Not the usual stuff I post.
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
A study in Nature Health finds that microplastics and nanoplastics
were at a higher level in brain tumour samples from living patients
than in healthy human brain samples from cadavers,
with a correlation between microplastic surface area and tumour proliferation. https://go.nature.com/4cuBK4I…
If you compare the challenges that a Neuralink Blindsight brain implant for restoring vision still has to overcome with the challenges for The vOICe (sound-guided mental imagery)... https://www.artificialvision.com/neuralink.htm Supporting independent and open science
Massachusetts-based brain implant company Axoft raised a $55M Series A and says it tested its device in a Shanghai patient, with plans for more trials in China (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
Sweet jesus, I think the brain worms have worked on this one beyond remedy. The whole thing is toast.
Once more I have woken up with Killing Joke rattling around my brain.
Nine tenths of the law that is sick
Is possession
Life expressed in matter is a blasphemy
Success defined by acquisition stinks
So busy trying to make a living I forget about living, yes, I do
So busy trying to make a living, I forget about life
It probably says a lot about how my brain works that last night, I overheard a commercial featuring "I Saw the Sun" by Ace of Base, and immediately of Roger from American Dad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsrrf7P8Y_E
En la mani del #1deMayo un compañero me ha hablado de este artículo sobre la salud del uso de la #ia en el entorno laboral. No lo he leído aún pero me ha dicho que es muy interesante lo que plantea
I had a weird dream where I was talking to someone at some kind of ceremony, I think a funeral, where I had timidly painted my face with clay as part of some ritual. This person was talking about how far society has come while our brains have not caught up.
Imagine if your ancient cave dwelling ancestors were dropped into this world of cars, office hours, budgets, climate change, and AI. They would be absolutely freaking out and struggling to understand things all the time... Just like you are now.
Society teaches us to suppress these emotions. You're supposed to be OK with giant metal boxes flying around you in rumbling stampedes, but you feel it in unexplained anxiety. You're supposed to just fit your life into tight little bounds that ignore weather and season, but you feel it in more unexplained anxiety and depression. We are all part of something so big and complicated we can't make sense of it, we cannot possibly comprehend it all, it is simply too much to fully grasp the implications of our individual actions within global capitalism. Should we be surprised by our urge to simply destroy it, by the anger and desire to simply "smash" something far more complex than can be met with simple violence?
Some part of my brain was trying to remind me to be compassionate to myself. Perhaps that reminder can be useful to you as well.
Every time I see the avatar thumbnail of @… in my timeline, my brain somehow parses it as him wearing a belly-free crop top of some sorts
cintestinalis: Tadpole larva brain (C. intestinalis)
Entire connectivity matrix for the complete brain of a larva of Ciona intestinalis. Each directed edge represents a synaptic connection from pre-synaptic cell i to post-synaptic cell j (may not be a neuron). Edge weights represent the cumulative depth of presynaptic contacts in µm.
This network has 205 nodes and 2903 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted
Would getting a Neuralink Blindsight brain implant for restoring vision be worth it? #BCI
Brain-Computer-Interface: ALS-Patient nutzt Hirnimplantat 19 Monate lang
Ein ALS-Patient hat ein Brain-Computer-Interface fast zwei Jahre lang täglich zu Hause genutzt. Die Studie liefert wichtige Belege für die Alltagstauglichkeit.
EyeBrain: Left and Right Brain Lateralization Activity Classification Through Pupil Diameter and Fixation Duration
Ko Watanabe, Pooja Pol, Nicolas Gro{\ss}mann, Shoya Ishimaru, Andreas Dengel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23562 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.23562 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.23562
arXiv:2604.23562v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The relationship between brain lateralization and cognitive functions is well-documented. The left hemisphere primarily handles tasks such as language and arithmetic, while the right hemisphere is involved in creative activities like drawing and music perception. Eye-tracking technology has shown the potential to reveal cognitive states by measuring ocular metrics such as pupil diameter and fixation duration. However, the ability to distinguish lateralized brain activity using these ocular metrics remains underexplored. Here, we demonstrate that pupil diameter and fixation duration can effectively classify left and right brain hemisphere activities. We obtained a considerably high classification performance, with an F1 score of 0.894. The results suggest that ocular metrics are robust indicators of lateralized brain activity and can be applied in cognitive monitoring and neurorehabilitation. Our future work expands on this by integrating these methods into real-time applications EyeBrain, potentially broadening their use across various cognitive and neurological domains.
