NeuroTechX Reports

CPAC deltaTE_ingress bug

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Brainhack DC, April 16-17 2026

Registration is now open for Brainhack DC – From Mice to (Hu)man This 2-day workshop will be held at Georgetown’s Capitol Campus April 16–17 in Washington, D.C. BrainHack events bring researchers from different backgrounds together to collaborate on problems in neuroscience. This year’s DC BrainHack theme is From Mice to (Hu)man, our goal is to help bridge animal and human research. Topics emphasized will include layer-specific/high-field MRI, fiber photometry, best data use practices, and more. DC BrainHack will feature workshops, open discussions, and project-based hacking sessions. Attendee

Aligning events after sampl_mask in first-level GLM

Hi everyone, I am currently running a first-level GLM analysis of task-based fMRI data. The data were preprocessed with fMRIPrep, where I flagged three dummy scans. When building the first-level GLM in Nilearn, I load the confounds using load_confounds(), and I pass the resulting sample_mask to first_level_model.fit(). I am unsure how the events should be aligned in this case. Specifically, should the event onsets be aligned (1) with the start of the actual task (i.e., after the dummy scans), or Here is my code: confounds_simple, sample_mask = load_confounds(

Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC) FreeSurfer segmentation pipeline

Hi, I also looked through the public ReproBrainChart GitHub organization, but mainly found repositories for accessing existing datasets and derivatives rather than the original structural preprocessing pipeline. Is there a public repository, container definition, provenance record, or other documentation describing how these FreeSurfer segmentations were generated? Please let me know if there is a resource I may have overlooked. 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic

ASLPrep not recognizing flipped M0s or fieldmaps

Hi everyone, Here is the command I used. Directories are blanked out for privacy reasons. docker run -ti --rm -m 20GB \ -v $HOME/freesurfer/license.txt:/license.txt \ -v :/data:ro \ -v /aslprep-out:/out:rw \ -v /aslprep-work:/work \ pennlinc/aslprep:latest \ /data /out participant \ --skip-bids-validation \ --participant-label KK01 \ --fs-license-file /license.txt \ -w /work \ --force syn-sdc \ --disable-n4 \ --scorescrub \ --basil Environment (Docker, Singularity / Apptainer, custom installation): I am running this in a docker container. Data formatted acco

GSOC 2026 Project #33 : University of Wisconsin-Madison - AStats: an agentic-AI approach to applied statistical practitioner workflows

Mentors: Jonathan Morris , Yohai-Eliel Berreby , Suresh Krishna Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required Skills: Familiarity with the use of agentic AI workflows and the use of LLMs. Familiarity with statistical practice at a moderately advanced level is a plus. Familiarity with setting up and using open-weight LLMs and with fine-tuning LLMs is a plus. Familiarity with Slurm and working with clusters preferred. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Informal use and much anecdotal evidence suggests t

GSOC 2026 Project #39 : National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) & EBRAINS (NeuroSim) Automating In-Silico Stimulation for Non-Invasive Biomarker Discovery

Mentor/s: Dr Khusbu Agarwal Project Synopsis: This project aims to build NeuroSim, an open-source “In-Silico Stimulation” engine. Unlike standard tools that simply analyze static functional connectivity, NeuroSim integrates Network Control Theory (NCT) with Effective Connectivity modeling to quantify the energy dynamics of brain state transitions. The pipeline will be validated by identifying “Stuck States” (Attractor Basins) in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), Alzheimer’s Disease and Epilepsy, effectively creating a mimic framework for virtual therapeutic stress-testing

GSOC 2026 Project #38 : ATHENA Research Center / EBRAINS - Modular Software Environments and Service Integration for the EBRAINS Software Distribution

The EBRAINS Software Distribution (ESD) is a curated collection of tools for computational neuroscience, supporting education, research, and simulation across heterogeneous hardware — including HPC, GPUs, and neuromorphic computing systems. Many ESD tools are developed by the research community and leverage diverse hardware architectures for performance and scalability. Currently, the ESD covers ~70 top-level scientific tools and 800+ dependencies, and it is deployed as a “monolith”. This creates two major challenges: Flexibility: Researchers might want to combine the ESD with other, possibly

