Alex Wiesman

Thank you Jennifer Yoon & @CBCNews for reporting on our Brain Health at Midlife & #Menopause (BHAMM) study!

If you live in Toronto or Montreal, are generally healthy & interested in participating please sign up at: bheamlab.ca/participate

#bhammstudy

🧩🧠New release! OMEGA v3.1.1 is out—now with MEG-MRI co-registration for 480 participants 🎉 Manual alignment using original MRI+digitized head shape & fiducials. Includes BIDS-compliant landmarks+quality scores.

🔗 See “Co-registration” tab: www.mcgill.ca/bic/resource...

Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️

and: "but somehow power and control over vital issues – what is peer review, what is a journal, what gets published – have been ceded to organizations beyond the scientific community, like Web of Science and Scopus. This is not healthy for science or the scientific community."

Genetic foundations of interindividual neurophysiological variability Individual brain activity profiles are shaped by lifelong genetic influences.

Very proud to share this one🥹! We show that personalized signatures of brain activity are heritable and relate to the expression of specific genes. That means my brain-fingerprint is very similar to my twin brother's! #ResearchIsMeSearch🧠 🧬 ♊️

Genetic foundations of interindividual neurophysiological variability Individual brain activity profiles are shaped by lifelong genetic influences.

🧬🧠 Our latest study shows that individual brain dynamics are partly written in our genes. We found that heritable neurophysiological traits align with adult cortical gene expression and psychological function.

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

@theneuro.bsky.social @mcgill.ca

In vivo and in silico alpha-synuclein propagation dynamics: The role of genotype, epicentre, and connectivity Synucleinopathies, like Parkinson's disease (PD) are characterized by progressive accumulation and spread of misfolded alpha-synuclein (aSyn) throughout the brain. To improve understanding of disease ...

Really excited to share this new preprint on the dynamics of alpha-synuclein spreading by Dr. Stephanie Tullo in our group. This was a long term labour of love spanning the pandemic, experimental work, and in silico modelling

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

See more below ⬇️

Great question Sierra - after further validation and extension to more accessible technologies, we hope this approach could be useful for monitoring the effects of DRT in real-time during prescribing - allowing more personalized dosing and regimens based on each patient's neurophysiology

Volume conductor models for magnetospinography - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Volume conductor models for magnetospinography

Pleased to see this paper finally published. We investigated which conductive models are appropriate for source analysis of spine electrophysiology. Turns out modelling the bone is quite important! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors : PAIN odeling and magnetoencephalography to detect time-resolved activations underlying pain expectations and aversive PE signals in the human brain. The task entailed learning probabilistically changing cu...

🚨New paper in PAIN w/ R. Gopalakrishnan, @torwager.bsky.social, @mcgill.ca Mathieu Roy, et al.

Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors.

journals.lww.com/pain/fulltex...

@theneuro.bsky.social

I still can’t believe that all NIH grants to my colleagues at Harvard and Harvard Medical School have been nullified. And that, as a nation, we’re somehow okay with this illegal, arbitrary, and petty act. Just think of the consequences: scientists, students, and patients will all suffer.

Alterations in cortical 40-Hz auditory steady-state response dynamics in children with mild-to-severe hearing loss are related to hearing aid use Abstract. Children who are hard-of-hearing (CHH) show greater variability in language and academic outcomes than children with normal hearing (CNH) through

Really excited to share the latest #CASILab publication that is my grad student Mike's first, first-authored publication! 🥳 We show how hearing loss relates to alterations in auditory entrainment, and how these changes are impacted by hearing aid use. Check it out!
tinyurl.com/ymjbpnye

🚨
Levodopa increased burst waveform-specific connectivity between STN and the sensorimotor cortex, which correlated with medication related improvement.

Beta burst waveforms look like a promising biomarker candidate for both disease severity and treatment response.

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

Have you been using ABCD data? Are you measuring psychopathology with the CBCL? You will want to check out our latest preprint, led by @kanepav.bsky.social, which shows that the constructs measured by the tool fail to meet many basic validity tests. Peep the thread!

Tune in today for a talk from Dr. Justin Carré, titled "Use of single-dose testosterone administration protocols to unravel the role of testosterone in modulating human aggression and mating psychology", presented by Dr. Justin Carré. To learn more, visit: rebrand.ly/nhwfmrd

NSERC contributes $9 million in new funding for science research

This morning the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced $9 million in new funding for research at #SFU Faculty of Science. www.sfu.ca/science/news... #NSERC

Come study in lovely London Ontario. Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (3T, 7T human, 9.4T and 15.2T animal) are two of our big strengths.

Excited to be taking over from the wonderfully capable David Park as Chair of the Research Committee for @braincanada.bsky.social in addition to continuing to serve as a Director on the Board of Brain Canada. Exciting and challenging times ahead in 🇨🇦 and the 🌎.

SFU professor Alex Wiesman talks to a middle-aged woman being scanned by an MEG machine

Research at SFU ImageTech Lab is exploring why medication for Parkinson's disease is more effective for some patients than others, and how we could develop more individualized and targeted treatment in the future. www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stor...

Grateful for the coverage of our recent collab w/ the talented crew at @ki.se indicating off-target cortical effects of levodopa in patients with Parkinson's disease

doi.org/10.1002/mds....

See also the phenomenal video-story from our SFU comms team:

www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stor...

Alert! ... for the child development world!

@fluxsociety.bsky.social @fitngin.bsky.social ‪

The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study has released its first data wave - it’s massive.

Check here:
docs.hbcdstudy.org

and here:
nbdc-datahub.org

Here’s why it matters 🧠🍼

Locus coeruleus fMRI response to transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation is coupled to changes in salivary alpha amylase Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has shown promise to non-invasively enhance memory in older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) [1,2]. Evidence suggests this...

Excited to share our new findings: transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation leads to increases in locus coeruleus activity, which correlate with changes in salivary alpha amylase in older individuals. #locuscoeruleus www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S193...

happy that our article about mu & alpha rhythm waveform shape in development is now finally out in the open: doi.org/10.1162/jocn...

oscillation frequency changes across development (one of the most robust findings in the oscillation world). in this work, we also look at waveform shape changes.

Still accepting postdoc applications!

On that note, I'll be looking for postdocs, students, and likely a computational lab tech/lab manager or research software engineer. Please share, and if this kind of work (and the prospect of helping get a new lab off the ground) sounds interesting to you, please reach out!

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy.
Details found here👇

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

Call for Submissions! Behavioral Medicine: Special Issue on Terminated Grants.

Submit by June 30 at 5PM ET. Learn more here: acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:...

What? Some good news on a Friday?

Parent Fellowship Notices of Funding Opportunities are up!

F30, F31, F32, F33

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Great opportunity to come work with us at SFU!!! 👇

Context-dependent modulations of subthalamo-cortical synchronization during rapid reversals of movement direction in Parkinson’s disease Beta synchrony between motor cortex and the subthalamic nucleus is intensified when instructional cues within a continuous motor sequence become less predictable, calling for more cautious behavior.

Now out in the final version @elife.bsky.social: Context-dependent modulations of subthalamo-cortical synchronization during rapid reversals of movement direction in Parkinson’s disease doi.org/10.7554/eLif...