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Rodrigo Braga

@rodbraga.bsky.social
1.2K followers 236 following 230 posts

Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, neuroscience, brain imaging, networks

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Reposted by Rodrigo Braga
Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How wonderful! seas.harvard.edu/news/2020/06...
seas.harvard.edu
I Am a Scientist
Initiative connects students with real-life scientists to promote diversity in STEM
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Ethan Solomon @esolomon.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Excited to share a new discovery from @stanfordpntlab.bsky.social about the effects of neurostimulation on brain activity. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... With our colleagues at the University of Iowa, we explored how intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) changes neural excitability. A 🧵
medrxiv.org
iTBS induces a suppression-rebound pattern in human cortical excitability
Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) is a widely used form of brain stimulation, developed on the premise that it promotes long-term potentiation (LTP) and neural excitation. However, this is n...
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Jennifer Tackett @jnfrltackett.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
One month before application review - TT faculty position in clinical psych; please spread the word!
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Fernanda Ribeiro @felenitaribeiro.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Drawing ROIs on cortical surfaces just got a lot easier! 😍 SurfAnnotate is a free, browser-based tool I have been co-developing with Claude Code (@dlinhardt.bsky.social, @sbollmann.bsky.social, and @sampendu.bsky.social ), leveraging the @neurodesk.org infrastructure!
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Jeremiah Cohen @jeremiahycohen.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1
biorxiv.org
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If you're having a stressful day, why not sit back, relax & immerse yourself in the reconstructed soundscape of a Jurassic forest. Based on ingenious analyses of the fossilized wings of extinct insects, from a paper in latest issue of @pnas.org. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (Sound up, obviously.)🦗🔊🧪
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Finally, this has gone a bit under the radar, so I want to highlight it: The social, behavioral and economic sciences directorate (SBE) has simply ceased to deliver grants to many of its subareas. Any topic not specifically OK'd by the Trump administration is receiving zero new awards.
All of the NSF’s directorates are awarding fewer new grants, but the hardest hit is the social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE) directorate, which the White House proposed eliminating in its 2027 budget request to Congress. SBE has so far awarded 84 new grants this year, about 11% of its average, mainly in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and decision-making. Much of its portfolio, such as sociology, archaeology, political science, economics and geography, has received zero new awards. “I don’t think they’ve realized yet that there’s no awards,” one NSF staff member says of researchers in those fields. “That’s going to be clear soon.”
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Cory Inman @brainscout.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Excited to share our lab's recent paper showing that direct electrical stimulation of the human amygdala enhances recognition memory for objects but not scenes. The article is open-access, and we'd love to hear your thoughts! Please share! TY to everyone involved! www.nature.com/articles/s42...
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Jingnan Du @jingnandu.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
📣 New preprint: Multiple Nested Distributed Language Networks in the Human Brain. 📣 Brain regions specialized for language have been extensively described. But are they organized into one network, or multiple? Our new preprint provides evidence for the latter:
 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Multiple Nested Distributed Language Networks in the Human Brain
Brain regions specialized for language have been extensively described, yet their arrangement into one or multiple networks remains debated. Using precision functional mapping across three independent...
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
What an honor! Thank you Nadine & Giulia and congrats @rementurus.bsky.social
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Nadine Dijkstra @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Excited to share our Preview about this excellent recent paper. In this Preview, @giuliacabbai.bsky.social and I explore how these findings connect with the rich literature on sensory reinstatement during imagery, and outline important questions for future imagery research! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Now published in Journal of Neurophysiology: journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1...
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Please RT - We are looking for someone who wants to establish and lead a cutting-edge neuroimaging center at Northwestern, working closely with multiple labs, including my own, in neuroscience research broadly construed. If you are curious, dm me and I'm happy to answer questions
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
All y’all on bsky are missing an epic trolling streak by Stuart Hameroff on twitter
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
We are hiring an Associate or Full Professor to lead the neuroimaging research program at Northwestern's Center for Translational Imaging in the Department of Radiology careers.northwestern.edu/psc/hrnu_er/...
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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
I assigned random gender/ethnicity labels to scientific abstracts from the literature and then asked Claude to do a thematic analysis. Claude identified a clinical versus computational split for female/male authors and a DEI focus for Black/URM authors. All in completely random data.
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Rui Xu @rui-xu.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
New preprint as my first post! "Monosynaptic connections link functionally similar regions in human cortex." We use electrical stimulation + fMRI in epilepsy patients to map whole-brain monosynaptic connectivity at 42 cortical sites. doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n
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Zach Ladwig @zachladwig.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
(1/5) Our paper is out now in Neuron! bsky.app/profile/cp-n... The LPFC has fine-scale organization that gets missed in group-averaged data because of inter-individual variability. It is visible in individuals in both resting-state and task data.