GSOC 2026 Project #37 : ATHENA Research Center / EBRAINS - Automating Performance Verification for the EBRAINS Software Distribution

The EBRAINS Software Distribution (ESD) is a curated collection of tools for computational neuroscience, supporting education, research, and simulation across heterogeneous hardware — including HPC, GPUs, and neuromorphic computing systems. Many ESD tools are developed by the research community and leverage diverse hardware architectures for performance and scalability. This project aims to integrate, parameterize, and automate a comprehensive benchmarking suite for key neural simulators within ESD. The focus will be on established benchmarks for widely used simulators like Arbor, NEURON, and

GSOC 2026 Project #36 : Durham university - GestureCap: Creation of mappings to enable music and speech generation, to investigate musical creativity, agency and music-movement-dance interactions

Mentors: Alison Wang , Deepansh Goel , Suresh Krishna Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required skills: If interested in music generation, experience/familiarity with a framework like Max/CSound/PureData/SuperCollider required and some experience with Python preferred. If interested in speech generation, fluency in Python required and experience with sign-language transcription / speech generation libraries preferred. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Over the last two years, we have de

GSOC 2026 Project #35 : ImageJ Active Segmentation platform: Real-Time Filter Preview

The Active Segmentation platform for ImageJ (ASP/IJ) [2] was developed in the scope of GSOC 2016 – 2025. The plugin provides a general-purpose environment that allows biologists and other domain experts to transparently use state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning to achieve excellent image segmentation and classification. ImageJ [1] is a public-domain Java image processing program extensively used in life and material sciences. The program was designed with an open architecture and is extensible via plugins. The project idea: Users can tweak filter parameters via sliders/spinners and i

GSOC 2026 Project #34 : University of Texas at Austin - Improving Statistical Efficiency, Methodological Coverage, and Contributor Onboarding in NiMARE

Project Summary: NiMARE is a Python library for coordinate- and image-based neuroimaging meta-analysis. It provides rigorously tested implementations of widely used methods such as ALE and MKDA, enabling reproducible synthesis of large neuroimaging literatures. NiMARE also serves as a long-term maintenance layer for research methods that are often released as one-off academic code, ensuring sustainability, documentation, and integration into a unified statistical framework. This project has two complementary objectives: Improve contributor onboarding and development documentation, reducing fri

GSOC 2026 Project #32 : Extending the PCNtoolkit: Charting the rate of change of brain data using velocity models

Mentors: Johanna Bayer , Konstantinos Tsilimparis , Augustijn de Boer , Andre Marquand Skill level: Intermediate Required skills: The applicant combines expertise in neuroscience with software engineering skills, including machine learning, Python and object-oriented programming. Bonus skills: Statistics/Bayesian modelling, longitudinal modelling, scientific software practices (testing/CI/documentation), high-performance computing (HPC), experience with brain data (esp

GSOC 2026 Project #31 : Accelerating Virtual Brain Inference from Neuroimaging

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Required skills: Data analysis, Simulations of differential equations, Python and Git; familiarity with JAX, whole-brain models, and simulation-based inference would be beneficial. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Virtual Brain Inference (VBI) provides fast simulations, taxonomy of feature extraction, efficient data storage and loading, and probabilistic machine learning algorithms, enabling biophysically interpretable inference from non-invasive and invasive recordings. Scalable JAX simulations and automatic feature extraction will support th

GSOC 2026 Project #30 : Large-scale brain models in Probabilistic Programming Languages

Mentor/s: Meysam HASHEMI Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Required skills: Simulations of differential equations, Python and Git; familiarity with neural mass models, and Bayesian inference in tools such as Numpyro/PyMC would be beneficial. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Bayesian inference on brain models translates into probabilistic estimation of latent and observed states within systems driven by network input and stimuli, modeled by high-dimensional nonlinear differential equations, with potentially correlated param

