL2025

@snlmtg.bsky.social

Stop by this afternoon to see some intracranial speech decoding in the hippocampus and to say hello!

Come stop by to say hello and see some science!

MARBLE: interpretable representations of neural population dynamics using geometric deep learning - Nature Methods MARBLE uses geometric deep learning to map dynamics such as neural activity into a latent representation, which can then be used to decode the neural activity or compare it across systems.

Last week, Zac Spalding (@zspald.bsky.social‬, 4th year PhD student, @dukeubme.bsky.social‬) presented Adam Gosztolai, Robert Peach, and colleagues’ 2025 paper on MARBLE, a method for finding interpretable latent representations of neural dynamics.

Exciting work by PhD student Zac Spalding @zspald.bsky.social and multiple labs across departments at Duke! A combination of human electrophysiology, modeling/decoding, and cognitive concepts to improve BCI for speech in patients. 👏 🧠📈

From Cogan Lab Journal Club with @zspald.bsky.social
these decomposition acronyms are getting out of hand!

Excellent work by @zspald.bsky.social !!
He finds that a shared neural speech production space across Micro-ECoG patients boosts decoding performance. Check it out!
@dukebrain.bsky.social @dukemedschool.bsky.social

Periodic Tables: What Makes Us Speak? For most of us, our brain oversees our effortless ability to speak. How does it do this? And how can we read the brain to restore speech in patients who have lost this ability? This month at Periodic…

Living in or around #DurhamNC and looking for something fun to do? Come share drinks and data at our Periodic Tables science cafe event! @gcogan.bsky.social will take us on a guided tour of the brain’s remarkable capacity to enable speech and language.

Speech sequencing in the human precentral gyrus - Nature Human Behaviour Liu et al. examine the role of sustained neural activity in the planning and production of speech sequences, revealing a key role for the middle precentral gyrus.

Last week, Nanlin Shi (Postdoctoral Associate) presented Jessie Liu and colleague’s latest work on speech encoding in the middle Precentral Gyrus (mPrCG). This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Join an amazing lab!!

Amazing news, congratulations!!

Circuit dynamics of approach-avoidance conflict in humans Debilitating anxiety is pervasive in the modern world. Choices to approach or avoid are common in everyday life and excessive avoidance is a cardinal feature of all anxiety disorders. Here, we used in...

This week, Jim Zhang (3rd year PhD student, @dukebrain.bsky.social) presented Brooke Staveland’s paper on circuit dynamics of approach-avoidance conflict in humans. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)

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

Last week, Areti Majumdar (1st year PhD student) presented Leyao Yu and colleagues’ new paper on two overlapping but distinct frontal networks for word retrieval. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)

doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Last week,
@danielsexton16.bsky.social
(7th year Neurosurgery Resident at Duke University) presented Linnea Evanson and colleagues' new paper on comparing the development of language from childhood to adulthood and how it relates to LLMs. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)

Flexibility of intrinsic neural timescales during distinct behavioral states - Communications Biology Calcium imaging of spontaneously behaving mice show increased intrinsic neural timescales during behavior. The behavioral state of mice can be predicted from the topography of timescales of the cortex...

Last week, Nicole Liddle (CRS, Sr. @nicoleliddle.bsky.social) presented Çatal and colleagues’ 2024 paper on the flexibility of intrinsic neural timescales during distinct behavioral states. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔):

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

my lab (lacns.github.io) at @mpi-nl.bsky.social and @dondersinst.bsky.social is recruiting for two PhD and two postdoctoral positions funded by an @erc.europa.eu Consolidator - come join us!

PhD: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

Postdoc: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

(please share widely)

Great news!!! Looking forward to having you join us here at Duke 🎉

Come join us at Duke!

Come join us at Duke!

Two-dimensional neural geometry underpins hierarchical organization of sequence in human working memory - Nature Human Behaviour Working memory is constructive in nature. In three electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography studies, Fan et al. provide converging behavioural and neural evidence that a one-dimensional syllable ...

Last week, Baishen Liang (postdoctoral associate) presented recent verbal working work using two-dimensional neural geometry by Fan and colleagues:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔) :

POST-DOC CALL!
2-year post-doctoral position to work in Marseille on any topic in the field of language, communication and the brain.
Deadline May, 20, 2025
www.ilcb.fr/ilcb-postdoc...

“This is seismic. Think of a car being built. The direct portion of any NIH grant goes toward the car components, but the indirect payments pay for the assembly line — the facilities, the specialty equipment, the IT structures, and the people. The F&A payments are essential; they are required to do the work.” Colin S. Duckett, PhD, Executive Vice Dean for Basic and Preclinical Science, Duke University School of Medicine, on the devastating effects of the NIH’s cap on indirect grant payments.

Duke is one of the largest biomedical research enterprises in the country. A cut of this magnitude (15%cap on F&As) would result in thousands of lost jobs at Duke & potentially tens of thousands across NC.
Sources: medschool.duke.edu/about-us/fac... & www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-pdf/?sta...

Federal Register hold makes ‘end run’ around court pause on NIH funding freeze NIH-related updates to the Federal Register, which are required for the scheduling of study sections and advisory councils, are on hold indefinitely, according to an email reviewed by <i>The Transmitt...

A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

bit.ly/3X8ngz8

Hey neuroscientists: were you, your lab or any of your ongoing projects caught up in any of the latest NIH firings? You can find me on Signal at avaskham.54 if you want to chat. 🧪

#neuroskyence

Control of working memory by phase–amplitude coupling of human hippocampal neurons - Nature Hippocampal theta–gamma phase–amplitude coupling integrates cognitive control and working&nbsp;memory storage across brain areas&nbsp;in humans.

Last week, @danielsexton16.bsky.social (7th year Neurosurgery Resident at Duke University) presented Jonathan Daume and colleagues' new paper on single cell phase-amplitude coupling in a working memory task. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)

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

Intracranial Mapping of Response Latencies and Task Effects for Spoken Syllable Processing in the Human Brain Prior lesion, noninvasive-imaging, and intracranial-electroencephalography (iEEG) studies have documented hierarchical, parallel, and distributed characteristics of human speech processing. Yet, there...

This week, Areti Majumdar (1st year PhD student) presented @vibhaviswanathan.bsky.social and colleagues’ new paper on auditory response latencies and task-related effects in diverse cortical and subcortical regions. This 🧵 explores our thoughts (🤍 & ❔)

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

✨i'm hiring a lab manager, with a start date of ~September 2025! to express interest, please complete this google form: forms.gle/GLyAbuD779Rz...

looking for someone to join our multi-disciplinary team, using OPM, EEG, iEEG and computational techniques to study speech and language processing! 🧠

Representation of verbal thought in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses Speech brain-computer interfaces show great promise in restoring communication for people who can no longer speak[1][1]–[3][2], but have also raised privacy concerns regarding their potential to decod...

Last week, Zac Spalding (3rd year PhD student, Duke BME) presented Erin Kunz, Benyamin Meschede-Krasa, and colleagues' 2024 preprint on how covert speech is represented in the motor cortex.

[cont.]

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

Had a great time presenting in the intracranial language symposium at #SNL2024!!
Thanks to all the amazing speakers: Matt Leonard, Stéphanie Riès, Anna Mai,and especially to Jill Kries for organizing!!