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Reposted by David Brang

serences.bsky.social @serences.bsky.social · Aug 13

I gave a talk in 2009 about feature-based attention and a famous vision scientist asked how top down signals from PFC could possibly target the right sensory neurons. The best I could do was "uh, dunno". sunyoungp.bsky.social has a much more thoughtful answer journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Near-random connections support top-down feature-based attentional modulations in early sensory cortex

Author summary In everyday life, we focus on what matters—like finding our car keys on a messy desk—by sending signals from higher control brain areas to earlier sensory brain areas. These “top-down” ...

journals.plos.org

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Jul 17

I'm not seeing of them up yet. Ours was just approved so they might be delayed; even it is not showing on careers.umich.edu yet. Ling should have their's up here at some point lsa.umich.edu/linguistics/...

Job Opportunity | U-M LSA Linguistics

lsa.umich.edu

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Jul 16

Our department is recruiting! New tenure-track, open rank faculty position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan (emphasis on human cognition and artificial intelligence).
apply.interfolio.com/169170

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Jul 6

New paper with @herveyjumper.bsky.social and Vardhaan Ambati! It shows that causal (DCS+) language cortex in glioma patients has greater ECoG information encoding (higher entropy and linguistic decoding). DCS+ sites showed stronger oscillations and high gamma, enabling prediction of DCS sites.

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Reposted by David Brang

bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · Jul 6

Electrocorticographic Detection of Speech Networks in Glioma-infiltrated Cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.04.663249v1

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Reposted by David Brang

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · Jul 1

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 24

Tissue samples were from healthy cortex (e.g., insular tumor resection), allowing transcriptionally defined neuronal subclasses, including numbers of glutamatergic + GABAergic neurons. This link better enables aperiodic (1/f) slope from EEG/ECoG to be used as a surrogate for cortical excitability.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 24

New paper with Shawn Hervey-Jumper's lab! As only PART of this project, it validates the relationship between aperiodic slope and cortical excitability using ECoG and single-nuc RNA sequencing in humans. Tissue samples with more excitatory neurons showed flatter aperiodic slope.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 8

No other tools currently exist specifically for intraOp ECoG registration. This was a multi-year collaboration with the amazing lab of Shawn Hervey-Jumper and included @senaoten.bsky.social, @sanjeevherr.bsky.social, Vardhaan Ambati, @ysibih.bsky.social, Katie Lu, and Jasleen Kaur.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 8

Localizing ECoG electrodes from photos alone is challenging (particularly with small craniotomies) and novice undergrads/medical students showed high variability (mean error = 16mm, ICC = .40), compared to experts with neuroanatomy training (mean error = 4mm, ICC = .93).

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 8

ExtraOp ECoG/sEEG localization require a postOp MRI or CT that are unavailable in intraOp contexts. As an alternative, we used preOp MRI imaging, vascular reconstructions, and intraOp photos to place grids along cortical reconstructions, in conforming electrodes to the brain.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · May 8

New preprint + toolbox! BrainTRACE is a MATLAB tool for localizing intraOp ECoG electrodes. It was designed for brain tumor patients, but appropriate for all ECoG implants.
github.com/dbrang/Brain...
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

GitHub - dbrang/BrainTRACE: An IntraOp ECoG electrode registration tool. Developed by Abbey Roelofs, Michael Egan, Tyler Slouf, Sena Oten, Shawn Hervey-Jumper, and David Brang

An IntraOp ECoG electrode registration tool. Developed by Abbey Roelofs, Michael Egan, Tyler Slouf, Sena Oten, Shawn Hervey-Jumper, and David Brang - dbrang/BrainTRACE

github.com

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Reposted by David Brang

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Apr 28

Here is a link to 60 Minutes NIH segment...

www.cbsnews.com/news/scienti...

Scientists fear Trump administration cuts to NIH could impact the health of Americans for generations

Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, who abruptly left his NIH research lab in February, fears aggressive downsizing could impact Americans' health.

www.cbsnews.com

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Mar 31

Fourier Wave Explorer lets you create a waveform from 5 sine waves that vary in frequency and amplitude, then shows the individual and composite waveforms, along with the PSD.