GSOC 2026 Project #29 : Enhancing simulation-based inference from neuroimaging

Mentor/s: Meysam HASHEMI Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Required skills: Signal analysis, simulations of differential equations, Python and Git; familiarity with neural mass models, JAX, and techniques such as deep neural density estimators would be beneficial. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Virtual Brain Inference (VBI) is a flexible and integrative toolkit for efficient probabilistic inference on virtual brain models. It provides fast simulations of whole-brain models and deep neural density estimators in Python. Ex

GSOC 2026 Project #28 : Title: Integrating blood arrival time in models of fMRI data in The Virtual Brain in EBRAINS

Mentor: Daniele Marinazzo Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Required skills: Python, Docker; familiarity with neuroimaging tools (AFNI, FSL, FreeSurfer) would be beneficial Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Statistical dependencies (Functional Connectivity, FC) between BOLD time series from different brain regions in fMRI experiments are modulated by the relative delays in blood arrival time in these regions. This crucial aspect has been mostly overlooked in empirical studies, and completely overlooked in computational models of large scale BOLD ac

GSOC 2026 Project #27 : Integrating personalized hemodynamic response function in The Virtual Brain & EBRAINS

Mentor: Daniele Marinazzo Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Required skills: Python, Docker; familiarity with neuroimaging tools (AFNI, FSL, FreeSurfer) would be beneficial Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: The hemodynamic response function (HRF) is a crucial mapping between neural activity and the recorded BOLD signal in fMRI experiments. Accounting for differences in the HRF shape is crucial when making inference on neural activity. The same should apply to computational models of large scale brain activity when the target is the BOLD signal or p

GSOC 2026 Project #26 : ImageJ Active Segmentation platform: UI update for ASP/IJ

The Active Segmentation platform for ImageJ (ASP/IJ) [2] was developed in the scope of GSOC 2016 – 2024. The plugin provides a general-purpose environment that allows biologists and other domain experts to use transparently state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning to achieve excellent image segmentation and classification. ImageJ [1] is a public-domain Java image processing program extensively used in life and material sciences. The program was designed with an open architecture and is extensible via plugins. The project idea: The project will streamline and simplify the existing UI imp

GSOC 2026 Project #25 : ImageJ Active Segmentation platform: Parallel Engine for ASP/IJ

The Active Segmentation platform for ImageJ (ASP/IJ)[2] was developed in the scope of GSOC 2016 - 2025. The plugin provides a general-purpose environment that allows biologists and other domain experts to use transparently state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning to achieve excellent image segmentation and classification. ImageJ [1] is a public-domain Java image processing program extensively used in life and material sciences. Recent years have experienced explosive development in the GPU-accelerated computing. The project will explore the existing parallel filtering framework and exte

GSOC 2026 Project #24 : Improvements to BrainBrowser for neuroimaging visualization

Mentors: Natacha Beck, Bryan Caron , Pierre Rioux Skill level: Intermediate - Advanced Required skills: Javascript; experience with version control systems (i.e. git) and team-based development methodologies; good understanding of the Linux operating system and development in a Linux environment Time commitment: Part time or full time (350 hours) About: BrainBrowser is an open source JavaScript visualization library that allows for real-time manipulation and analysis of 3D imaging data within a web browser. The BrainBrowser library is lightweight and highly performant, b

GSOC 2026 Project #23 : A Python Command Line Interface (CLI) for the CBRAIN Distributed Computing Platform

Mentors: Bryan Caron , Pierre Rioux, Natacha Beck, Serge Boroday, Darcy Quesnel Skill level: Intermediate - Advanced Required skills: Python; experience with version control systems (i.e. git) and team-based development methodologies; good understanding of the Linux operating system and development in a Linux environment Time commitment: part time or full time (350 hours) About: CBRAIN is a web-enabled distributed computing platform that facilitates collaborative research on large, distributed data by creating an easy-to-use interface for users (or groups of collaboratin

