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Zach Nudelman

@zednud.bsky.social

104 followers 173 following 9 posts

PhD Candidate | Cognitive Neuroscience | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | Eye <-> Brain Dynamics | 🌀🎵

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by Zach Nudelman

Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Thrilled to share our new #preprint, and super proud of @zednud.bsky.social and our work on eye–brain dynamics during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Also excited to share that Zach started his PhD with me recently! 🎉 Lots of ideas and cool work ahead. Follow him on Bluesky and check out his thread! 🧵

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Thanks so much!

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Our new MR-based eye-tracking approach may enable examining these effects across many cognitive states, which is what we will be doing next! Stay tuned! 8/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

We’re super excited about these findings because they suggest that eye-brain dynamics, as studied here, may provide a window into eyes-closed cognition. Think dreaming, anesthesia, coma – there are many cognitive states that lack a continuous behavioral read-out! 7/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Finally, we found that partialing out the effect of gaze behavior from voxel time courses systematically altered functional connectivity estimates throughout the brain, a widely used measure of large-scale brain organization. 6/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

These eye-brain dynamics largely persisted across wakefulness and sleep (but we also report evidence for local differences – promising targets for future work on differences across sleep stages etc.) 5/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

We found that activity covaried with inferred gaze behavior throughout the brain, spanning the cerebral cortex and cerebellum, and involving many regions associated with vision. The eyes were closed and people were sleeping! 4/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Here, we developed an unsupervised MR-based eye tracking method (MReyeMove, to be released) that infers gaze behavior directly from the MR signal of the eyes. It enabled us to examine gaze-dependent brain activity in a fantastic resting-state and sleep dataset shared by Gu and colleagues. 3/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Eye movements and brain activity are known to be tightly coupled during perception and mental imagery. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐲𝐞–𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬-𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩? 2/8

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Zach Nudelman @zednud.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Excited to share my first #preprint with @matthiasnau.bsky.social on how gaze behavior shapes brain activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Gaze-dependent activity was widespread even during sleep, including in many visual cortices, and altered brain-wide functional connectivity! 🧵 1/8

biorxiv.org

Brain-wide gaze-dependent activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep

Gaze behavior and brain activity are tightly coupled during perception and mental imagery. Whether this coupling extends to eyes-closed states remains largely unknown, primarily because measuring eye ...

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Reposted by Zach Nudelman

Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Fascinating discussion on the societal shift from maximizing positive affect (pleasure) to minimizing negative affect (anxiety), induced by screens and metrics. Coincidentally, I‘ve just gone old school and bought a radio for running. Digital detox summer! www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novel

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Reposted by Zach Nudelman

Nathan Warren @nathanwarren.bsky.social · 02/05/2024

Simon Kuper spitting facts: "Perhaps the global economy needs the US, or at least a few inventive bits of it — as long as you don’t have to live there." on.ft.com/3QtMyED

on.ft.com

Europeans have more time, Americans more money. Which is better?

Life expectancy, happiness, sustainability and innovation among factors shaping work attitudes

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