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Many years ago, a friend said he was following “The S Diet”. It was very simple and memorable:
——
No Sweets or Seconds, except on Saturday and Sunday.
——
Simple… easy… and it actually worked for me as a way to help maintain or reduce weight (along with some mild level of exercise).
My challenge is that in the intervening years, my brain fought that and changed it to:
——
No Sweets or Seconds, except on days ending in ‘y’.
——
🤣🤦♂️
Un-doin…
Two days in R-studio has made my brain an utter mess. Doing extra work on the side at night feels more heavy than ever. But sooon - I see a vaccation in the horizon
Auf Anregung von @… habe ich mal versucht, meinen Workflow von #Logseq auf #Orgmode umzubauen.
Der erste Ansatz mit org-roam sah vielversprechend aus. Aber schon nach ku…
How US schools' overreliance on YouTube for educational content encourages students to drift into endless video scrolling on school-issued devices (Shalini Ramachandran/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/youtube-…
multi-trillion dollar company showing off their multi-trillion dollar PhD-level galaxy brain technology
No! No no brain, no brain. no brain. Toot toot toot toot [unintelligible] like-like-like-like YeAH toot. boost. toot. boost. toot. toot toot toot toot like-like-like-like mastodon no brain. mastodon no brain. boost-toot-boost-toot. never! never! never! brain. boost toot boost toot. Never think!
https://
How Kosovo's tech industry, driven by local companies like business outsource provider SPEEEX, is helping cut youth unemployment and changing Pristina's skyline (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-30/…
"there is basically two sides in the #freeWill debate: compatibilists and those who find it very regrettable that they have a brain."
#compatibilism
A geometry aware framework enhances noninvasive mapping of whole human brain dynamics
Song Wang, Kexin Lou, Chen Wei, Zhiyuan Sheng, Jiahao Tang, Kaining Peng, Xinke Shen, Shuhao Mei, Liang Chen, Dongfeng Gu, Quanying Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25592 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.25592 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.25592
arXiv:2604.25592v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Non-invasive electrophysiology lacks methods that accurately reconstruct whole-brain spatiotemporal dynamics while incorporating individual cortical geometry, leaving current electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography source imaging limited by simplistic or biologically implausible priors. Here, we show that embedding participant-specific Geometric Basis Functions (GBFs), eigenmodes derived from each individual's cortical surface, provides a powerful anatomic constraint that resolves the inverse problem and improves reconstruction fidelity. The method reconstructs neural sources as linear combinations of geometric basis functions, thereby aligning source estimates with the geometric organization of neural dynamics. We validate GBF across the Meta-Source Benchmark, task-evoked data, resting-state networks, intracranial stimulation, and epilepsy data. The results demonstrate that GBF yields high localization accuracy and captures fast spatiotemporal dynamics consistent with anatomical pathways. These findings suggest that both spontaneous and evoked whole-brain activity can be described by hundreds of geometric modes, providing a compact yet accurate representation of neural sources. By linking cortical geometry to electrophysiological dynamics, GBF offers a versatile source imaging tool for both scientific and clinical applications.
toXiv_bot_toot
one way mastodon continues to absolutely whip bluesky's ass by an order of magnitude is by having a proper edit function, which means i didn't have to delete/redraft my mastodon post because my morning brain confused robert wilson & robert anton wilson.
It's not that The vOICe vision BCI is so good, it's that invasive BCIs for (restoring) vision are far worse than often claimed. The human brain is not plug-and-play. https://chatgpt.com/share/69f448a9-de04-83eb-9720-98a2f66ca7e5
How it feels to focus on anything for more than 30 minutes
#theplaylistsuggestion The Main Monkey Business by Rush. And... Banana Brain by Die Antwoord. Oh, and this: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8jpcxc
The “neural fingerprint” of psychedelics was spotted among hundreds of brain scans of people on LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline and ayahuasca,
pointing to a shared impact on the brain’s behaviour.
