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Joel I Berger

@joelberger.bsky.social
172 followers 69 following 61 posts

Neuroscientist at University of Iowa Neurosurgery, researching into the neural bases of auditory perception. Also a musician.

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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
As always, thanks to my co-authors and in particular thanks so much to the incredible patients for providing us with this opportunity. Thank you for reading :-)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
These neurons often showed increases in activity many minutes prior to overt responsiveness. Whether early activity within this region (vs insula later) reflects the restoration of narrative self prior to restoration of embodied self is unclear, but it's one possible interpretation of these data.
Latencies in firing rate changes.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
As for what I think is the most striking result, neurons in the medial temporal lobe were among the first to show increases in activity following propofol cessation. This was contrary to our hypothesis that regions underlying core aspects of embodied self and awareness (e.g. insula) would be first.
Single neuron example and grouped single neuron data for a single participant.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Analyses of criticality across all neurons (i.e. the boundary between order & disorder) showed a return to criticality the closer patients got to responsiveness. State space analyses identified attractor states (i.e. stable activity) around the periods of while propofol was still on & at time of RC.
Criticality analysis.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
We benefited from amazing patients who had just undergone implantation for seizure monitoring. Offline, we isolated a total of 356 single neurons from a variety of regions. We monitored for overt responses to commands and defined responsiveness (RC) as the first of 2 consecutive positive responses.
Design of protocol and locations of microwires on template brain.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
We have a new preprint, examining what happens at the single neuron level in humans while people emerge from anaesthesia. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... tldr: neurons in medial temporal lobe (and thalamus, albeit limited data) often show increases in activity way before overt responses 🧠🟦 🧠💻
biorxiv.org
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Really interesting work! The figure 1 plot looks similar to what we see in single unit activity across sleep states (in various regions). I wonder how they might relate to one another. In any event, very cool!
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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
New intracranial work published today in @plosbiology.org Frontotemporal network interactions causally support rapid concreteness judgments during reading Summary below 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
journals.plos.org
Frontotemporal network interactions causally support rapid concreteness judgments during reading
How the brain causally represents conceptual meaning with precise spatiotemporal dynamics remains unclear. This study shows through brain stimulation and intracranial recordings that concrete and abst...
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Agreed, I think that's a plausible explanation and it's also possible that there are other mechanisms (e.g. longer-term plasticity changes) that we aren't capturing with our spike rate modulation. We're currently adding more participants and studying the effects of theta burst TMS.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Thank you for the interest! We did have two microwire clusters in the amygdala, but only a total of 16 neurons. These were grouped in the "limbic" parcellation for this manuscript. Most neurons in amygdala weren't significantly modulated, but we did observe some suppression.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Thanks to all of the wonderful co-authors on this work, the funding agencies and importantly the incredible patients willing to give their time to research. I'm truly so grateful to be able to pursue a varied research program that includes work such as this (7/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Overall, these data suggest TMS can modulate activity by recruiting inhibitory interneurons in striato-thalamic regions to gate activity in commonly-named limbic regions. There's lots more to do, but this research will hopefully lead to more precise treatment targeting to increase efficacy (6/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Identifying different putative cell types, we found inhibitory interneurons were primarily facilitated, while excitatory pyramidal cells were suppressed. Single neuron modulation was correlated with striato-thalamic local field potentials and anti-correlated with limbic evoked potentials (5/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
46% of recorded neurons were modulated in various brain regions, including thalamus, putamen, amygdala & hippocampus. Striato-thalamic regions showed increased activity, peaking 80-100ms post-stimulation. Contrastingly, limbic areas were dominated by suppression, with a delayed time course (4/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
This unique work was only possible thanks to patients undergoing clinical monitoring for seizure activity who volunteered their time for research during the monitoring period. With very careful artifact removal, we could resolve single neurons as early as 8ms following stimulation (3/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
TMS is widely used as a treatment for psychiatric disorders, including depression, yet the neural mechanisms underlying its efficacy are still poorly understood At the University of Iowa we conducted the first ever study of human single neuron recordings during single-pulse TMS to the dlPFC (2/7).
