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Maciek Szul

@maciekszul.bsky.social

650 followers 360 following 670 posts

📍 Tübingen, DE ∆ DevComPsy Lab ∆🔬👨‍💻 🧪∆ decisions, motor control, (laminar) MEG, MRI ∆ not interested in oscillations ∆🤘🤡🚴🏔️ ∆ he/him ∆

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · Jun 23

Laminar MEG is possible across all cortical depths. Our comprehensive simulations outline SNR, head movement, and micro/macro anatomical limitations to source reconstruction precision. Not perfect by any chance, lots of confirmatory work ahead, but it's promising.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Sarang Dalal @sarangnemo.bsky.social · 10h

📈🧠 We're looking for brains! 🧠📈
Postdoc + PhD positions are available to help pioneer fetal MEG with optically pumped magnetometers, measuring prenatal responses to sound and light to understand how we start making sense of the world even before we're born. 🐣

Please get in touch to hear more!

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

JJ @jjodx.bsky.social · 4d

First first author paper of Anouck Matthijs on the fact that aging does not affect the ability to compensate for interaction torques during movement planning. Both the timing and scaling of anticipatory EMG activity are preserved with age.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Adults up to 80 years old maintain effective movement planning when facing complex body dynamics

Aging can significantly impact motor performance, especially in highly complex tasks such as multi-joint movements where the nervous system needs to adequately coordinate mechanical interactions betwe...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 6d

In a new paper, we find that sycophantic #AI chatbots make people more extreme--operating like an echo chamber

Yet, people prefer sycophantic chatbots and see them as less biased

Only open-minded people prefer disagreeable chatbots: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Led by @steverathje.bsky.social

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 6d

A model of rhythm production and rhythmic auditory stimulation in healthy and Parkinsonian basal ganglia https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.679952v1

Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 6d

I find using Windows stressful.

Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 6d

What I really like about my Linux based environment is, its development is mostly user driven. Hence the lack of in-built LLM parrot, steady improvements of UI, high levels of customisability, software as a service is largely non-existent, updates are not forced. Open source is a resistance.

The Verge @theverge.com · 9d

Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.

buff.ly

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 7d

Really interesting!

Neurospeech Team @neurospeech.bsky.social · Jul 3

New preprint from our team!

People with tinnitus often complain about attention difficulties so we made them perform several tasks (n=200). After correcting for comorbidities, no deficits in selective attention or executive functions could be observed but they exhibited poorer control of arousal.

Tinnitus perception is linked to arousal system dysfunction

Tinnitus, the perception of sound in the absence of an external source, affects 14% of the population and is often associated with concentration and emotional difficulties. However, the characterizati...

doi.org

Reposted by Maciek Szul

Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 7d

Carefully reading the papers you cite is like a superpower. You might be surprised what you actually find! 😜

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 8d

Great piece by @jonathanjarry.bsky.social on the descent of Sabine Hossenfelder, from science communicator to contrarian outrage-monger www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Sabine Hossenfelder Asks If Science Is Dying. It’s Not.

Physics is dying. It’s mathematical fiction. Science is failing. Most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit. I don’t trust scientists. Would you believe me if I tol...

www.mcgill.ca

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Vinny Costa @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social · 10d

This is fantastic work.

Monkeys show the same pattern of “optimistic” exploration in multi-arm bandits www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Nature @nature.com · 12d

Nature research paper: Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics

go.nature.com/4nMUgYz

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature

Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 12d

Excellent reporting from Heated and Atmos.

It looks like some of the biggest investors in the anti-trans movement are fossil fuel billionaires who are trying to use trans issues to ensure that Republicans pass policies favorable to their industry.

heated.world/p/fossil-fue...

Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement

An investigation shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED finds that 80% of anti-trans organizations receive fossil fuel funding.

heated.world

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 13d

The brain is incredibly densely connected. Human cerebral cortex may have as many as *one trillion* connections.

