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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 ...

How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition? A Perspective by Matthew C. Rosen & David J. Freedman

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

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

I wrote a book: "The brain, in theory".
First chapter and TOC:

romainbrette.fr/WordPress3/w...

YouTube video by Center for Philosophy of Science Lunchtime Talk - Joe McCaffrey 11/7/25

very nice talk by Joe McCaffrey on functional localization— it’s an easy listen with tons of great information about the debate.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=eRmD...

An early surge of norepinephrine along brainstem pathways drives sensory-evoked awakening The locus coeruleus has a specialized pathway to the brainstem that controls sound-evoked awakening from sleep.

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨(1/6)

Excited to share our work, out now in Science Advances

We show that a rapid norepinephrine surge along a brainstem pathway (LC→PRN) is a key driver of sound-evoked awakenings
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Working link to the preprint 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
See thread below for a looong explainer

#NeuroJobs

But couldn’t the opposite be true as well? To say that a cell has a very specific tuning to a category shouldn’t it probed with a really large sample of concepts? After all the ~100 of the paper represents a fairly limited sample space

Too often, I see people talk about a replication as if the first study has established something, and the replication study is a double-check. What people often fail to understand is that we do not do replication studies to *check* a finding, but to *establish* a finding. 1/x

Supergroup (music) - Wikipedia

A superlab paper?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergr...

Ultra-slow Oscillations in fMRI and Resting-State Connectivity: Neuronal and Vascular Contributions and Technical Confounds Ultra-slow, ∼0.1-Hz variations in the oxygenation level of brain blood are widely used as an fMRI-based surrogate of “resting-state” neuronal activity…

This review may be relevant. They argue that BOLD results mainly from the entrainment of blood vessels on the (low-frequency) envelope of gamma neural oscillations

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thinking about writing a pop science book about the brain (“Your Brain on Everything”) where the big reveal is that all the brain names were randomized and I was actually talking about psychology the whole time.

Cholinergic feedback for modality- and context-specific modulation of sensory representations The brain’s ability to prioritize sensory information is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated basal forebrain cholinergic neurons modulating olfactory bulb...

Our new paper is out in Science.

We identified a subgroup of cholinergic neurons that mediate sensory modality-specific attention. They change their funcitonal properties within secs of behavioral context change.

Congrats to Bin for the great thesis, and the team!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Is the "homunculus" that supposedly monitors the activity of the mid-level visual cortex real or imaginary?

An important question than is: if this work was advertised as exploratory research, would it still be published in Science? (Of course, this is likely a problem that affects the publication process in general, rather than this paper specifically; we should probably work to change that)

And probably we didn’t even moved on completely. I think it’s still considered true by the general public

Integrating multimodal data to understand cortical circuit architecture and function - Nature Neuroscience This paper discusses how experimental and computational studies integrating multimodal data, such as RNA expression, connectivity and neural activity, are advancing our understanding of the architectu...

Advances in neuroscience have yielded massive, rich datasets from various analysis techniques and modalities. 🧠📈

In a @natureneuro.bsky.social perspective, researchers underscore the importance of an integrative approach to render a more complete picture of the brain.

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c...

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... - really pleased that this paper with Henry Potter is now published in the European Journal of Neuroscience 😊