Harry H Behjat

🚨Paper Out!
Systematic Review & Meta-analysis of ALS Fluid Biomarkers

🧵Key findings:
• NfL leads for both diagnosis (AUC 0.81–0.92) & prognosis (HR 2.8–4.3)
• CSF chitinases, p-tau/t-tau: moderate values
• Marked heterogeneity

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We just advertised the Hooke Fellowships for exceptional researchers (typically after their first post-doc).

You are completely free to set up your own research agenda for three years.

RT please

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Quantifying the compressibility of the human brain | arxiv.org/abs/2510.16327

The illusion of illusions: There are no optical corrections in the Parthenon One of the oldest and most enduring myths in human history is the belief that the Parthenon was cleverly designed with various curved structures and sizes in order to correct optical illusions, and th...

The illusion of illusions

One of the oldest myths in human history is that the Parthenon was cleverly built with curves so that it looks straight, to correct some visual illusions

In this paper I demonstrate that there are NO optical corrections in the Parthenon

arxiv.org/abs/2510.16831. [1/n]

Genome-wide analysis of brain age identifies 59 associated loci and unveils relationships with mental and physical health - Nature Aging This genomic study of magnetic resonance imaging-based brain age in 56,348 people identifies 59 genetic loci, links brain aging to mental and physical health, and suggests high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes as causal factors of brain aging.

🧠 Why do some brains age faster than others?
🧬 Our new Nature Aging study of over 56,000 participants explores the genetics of the “brain age gap” — the difference between your brain’s biological and chronological age.
nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00962-7

Thread below 👇

Is resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), cortical thickness (CT), or cortical volume more effective at capturing sex and gender differences in the brains of preadolescents?

Check out our new article (doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...) now out in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.

1000s of studies have been published mapping neuroanatomical changes in psychiatric disorders. Can we ever converge on robust disease phenotypes? Our latest PP led by Trang Cao in a huge collab effort investigates this question...

@nsb-lab.bsky.social

Excited to share my first preprint investigating the feasibility and reliability of using precision RSFC in people with Parkinson’s disease! 🧠👇
📄: go.illinois.edu/PDfeasibility

🧵 Thread ⬇️ 1/12

Ever wondered if your interesting brain-behavior correlation was over- or under-estimated due to head motion, but were afraid to ask? We’ve created a motion impact score for detecting spurious brain-behavior associations, now available in Nature Communications!
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

🚨 Excited to share the latest preprint form the lab ➡️https://tinyurl.com/32d3be9f

Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience

➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism?

Check out what we found!
🧵1/n

🔥Recent advances in #neuroimaging of #Alzheimers disease 🧠✨

dx.doi.org/10.1002/alz....

➡️ Valuable resource for both researchers & clinicians!
➡️ ATNIV biomarkers, staging, connectomics & more
➡️ Plus: how are sex & country represented in first/last authorship?

@istaart.bsky.social Neuroimaging PIA

[🧵12..] @jorittmo.bsky.social @alexapb.bsky.social @xiaoyucaly.bsky.social @pavanchaggar.bsky.social

[🧵12] this work rests on the pivotal guidance of my advisory team @jwvogel.bsky.social Oskar Hansson @rikossenkoppele.bsky.social + decisive inputs from Ruben Smith & @dimitrivdv.bsky.social + plus the contributions of other brilliant minds at the @biofinder.bsky.social & demonlab.org labs 🙌

[🧵11] altogether, our findings provide strong evidence that individual functional brain architecture shapes tau propagation in humans, supporting the network-spread hypothesis by showing that variability in connectivity translates into heterogeneity in tau distribution 🧠

Patient-specific functional brain architecture explains cortical patterns of tau PET in Alzheimer's disease The spatial distribution of tau pathology, the core driver of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD), varies markedly across individuals. While tau is thought to spread along brain networks, th...

[🧵10] all the answers given above are "yes", however, with their own ifs and buts; pls make sure to check the details in the manuscript 🔎 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

[🧵9] fourth, we asked, does FC also have prognostic value, that is, does individualised FC explain individual follow-up tau-PET patterns? it does.

[🧵8] third, we asked, is the superior explanatory power of FC over canonical PET patterns specific to tau and
absent for e.g. B-amyloid pathology? it is.

[🧵7] second, as a largely overlooked dimension, we asked, does FC actually perform better in explaining individual tau-PET patterns than just using canonical patterns of tau-PET? it does.

[🧵6] first, we asked, does patient-specific FC help better to better explain the variance in individual tau-PET patterns than group-level FC does? it does.

[🧵5] in a large sample of deeply phenotyped patients across the AD continuum from @biofinder.bsky.social, we rigorously validated, at the individual level, the association between patterns of tau-PET and functional connectivity, on four fronts.

Four distinct trajectories of tau deposition identified in Alzheimer’s disease Nature Medicine - Systematic characterization of longitudinal tau variability in human Alzheimer’s disease using an unbiased subtyping algorithm reveals four trajectories of tau deposition...

[🧵4] this is particularly important, since patterns of tau as captured by PET scans vary markedly across individuals and the role of inter-individual variability in shaping these patterns remains underexplored. e.g. see:
rdcu.be/eJKD5

[🧵3] most evidence from human studies on this hypothesis, however, is based on group-level models of brain networks.

to truly validate the hypothesis, we need to go beyond group means, and work at the individual level.

[🧵2] growing evidence suggests that tau pathology spreads via communicating neurons, along brain networks: the network-spread hypothesis: rdcu.be/eJLAl

many works on this topic, by @jwvogel.bsky.social @nfranzme.bsky.social and others, e.g. see: bsky.app/profile/nfra...

[🧵1] there is a protein that helps neurons in the brain keep their shape & function: tau.

but misfolded forms of tau appear in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and correlate strongly with cognitive decline.

does brain connectivity drive spread of pathological proteins in Alzheimer’s disease?

✨ preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

if the question intrigues you, please read on 🧵⤵️

Patient-specific functional brain architecture explains cortical patterns of tau PET in Alzheimer's disease https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.679969v1

Quantum-like dynamics in the human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.680057v1

🚨 New paper in Nature Methods:
HippoMaps: multiscale cartography of the human hippocampus

Open-source tools & data to explore structure and function of the 🍤🧠 (histology, in/ex vivo MRI, iEEG)

Led by @jordandekraker.bsky.social

docs: hippomaps.readthedocs.io
paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Interested in the mechanisms shaping the extraordinary complexity of the connectome?

Then check out our new preprint, lead by
Francis Normand with a stellar team, showing how geometry constrains connectome architecture:

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Full thread here:
tinyurl.com/sfv3yf73