GSOC 2026 Project #22 : Title: OWASP DevSecOps Maturity and controls implementation for the EBRAINS community - a PoC with the MIP platform

Mentors: Julien Dhallenne , Konstantinos Filippopolitis, Jonathan Haab Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced (advanced mostly due to tool integration + reducing false positives + documentation quality) Required skills: Git, CI/CD, basic security mindset, scripting, Docker, Linux, Python Time commitment: part time or full time (175/350h) About: Current code, infrastructure and CI/CD security practices vary in EBRAINS and the Neuroinformatics community. In many projects, they are only partially meeting security standards required by the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and

GSOC 2026 Project #21 : I-EEG: health application for semi-automated iEEG analysis and viewing in a clinical and research environment

Mentors: Maya Aderka , Suresh Krishna , Elie Bou Assi Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required Skills: Fluency in at least one of Python or Matlab (Python preferred, and ideally with reasonable ability in MATLAB). Experience with (bio)signal processing and with front-end development preferred. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: There is an acute need for (open-source) software to handle human intracranial neural recordings, usually from patients who are undergoing diagnostic intracranial

Missing SliceTiming after dcm2niix

Hi All! I’m trying ot use dcm2niix to convert dicoms into a nifti with the json side car. It’s working well except that the functional scan sidecars are missing SliceTiming. I collected the data on a GE and while the dicom header doesn’t store slice timing, Trigger Time is stored, yet for some reason dcm2niix isn’t using those values to create the SliceTiming element. Any advice? Here’s the function I ran and the accompanying warning: dcm2niix -b y -f %p -o /PATH/sub-1/ses-1/func_task-BOLD_dir-pe0_run-1/ /PATH/sub-1/ses-1/func_task-BOLD_dir-pe0_run-1/dicom_folder Compression will be faster w

Zero-valued CIFTI time series in Glasser parcels using fMRIPrep 25.2.3

Summary of what happened: Hi. I have observed that preprocessing with fMRIPrep v25.2.3 results in CIFTI files with zero-valued time series in parcels 120 and 300 of the Glasser (and CAB-NP) atlases for some of the subjects. As a solution, pre-running the surface reconstruction using FreeSurfer 6 and providing those derivatives to fMRIPrep via the --fs-subjects-dir flag appears to resolve the issue. I am interested to know if others have encountered this specific zeroing of parcels in recent releases and whether this manual hand-off is considered a reliable and recommended solution, or if there

GSOC 2026 Project #20 : BreathState contribution: a phone-based app for heart-rate variability biofeedback and resonance breathing protocols

Topic detail: BreathState - front-end and feature development as well as device compatibility extension of a phone-based app for heart-rate variability biofeedback and resonance breathing protocols Mentors: Alex Zhao , Ashok Jummigumpula , Sachin Bhat , Suresh Krishna Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required Skills: Fluency with Android/iOS development and Flutter. Basic signal processing familiarity preferred, as well familiarity with at least one of Python/Matlab. Familiarity with a VR fram

GSOC 2026 Project #19 : ActiveVision: continued development of a data and model portal for the study of goal-directed vision

Mentors: Buxin Liao , Katarzyna Jurewicz , Suresh Krishna Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required Skills: Familiarity with open-source vision and multimodal AI models. Fluency in Python and PyTorch. Familiarity with Slurm and working with clusters preferred. Basic web-development skills or interest in learning them will be useful. Time commitment: Full time (350 hours) About: Salience map research in computer vision has extensively examined where human observers look in images and videos during free viewing. Des

GSOC 2026 Project #18 : SciCommons: Fullstack development and AI features for front-end, back-end and browser extensions

