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thehandlab.bsky.social
Nick Holmes
@thehandlab.bsky.social
1.8K followers 940 following 840 posts
handy neuroscientist | touch & movement | brain stimulation | neurobiography.info | pod @theerrorbar.bsky.social theerrorbar.com | @tmsmultilab.bsky.social https://tms-rat.org https://tms-smart.info | b. 335ppm C💚2 | pro birds | Associating with Professors
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thehandlab.bsky.social
Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · Aug 11
I'm happy to report that @valedichiaro.bsky.social 's 2nd PhD paper is in press! :-). Brief explainer...

- 2-coil #TMS over left & right primary motor cortex
- TMS in the ~300ms before one hand responds
- corticospinal excitability increases before response
- no changes in non-responding hand

1/n
image describing the trials in the experiment. at the start of each trial, a random 1-3 foreperiod contains a fixation cross to warn the participant. The first event in the trial is a 200ms period with two coloured squares left and right of the (now disappeared) central fixation point (both are red, blue, yellow or green). These are the distractor 'Flanker' stimuli. A third coloured square is then presented centrally. This is the target stimulus. If the target is red or blue, the participant must grip a left force meter; if green or yellow, they grip the right force meter. They try to respond as quickly and as correctly as possible. In the ~300ms before their response, two pulses of TMS are delivered, one over each motor cortex. This TMS pulse excites the corticospinal tract and results in a muscle contraction. The size of the muscle contraction is used as a proxy for corticospinal excitability and response preparation.
Reposted by Nick Holmes
mrspowersdayjob.bsky.social
Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.
A large (maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall) sign on the end of a row of bookshelves that tells the “address” of books that have sensitive content.
November 25, 2025 at 1:47 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
NF: "suddenly after 49 years they [his accusors] seem to have perfect recollection... [I have not] directly racially abused anyone"

So, NF's recollection *is* perfect 🤔
November 25, 2025 at 6:20 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
The year is 2025.

Companies are still sending blank proforma .doc files by email and asking people to complete the reference document and email it back.

😱 what dystopian nightmare is this 😱
November 25, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
sarahgarf.bsky.social
** Recruiting a postdoc ** We are looking for a postdoc to work on emotion, mental health, and interoception, based in London at @ucl.ac.uk in my lab (Clinical and Affective Neuroscience). Part of a large Wellcome Grant (co-led with the brilliant @camillanord.bsky.social)
November 24, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
kathryn-brown.bsky.social
For everyone in the Reading area.. can you help to find a lost space bear!

🧪🌎🛰📡

@bbowt.bsky.social @ncas-uk.bsky.social

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Search for missing Walhampton School teddy bear after space flight
The school uniform-wearing bear was attached to a weather balloon and launched from the New Forest.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 24, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
peterstefanovic.bsky.social
This petition calling for a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy already has over 26,000 signatures. Let’s get it to 100,000 this week.

Please sign and share 🙏

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...
Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy
We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...
petition.parliament.uk
November 24, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
rezashadmehr.bsky.social
Tenure track position in motor control at Northeastern University

northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...
Open Rank (Professor, Associate or Assistant) AI, Sensors, and Human Movement
About the Opportunity About Northeastern Founded in 1898, Northeastern is a global research university and the recognized leader in experience-driven lifelong learning. Our world-renowned experiential...
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
November 22, 2025 at 4:15 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Thank you @ecosiasearch.bsky.social - I've just turned off the 'AI Overview' and no longer have to scroll down to get to the search results.

