Vishal Rawji

🚨Big news!🚨
The lab is relocating to Lisbon, joining a great team of experimental and theoretical neuroscientists, and the Neurotechnology Warehouse, a new initiative to bridge basic and translational research.

I'll be sharing postdoc openings soon. Come join us in this new incarnation of the lab!

‪@benhayden.bsky.social‬
@tyrellturing.bsky.social‬
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social‬
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...

A paradigm to study the learning of muscle activity patterns outside of the natural repertoire | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society The acquisition of novel muscle activity patterns is a key aspect of motor skill learning, which can be seen, for example, when beginner musicians learn new guitar or piano chords. To study this proce...

Congrats to @alighavampour.bsky.social and @mnlmrc.bsky.social for developing a new paradigm for hand synergy learning. If you are looking for a motor skill task that seems impossibly difficult and really needs to learning to be mastered, here it is:
journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

🚨New paper🚨

Neural manifolds went from a niche-y word to an ubiquitous term in systems neuro thanks to many interesting findings across fields. But like with any emerging term, people use it very differently.

Here, we clarify our take on the term, and review key findings & challenges rdcu.be/ex8hW

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

Check out our new review/perspective (w/ @juangallego.bsky.social & Devika Narain) on neural manifolds in the brain! It was a lot of fun to think through these ideas over the past couple of years, and I'm excited it's finally out in the world!

🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
📄: rdcu.be/ex8hW

This work was co-supervised by @juangallego.bsky.social and Dario Farina, and sponsored in part by Meta.

We're extremely grateful for our participants, their carers, Aspire, the Spinal Injuries Association and Hillingdon Hospital for their patience and support.

In sum, we provide proof-of-concept of an implantable system that uses high-density intramuscular microelectrode arrays to enable accurate control in individuals with tetraplegic SCI 11/n

We then re-routed the activity of a single motoneuron to control a wearable, soft exoskeleton that uses motors and wires to pull on rings placed on joints. In doing so, this participant could grasp a pen and deform a sponge 10/n

One could also use two independent motoneurons to control a cursor in 2D (one controlling the x-axis position and the other controlling the y-axis position) 9/n

And could control a single motoneuron to play Pong! 8/n

Excitingly, both participants were able to proportionally control the activity of single motoneurons 7/n

Interestingly, there were pairs (and even a triplet) of motoneurons that fired independently of one another, suggesting multiple degree-of-freedom control from a single array 6/n

We identified up to 46 motoneurons during attempted movements, despite lack of movement. Some motoneurons fired continuously (during rest and movement), likely due to spasticity. Others fired only during attempted movements.

We found far fewer with surface grids, despite having more electrodes 5/n

In two people with tetraplegic SCI, we use ultrasound to identify regions of spared muscle activity, then insert 40 channel microelectrode arrays to sample residual muscle activity over a large region 4/n

Invasive electrodes improve the signal-to-noise ratio but only sample amount of muscle and hence reduces the likelihood of detecting residual activity 3/n

Harnessing residual signals after SCI is a promising approach to restoring functionality. Whilst EMG (from muscles) is often detectable after SCI, it is too small and sparse to be used for control, especially when measured with surface electrodes 2/n

Multidimensional motoneuron control using intramuscular microelectrode arrays in tetraplegic spinal cord injury Loss of hand function after spinal cord injury (SCI) significantly impairs independence and quality of life. Although residual muscle activity recorded on the skin can provide intuitive control signal...

Preprint out -- using intramuscular microelectrode arrays to detect residual motoneuron activity in tetraplegic spinal cord injury, and then using that activity for control
Credit to my other co-first authors Agnese Grison and Ciara Gibbs
1/n
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Take a look at our recent article on neural interfaces based on EMG. We propose some new ideas regarding how one can take advantage of muscle recordings to estimate neural activity in the central nervous system. I hope you enjoy it!
lnkd.in/duAHSRB5
Temporary open link to the paper: rdcu.be/etI2K

A plea for academic decency - Journal of Comparative Physiology A In an internet age when a viral sensationalist story gains far more traction than a nuanced and balanced discussion, we have become used to some politicians, media and web-based influencers bending th...

🚨 In our world riddled with misinformation and sensationalization, we must be cautious about handling accusations of scientific misconduct in our community. Weaponizing a public internet campaign is not the way.

📖 Read "A plea for academic decency"
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An instantaneous voice-synthesis neuroprosthesis - Nature A brain-to-voice neuroprosthesis enables a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to synthesize his voice in real time by decoding neural activity, demonstrating the potential of brain–computer interfaces to enable people with paralysis to speak intelligibly and expressively.

Nature research paper: An instantaneous voice-synthesis neuroprosthesis

https://go.nature.com/4kLPolK

I'm planning to write an editorial in @brain1878.bsky.social entitled "If patients only knew".
It's about obstacles that slow down or prevent people from participating in clinical studies and the pace of initiating #ClinicalTrials. If you have experience or comments please message me and repost.

A pill for sleep apnea that keeps the airway open
www.science.org/content/arti... @science.org @meredithwadman.bsky.social

Job Alert (please repost)!

We are looking to hire a Research Assistant to join us in an exciting project looking into Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) and how brains learn to control them.

Those immensely useful tasks don’t “save the world” or “revolutionize healthcare as we know it” unfortunately.

A good read: www.bmj.com/content/386/...

At @ox.ac.uk it's time for the staff survey. Here's my answer to: "What is the main thing the University could do to help you to progress your career?"
Please repost and respond similarly to the survey if you agree. It's the only way to get our points across!

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Why Alzheimer’s Scientists Are Re-thinking the Amyloid Hypothesis Recent studies implicate the immune system and a herpes virus as potential contributors to development of the disease.

Why Alzheimer’s Scientists Are Re-thinking the Amyloid Hypothesis undark.org/2025/01/07/a...

Can the motor system use sensory expectations to prepare for unexpected events?

Excited to share my latest work with @andpru.bsky.social – where we establish that sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits!

🧵 and paper below
1/

Learning resources for scientists · eLife A collections of articles that provide practical resources and guidance for researchers and academics

1/ 🧵 Free resources for scientists

💡 Covering research skills, careers, #SciComm, leadership, activism and more, everything in this thread appears on our Learning Resources page, with tips for researchers and academics at any career stage. #AcademicChatter #ECRChat
https://buff.ly/4f8vIpk

Important paper!

www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

Im not sure the Discussion fully delineates its radical implications.

No more...

* Place cells
* Grid cells, splitter cells, border cells
* Mirror neurons
* Reward neurons
* Conflict cells

(continued)