Most of those cortical connections are recurrent, inside each area. What do they do?

New paper from me in Annual Reviews: 🧪 🧠📈 1/

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Active Filtering: A Predictive Function of Recurrent Circuits of Sensory Cortex | Annual Reviews

Our brains encode many features of the sensory world into memories: We can sing along with songs we have heard before, interpret spoken and written language composed of words we have learned, and reco...

www.annualreviews.org

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Michael Beyeler @mbeyeler.bsky.social · 11d

👁️🧠 New preprint: We demonstrate the first data-driven neural control framework for a visual cortical implant in a blind human!

TL;DR Deep learning lets us synthesize efficient stimulation patterns that reliably evoke percepts, outperforming conventional calibration.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Diagram showing three ways to control brain activity with a visual prosthesis. The goal is to match a desired pattern of brain responses. One method uses a simple one-to-one mapping, another uses an inverse neural network, and a third uses gradient optimization. Each method produces a stimulation pattern, which is tested in both computer simulations and in the brain of a blind participant with an implant. The figure shows that the neural network and gradient methods reproduce the target brain activity more accurately than the simple mapping.

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 12d

I'm just seeing the overlapping JND curve with something 1/500th the value 😁

Reposted by Maciek Szul

Jason da Silva Castanheira @jasondasilvac.bsky.social · 13d

Quantifying rhythmic and arrhythmic brain activity is a hot 🥵 topic. But how independent are the two components from one another? 🤔 In my latest work with @smfleming.bsky.social & @matlandry.bsky.social, I explore the relationship between the two.

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Quantifying Rhythmic and Arrhythmic Components of Brain Activity

Brain activity comprises both rhythmic (periodic) and arrhythmic (aperiodic) components. These signal elements vary across healthy aging, and disease, and may make distinct contributions to conscious ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 14d

Sorry 😁 well, this approach is not only infrequent but also invisible.

Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 14d

In a Bayesian way yes, in a frequentist framework it compounds the error.

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 14d

Peak LARPing: riding a Harley Davidson in Europe.

Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 15d

You must have employed a consultancy firm, because they have the best record of conning universities out of money (aka "Congrats for the new position!")

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 15d

What a nice score today. The record shop had Handsome Boy Modelling School too, but I decided to spend my budget on Rollins Band.

Two used CDs of "Come in and Burn" and "Insert Band Here: Live in Australia 1990" by Rollins Band.

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Richard Gao @rdgao.bsky.social · 15d

I've been waiting some years to make this joke and now it’s real:

I conned somebody into giving me a faculty job!

I’m starting as a W1 Tenure-Track Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt in a week (lol), in the Faculty of CS and Math

and I'm recruiting PhD students 🤗

a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window

ALT: a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Maciek Szul

Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró) @biotay.bsky.social · 17d

1/2 Our immune system responds just by being around someone who appears to be sick.

Not only that, but our peripersonal space also expands.

This has been demonstrated using virtual reality, EEG, and analysis of innate lymphoid cells.

(paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · 17d

Later maturation of cortex in humans may support a greater postnatal plasticity.

Btw another study that would greatly benefit in noninvasive extraction of cortical layers from MRI, which I think is currently a holy hanging fruit in non invasive structural imaging.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Humans have a longer period of cortical maturation across depth and hierarchy than macaques

Cortical development in primates follows a hierarchical gradient, but how maturation varies across cortical depth and between species remains unclear. This study shows that humans and macaques share c...

journals.plos.org

Reposted by Maciek Szul

Maciek Szul @maciekszul.bsky.social · Jun 4

Another educational piece for our non-medical continuous glucose monitor users. Individual interpretations of fluctuations require a more detailed history (a diary and recordings).

Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · Jun 4

What's the meaning of the glucose spikes after eating?
A new @naturemedicine.bsky.social study finds people have different food triggers and some connect with insulin resistance, along with ways to mitigate spikes
www.nature.com/articles/s41...