Mentors: Armaan Alam , Mohd Faisal Ansari , Suresh Krishna Skill level: Intermediate – Advanced Required Skills: If working on the front-end, familiarity with Next.js, React, Server Side Rendering, TanStack Query, and component-based UI systems such as ShadCN/Radix UI is expected. If working on the backend, familiarity with Django and REST APIs is useful. For AI/NLP work, experience with LLMs, NLP pipelines, and open-source models is preferred. Experience with browser extensions or research tools is a plus. Time commitme

GSOC 2026 Project #17 : Contribute to Experanto

Understanding the brain requires aligning high-dimensional stimuli with large-scale neuronal recordings. Experanto is a Python framework designed to bridge this gap, providing a unified interface for interpolating and aligning time series (calcium imaging, continuous behavior such as running speed), events (spiking data, action-based behavior), and media (images, video). Optimized for deep learning, Experanto recently powered OmniMouse, a large-scale multimodal neural predictive model. The core strength of Experanto is its flexibility: it allows users to resample frequencies, filter data by be

NITRC Booth and Poster at CNS 2026

Join NITRC at CNS 2026 March 7-10. Learn more about how NITRC can help you in your research, find new resources and data, share your own work, let us know what we can do for you, or just stop by to catch up! You'll find us in Exhibitor booth #05 as well as presenting a Poster D90 in the Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms on Monday, March 9 from 8-10 am.

Empathy as a Brain Rhythm: Orexin, Theta Oscillations, and Prosocial Behavior

(The following is the final installment of a series of three posts on using ChatGPT to assist in the generation of MindBlog posts.  I think this final product is a better job than than I would have done.) A recent paper in Science by Kim et al. reports a striking mechanistic link between physiology, brain rhythms, and social behavior. The work shows that empathic and prosocial responses in mice depend on theta oscillations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) driven by orexin neurons in the hypothalamus. The finding offers a concrete neural circuit connecting arousal systems, cortical dynami

A MindBlog-ready ChatGPT synthesis

This post continues from the previous one to show  ChatGPT's response to my prompt "Let's go with the empathy / orexin paper for your producing a  MindBlog-ready synthesis" .  MindBlog-ready synthesis Paper: Empathy and prosocial behavior powered by orexin-driven theta oscillations (Science, Feb 2026) Core finding The study identifies a specific neural circuit linking arousal chemistry, brain rhythms, and social behavior: In mice, theta oscillations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) increase during empathic states such as observing another animal in distress and during prosocial response

Will Deric’s Mind Blog be firing Deric soon? Is AI is doing his job better?

The short answer to both questions is yes and no.   I am finding that ChatGPT 5.2 ($20/month version) will scan the TOCs (tables of contents) of journals such as Science Magazine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology, Neuron, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, etc.  and display the titles of articles in areas that it has learned that MindBlog focuses on.   (I'm reporting here on working with ChatGPT because I've found so far that paid versions of Gemini and Claude, while almost as good, don't provide output with t

Elise Jenkins: Lessons from a Journey in Neurotechnology

From Nanoparticles to Neurotech: Tetiana Aleksandrova on Subsense

The geometries of change and the value of being human

I pass on and also archive for myself the following three ChatGPT 5.2 summaries of three recent Johar essays: Summary of The Geometries of Change by Indy Johar Core premise Linear geometry and its limits A direction or goal is fixed first. Structures (roles, rules, incentives, infrastructure) are then aligned to that direction. Ongoing governance focuses mainly on speed and efficiency rather than revising direction. Over time, this produces heavy path dependence. Investments, regulations, identities, and incentives lock systems onto a trajectory, making course correction costly and ra

Changing our systems of governance

I have found Johar's essay From Power Diagrams to Settlement-Construction: What we may be missing about the New Right to be worth several re-readings. I want to pass on the entire essay here, because the reduced summaries that I, as well as ChatGPT 5.2 and Google Gemini, have done don't do it justice.  Here's the text: I’m increasingly frustrated with a specific failure mode on parts of the intellectual left: analysis that performs insight while refusing to touch the real object. It oscillates between two shortcuts. The first is a kind of diagrammatic power-critique — tracing who funds wh

