Long may your run, to and from

It was wonderful to take a moment to celebrate as Gov McKee signed the Freedom to Read Act today! Thank you everyone! Sharing some photos and nuggets of wisdom from the speakers

What shifts in our brain when our consciousness shifts? On Sept 8-9, we will explore this question at ESI-SyNC 2025 - with exciting talks, posters and discussions on the neural dynamics of altered consciousness, from psychedelics to breathwork, near-death experiences and meditation.
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More video from the Francis Collins interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

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We have an open position for a Scientist I at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. Come join our exciting research environment @alleninstitute.org. Please share!

alleninstitute.org/careers/jobs...

Sweet, sweet review by the awesome @anne-urai.bsky.social on the beautiful mess that is behaviour.
Also, best abstract ending I've seen in a long time:
'There is probably no such thing as stable behavior.'
Check it out!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A great Bela Julesz (1994) quote I recently learned I’m sharing (imposing?!) whenever I can: psychology without consciousness is like math without infinity. We have ways (imaginary numbers) to get around hard things without giving up on the fact that we need to make them operable. Again, quick take!

So, saying death = final failure to fight entropy is also I think super useful, but doesn’t capture why humans care about death. This is different than saying introspection automatically = truth, just that the question *is* crucially in part about conscious perception of our own states.

Hey, I love this discussion. Quick intuition: reductionsitic / mechanistic description of our motivations that stands alone is possible and useful, without need for conceptual level of “emotions”. But that to define away the feelings part is to remove what’s meant by the term emotions.

Here's a provocative proposal for settling the "What is an emotion?" debate - get rid of the concept altogether!

From What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories (1997).

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

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Great at so many levels.

My quote of the day

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

Thomas Paine

An LAPD helicopter claimed to have ID'ed protesters from above and threatened to "come to your house."

The threat was greeted with extreme concern by civil liberties and digital privacy groups. It suggests the LAPD could be using facial recognition to identify and retaliate against protesters.

What does 18,000+ brave signatories look like standing together in massive solidarity with the #NIH heroes of the historic Bethesda Declaration??...

Find out by adding YOUR NAME to our #NIHLove letter here! -

actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na...

#StandUpForScience
#BethesdaDeclaration
#StopTrump

Mindscape 317 | Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders. Or, why Bench to Bedside is harder than it sounds. #MindscapePocast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

So psyched for this! Go grab a few copies, you’ll want to give them to friends

LIVE feed of Senate Appropriations Committee ready to hold #Bhattacharya accountable to stand - or not - with his heroic #NIH staff.

www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/a-r...

#StandUpForScience
#BethesdaDeclaration
#SaveNIH

One thing the MAHA report is seriously missing: connection to reality. You can’t tackle chronic illness while gutting the workforce that prevents it. Health departments hollowed out, $11b of directed federal support pulled, 20k jobs at health agencies eliminated.

zurl.co/QUnUU

Getting confirmation from several sources that the review branch at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at NIH no longer exists.

I am sure this is true across many/all institutes and centers at NIH.

I hope the Center for Scientific Review will be up to the task.

"Trumpism may be ascendant, but it is not invincible. What it fears most is solidarity that bridges class, race, and background–solidarity that declares that America is not Donald Trump’s to disfigure or define."

We agree. Join the #SummerFightForScience - This fight needs us all.
zurl.co/noQrh

Listening to & reading mainstream/center-left political media, I don’t get the sense that the generational threat to U.S. science is really on the radar or breaking through.

I always say that my job when accepting a student is to get them a job, and if I know how to do that when they enter—if I have what they need for that goal—it works. Perhaps that’s a grounding question where the answer is not always Faculty.

The cortical critical power law balances energy and information in an optimal fashion
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
#neuroscience

Proud of Harvard for pushing back, exercising some creativity, and, maybe, helping folks get some needed education.

Harvard is making many of their online government courses FREE.

I just signed up for "Citizen Politics in America".

They even asked me my Gender.

pll.harvard.edu/subject/gove...