The finding emerged from a major study that combined 11 brain imaging datasets from around the world
in an effort to build a reliable picture of how the substances temporarily rewire the brain.
Dr Danilo Bzdok and his colleagues analysed more than 500 brain scans from 267 p…
Triple Configuration of Brain Networks Based on Recurrent Neural Networks: The Synergistic Effects of Exogenous Stimuli, Task Demands, and Spontaneous Activity
Binghao Yang, Guangzong Chen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23525 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.23525 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.23525
arXiv:2604.23525v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The foundation of cognitive flexibility and higher-order intelligence lies in the functional structure and activity of brain networks, which can be dynamically configured by both external environments and internal states. However, decoding these dynamics from high-dimensional neural data remains a challenge. In this study, we propose a computational framework using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) with neural dynamic constraints to model source-localized resting-state EEG data from $114$ participants. We aim to clarify the "triple brain network configurations" driven by exogenous and endogenous factors, including external stimuli, information processing tasks, and spontaneous activities. Our model identifies the parietal network as a critical hub supporting these multiple configuration patterns. Furthermore, we reveal that the anterior and posterior parietal regions exhibit distinct functional specializations under different stimulus modalities. By formalizing a triple configuration framework, this work separates latent factors of brain dynamics and underscores the computational significance of parietal regions in orchestrating higher-order intelligence.
toXiv_bot_toot
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
Neuroscientists being “surprised” that the brain doesn’t work like a computer, episode 244:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01554-0
Brain implants for restoring vision to the blind need to stimulate large numbers of neurons with electrodes, many times per second. So... https://bioniclab.substack.com/p/what-happens-to-blood-flow-when-you The stimulation paradox: Activating neurons starves them of…
Integrative neurocybernetic modeling in the era of large-scale neuroscience
Il Memming Park, Ayesha Vermani, Gonzalo G. de Polavieja, Juan \'Alvaro Gallego, Kathleen Esfahany, Shreya Saxena, Michael Orger, Auke Ijspeert, Matthew Dowling, Daniel McNamee, Srinivas C. Turaga, Zachary Mainen, Joseph J. Paton, Alfonso Renart
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23903 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.23903 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.23903
arXiv:2604.23903v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large-scale neuroscience is generating rich datasets across animals, brain areas and behavioral contexts, yet our modeling efforts remains fragmented across isolated experiments. We argue that understanding behavior requires integrative neurocybernetic models: understandable dynamical models that capture the closed-loop coupling of brain, body and environment, treat the brain as a controller pursuing latent objectives, represent structured variation across scales, and scale to heterogeneous datasets. Such models shift the goal from predicting neural recordings in isolation to inferring the organizing principles that govern neural and behavioral dynamics. We outline a practical route toward this goal by combining nonlinear state-space models and meta-dynamical extensions with scalable inference, knowledge distillation, mixed open- and closed-loop training, and connectomics-informed architectures. By pooling complementary constraints from recordings, behavior, perturbations and anatomy, integrative neurocybernetic models can provide statistical amplification, few-shot generalization, and mechanistic insight into shared dynamical structure, individual variation, and the control objectives that govern behavior. This agenda offers a model-centric path from fragmented data to a mechanistic science of how brains produce behavior.
toXiv_bot_toot
fly_hemibrain: Fly hemibrain (2020)
A synaptic map of the hemibrain connectome of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using EM reconstruction techniques. Neurons are labeled by their type. Edges are annotated by the connection strength between the neurons.
This network has 21739 nodes and 4259624 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted, Metadata
https://networks.skewed.de/net/fly_hemibrain
Ridiculogram:
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that
bacteria can learn from past experiences,
store memories across generations
and adapt their behavior to changing environments
all without a brain or nervous system
https://www.cmu.edu…
Vision restoration: From prostheses to genetic-based brain-machine interfaces https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/handbook/abs/pii/B9780443222122000173 "Classically, visual prostheses were made of electrode arrays", in Handbook of …
Low-level "visual" perception with visual-to-auditory sensory substitution is at least on par with brain implants for restoring vision. It's the higher-level visual perception where there remain many open questions. Much more scientific effort should go into that. #BCI #blindness
The dismantling of US science (funding) by the US administration very likely also negatively impacts new studies based on The vOICe sensory substitution approach, no matter how much more promising it is than the development and use of brain implants for restoring vision.
