In case this important point gets overlooked: along with our Nature paper (nature.com/articles/s41586-0…), we’ve publicly released two large and scarce datasets—PIPD and PIET. IMHO, these are the best open Parkinson's and Tremor datasets available to date. See threads (1/4) 👇

My new favorite scientific study of all times. If you’re interested in your lived experience as a human you have to check this out. & it finally makes sense to me how I will randomly & suddenly have a better solution to a problem I hadn’t thought about in days.

Could obesity be quietly aging our brains and increasing our risk of dementia? Obesity refers to excess body fat that can negatively affect health, including brain health. Cali McEntee, Eva Feldman and colleagues describe in a new review in Nature Reviews Neurology how obesity may affect memory, thinking and the biological pathways involved in dementia. Key points: - Midlife obesity is associated w/ cognitive decline and an increased risk of dementia, even when weight decreases later in life. - Obesity may affect the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, brain regions essential for memory, attention and decision-making, through inflammation, insulin resistance and vascular dysfunction. - Exercise, healthier nutrition, weight-loss surgery and newer weight-management medications offer potential opportunities to improve metabolic health and possibly protect cognition, although more definitive trials are needed. My take: What resonates w/ me is that obesity is not simply a number on a scale. It is a biological condition that can influence how our brains function and age. The brain and body are not separate universes. Inflammation, blood vessel health, insulin signaling and metabolism all matter. Perhaps most importantly, the timing of obesity matters. Carrying excess weight in midlife may have consequences that are not completely reversed by losing weight decades later. Here are 5 points that resonated w/ me: 1- Midlife may represent an important window of opportunity for protecting long-term brain health. 2- Where fat accumulates may matter as much as how much we weigh, particularly when it collects around the abdomen. 3- Obesity can create a vicious cycle in which inflammation disrupts the brain circuits controlling appetite, potentially promoting further weight gain. 4- Exercise, nutrition and appropriate medical treatment should be viewed as investments in brain health, not simply strategies for changing appearance or body weight. 5- We still need randomized trials to establish whether treating obesity actually prevents dementia, but the opportunity to improve metabolic and vascular health is already in front of us. nature.com/articles/s41582-0…

Congratulations to @KarlDeisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel on the Nobel Prize! I feel very lucky to have learned from all three, from their brilliant science and from their generosity to the scientific community.

Congratulations @KarlDeisseroth!!! I think all of us in systems neuro have been rooting for you to get this call for a long time coming (the one and only time my lab ever had a jclub on a Saturday was to catch up with all the jaw-dropping papers coming out of your lab). You revolutionized our field, making it possible to probe this tangle of cells that is us in an entirely new way. I believe the most profound consequences of what you unlocked have yet to be written.

1/ 🚨 Just out in @NatureNeuro! 🧠 We profiled >6,000 features of brain dynamics across humans + monkeys, mice, fish and worms 🧑🐒🐒🐁🐟🪱 to find a shared neural endpoint of anaesthesia: spatiotemporal isolation of local activity 🧵 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-0…

Why do neural networks become modular? Our paper is now out in Nature Machine Intelligence! @NaturePortfolio We show that multi-task learning promotes modularity under limited capacity and task demands help explain features of brain architecture in addition to the spatial constraints. Great thanks to all the co-authors. @WHYWYH007 @yifannnwu @DaniSBassett @marcelomattar rdcu.be/YJ12NBxvrHsa

Happy to share our new @NatureMedicine paper on: "Sex-specific biological aging clocks across organs and omics" As biological aging clocks have been rapidly developed in the research domain, we observed pronounced sex differences even in sex-pooled models in our previous work. So, here, we asked a very straightforward question: whether we should derive these clocks in a sex-stratified learning scheme? We found, in particular for a normative training scheme, that it's important to train the ML models separately so as not to mix the normative references between females and males. We confirmed substantial sex differences in downstream associations with genetics, omics, and disease endpoints among different organ systems/tissues (e.g., adipose tissue) and omics types. Thanks to all collaborators' contributions on this rapidly evolving topic! Thanks to all reviewers and the editors' work to make this online! PS: We made all the sex-specific GWAS publicly available at: labs-laboratory.com/medicine… nature.com/articles/s41591-0…

Our full SORDINO paper is now available @NatureNeuro. I hope it will prove useful to the fMRI community. nature.com/articles/s41593-0… See our earlier digest: x.com/ShihYYI/status/1901670… News & Views by @ShemeshL: nature.com/articles/s41593-0… Use SORDINO in your lab: camri.org/SORDINO

Excited to share our new work, "Developmental deviations of association-network structural connectivity in youths with ADHD predict symptom and treatment outcomes", now out in Nat. Biomed. Eng. @natBME: nature.com/articles/s41551-0…! Congrats to @chocoxu0925 & Zhao.

The neural basis of laughter cell.com/trends/neuroscience…

42 new #fmri tutorials to accompany our new book Elements of fMRI, with @fMRIstats. Run code in both #python and #matlab in your browser to explore. 7 sections, from conceptual foundations to machine learning and AI. torwager.github.io/elements-…

Excited to share our new work, "Developmental benchmarks of executive function reveal sensitive periods for adolescent mental health", now out in @NatMentHealth: nature.com/articles/s44220-0…! Congrats to @YangLi1_888, Lirou, Yinan & @chocoxu0925.

Our new work, "White-matter functional connectivity uniquely predicts brain age, cognition, and psychopathology beyond gray-matter connectivity," is now out in PNAS @PNASNews: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…! Congrats to @cngjng333533221, Shaoling & @xsmilebook.

👏👏👏So cool!

Congratulations to my teacher Jianxun Ren, runner-up of the Science & PINS Neuromodulation Prize with his new Science essay ! ! ! 🏆 His research pioneers shifting brain stimulation from deep nuclei to the brain surface for Parkinson’s treatment.

Honored to be named the runner-up for the Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation, with my essay now published by @ScienceMagazine. science.org/doi/10.1126/scie… The essay lays out how mapping the brain's functional circuits lets us move brain stim. from deep toward the brain surface.

Our latest work, "Intracranial EEG reveals working memory-related dynamics and connectivity in human white matter," is now out in Science Bulletin @Sci_Bull: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…. Congrats to @ShenZhang_CIBR and @xlzhope, and thanks to all collaborators.