Corey Horien

We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨
🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

Which Came First? Utility of Preclinical Models in Cracking the Chicken-or-Egg Relationship between Cannabis Use and Schizophrenia - Current Addiction Reports Current Addiction Reports - The association between cannabis use and schizophrenia is a growing public health concern, particularly in vulnerable populations. This review synthesizes insights from...

Back to back paper drops: Which Came First? Utility of Preclinical Models in Cracking the Chicken-or-Egg Relationship between Cannabis Use and Schizophrenia: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An Open-Source Restraint System for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Rats Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a critical tool for translational neuroscience, but preclinical studies frequently rely on anesthesia, which alters neural activity and limits comparison with human...

Excited to share this in final form @sfnjournals.bsky.social: An Open-Source Restraint System for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Rats www.eneuro.org/content/13/2... if anyone wants to try doing it, give us a call! Happy to help you get going!

Inter- and intra-individual variability in structure-function coupling in human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.707886v1

Immune conflict in placenta affects male fetal development The immune-conflict between dam and fetus could help explain sex differences in neurodevelopmental conditions.

“Understanding autism from a variety of perspectives, whether it’s neurological, immunological, or even ‘placentological’—I think those are all important pieces of the puzzle,” says @cheadlelab.bsky.social of @cshlnews.bsky.social.

By @vcallier.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/pos...

New paper in Nature Neuroscience! We developed personalized fMRI-based predictive models tracking ongoing spontaneous pain in chronic pain patients—trained on 6+ months of densely sampled data. A true team effort. Deeply grateful to our participants! doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02221-3

Federal funding for US biomedical research is moribund.

Since October 1 2025, NIH is -80% in new grants and -70% in values (total dollars).

Labs are closing down and researchers are leaving science.

To what end?

The effects of a second pregnancy on women’s brain structure and function - Nature Communications Extending their previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, the authors show that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks.

Extending previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, a study in Nature Communications shows that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks. #Neuroskyence #medsky 🧪

Symptom-specific links between internalizing problems and functional connectivity in adolescents: a network analysis - European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Previous fMRI studies have documented links between internalizing problems in youth and brain functional connectivity of the default (DN), frontoparietal (FP), and salience (SA) networks. Characterize...

Very excited to share that our paper “Symptom-specific links between internalizing problems and functional connectivity in adolescents: a network analysis” has been published in European Child & Adolescence Psychiatry doi.org/10.1007/s007...

We've posted a new fMRI study examining attention across tasks. We compare semantic representations during movie watching to those during naturalistic navigation. We show that attention in different contexts alters semantic representations to optimize performance.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

"Across individuals n=414, representations converged in higher-order cortex despite substantial topographic diversity... similar information was encoded by individual-specific activity patterns." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41727092/ Brains encode the same information, but in different places (preprint)

Anatomic & functional brain atlases: connecting functional flexibility with fixed infrastructure - Brain Structure and Function Brain Structure and Function - Recent advancements in imaging across scales has propelled the development of anatomic brain atlases reflecting a wide range of cellular properties. It’s...

It's important to note that when discussing brain structure-function relationships across scales, that the definition of function changes with scale. Keep it straight! @sbe.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Brandi Carlile raises more than $600k with Minneapolis livestream “Minnesota is so deeply inspiring,” the singer posted after Saturday’s emotional Target Center concert.

“Minnesota is so deeply inspiring,” singer Brandi Carlile posted after Saturday’s emotional Target Center concert.

Opinion | The Human Cost of Trump’s War on Science

NIH is “…the largest government-funded biomedical research agency in the world, and until recently was the envy of scientists across the globe.

The president’s attacks on this legacy have been relentless and all-encompassing…”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

Happy to announce this new preprint!

In it, we use info decomp (ΦID) on fMRI in Alzheimer's and MCI to explore how info-dynamic representations change.

AD saw big decreases in synergy ('deductive' information) and increases in redundancy.

Check it out here:
👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

After leaving WHO, Trump officials propose more expensive replacement to duplicate it HHS proposes spending $2 billion a year to re-create systems the U.S. accessed through the WHO at a fraction of the cost, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Exclusive: After pulling out of WHO, the Trump administration is proposing spending $2 billion a year to replicate the global disease surveillance and outbreak functions the United States once helped build, which will cost about three times as much.

New preprint from the lab on synapse development in the nascent neocortical hierarchy!

Using mice that label MAGUK proteins developed by Seth Grant we find key differences in the laminar maturation of association and sensory motor cortices, including delayed, cortex-wide maturation of L1 synapses.

FIRST post here on Bluesky - we’re excited to share that our large spatial transcriptomics study of the human dlPFC in schizophrenia is now available on bioRxiv📄: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/9)

🚨new lab preprint; brain fingerprinting entirely revisited:
Can we differentiate individuals from just seconds of neurophysiological recordings with machine learning, without resorting to black-box approaches?

In this work, Maxence Lapatrie says 'yes'.

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

Voices: Medical research saved my daughter’s life. We must protect the funding that makes that research possible. “Scientists are seeking new treatments and cures for many diseases, common and rare,” writes Lateishia Curtis in an op-ed. “Talk to friends, neighbors and policymakers about medical research. The next...

Wonderful op-ed by a mother who explains how NIH-funded research at U of U Health saved her daughter's life.

"That research — and Briar’s life — demonstrate just how critical federal support is to scientists, doctors and, especially, the patients they help."
www.sltrib.com/opinion/comm...

🚨Do we need a large, expensive MRI scanner to map whole-brain networks in the mouse? Not necessarily!

In our new preprint ▶️ tinyurl.com/3a2h4r9f
we show that transcranial functional ultrasound (fUSI) can map connectome-scale networks with striking agreement to fMRI
🧵👇

We review studies showing that when brain areas face similar computational demands in social and non-social context, they perform the same computations. We argue that exaptation (repurposing of traits for new functions) played a key role in brain evolution.

A precise atlas of the human subcortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.705755v1

Now out in Psychological Medicine (led by Jodi Gilman and myself).

"Impulsivity-related predictors of adolescent substance use initiation"

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

Another NIH institute loses its director Health department declines to renew Lindsey Criswell, head of arthritis institute, to another 5-year term

The chief of NIAMS, Lindsey Criswell, has told her staff that her 5-year leadership appointment had not been renewed, meaning 16 out of 27 NIH institutes and centers will be operating without a permanent director. https://scim.ag/4cr5wHI

Exclusive: White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security, documents show The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's budget chief and an archit...

Reuters Exclusive:

The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from USAID, the former U.S. foreign aid agency, to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, Trump's budget chief and an architect of the government overhaul cut thousands of federal jobs.

A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

NSF Update

Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.

Now by Directorate...

1/11

At-home movement state classification using totally implantable cortical-basal ganglia neural interface Chronic at-home neural recordings in Parkinson’s disease reveal personalized biomarkers that accurately classify walking state.

Super excited to share our new paper: At-home movement state classification using totally implantable cortical-basal ganglia neural interface | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...