Adam Turnbull

Just continuing the long-standing scientific tradition of prioritizing cool-sounding names for things over clear science communication 😅

Something like this? Source: jtr13.github.io/cc21fall2/ra... but then it doesn't look like a raincloud... (original raincloud plot source pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...)

This is a ready-made advert for raincloud plots

Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in gene therapy trial UCL trialled hours-long surgical procedure to treat disease which causes dementia and paralysis Huntington’s disease, a devastating degenerative illness that runs in families, has been treated successfully for the first time in a breakthrough gene therapy trial. The disease, caused by a single gene defect, steadily kills brain cells leading to dementia, paralysis and ultimately death. Those with a parent with Huntington’s have a 50% chance of developing the disease, which until now has been incurable. Continue reading...

Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in gene therapy trial

New landscape of the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease involves a drastic departure from the cognitive, functional, and behavioural trajectory of normal ageing, and is both a dreaded and highly prevalent cause of disability to individu...

New landscape of the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... by @thelancet.com

#Alzheimers #dementia #biomarkers #neuroscience #NeuroSkyence

Lab’s latest is out in Imaging Neuroscience, led by Kirsten Peterson: “Regularized partial correlation provides reliable functional connectivity estimates while correcting for widespread confounding”, where we demonstrate a major improvement to standard fMRI functional connectivity (correlation) 1/n

The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500: ‘We’re not OK with our babies being born into poverty’ Infants in Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan, saw lower rates of prematurity and other issues, saving millions in NICU visits

A program in Flint, MI, gave $1,500 to any/all pregnant people and $500/month for the first year of their infant’s life.

Among the benefits, those babies experienced lower rates of prematurity and low birth weight, which resulted in fewer NICU admissions, saving the city of Flint $6.2 million/year.

@inmice.bsky.social

Ecological Momentary Assessment as a Measure of Intervention Change: Evaluation in 4 Digital Mental Health Trials Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is increasingly being incorporated into intervention studies to acquire a more fine-grained and ecologically valid assessment of change. The added uti...

📱EMA is increasingly used in intervention studies to acquire a more fine-grained and ecologically valid assessment of change. But EMA is relatively burdensome. What's the added value? We tried to address this question in our new paper now out @jmirpub.bsky.social www.jmir.org/2025/1/e69297 1/n

The Government Wants to See Your Papers And the Supreme Court decides that the Fourth Amendment might not be for everyone.

Will ICE send guys to Boston looking for red hair and listening for brogues? Or stake out delis in Chicago to see who buys a kielbasa?
No. This is about profiling people by skin color and language.

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

How do sex, stress & anxiety shape risk for Alzheimer’s disease?

Join Dr. Holly Hunsberger on Sept 15 for our next #WHSS talk on vulnerabilities to aging & AD.

📅 Sept 15 | 12pm ET
💻 Free, virtual — register today: ow.ly/KR1150WJEny

#Alzheimers #Research #WomensHealth

So, kudos to both #Democrats & #Republicans in the House for their draft mark-up for next year's #budget, which maintains funding for #NIH (just like the Senate). This is rare, true #bipartisanship and should be praised. But #RussellVought will not be stopped by an appropriations bill. Why? 1/

Forever grateful for having a dad who was into jazz so I was never at risk of being in the no-jazz group. Now I get to have a re-discovery phase every few years when I get into something new or find a new appreciation for something I'd always liked. Just wish it was more readily available live.

Effect of confound mass on true positive rates under FDR correction. Confound mass represents how large a confound is in terms of the product of its voxel extent and effect size. Results are shown at differing combinations of true effect size, true effect voxel extent, and sample size.

Inflated surface maps of meta-analytic z-statistics from Neurosynth for low-level confounds (top) and high-level cognitive tasks (bottom). Red reflects positive activations, blue reflects negative (de)activations, and darker colors indicate larger z-statistics. Maps are thresholded at |z| = 1 for visualization purposes.

Effect of confound effect size on true positive rates for task effects under FDR correction. Colors indicate sample sizes: N = 25 in blue, N = 50 in green, and N = 100 in orange. Effect sizes are reflected by the darkness of each color, with light shades representing d = .2, medium d = .5, and dark d = .8. The task brain maps and confound brain maps referenced in each panel are shown in Figure 3.

Effect of FDR-based publication bias on observed confound effects sizes. Simulated meta-analytic confound effect sizes are visualized through violin plots for each combination of task effect and confound effect examined in the neural data simulations. Meta-analyses featuring publication bias (orange) substantially inflate these effect size estimates in all cases, relative to meta-analyses featuring no publication bias (blue).