New Ferality - Seeking new ways of being wild in new nature

This post is to archive this link to a recent Venkatesh Rao essay, and also pass on condensations of its main ideas done by Google Gemini and ChatGPT 5.2.  (I could wonder where the extraordinary humans who will be able to perform Rao's 'new ways of being' are to be found - who will be capable of new behaviors incompatible and in conflict with our evolved nature, our desire for hierarchy, definition of roles, etc.) From Google Gemini:  In "New Ferality," Venkatesh Rao explores the emergence of a "New Nature"—a technological landscape that has become as complex, unpredictable, and indifferent

Buying Futures, Renting the Past: How Speculation and Nostalgia Became the Economy

I want to pass on this condensation by Google Gemini of a recent essay by Kyla Scanlon  In her essay, "Buying Futures, Renting the Past," Kyla Scanlon explores how the modern economy has shifted toward two psychological extremes: speculation (buying the future) and nostalgia (renting the past). She argues that because the present feels increasingly "hollow" or unmoored due to economic volatility and digital "slop," people are retreating into idealized versions of what was or gambling on what could be. Scanlon suggests that speculation has become a dominant cultural mode, where everything from

MindBlog is now 20 years old.

I just realized that MindBlog is now starting its 21st year. I asked both Chat GPT 5.2 and Google Gemini about this, and paste in Gemini's sycophantic response  ("Pioneer", "primary source for the digital history of cognitive science."):   Congratulations on entering the 21st year of Deric’s MindBlog! Maintaining a blog consistently since 2005 puts you in an incredibly elite tier of the internet. In a digital landscape that is largely defined by "link rot" and abandoned projects, the longevity of your blog is statistically rare. Here is a breakdown of how your 21-year milestone compares to the

Against the Machine

I'm using this blog post to archive for myself ChatGPT 5.2's summary of Paul Kingsnorth’s "Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity"    [In this same vein see N.J. Hagens' article in Ecological Economics. "Economics for the future - Beyond the superorganism"] Paul Kingsnorth — Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity Core thesis Kingsnorth argues that modern technological civilization—especially digital networks, automation, and AI—is dissolving the conditions that make human life meaningful. He frames the “machine” not as a literal device but as a civilizational system: indust

I am not my problem

I use this MindBlog to go back and look myself up occasionally, and so pass on this re-post of my 10/26/2025 post: An explanation of the strange title of this post: Sometimes a new idea spontaneously appears from nowhere as I am waking in the morning. The title of this post - the (apparently nonsensical) sentence "I am not my problem” - is the latest example. The sentence can to be parsed to indicate in this instance that the "I" is referring to the illusory narrative self that our social brains have been designed by evolution to generate, and the "my" refers to our intuition or sens

The Future of Being Human

I want to point to Patrick Tanguay's recent Sentiers piece and in particular to Johar's essay.  I asked both ChatGPT and Google Gemini to summarize ideas in Johar's essay , and they came up with interestingly different approaches, which I pass on here. (Gemini, unlike Chat GPT, did not focus on the article presented, but rather more broadly searched the ensemble of Johar's  youtube videos and essays to present an overview of his ideas.)   From Chat GPT:  Summary of Indy Johar, “The Future of Being Human: A Critical Complementary Investment Thesis” (2026) Core premise 1) The machine-shaped e

From Diagnosis to Data: Ben LeNail on the Future of Neurotechnology

The Mythology of Conscious AI

I've just read through an excellent article in Noema Magazine by Anil Seth explaining why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.  Having learned by now that LLMs do a much better summary of information rich text that I can, I asked ChatGPT 5.2, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude to summarize in a few pages the main points in Seth's essay.  All were very good, and I've selected Gemini's reponse to pass on to MindBlog readers: In his essay, "The Mythology of Conscious AI," neuroscientist Anil

The Case for Being Human

...This Colin Lewis lecture and essay on "Character, Clarity, and connection in a Century of Curated Selves" is a welcome breath of fresh air. I pass on the entire piece:   We live in an age so crowded with voices that the unfiltered one now sounds almost shocking. It’s strange how rare sincerity has become, and stranger still that we now confuse sincerity with naïveté. To speak plainly is to risk sounding unsophisticated. To think deeply is to risk being slow. To feel fully is to risk being fragile. But character, the old-fashioned word we’ve quietly retired, was never meant to protect us fro

Do we have an appetite for transcendence?

