Cedric Boeckx

Had a wonderful time visiting my friend (and one of the people who influenced my thinking the most) @kazuookanoya.bsky.social at Teikyo University today. Grateful for the opportunity to share ideas with his brilliant lab members, doing such interesting work on the neuroscience of birdsong 🧪

How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Both localized and distributed views on the functional organization of the brain have been put forward. In this Perspective, Rosen and Freedman examine the degree to which these two views account for ...

Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.

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

Thank you! See you again soon

Many thanks to the audience at my talk at the International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCcN) at the University of Tokyo today; great feedback 🙏
It was so nice to talk about brain development with so many experts. Impressed by the research range at the IRCN 🧪🧠

Homo sapiens-specific evolution unveiled by ancient southern African genomes - Nature The genomes of 28 ancient southern African individuals dated to between 10,200 and 150 years before present offer insights into the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published!
We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes.
Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity!

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

👏👏

Very happy to have had a chance to catch up with fantastic researchers like @ebisuyamiki.bsky.social & @tyamadat.bsky.social today 🙏

Development's Pathway to Independence Programme Our grants support and encourage the sharing of knowledge throughout the community by facilitating international collaboration, event attendance and the organisation of scientific meetings, conference...

Applications are open for @dev-journal.bsky.social 2026 Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs applying for group leader positions:

Mentoring
Profile raising
Leadership training
Network building

Spread the word...

www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

Interrogating the Regulatory Function of HAQERs during Human Cortical Development Background Sequence divergence within gene regulatory elements has been proposed to play an important role in the evolution of human-specific traits, including cortical expansion. However, the mutatio...

New preprint by @brainevodevo.bsky.social

“Interrogating the Regulatory Function of HAQERs during Human Cortical Development” 🧪🧠🧬

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

Deadline approaching for participating in the international Stanford Course on Neural Assembloids in spring 2026!

This is an immersive, hands-on course on generating, probing and manipulating stem cell-derived neural #assembloids and #organoids for disease and development modeling.

Looking forward to taking part in the “What makes us human” symposium at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan, in Yokohama. I’ll be talking about heterochronies, delayed aspects of brain development & consequences for cognition. 🧪🧠🧬
Always great to be back in Japan 🙏

We are all mosaics: vast genetic diversity found between cells in a single person Technical advances allow researchers to trace the genetic changes that occur over time.

We are all mosaics: vast genetic diversity found between cells in a single person www.nature.com/articles/d41... Technical advances allow researchers to trace the genetic changes that occur over time.

Interesting re-reading & re-appraisal of a classic paper on the design features of specific cognitive systems like human language, by @symbolicstorage.bsky.social @mperlman.bsky.social @glupyan.bsky.social K de Reus & @limorraviv.bsky.social
@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🧪

Brain-wide mapping of developmental trajectories of cerebellar efferent projections | PNAS Long-range cerebellar outputs are critical for shaping brain-wide functional architecture, influencing motor, cognitive, and affective domains. Pro...

Nice cerebellum development paper 👀

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congrats!

Very nice work revealing the importance of social/cultural learning in orangutans 👇 🧪

A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity - Scientific Data Scientific Data - A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity

Such a fantastic resource by @kuhlwilm.bsky.social's lab. We’re using this catalog in half our projects
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nice work @raffaela-lesch.bsky.social!

Nice study! 👏

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

Excellent @science.org review by an outstanding group, including @inbalarnon.bsky.social @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @limorraviv.bsky.social @simonkirby.bsky.social @lirancarmel.bsky.social @kazuookanoya.bsky.social @luciewolters.bsky.social
What enables human language? A biocultural framework
🧪

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

+ @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social (glad to see you on this platform)

CHD2 Dosage Ties Autolysosomal Pathway to Cortical Maturation in Disease and Evolution The relatively slow pace of cortical development in humans has long been a topic of investigation. Studies seeking to understand the underlying mechanisms have mostly focused on neurogenetic compariso...

Great review 👏. Planning to use it when revising www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrats @limorraviv.bsky.social (and team)!

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

Excellent @science.org review by an outstanding group, including @inbalarnon.bsky.social @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @limorraviv.bsky.social @simonkirby.bsky.social @lirancarmel.bsky.social @kazuookanoya.bsky.social @luciewolters.bsky.social
What enables human language? A biocultural framework
🧪

BRAIN-MAGNET: A functional genomics atlas for interpretation of non-coding variants BRAIN-MAGNET, a convolutional neural network trained on 148,198 functionally tested non-coding regulatory elements, predicts enhancer activity directly from DNA sequence and identifies nucleotides ess...

Very pleased to share our latest paper published in Cell:
BRAIN-MAGNET: A functional genomics atlas for interpretation of non-coding variants: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
@cellpress.bsky.social, @cp-cell.bsky.social, @ruizhideng.bsky.social #enhancer
here is a thread about our findings:

Congrats!

Ping @radicalanthro.bsky.social

Evidence for deceptive fertility in a wild primate Baniel et al. show that female geladas deceptively signal fertility when a new dominant male arrives. Across 14 years of data, lactating females displayed fertility signals and mated without conceivin...

Fascinating longitudinal study in @currentbiology.bsky.social by @alicebaniel.bsky.social @jbeehner.bsky.social and colleagues, providing evidence for deceptive fertility in a wild primate (gelada) 🧪
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Perfect forum for your work 👏