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Rodrigo Braga

@rodbraga.bsky.social
1.2K followers 237 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 · 03/10/2026
89% of SBE NSF grants were never awarded!! My field (Cognitive Neuroscience) is included in this gutting, as are so many others. Plenty of horror stories in the same space are also coming from NIH. It’s not just delaying research; it’s labs shutting down and a next gen that won’t be trained.
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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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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Thanks Nicole! All credit goes to Steph Sasse and the I Am a Scientist team who are doing this amazing work
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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 · 05/08/2026
Very interesting! I couldn’t tell but was the optimal window during an exhale? I’ve often wondered if inhaling is more effortful/active whereas exhaling is more effortless/passive due to the mechanics of diaphragm contraction, naturally establishing an action-relaxation cycle in the brain
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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 · 19/06/2026
I think the way that @davidchalmers.bsky.social ‘s philosophical zombie framed the hard problem, tho great for promoting discussion, also really delayed progress by demanding non-functional reasoning about consciousness… microtubules are just one example
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
It seems to me that the theory is motivated by the idea that there cannot be a functional/computational explanation for consciousness, which seems misguided to me
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Day 4 just dropped!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
kudos to the exemplary @anilseth.bsky.social and @earlkmiller.bsky.social for keeping it respectful
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Think It’s Day 3 now but it’s hard to tell
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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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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
@earlkmiller.bsky.social
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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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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
@earlkmiller.bsky.social
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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 · 24/04/2026
Nice work, Evan! the language network “chain” in mPFC always fascinated me
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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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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
If they're near the canonical FFA then it could well be in the overlap area
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Yes I completely agree - the plot thickens :) Thank you for the kind words!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
For instance, I liked @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social 's perspective, implying that if we'd asked subs to imagine features that are actually encoded in earlier regions (eg orientation, items in specific receptive field locations, etc), we'd be more likely to see earlier regions reinstated
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Yes it's very interesting. Hard to tell how far along VTC the recordings were, to assess whether they'd be in the overlap regions we see. But other studies have decoded imagined content from earlier visual areas, so (as we mention in the paper) there's likely more going on beyond the overlap.
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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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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Thanks Micah!
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Thank you!
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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
The principle was seen for imagining scenes or speech, even though different sensory systems (visual, auditory) and transmodal networks (DN-A, LANG) were implicated in each.
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