Jörn Alexander Quent

Periodic reminder: It’s Spring Festival in mainland China. Many researchers are on holiday while simultaneously working on major NSFC grant applications.

Responses to manuscript handling, reviews, or revisions may be delayed over the next two weeks.

NSD-synthetic, the out-of-distribution companion dataset of NSD consisting of 7T fMRI responses to 284 artificial images, is now published.

#NeuroAI #CompNeuro #neuroscience #AI

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Excited to share a new paper spearheaded by the wonderful @baror-shira.bsky.social:
tinyurl.com/bd8xdcum
@erc.europa.eu @nathumbehav.nature.com

We test the link between serial dependence (as an index of continuity) and event boundaries (indexing segmentation). A few key findings in the thread:

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

If you want to give you figures different names (fig1.svg etc.) but still want to show them in the document without always typing them out you can also use this:

```{r, echo = FALSE}
knitr::include_graphics(plot_filename)
```

📈 A while back I did promise to put a post together how I generate publication-ready figures. Before I am off to #CNY2026, I finally found the time. May this be useful to some...
Also I am curious to hear what other tricks are out there.
jaquent.github.io/2026/02/crea...

#rstats #ggplot #dataviz

I forgive you because of the bird.

For the final final touch I think that's fine specially for more complex multi panel plots but having to do this multiple times sounds like a nightmare.

Hehe, my main problem usually is font size but I also don't like dots that are too big and I hate changing the dots for each plot.

ggplot2 styling This post discusses one function in ggplot2: `theme()`. Find out about the glamour of graphics in this deep-dive article.

You can use this instead of your `update_geom_defaults()`:
```
theme(geom = element_geom(linewidth = 0.25, borderwidth = 0.25, pointsize = 0.5))
```
And you can use `set_theme()` to globally apply a theme as the default theme.

I wrote some additional tricks here: tidyverse.org/blog/2025/10...

I also finally got around fixing the styling of the code chunks:

📈 A while back I did promise to put a post together how I generate publication-ready figures. Before I am off to #CNY2026, I finally found the time. May this be useful to some...
Also I am curious to hear what other tricks are out there.
jaquent.github.io/2026/02/crea...

#rstats #ggplot #dataviz

I used this earlier. Thank you so much for this!

Release Just the Browser v1.1 · corbindavenport/just-the-browser This update contains no changes to the browser settings. Existing users do not need to update unless the settings are not working. Configuration settings Change Firefox configuration on macOS from...

Finished the first round of updates to my justthebrowser.com project!

The Firefox settings now use the registry on Windows and system profiles on Mac, instead of the JSON files that kept breaking. A bug with downloads failing on Mac is also fixed.

We are hiring a research specialist, to start this summer! This position would be a great fit for individuals looking to get more experience in computational and cognitive neuroscience research before applying to graduate school. #neurojobs Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21503/r...

We’re hiring! The Suthana Lab @ Duke is looking for a Research Assistant to join our team studying human memory & real-world 🧠 dynamics using wearable tech & intracranial recordings.

Apply: careers.duke.edu/job/Durham-C...

You can also email suthanalab@duke.edu with CV/questions. Please share!

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

It doesn't seem to work: github.com/tidyverse/gg...

I haven't posted on stackoverflow in a while but even my LLM only came up with non-working "solutions".

My fellow #ggplot #dataviz nerds, I am finally working on a short guide to create publication ready figures but I encountered an issue, which is that update_geom_defaults() does not seem to work with stat_summary(geom='errorbar'). Any ideas to solve this?

stackoverflow.com/questions/79...

OMG, where can I do this?

1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.

Honestly, this would already be good enough for me.

YouTube video by Audiolith Rampue - Let's Be Kids Again (Audio) [Full Album]

My album of the weekend: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwaR...

#Rampue

Research posts on Bluesky are more original — and get better engagement Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X.

Research posts on Bluesky are more original — and get better engagement www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#SciSky #AcademicSky #OpenScience #SciComm #SocialMediaAnalysis

I am not sure you have to fight many on that hill though.

I am even warier than the authors about the broad-brush applications of the QRP label. However, I stand firmly against classifying data dredging/fishing expeditions as responsible research practice and as exploratory research. Science reform has distorted our understanding of scientific exploration.

Are episodic and semantic memory really that different? Using closely matched tasks, we found no substantial neural differences between recalling personal experiences and general knowledge: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02390-4

Great work by Roni Tibon (not on BlueSky) - surprising that negligible difference in fMRI correlates of semantic vs episodic retrieval?

Neural activations and representations during episodic versus semantic memory retrieval - Nature Human Behaviour In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Tibon et al. showed using fMRI that neural activity associated with successful memory retrieval did not differ between semantic and episodic memory, using a task wit...

Finally: the fantastic #registeredreport from bsky-less Roni Tibon is out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... showing less difference between #episodic vs. #semantic #memory than one might have thought.

Proud to have contributed a tiny part to this great paper.