🙏
November 22, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
tmsmultilab.bsky.social
This month's #TMS MultiLab meeting will be given by @phivph.com Phivos Phylactou, on:

"The eyes are the window to t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶l̶ brain excitability"

Friday 28th, 14:00 GMT

👀🧠🧲⚡️

Get the meeting link from our GitHub pages or Slack channel - get in touch if you can't find it!

github.com/TMSMultiLab/...
Meetings
Resources, data and code to help you run a TMS laboratory - TMSMultiLab/TMSMultiLab
github.com
November 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
One of the best reasons to make all your data open is that it can't be stolen

#OpenScience
November 21, 2025 at 3:05 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
When scientists still can't report (or review or edit) correlations correctly, what hope for the rest of stats?
November 20, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
adw.bsky.social
The next politician who says that UK HE is a jewel in the crown and the best in the world gets fucking slapped with a wet fish. None of this utter bullshit is necessary, not is any of it a good idea. You want HE to be great? Stop making this seem like a good idea
eicathomefinn.bsky.social Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 7d
'Nottingham will be the only Russell Group university not to teach modern foreign languages degrees if it approves plans to close a swath of courses including Spanish and French as well as music and dozens of others.' 1/3
University of Nottingham considers axing language and music degrees
Total of 48 degrees could disappear from Russell Group institution, with falling revenues and rising costs blamed
www.theguardian.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:48 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Yup. Papers by Dr Blandine French raised many similar problems over the last few years. It ain't just AI, folks.

doi.org/10.2196/58432

doi.org/10.1016/s221...
November 18, 2025 at 9:49 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
This, for me, is fundamental.

We have *SO MUCH DATA* already, but we analyse it piecemeal, particular, specific. So 20th Cehtury.

#TheoryFirst

#MetaData #MetaAnalysis #MetaButNotTheFacebookThing
neural-reckoning.org Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 9d
More data would always be nice, but my impression is that we're not doing all we could with the data we've got. And we may be collecting the wrong data, or not the most efficient data that we would be collecting if we had a better idea of what we should be looking for.
November 17, 2025 at 8:04 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Amazing progress!

But still not as good as most children. Another 20 years? 🤔
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 10d
More robots.

China hosted world games.. for robots. Enjoy.
November 17, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.

Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
In the era of papermills & #AI, the concept of the academic #journal is having to be re-invented for #preprints, which are now being assessed for suitability by a team of volunteers (ie, academic editors).

If suitable -> publish; if not -> reject.

Interesting! 👇

blog.psyarxiv.com/2025/09/18/p...
PsyArXiv Returns to Normal Operations – PsyArXiv Blog
Thanks to PsyArXiv’s amazing team of 100+ moderators, all preprints meeting PsyArXiv’s requirements have now been approved! Thank you to everyone who volunteered and worked tirelessly over the past 3 ...
blog.psyarxiv.com
November 13, 2025 at 6:09 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Fabulously useful!
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
Canada has just lost measles elimination status. The U.S. will undoubtedly follow shortly.

Elimination means that there is no continuous spreading of measles within the country for a year or longer.

Canada and the U.S. have blown it, and it’s largely the fault of the anti-vaccination movement.
Canada loses measles elimination status after three decades, health agency says
Canada has lost its measles elimination status after nearly three decades due to its failure to curb a year-long outbreak, the country's public health agency said on Monday.
www.reuters.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:52 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Cut out the middle man:

"AI could replace minister with savings of £100k per year"
November 10, 2025 at 7:57 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
I finally found an actual use for CoPilot!

When updating a file on GitHub (e.g., a readme file), the AI summarises the changes so i don't have to write a commit message. It does a good job.

That's about 20 seconds saved today :-)

(it took me 3 minutes to write this post)
November 9, 2025 at 12:53 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Hello #Bird lovers. What the hell is this big feathery thing flying through my garden at midday in Warwickshire UK?

Owl? Red kite? Buzzard? 🤔

At this position from the camera, this is a big bird!

#Ornithology #Birding #Twitcher
A large bird flying around a tree at midday in Warwickshire, UK. I don't know what kind...
November 7, 2025 at 10:33 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Have asked my line manager for a £999,999,937,482 pay rise next year 🤞
November 7, 2025 at 8:31 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
"GLMMs are black boxes into which stats-naïve authors can throw anything they like."

Discuss.
November 7, 2025 at 7:11 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Deep.
Notice on train schedule app: "This train has been delayed by this train being late"
November 6, 2025 at 7:40 PM