iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David Brang

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Visual speech enhances phoneme separability in human superior temporal gyrus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

Reposted by David Brang

Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Super excited by this manuscript led by the amazing @brissend.bsky.social By combining fMRI, TMS, and modeling, we finally have causal evidence that the cerebellum is contributing to brain-wide working memory representations and recall performance! 1/n

Plot showing that the read-out of visual working memory information from cerebellum is degraded following stimulation to cerebellum, IPS, or FEF

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Reposted by David Brang

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success.

Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is important for signal processing but isn't always intuitive. I made a demo to generate EEG, run ICA, and remove blink components, that also works with wav files, letting you move the speakers/mics around to control mixing. dbrang.github.io/EEG-ICA-Demo/

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

EEG requires many neurons aligned so that their electric fields can positively sum to spread up to the scalp. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how "open fields" contribute to EEG recordings. dbrang.github.io/Open-Closed-... Github: github.com/dbrang/Open-...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap. dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-D... Github page: github.com/dbrang/EEG-D...

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Reposted by David Brang

Alina Studenova @studenova.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

We (I and @willenjoy.bsky.social) created a toolbox for simulations of EEG/MEG because we needed to simulate data. Our initial aim was to simulate connectivity. For this short clip, I simulated two sources with phase connectivity using our toolbox. #brainmovie meegsim.readthedocs.io/en/stable/in...

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Reposted by David Brang

serences.bsky.social @serences.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I gave a talk in 2009 about feature-based attention and a famous vision scientist asked how top down signals from PFC could possibly target the right sensory neurons. The best I could do was "uh, dunno". sunyoungp.bsky.social has a much more thoughtful answer journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

journals.plos.org

Near-random connections support top-down feature-based attentional modulations in early sensory cortex

Author summary In everyday life, we focus on what matters—like finding our car keys on a messy desk—by sending signals from higher control brain areas to earlier sensory brain areas. These “top-down” ...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

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

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

New paper with @herveyjumper.bsky.social and Vardhaan Ambati! It shows that causal (DCS+) language cortex in glioma patients has greater ECoG information encoding (higher entropy and linguistic decoding). DCS+ sites showed stronger oscillations and high gamma, enabling prediction of DCS sites.

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Reposted by David Brang

bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Electrocorticographic Detection of Speech Networks in Glioma-infiltrated Cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

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Reposted by David Brang

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

New paper with Shawn Hervey-Jumper's lab! As only PART of this project, it validates the relationship between aperiodic slope and cortical excitability using ECoG and single-nuc RNA sequencing in humans. Tissue samples with more excitatory neurons showed flatter aperiodic slope.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

I'm teaching an undergrad EEG/MEG/iEEG methods course and created a pair of interactive webpages to help build intuition about the Fourier Transform. dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave... dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave...

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Reposted by David Brang

Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

At #CNS2025? Come by our posters from the Cognition, Control, and Action Lab! SAT 3-5pm A126 Modeling the temporal dynamics of cognitive control A149 Cognition-Action links in Parkinson disease (TMS-fMRI) SUN 8-10am B30 Causal role of the cerebellum in spatial working memory (TMS-fMRI)

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

New study from my PostDoc Emily Cunningham! We used ECoG with stimulation of the STG to test for direct (potentially monosynaptic) A-to-V connections in humans. 112 out of 231 visual electrodes (across 19/23 patients) exhibited early responses to STG stimulation (as early as 18ms after stimulation).

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Reposted by David Brang

Katie Wilkinson @drkwilkinson.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Helpful table to determine how much your University or health system is set to lose if the NIH indirect cap is suddenly lowered to 15%. For SJSU it is $374k which is on the smaller end but devastating considering our other budget issues. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/8/

datawrapper.dwcdn.net

Estimated Single Year Loss of NIH Funding if 15% Indirect Cost Rate is Imposed

Based on analysis of 2024 NIH funding data. Sums are totals of losses in funding to programs if indirect costs had been capped at 15%

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Reposted by David Brang

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

ATTENTION If you are someone who had an F31-Diversity (or similar) application submitted this cycle, please DM me here, contact me on signal (jeremymberg.78), or email me at jeremymberg@gmail.com. I will keep all information confidential. 2/n

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Reposted by David Brang

Margaret Crane, PhD @margaretcrane.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

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Reposted by David Brang

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Another shoe drop. Early termination of FOA.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

We're looking to hire a new lecturer in Psychology at the University of Michigan! The initial appointment is for 3 years and this person would teach our large Intro to Cognitive Psychology course along with smaller courses on topics within their expertise. apply.interfolio.com/160580

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Reposted by David Brang

Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Excited this one is finally out! The forced response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing with @hanzhang.bsky.social link.springer.com/10.3758/s134... Can we better study how the conflict between goal-directed and habitual/automatic actions is resolved? Read on!

link.springer.com

The forced-response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing - Behavior Research Methods

Despite long-standing concerns about the use of free reaction times (RTs) in cognitive psychology, they remain a prevalent measure of conflict resolution. This report presents the forced-response meth...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Posted some of the lab's Open-Source Image Registration scripts onto github, useful for identifying where ECoG electrodes are located based on intraoperative photography alone, by registering/warping pictures of the brain with and without the ECoG grid. github.com/dbrang/Intra...

github.com

GitHub - dbrang/IntraOp_Image_Registration_Tools: Open-source tools for aligning intraoperative photos based on automatic and manual control point selection

Open-source tools for aligning intraoperative photos based on automatic and manual control point selection - dbrang/IntraOp_Image_Registration_Tools

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Reposted by David Brang

Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I have not seen a starter pack for the study of brain rhythms. So, here's a start. go.bsky.app/A6zgHeE

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Reposted by David Brang

Cody Cao @neurocow.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

my first preprint with @dbrang.bsky.social is now live. we tested whether mouth movement improves auditory speech onset encoding and ongoing speech envelope tracking with distinct or overlapping mechanisms (1/7)

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 14/02/2023

First R01 for the lab! Grateful to have such amazing lab members and collaborators. We’re recruiting postdocs for this work and for an NSF grant (salary 65-70k; the postdoc could potentially live out of state and work remotely). More info at...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 12/11/2022

New preprint from the lab! "Auditory cortex encodes lipreading information through spatially distributed activity." We used fMRI (n=64) and intracranial recordings (n=6) to study how the auditory system represents lipreading information....

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 03/06/2022

New iEEG paper from the lab testing what auditory features visual cortex is sensitive to (we've previously found that the auditory system sends sound onset timing and some coarse spatial information, but anything else?). journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10…...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 29/11/2021

Now published at @SciReports rdcu.be/cCfCG Multisensory redundancy gain effects are best modeled through phase-resetting mechanisms (vs noise-based models or the classic race-model). Raw data (1400 trials x 78 subjects) are available online: osf.io/grckd

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 27/04/2021

New preprint from the lab with John Plass! We compared models of the redundant target effect (RTE), which is the finding that combined stimuli (e.g., aud + vis) are responded to faster than either stimulus alone. (1/3) psyarxiv.com/s9rdq

psyarxiv.com

OSF

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · 05/09/2020

Finally have made the foray into academic twitter! New paper from John Plass in the lab showing that lip-shape recovers spectral information during auditory speech perception (independent of other audiovisual benefits) www.pnas.org/content/117/29/16920

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