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
We have a new preprint examining single neuron responses in humans undergoing TMS (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...). The excellent Charlie Dickey led the way, and I had the privilege to co-supervise this work with @coreykeller.bsky.social and @aaronboes.bsky.social 🧵 (1/7) 🧠🟦 🧠💻
Image showing the paradigm for recording single neurons in a variety of brain regions in humans, while single-pulse TMS was applied to dlPFC. One subpanel shows that single neurons were able to be resolved very early (8ms) after the single-pulse stimulation. Another subpanel shows two example neuron waveforms, along with their inter-spike interval distributions. The final subpanels show spike density functions overlaid on raster plots for the same neuron, separately for active and sham stimulation, in order to demonstrate that active (but not sham) stimulation increased activity in this example neuron.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Too soon and too accurate...
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
This is awesome work! Very cool!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Very cool work!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Excellent fMRI work on auditory navigation, led by the wonderful @alexjbillig.bsky.social
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Adam Hockley @adhockley.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Our new preprint is out! We show that deviance detection in auditory cortex conveys the theorised comparison of internal prediction to sensory input. Our data confirm this key assumtion that links theoretical models of sensory processing to experimental data. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Cortical deviance detection represents a canonical difference signal
Context modulates neural processing of sensory stimuli. Neural responses are suppressed to stimuli that are typical in their context and augmented to stimuli that deviate from their context. The latte...
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Sylvain Baillet @sylvainbaillet.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Please repost: we're hiring! Apply now! 👉 can-acn.org/professor-re...
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Edwin Dalmaijer @dalmaijer.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Are you curious about electrogastrography, but keep getting chicken-related results when googling "EGG"? We have the preprint for you! In this tutorial, we describe how to acquire and analyse gastric data from human participants. Plus FREE software! Read it here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.17260
Image illustrating sensor placement. The reference sensor is placed on the xiphoid process (just under the sternum), the ground is placed on the left costal margin (just under the bottom rib), and sensors one through four are place over where the stomach would be. Sensor 3 is midway through the umbilicus (navel) and the reference sensor. Sensor 4 is roughly three centimetres from sensor 3 to participant-right. Sensors 2 is also roughly three centimetres away from sensor 3, but along a 45 degree angle upwards and to participant-left. Sensor 1 lies 3 centimetres further from sensor 2, along the same 45 degree line.Two-panel image showing a processed electrogastrogram. The left panel shows five minutes of raw data from four different leads (measured from the four sensors in the previous image and their common reference). The right panel shows the same signal in frequency space, illustrating the typical normogastric peak at 3 cycles per minute.
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Valentin Riedl @vavatin.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
fMRI signals “up,” but neural metabolism might be going “down.” In our @natneuro.nature.com paper, we demonstrate that about 40% of voxels with robust BOLD responses exhibit opposite oxygen metabolism, revealing two distinct hemodynamic modes. rdcu.be/eUPO8 funds @erc.europa.eu #neuroskyence 🧵:
BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex, Nature Neuroscience
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Fully agreed 😊!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
I'm sorry to hear it Micah. Had the same thing here over the past couple of weeks.