Github pages:
github.com/dbrang/Fouri...
github.com/dbrang/Fouri...

Features inspired by: github.com/Jezzamonn/fo...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Mar 31

Fourier Wave Creator lets you either select example waveforms (e.g., square wave, 10hz + 3hz sine wave) or draw your own waveform, then shows the sine waves needed to reconstruct that complex waveform, along with the PSD. You can suppress frequencies to show the effects on reconstruction accuracy.

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Mar 31

I'm teaching an undergrad EEG/MEG/iEEG methods course and created a pair of interactive webpages to help build intuition about the Fourier Transform.
dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave...
dbrang.github.io/Fourier-Wave...

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Reposted by David Brang

Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · Mar 28

At #CNS2025? Come by our posters from the Cognition, Control, and Action Lab!

SAT 3-5pm
A126 Modeling the temporal dynamics of cognitive control
A149 Cognition-Action links in Parkinson disease (TMS-fMRI)

SUN 8-10am
B30 Causal role of the cerebellum in spatial working memory (TMS-fMRI)

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Mar 24

New study from my PostDoc Emily Cunningham! We used ECoG with stimulation of the STG to test for direct (potentially monosynaptic) A-to-V connections in humans. 112 out of 231 visual electrodes (across 19/23 patients) exhibited early responses to STG stimulation (as early as 18ms after stimulation).

Emily Cunningham @e-cunningham.bsky.social · Mar 24

A new preprint (brief report) with @dbrang.bsky.social is now live, examining CCEP evidence for direct projections between auditory and visual cortices in humans. (1/3)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The figure shows occipital evoked responses to electrical stimulation over mid-STG, colored by latency of the response. On the right is a plot of evoked responses for a single patient in anterior V1.

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Reposted by David Brang

Katie Wilkinson @drkwilkinson.bsky.social · Feb 9

Helpful table to determine how much your University or health system is set to lose if the NIH indirect cap is suddenly lowered to 15%. For SJSU it is $374k which is on the smaller end but devastating considering our other budget issues. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/8/

Estimated Single Year Loss of NIH Funding if 15% Indirect Cost Rate is Imposed

Based on analysis of 2024 NIH funding data. Sums are totals of losses in funding to programs if indirect costs had been capped at 15%

datawrapper.dwcdn.net

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Reposted by David Brang

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Feb 7

ATTENTION

If you are someone who had an F31-Diversity (or similar) application submitted this cycle, please DM me here, contact me on signal (jeremymberg.78), or email me at [email protected].

I will keep all information confidential.

2/n

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Reposted by David Brang

Margaret Crane, PhD @margaretcrane.bsky.social · Jan 24

And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

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Reposted by David Brang

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · Jan 24

Another shoe drop. Early termination of FOA.

Margaret Crane, PhD @margaretcrane.bsky.social · Jan 24

And the funding announcement for diversity supplements now has been updated to expire today. Supplements are so important to the careers of junior scientists. This is crushing for post docs and early career faculty

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Jan 8

We're looking to hire a new lecturer in Psychology at the University of Michigan! The initial appointment is for 3 years and this person would teach our large Intro to Cognitive Psychology course along with smaller courses on topics within their expertise.
apply.interfolio.com/160580

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by David Brang

Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · Dec 17

Excited this one is finally out!

The forced response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing
with @hanzhang.bsky.social

link.springer.com/10.3758/s134...

Can we better study how the conflict between goal-directed and habitual/automatic actions is resolved? Read on!

The forced-response method: A new chronometric approach to measure conflict processing - Behavior Research Methods

Despite long-standing concerns about the use of free reaction times (RTs) in cognitive psychology, they remain a prevalent measure of conflict resolution. This report presents the forced-response meth...

link.springer.com

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David Brang @dbrang.bsky.social · Dec 4

Transition GIF showing the photos with and without the grid registered together. {Warning: these are intraoperative photos}