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Caterina Gratton @caterinagratton.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Very excited about this project, led by @zachladwig.bsky.social We show that an individual’s lateral prefrontal cortex has reliable and highly detailed network organization missed in past group approaches. Full🧵 coming soon!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Excellent explainer of the recent BOLD x metabolism controversy... worth a read! “Does the evidence presented by Epp et al. warrant a wholesale dismissal of BOLD-fMRI? The answer is: certainly not.”
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
On NSF’s postdoc page, the biology and earth science fields have been completely eliminated; the only remaining fellowships are in math, astronomy, engineering, and “entrepreneurship.” Weird choice not to support research on the life support system for 8 billion people. www.nsf.gov/funding/post...
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Dr Francesca Branzi @fbranzi84.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
📣 📣 📣 The Department of Psychology is offering 8 funded, part-time PhD training posts. If you are interested in doing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in a supportive and friendly environment, with training in fMRI, EEG and TMS/tDCS methods, please get in touch at francesca.branzi@liverpool.ac.uk!
my.corehr.com
Job Specification
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
My thoughts on Director Bhattacharya's Fireside Chat at the NAM workshop (a long 🧵) Overall (1) He clarified what he said that NIH is doing with regard to improving replication. While these are concrete steps, they seem either naive or dependent of unproven technology. Time will tell. 1/30
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Nice write up about our paper on mental imagery in Science News www.sciencenews.org/article/imag... Thanks @norabradford.bsky.social ! @rementurus.bsky.social
sciencenews.org
Imagination is not just replaying what we see and hear
The findings differ from prior work, showing it's tough to disentangle how similarly our brains register imagined thoughts and real sensations.
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 19/04/2026
new preprint from PhD student Gage Quigley-Tump, reporting a survey of 200,000 ppl on themusiclab.org about auditory imagery or the lack thereof ('anauralia', the auditory version of aphantasia) osf.io/cm85z some findings: (1) self-reported imagery ability similar across auditory & visual domains
figure 1 from the paper linked in OP - similar prevalence of self-reported imagery scores across auditory and visual domains
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Congratulations Donnisa Edmonds! @donnisa.bsky.social
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member
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Paige Amormino @amormino.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
Saving SBE starts before the bill is written. SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates: www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337
paigeamormino.com
Paige Amormino - Saving SBE starts before the bill is written.
Right now, NSF SBE does not have its own separate line of funding in the FY2027 budget structure. This matters because if SBE is not specifically protected ...
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Neuron @cp-neuron.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
dlvr.it
Mental imagery and perception overlap within transmodal association networks
Anderson et al. map brain activity during cued imagination with individual-level precision fMRI and show that imagined scenes and inner speech recruit distinct networks whose engagement tracks self-reported vividness. Overlap with perception was mainly in association networks, rather than nearby sensory networks, suggesting that transmodal brain systems support mental imagery.
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Nathan Anderson @rementurus.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Our paper is out! This has been years in the making. We found that mental imagery and perception do share a neural substrate, but we see it in in higher-order transmodal networks rather than earlier sensory systems. Check it out! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
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Alfred Nobel @alfrednobel.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
But there is a deeper implication: if both perception and imagery rely on the same transmodal systems despite clear differences in sensory input, then what is shared between them cannot be the input itself, but the way experience is organized beyond that input.
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
We dedicate this paper to Jonny Smallwood (1975-2025), who was instrumental in this project from inception to submission. Jonny thank you for your mentorship & you are dearly missed!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron! Here is a download link (free for 50 days): authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH... Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social 🧵
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Wonderful time at the #CNS2026 Individual-level precision fMRI symposium yesterday with this lovely lineup. See you at the next one!
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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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Brad Postle @bradpostle.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
It’s out!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
3 funding rejections in a week 🙃
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
My review with @caterinagratton.bsky.social is (apparently) open access for those who couldn't see it before: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... We discuss individual differences in brain network organization and how to home in on and talk about commonalities in the face of such differences
annualreviews.org
Dense Phenotyping of Human Brain Network Organization Using Precision fMRI
The advent of noninvasive imaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) transformed cognitive neuroscience, providing insights into large-scale brain networks and their link to cog...
