Alexander Li Cohen

MFM - Boston Marathon 2026: Support me fundraising for Boston Children's Hospital I've joined the Miles for Miracles team because I am passionate about helping kids at Boston Children’s Hospital find lifesaving care, and give families hope. Will you help me reach my fundraising goal with a donation today?

I don't post often, but this is special. I'm running the Boston Marathon for my patients at Boston Children's Hospital. 🦄🏃‍♂️

Help me hit my $20k goal for research & family support this Giving Tuesday! ⬇️

secure.childrenshospital.org/goto/alexcohen

#MedSky #BostonMarathon @bostonchildrens.bsky.social

Agreed! Which is why choosing appropriate control cohorts and comparison groups is such an important step to do before declaring that any finding a specific to your “syndrome/symptom” of interest.

8️⃣ Shout-out to our first author Juliana Wall, whose outstanding work brings clarity and rigor to complex neuroimaging data! 👏

9️⃣ We’re grateful to our colleagues, the many patients we partner with, and the Child Neurology Society community—advancing research together to develop new therapies!

7️⃣ So what’s next?
We're looking for clues in how stimulant medications used in ADHD alter brain networks in individual patients to generate new focused neuromodulatory therapies!

6️⃣ Yet, amidst uncertainty, the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) robustly stood out as a region implicated beyond chance and converging with parallel evidence of anatomical changes. This may hint at a critical neural target.

5️⃣ BUT—crucially—our analyses also found this network pattern was similar to that seen across psychiatric disorders, and that these patterns are similar to what you’d see with randomly chosen brain coordinates!
Meaning: Caution is needed before concluding specificity in coordinate mapping studies.

4️⃣ Indeed, we found scattered locations consistently mapped onto brain networks associated with reward processing and cognitive control (Cingulo-Opercular network).

3️⃣ Using Coordinate Network Mapping, we asked a new question: could these scattered brain locations converge on common brain networks—even if exact coordinates differ?

2️⃣ Why this study?
Do brain imaging studies on anatomical changes in ADHD consistently identify the same brain regions? Surprisingly, our meta-analysis of 38 studies found minimal spatial agreement across studies.

Coordinate Network Mapping of Focal Brain Volume Differences in ADHD Reveals Common Patterns That Lack Specificity: A Systematic Review Objective Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with decreased regional brain volume, yet no consistent localization has emerged across studies. This discrepancy has be...

Thrilled our ADHD network mapping work is now out in Annals of the Child Neurology Society, and honored to be featured on the cover!
🔗 Full article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

@childneurosoc.bsky.social @bostonchildrens.bsky.social @simonwarfield.bsky.social @braincircuits.bsky.social

🗣️Non-federal funding alert!!! Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) has a new RFA to join their IMPACT Network, a clinical-translational research effort to accelerate care for people across the spectrum by enabling rapid therapeutic development. Up to $15 million over 5 years.

bit.ly/3YRYMv3

Expediting clinical trials for profound autism: Q&A with Matthew State Aligning Research to Impact Autism, a new initiative funded by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, wants to bring basic science discoveries to the clinic faster.

Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) aims to speed up the route from basic research to treatments for profound autism. Scientific director Matthew State shared more about the initiative’s goals and upcoming RFAs in a Q&A with @lauschenk.bsky.social.

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/exp...

Computational Health Informatics Data Manager II-Neuro Careers at Boston Children’s Hospital will help you reach your goals – both in and out of the workplace.

We are looking to hire a Senior Data Manager for a new initiative focused on neurodevelopmental conditions for which @bostonchildrens.bsky.social will serve as the admin hub. Please feel free to share!

jobs.bostonchildrens.org/job/21859461...

The Cohen Lab of Translational Neuroimaging is looking to hire a bioinformatics and research data scientist to help accelerate our research and develop new analysis tools! @bostonchildrens.bsky.social @braincircuits.bsky.social

Please consider applying or sharing!
jobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...

Amazing work by Julian Kutsche and the many other collaborators. @drdrxanderli.bsky.social
@andreashorn.org @harvardmed.bsky.social

Reduced function or injury to the frontal pole may increase creativity by disengaging the self-monitoring & cognitive control actions of the frontal pole to allow novelty seeking & creativity to be unleashed. @braincircuits.bsky.social @foxmdphd.bsky.social @julianneumann.bsky.social

How can a brain disease increase creativity? We derive a brain circuit from creative tasks demonstrating they share reduced activity in the right frontal pole. Then we show that brain lesions & neurodegeneration that increase creativity are connected to this location
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Great article on how methods ALWAYS frame the question more than you think…

🗣️ Language is widely distributed throughout the brain 🧠

In a recent correspondence in @natrevneurosci.bsky.social, we suggest that there is no 'language network' in the brain. What appears as such is an inevitable illusion created in part by the methods we use.

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

Excellent resource!!!

I would have titled this: “Shining a light on the black hole: Look you can see activations in orbitofrontal cortex now!”

Completely agree.

This is wild! What a cool idea and set of approaches.

#neuroimaging #neuroskyence

I think there is a way to do exploratory research very rigorously. Just use full transparency. Publish the entire github history for the analysis chain, nits, zits, and all. And of course, focus more on the strength of evidence than posthoc narrative building.

The work incorporating optimisation to guide experiment design/analysis is also a way to do rigorous exploratory research. E.g.,

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

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

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

Students don't need a perfect teacher. Students need a happy teacher, who's gonna make them excited to come to school and grow a love for learning.

Great book!

Recruiting diverse talent is insufficient; we need retention. And we can do better.

Here’s hoping this highly practical paper is helping guide change in academia.

newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/a...

@nilearn.bsky.social + JupyterLab + [insert cluster/cloud of your choice] is my happy place…

The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on?

direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A 🧵 1/n
#AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub