Tarkesh Singh

Do you know an outstanding early career researcher in the NCM Community? Nominate them for the Early Career Award!

Deadline for nominations is Sept 8 and more details can be found on the website - ncm-society.org/awards/

We are excited to share our new paper that dives into how ongoing decision deliberation reflects ongoing movements: (jneurosci.org/content/45/3...
A tour-de-force by the incredible Jan Calalo.

Mount Holyoke College in lovely western Massachusetts is hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist. Amazing students and fantastic faculty support - please share!
mtholyoke.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Rubber arm illusion in octopus The feeling of a body as belonging to oneself is called the sense of body ownership and the centerpiece of conscious experience. Kawashima and Ikeda investigated the sense of body ownership in an octo...

Rubber arm illusion in octopus: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Motor sequence learning involves better prediction of the next action and optimization of movement trajectories Learning new sequential movements is a fundamental skill for many animals. Motor sequence learning may arise from three distinct processes: (1) improved execution of individual movements independent o...

Careful dissection of motor sequence learning by @andpru.bsky.social and @mkashefi.bsky.social. In my humble opinion this should be an instant classic 😏.

www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

6+6 = 12 reasons to move to Waterloo, Canada.

First 6.....

6 job openings in the University of Waterloo School of Optometry & Vision Science/Waterloo Eye Institute.

lnkd.in/d3QD5wFA

see thread for the next 6.

Our department is recruiting! New tenure-track, open rank faculty position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan (emphasis on human cognition and artificial intelligence).
apply.interfolio.com/169170

Following a discussion with Mindy Levin about the limitations of using VR in motor control and rehabilitation, I joined her in writing this review.

Interference between flexible and adaptive reaching control Humans rapidly update the control of an ongoing movement following changes in contextual parameters. This involves adjusting the controller to exploit redundancy in the movement goal, such as when rea...

When we reach for an object, we adapt to unexpected dynamics and respond to disturbances. These two mechanisms work online, and when you perturb them at the right time, you can see interference...

Full story ➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Apply or nominate someone for the #NCMKobe26 Early and Distinguished Career Awards!

Deadline for submissions is Sept 8.

ncm-society.org/awards/

Uncovering Cultural Biases in Visuomotor Adaptation In a groundbreaking study poised to redefine our understanding of the intersection between culture and sensorimotor control, researchers Yamada, Itaguchi, and Rodríguez-Aranda have unveiled compelling evidence that unconscious cultural cognitive biases infiltrate even the most explicit processes of visuomotor adaptation. Published in npj Science of Learning, this research delves into the subtle and often overlooked ways cultural frameworks shape the brain's ability to adjust motor output in response to visual stimuli, revealing a layer of complexity that challenges prior assumptions in neuroscience and psychology.

Uncovering Cultural Biases in Visuomotor Adaptation

In a groundbreaking study poised to redefine our understanding of the intersection between culture and sensorimotor control, researchers Yamada, Itaguchi, and Rodríguez-Aranda have unveiled compelling evidence that unconscious cultural cognitive…

Testing for trans-saccadic prediction error signaling by foveal SC neurons. Top: Monkeys generated a delayed, visually-guided saccade towards an extrafoveal target. The authors used a delayed paradigm to make sure that there was a stable visual image upon saccade generation. In some trials, the saccade target was unchanged throughout the whole trial (high spatial frequency grating embedded within a circular patch for this shown example). In other trials, they detected saccade onset and immediately flipped the saccade target to another feature (from a low to a high spatial frequency texture in the shown example). Bottom: The authors only selected foveal SC neurons with response fields (RF’s) not extending towards the pre-saccadic extrafoveal stimulus location. In this example, the RF was almost entirely contained within <2 deg eccentricity. Each black dot is a stimulus onset location during RF mapping, and the white circle (3 deg radius) shows the extent of the saccade target if it was perfectly foveated post-saccadically. The target covered the RF post-saccadically but not pre-saccadically. The z-axis indicates the visual response strength of the neuron at each stimulus location.

Why don't #saccades disrupt our continuous #visual experience? This study shows that neurons of the #SuperiorColliculus are sensitive to the pre-movement peripheral appearance of the eye movement targets, potentially explaining the experienced perceptual stability @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44cxQIe

👇 We’re still accepting applications.

NSF Encourages Junior Faculty to Move Forward with CAREER Proposals Despite Budget Uncertainty In a recent message to the computing research community, Ellen Zegura, Acting Assistant Director for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engin…

YES! NSF Encourages Junior Faculty to Move Forward with CAREER Proposals Despite Budget Uncertainty - CRA cra.org/nsf-encourag...

ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

time.com/7295195/ai-c...

We're excited share our perspective on whether you only use 10 bits/s of your brain.

ASB long form logo on left of vertical bar with De Luca Foundation logo on right. Logos overlaid on yellowed graphic of davinci's biomechanics drawings, knee reaction force diagram, and knee replacement xray

🎉 Big news! ASB received a $500K donation from the De Luca Foundation to expand access to biomechanics!
💡 Supports B-SURE Grants + travel awards for our Annual Meeting.
🙏 Thank you, De Luca Foundation!
🔗 Read more: asbweb.org/category/stateme...
#ASB2025 #STEM #Biomechanics

Sensory modality of initiation cues modulates action goal-relevant neural representations Abstract. The ability to produce goal-directed movement relies on the integration of diverse sensory cues which contribute to goal subtasks, such as trajectory planning and initiation. To achieve thes...

A traffic light goes green. Maybe there’s also a honk. Does that change how your brain plans to move?🚦🔊
We show that neural representations of action goals vary depending on the sensory modality of the initiation cues, even when the movement stays the same.🧠
📄 tiny.cc/ecjm001 @hphyuo.bsky.social

Spatial reasoning via recurrent neural dynamics in mouse retrosplenial cortex - Nature Neuroscience Using a spatial reasoning task in mice, the authors show that retrosplenial cortex encodes spatial hypotheses with well-behaved recurrent dynamics, which can combine these hypotheses with incoming inf...

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

Dissociable habits of response preparation versus response initiation - Nature Human Behaviour Du and Haith show that behaviour can become habitual in two different ways, involving response initiation and response preparation.

In this article, @yuedu.bsky.social and @adrianhaith.bsky.social show that behavior can become habitual in two different ways, involving response initiation and response preparation, respectively
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations - Nature Human Behaviour Trach and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations.

In this article, @jetrach.bsky.social and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations. @actlab.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sensorimotor Transformations for Postural Control in the Vermis of the Cerebellum The cerebellar vermis plays an essential role in maintaining posture and balance by integrating sensory inputs from multiple modalities to effectively coordinate movement. By transforming convergent s...

The cerebellar vermis keeps us balanced by integrating sensory and motor signals. In this new review, Drs. Mildren and Cullen examine how the specialized functions of the anterior and posterior vermis contribute to postural control across a variety of contexts. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2...

Age-related changes in proprioception are of limited size, outcome-dependent and task-dependent. Our ability to sense of the position and movement of our limbs is essential for all activities of daily living. This ability arises from the signal sent by muscle spindles to the brain. While there is...

After years of works, more than happy to see the first preprint of Stien Van De Plas on bioRXiv:

Age-related changes in proprioception are of limited size, outcome-dependent and task-dependent
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#sensorimotor

Also, sorry you got this. I have received a few comments like this too. The student may have thought this is funny, but maybe they need to know that it is not acceptable

I think you should report it. If this is going to stay on in an official document, then there should be some way to hold people who write these kinda idiotic comments accountable as well.

A vector calculus for neural computation in the cerebellum Null space theory predicts that neurons generate spikes not only to produce behavior but also to prevent the undesirable effect of other neurons on behavior. In this work, we show that this competitiv...

Neuronal computation in the cerebellum via a vector calculus.

Work of Mohammad Amin Fakharian, Alden Shoup, Paul Hage, and Hisham Elseweifi

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

Error signals in the parvocellular division of the red nucleus, not the magnocellular division, drive adaptation in reaching Adaptation in reaching is a fundamental topic in motor neuroscience, yet the origins of error signals driving this process remain unclear. In this study, Inoue and Kitazawa demonstrate that error sign...

Error signals in the parvocellular division of the red nucleus, not the magnocellular division, drive adaptation in reaching
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
#sensorimotor

Finally got around to incorporating all Github feedback on my open access textbook, making around 20 minor improvements, and updating some references. 17 chapters of state of the art stats and methods education, freely available for any course you teach. lakens.github.io/statistical_...

🧠What do random neural networks have in common with the motor cortex?

Turns out, a lot!

Both exhibit similar low‑dimensional dynamics across sensorimotor tasks.👇🧵

After using electrical stimulation to activate their muscles, patients improved movement in their paralyzed limbs even when the system was turned off. The team leading the clinical trial believes new nerve connections may have begun to grow. https://cbsn.ws/43ocCrA