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
(YouTube, 2023) This seeming "reconstruction" is misleading: not reconstruction but rather neural signal pattern matching with video frame lookup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zBZySKWAqA Seeing through the eyes of a mouse by decoding its brain signals.
The vOICe vision BCI app for Android crossed the 600,000 cumulative installs mark from Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vOICe.vOICe Compare this to the number of Neuralink Blindsight brain implants in humans to date (spoiler: zero).
Crosslisted article(s) found for q-bio.NC. https://arxiv.org/list/q-bio.NC/new
[1/1]:
- Independent-Component-Based Encoding Models of Brain Activity During Story Comprehension
Kamya Hari, Taha Binhuraib, Jin Li, Cory Shain, Anna A. Ivanova
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24942 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCL_bot/116486847293367640
toXiv_bot_toot
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
By linking up visual and auditory processing in the human brain, The vOICe vision BCI can act as both a fully noninvasive visual prosthesis for the totally blind and as a research vehicle for macroscopic neuroscience https://www.artificialvision.com/neuralink.htm
Relevant for brain implants? Frequency-specific effects of pulsed magnetic field on BV2 microglial cell function https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15368378.2026.2694326 "pulsed magnetic field can effectively regulate microglial phagocytosis, migration,…
Astrocytes connect specific brain regions through plastic networks (in mice) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10426-6 "communication between distant brain regions that is mediated by plastic networks of gap junction-coupled astrocytes";
Brain-wide distributed processing underlying natural vision and audition https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.26.727967v1 "prefrontal cortex coordinated brain dynamics through synergistic interactions independently of sensory modality and previous sensory e…
Brain-computer interfaces in healthcare: building the picks and shovels company while the giants fight over gold #BCI
A computer model predicted which human brain implant channels would fail #invasive
Once you realize that a Neuralink Blindsight brain implant for restoring vision will not be available for at least another decade, consider your other options more seriously.
Fake AI-generated video clip of an elderly blind man seeing his wife after receiving a brain implant for restoring his vision. Will we still know what is real? Reminiscent of the Argus II media coverage before the rise of generative AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiyGOUHD2nI
Seeing and imagining are handled by the same brain cells https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/05/12/seeing-and-imagining-are-handled-by-the-same-brain-cells/
"Researchers make advances in understanding how human brains ar…
Sensory restoration via brain-computer interfaces: A unified 2×2 framework and convergence roadmap https://arxiv.org/html/2606.15091v1
"Community Siloing: Research remains siloed. Teams developing high-density invasive stimulation interfaces rarely collaborate with teams building non-invasive se…
#Paradromics: From brain implants to neuroprosthetics | Making sense of brain-computer interface terminology https://www.paradromics.com/insights/from-brain-implants-to-neuropr…
(YouTube) Jacques Carolan — The mission to get breakthrough brain treatments to everyone #neuromodulation
White paper and living document: Comparing The vOICe vision BCI with Neuralink Blindsight and other brain implants for restoring vision to the blind https://www.artificialvision.com/BCI.html
(YouTube video clips) Recent developments with The vOICe visual-to-auditory sensory substitution includ…
When will @… write about Elon Musk's Neuralink Blindsight brain implant? Still nothing in sight. #BCI
Companies developing brain implants for restoring vision to the blind will add smartglasses to compensate for ultra-crude vision, but smartglasses offering AI scene description, real-time talking OCR and sensory substitution may render the brain implant redundant. #BCI #blindness
Visual field position shapes input sampling and output routing in the superior colliculus (in mice) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728073v1 Likely nonfunctional with brain implants in V1 for restoring vision
Thalamic oscillations distinguish natural states of consciousness in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02446-z Might thalamic and other oscillations also determine if experiences appear visual or from another sensory modality? Looking for brain state control for senso…