David Baranger

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

So infuriating.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Please say hi at #ACNP if you'd like to chat with either of us about this opportunity!!

darth vader is standing in front of a wall with the words join me below him ALT: darth vader is standing in front of a wall with the words join me below him

Toddler requested a "Master Yoda" bedtime story

palmerpenguins R data package Data for three penguin species observed in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica, collected by Dr. Kristen Gorman with Palmer Station LTER. A great intro dataset for data science teaching and learning, a...

See also palmerpenguins - allisonhorst.github.io/palmerpengui...

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬. New from us, led by @sarahepaul.bsky.social. PheWAS in ABCD identifies many potentially modifiable substance use risk factors!

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Certainly

Most people use MID contrasts (eg Big Win > Neut), which would be less reliable than any of these estimates.

I'm also surprised by how low the PET reliability is, but I'm less familiar with that literature.

Thanks Nicola! Given that they're looking at activation relative to an implicit baseline, and not a contrast, the ICC here is around what I would expect. Certainly longer time between measurements lowers reliability in many of the adolescent samples. Harder to say if there are age effects.

Great work led by Andrew Castillo extending sample size stability analyses to interactions! We've also added a function implementing these analyses to the InteractionPoweR R package: dbaranger.github.io/InteractionP... #rstats

When do interaction/moderation effects stabilize in linear regression?: https://osf.io/35t84

Reliability and sample size have a non-linear relationship. Linear increases in reliability yield diminishing reductions in the required sample size.

If you are ever working on a project and see r=0.98 between variables that are supposedly different, your first thought should be "oh $&*! what went wrong?", NOT "I wonder what mediates this???"

Shout out to BEAR Lab research tech Daniella Fernandez (who only joined 4 months ago!) whose poster abstract was selected for a nanosymposium at the annual meeting of the Upper Midwest Chapter of SFN this weekend! #neuroskyence #MRI 🧠🍺

Applications for the Career Development Institute (CDI) in Psychiatry are open! Strongly recommend for senior grad students and postdocs.
cdipsychiatry.org

TransBrain: A computational framework for translating brain-wide phenotypes between humans and mice Despite remarkable advances in whole-brain imaging technologies, the lack of quantitative approaches to bridge rodent preclinical and human studies remains a critical challenge. Here we present TransB...

Interesting approach that aligns mouse and human brain-wide data using transcriptomics and structural connectivity. I'm curious if anyone here has tried using it yet? #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... transbrain.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Official job ad is up! careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

A new favorite citation appeared!

TIL in Windows you can use PowerShell to search not only file names but also text file contents - including .R and .Rhistory files. In a moment of pure insanity, 1.5 years ago I did not save the code for a figure, but it was recorded in an old .Rhistory file!

Lol thanks!!!

Also, I will be at #SRP this week if anyone wants to chat!

Current projects in the lab include longitudinal neuroimaging of substance use at different time-scales, family-based studies of casual and genetic effects, and the development of new ML models for task fMRI. This is a funded position with up to 3 years of funding available.

Opportunities Interested in the neuroscience of addiction? We are recruiting at all levels!! Reach out to Dr. Baranger – dbaranger@mcw.edu Postdoctoral fellows/Senior Scientists: Please send an email conta…

Excited to share that I am officially recruiting a postdoc to study the neurobiology of addiction! Looking for someone who would be excited to lead current projects in the lab and develop new directions in related areas.
More info: bearlab.science/opportunities/

🧠📊 New research examines potential bias in brain age algorithms across racial groups

📈 Study of 6 popular algorithms found lower accuracy for African American participants (r=0.51-0.85) compared to White/Hispanic participants (r=0.57-0.89)/1

The lifespan trajectories of brain activities related to conflict-driven cognitive control Cognitive control is fundamental to human goal-directed behavior. Understanding its trajectory across the lifespan is crucial for optimizing cognitive…

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐭-𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 | "The predominant lifespan trajectory is inverted U-shaped, rising from childhood to peak in young adulthood before declining in later adulthood" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Additive and Interactive Relations of Personality and Cognition With Externalizing Behaviors - Nathaniel L. Phillips, Nathan T. Carter, Kevin M. King, Courtland S. Hyatt, Max M. Owens, Donald R. Lynam... Personality and cognition offer robust frameworks to understand the individual differences associated with externalizing behaviors. However, these literatures h...

𝐀𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬 | "Although interaction effects were detected, they were small and practically negligible in their explanation of variance in externalizing behaviors" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thanks! I was able to create an educator account on datacamp, which lets me give trainees access for free if then enroll in my 'class'. So far it looks like a useful supplement, particularly for programming concepts that might be new

Wooo NOA day! Phew.

If you're looking at pre-6.0 ABCD results with subcortical rs-fMRI correlations, the labels are all wrong! We reported a result as Auditory - L Putamen, but it it was actually Default Mode - L Cerebellum. docs.abcdstudy.org/latest/docum...

For sure. I guess my point is that a generative epistatic model with uncentered effects is equivalent to a centered model with large additive effects with the means added in after the data are generated. So the increasing additive effects you're seeing at higher MAF are expected.

Thanks so much!! Instead of saying that this is skew (MAF), I would say that this comes from not mean-centering X1/X2 before making the interaction term. I do find it surprising that the extent of the multi-collinearity (from not mean-centering) is larger when X1 & X2 are normal (MAF=0.5).