After 5 years, I finally carved out time to turn this blog post on FDR (markallenthornton.com/blog/fdr-pro...) into a manuscript. The preprint features a much broader range of simulations showing how FDR promotes confounds, and how this effect compounds with publication bias: osf.io/preprints/ps...

the absolute worst thing they can do is be over the second apron without a chance of competing for a title: the penalties are brutal. I think if they can stay under it for 2 years while keeping Brown/White they can take shots to compete again when Tatum is back. not really fun but the reality...

Although I will say a lot of this is the current media and cultural environment. It's easier to compete in long-form media and when people have decent science (or whatever domain you're trying to explain) literacy.

I agree to some extent: there are excellent science communicators that "preserve the interest in truth" but even the best ones don't compete with the junk scientists in terms of popularity. I think the trust can't compete with falsity but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try.

Impossible to judge from this off-season. Punting this year is the only rational choice.

I agree that rationalists could use these tactics more but I do think there is often a trade-off between trying to represent the truth and being appealing.

I think it's tricky... e.g., in science communication. The people that get popular are often those most willing to play it fast and loose with these tactics when discussing what is "true" or what we know. The reality is objectively more boring, complicated, and harder to sell.

This is the definition of a failed social media platform.

Dear Colleagues: I am sending this memo to clarify our priorities and ensure efforts to fulfill our mission are aligned across the agency. I want to start by expressing my gratitude for your advice and input thus far, and I look forward to our continued collaboration. I have had the opportunity now to visit labs and meet with teams across the agency, and I am constantly impressed. It is a privilege to work with such a dedicated and talented staff. I recognize that several new initiatives and policies have been implemented in a short period of time, and there has been some confusion due to inaccurate media reports and rumors. Therefore, I have outlined select agency priorities at the end of this note to ensure you have a clearer picture of our rationale and objectives. I do not mean this memo to be an exhaustive list of all agency priorities, but rather a select list of topics that require our particular attention and focus while continuing the other important work you are all doing. This memo will help to ensure NIH supports only high-quality projects selected based on the merit of the science and that are aligned with our mission to generate data that can improve the health of all of the American people. I ask each of you to use this guidance when reviewing your intramural and extramural research portfolios and making decisions about your future programs. In recent weeks, it has come to my attention that some at NIH and in the scientific community believe that there are “banned words” or some level of censorship of science ongoing or planned. This is simply untrue. I have advocated for academic freedom throughout my career, with a particular public focus in the last five years. My position has not changed; scientists must be allowed to pursue their ideas free of censorship or control by others. They must be able to express their scientific opinions and challenge scientific dogma.

Here is the Priorities document (long thread)

1/n

Both regimes also moved really fast. This sort of goodwill and sense of duty rarely seems to last for the left (FDR got “lucky” with the war timing). Need to be brave and not worry about staying “electable” (they won’t anyway).

This was a central theme of Attlee’s vision as well but for both regimes I feel like it was so obvious to the working people the benefits they were getting from being part of organised society. The war also helped but there was a lot of low hanging fruit for the government. There still is tbh…

Are similar representations in neural nets evidence of shared computation? In new theory work w/ Lukas Braun (lukasbraun.com) & @saxelab.bsky.social, we prove that representational comparisons are ill-posed in general, unless networks are efficient.

@icmlconf.bsky.social @cogcompneuro.bsky.social

🚨 New Preprint 🚨

Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects

By Cyr et al.

***
Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES?

A: Yes!

🧵:

Haha fair. I think I'm in a weird place with faith in that I have personal reasons to want to be a Christian so I'm always skeptical of my own faith and I feel like there are certain belief systems that feel too convenient (e.g., if I can convince myself I have to believe nothing supernatural).

I'm interesting in perspectives on this: how many "historical facts" stated in the Bible do you think you have to ascribe to in order to be a Christian. I know there is a lot of variability in terms of "inspiration" but surely at least 1: Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. More than that?

A randomized trial (N>2,100 participants, multi-center) of structured vs self-guided lifestyle interventions in older adults shows the former improved cognitive function jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Home | Social Connection Lab The Social Connection Lab ("SoCoLab") at USC investigates what helps people feel socially connected to one another.

🚨We are recruiting a lab manager who will spend 80% of their effort in my lab and 20% of their effort in @leorhackel.bsky.social's lab. Please share widely!

Apply at usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange... with:
completed questionnaire (socolab.org/lab-manager-application), CV & Cover Letter!