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
These results also constitute some of the only - if not the only (to my knowledge!) - reports of single neurons from human anterior insula. Reports from auditory cortex and posterior insula are also surprisingly scarce. Thanks as always to our amazing patients and my co-authors. (5/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Overall, these results are consistent with what others have shown in LFPs, though usually those are examined in behaviorally-relevant contexts. These findings highlight that insula cares about fundamental sound attributes, which is important to know when considering responses to other stimuli. (4/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Many of these neurons also showed clear preferred tuning to particular tone frequencies - completely unsurprising for auditory cortex, but an interesting finding for insula. An important aspect is that there was no task required, so there was no behavioral context for these stimuli. (3/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
We find that the activity of ~30% of posterior insula neurons and up to ~15% of anterior insula neurons is significantly modulated in response to these basic sounds. The latencies of these responses are very similar to primary auditory cortex, though the responses are much more transient. (2/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Our paper is out now in J Neuroscience (currently in "accepted paper" form). We directly record single neurons in human insula, as well as primary auditory cortex, while participants passively listen to simple sounds. @sfnjournals.bsky.social www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... (1/5) 🧠📈🧵👇
jneurosci.org
The human insula reimagined: Single neurons respond to simple sounds during passive listening
The insula is critical for integrating sensory information from the body with that arising from the environment. Although previous studies suggested that posterior insula is sensitive to sounds, these...
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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
New paper just published with @evelinaleivada.bsky.social @garymarcus.bsky.social, Vittoria Dentella, Raquel Montero and Fritz Günther Fundamental Principles of Linguistic Structure Are Not Represented by ChatGPT bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bi...
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
My wonderful co-authors (including @alexjbillig.bsky.social) & I have just published a case report of acquired misophonia & amusia following right temporal resection (including posterior insula). This represents the first case of acquired misophonia. Please find the paper freely accessible below🧠📈
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
🧠📈
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Oscar Woolnough @owoolnough.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
As it's hiring season again I'm resharing the NeuroJobs feed. Add #NeuroJobs to your post if you're recruiting or looking for an RA, PhD, Postdoc, or faculty position in Neuro or an adjacent field. bsky.app/profile/did:...
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
@suthanalab.bsky.social outstanding talks at HSN and SfN. Really amazing work!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Thank you very much!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
For sure!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Thanks Elliot! I hope you're very well. I really enjoyed your recent Brain Stimulation article!
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Overall, these results show that even low-level auditory working memory (i.e. not involving semantic features or high-level representations) engages a distributed network of brain regions, which includes strong involvement of the hippocampus. (5/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
State space analyses showed that task phases were clearly separable based on population activity, with neurons reaching an attractor-like state during maintenance and adjustment phases. Better task performance was associated with an increase in the number of neurons showing modulation. (4/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Neurons in all the aforementioned regions (and others) showed modulation during the maintenance and adjustment phases of the task, with the highest proportion modulated in posterior hippocampus in the maintenance period. Strikingly, suppression was the dominant pattern of activity. (3/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
We recorded single neurons while participants performed a task that involved keeping a simple tone in mind and then adjusting ongoing tones to match following a maintenance period of 3 seconds. We recorded a wide variety of regions, including hippocampus, cingulate, insula. (2/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025... I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
doi.org
Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans
In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, w...
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Melissa Franch, PhD @mfranch.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Oscar Woolnough @owoolnough.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Out now in Nature Comms. To learn a new word, we need to remember it. We track factors driving memory of novel words, showing which words we remember or forget is predictable across people, and isolate a distinct region of fusiform cortex sensitive to this memorability. 🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬 🧵👇
doi.org
Memorability of novel words correlates with anterior fusiform activity during reading - Nature Communications
To learn new written words, we need to be able to remember their associated letters. Here, the authors show the factors that predict how memorable or forgettable new words are and show a region of hum...
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
These results also constitute some of the only - if not the only (to my knowledge!) - reports of single neurons from human anterior insula. Reports from auditory cortex and posterior insula are also surprisingly scarce. Thanks as always to our amazing patients and my awesome co-authors. (5/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Overall, these results are consistent with what others have shown in LFPs, though usually those are examined in behaviorally-relevant contexts. These findings highlight that insula cares about fundamental sound attributes, which is important to know when considering responses to other stimuli. (4/5)
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Joel I Berger @joelberger.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Many of these neurons also showed clear preferred tuning to particular tone frequencies - completely unsurprising for auditory cortex, but an interesting finding for insula. An important aspect is that there was no task required, so there was no behavioral context for these stimuli. (3/5)
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