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Donnisa (she/her) @donnisa.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
going through months of figure edits feels worth it when one ends up on a text book cover! thanks to @bradpostle.bsky.social and @rodbraga.bsky.social
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
As a high-school student learning about science, I never even dreamed that my research would ever be on the cover of a textbook 🥹 Thank you @bradpostle.bsky.social ! And congrats to 1st author @donnisa.bsky.social ! www.amazon.com/Essentials-C...
amazon.com
Essentials of Cognitive Neuroscience
Amazon.com: Essentials of Cognitive Neuroscience: 9781394380145: Postle, Bradley R.: Books
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Lauren DiNicola @laurendinicola.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
** Recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher! ** We are seeking a postdoc to help examine how brain networks might change within individuals across transitional times, such as adolescence & pregnancy! Please share widely and apply at the link! #NeuroJobs uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UVAJobs/job/...
uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Research Associate in Psychology
The Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate position to work in the DiNicola Lab. The DiNicola lab uses a precision neuroscien...
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Our paper on improving statistical reporting in psychology is now online 🎉 As a part of this paper, we also created the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology checklist, which researchers can use to improve their statistical reporting practices www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Transparent and comprehensive statistical reporting is critical for ensuring the credibility, reproducibility, and interpretability of psychological research. This paper offers a structured set of guidelines for reporting statistical analyses in quantitative psychology, emphasizing clarity at both the planning and results stages. Drawing on established recommendations and emerging best practices, we outline key decisions related to hypothesis formulation, sample size justification, preregistration, outlier and missing data handling, statistical model specification, and the interpretation of inferential outcomes. We address considerations across frequentist and Bayesian frameworks and fixed as well as sequential research designs, including guidance on effect size reporting, equivalence testing, and the appropriate treatment of null results. To facilitate implementation of these recommendations, we provide the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology (TSRP) Checklist that researchers can use to systematically evaluate and improve their statistical reporting practices (https://osf.io/t2zpq/). In addition, we provide a curated list of freely available tools, packages, and functions that researchers can use to implement transparent reporting practices in their own analyses to bridge the gap between theory and practice. To illustrate the practical application of these principles, we provide a side-by-side comparison of insufficient versus best-practice reporting using a hypothetical cognitive psychology study. By adopting transparent reporting standards, researchers can improve the robustness of individual studies and facilitate cumulative scientific progress through more reliable meta-analyses and research syntheses.
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Hao-Ting Wang @haotingwang.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
I worked with Jonny for 5 years during my formative years as a scientist. He influenced how I see life deeply. Although I won't hear him explain things to me again, his words and kindness will live through those whom he inspired. We were so lucky to have him in our lives. We miss you a lot, Jonny.
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Adam Turnbull @adamgturnbull.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
I was so lucky to have Jonny as my PhD supervisor. He was a one-of-a-kind scientist and person. He continues to be an inspiration to me and I will always be guided by the way he thought about science and life. He built an amazing network of wonderful people and we all miss you, Jonny.
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 13/11/2025
Jonny Smallwood @themindwanders.bsky.social was a beloved friend and mentor. He was taken from us too soon. His was a beautiful mind who understood the beauty of minds. As ever before, his kind voice guides me and his work will continue. We miss you Jonny. www.cbs.mpg.de/news/obituar...
cbs.mpg.de
Obituary – Jonathan Smallwood
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
How can the "default network" support many forms of introspective thought? Our new review argues these functions rely on distinct MTL connections: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Thanks to @denizvatansever.bsky.social & Jess Andrews-Hanna for the invitation to this Special Issue! 🧵
sciencedirect.com
The canonical default network comprises parallel distributed networks with distinct medial temporal lobe connections
The default network (DN) is associated with a variety of introspective cognitive processes. Recent developments support that the ‘canonical’ DN compri…
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Thank you @caterinagratton.bsky.social for inviting me to contribute to this! Fascinating to dive into the causes and consequences of individual differences in brain organization.
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Caterina Gratton @caterinagratton.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Why do brain networks vary? Do these differences shape behavior? If every 🧠 is unique, how can we detect common features of brain organization? @rodbraga.bsky.social and I dig in, in @annualreviews.bsky.social (ahead of print): go.illinois.edu/Gratton2025-... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #MedSky 🧵👇
go.illinois.edu
Dense Phenotyping of Human Brain Network Organization Using Precision fMRI
The advent of noninvasive imaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) transformed cognitive neuroscience, providing insights into large-scale brain networks and their link to cog...
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
📣 New preprint from the Braga Lab! 📣 The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning? Thread 🧵 ⬇️
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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Amazing resource ⚡️ 🧠 Single-neuron datasets for linguistic and semantic processing in the human amygdala and hippocampus www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Single-neuron datasets for linguistic and semantic processing in the human amygdala and hippocampus - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Single-neuron datasets for linguistic and semantic processing in the human amygdala and hippocampus
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