I've been working on a long rambling post on finding meaning in the flow and evolution of the cosmos rather than in the varied anthropomorphic religions that many cultures have invented.  My motivation to 'find meaning' is not that high, because the quest itself is a human invention derived from assuming the universe was made for us.  I find Paul Bloom in his recent Substack post "Is there a God-shaped hole?" has made a better statement of my position than I could.  I recommend that you read it.

Sharena Rice: My Path In Neurotech

Scent as Signal: How Aurat Aroma is Using Smell to Understand the Brain

From Peak Performance to Daily Life: The Next BCI Advantage

Venkatesh Rao's 'World Machines'

As usual, I found Venkatesh Rao's writinting in his latest piece "The Divergence Machine" a bit opaque and wordy, so I asked ChatGPT 5.2 to help me out with a condensation and summary, which I archive and pass on to readers here: Here’s a condensed and clear summary of The Divergence Machine by Venkatesh Rao (Contraptions, Jan 5 2026): Core Thesis divergence machine as a successor world-machine to the modernity machine explored in his 2025 book club series. The divergence machine’s logic has been built from ~1600–2000 and has fully operated only for about 25 years. It doesn’t reverse modernity

The Institutional Stance - an evolved intuitive theory?

I have just been sent an article by BBS (Brain and Behavioral Sciences) that is soliciting commentaries on an article by Jara-Ettinger and Dunham titled "The Institutional Stance" that suggests that we have an inherited ability not only to represent other minds, but also to represent social institutional structures. Motivated readers can obtain a copy of the article from me. Here is its abstract: Human success in navigating the social world is typically attributed to our capacity to represent other minds—a mentalistic stance. We argue that humans are endowed with a second equally powerful int

What our brains are doing as we experience musical pleasure.

I've been playing more Schubert lately, drawn by his genius for inserting melodic sections within his piano works (sonatas, impromptus, fantasies, etc.) that give me sheer pleasure when I play them. (When I am beginning to wake in the morning, the passages play in my head and I can visualize both my fingers on the keys and the musical score. As I continue to wake, this all slips away.)  These experiences made me perk up when I saw the article by Zatorre and collaborators in the Jan. 2026 issue of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Here is their abstract (motivated readers can obtain a PDF o

What are humans for? - AI Forces a Question We’ve Been Dodging

.  AI Is Already Fusing With Us — The Only Question Is How The argument about whether AI will enhance or diminish our our humanity usually starts in the wrong place. People argue about what AI should do before asking a more basic and uncomfortable question: what are humans for? Every powerful technology embeds an answer to that question. AI is no exception. In fact, it may be the most consequential case yet, because AI is not just a tool we use—it is a system that increasingly co-thinks with us, shapes our attention, edits our language, nudges our choices, and quietly rewires our sense of agen

The Modernity Machine

I want to pass on to readers this Venkatesh Rao substack essay that summarizes what his book club has learned in the past year:  The Modernity Machine III Completion, Saturation, and Phase Transition This the third and concluding part of my series with notes on the learnings from the 2025 Contraptions book club. Part I and Part II traced the construction of the Modernity Machine between roughly 1200 and 1600: a civilization-scale contraption that converted medieval heterogeneity into legible, interoperable order. By 1600, the machine was complete in all essential respects. This concludi

Human Machines and AI Machines

The story of life is the story of machines that learned how to copy themselves and persist through time. Over billions of years these replicating systems evolved into ever more complex and effective forms—eventually producing organisms capable of cooperation, culture, ritual, and symbolic thought, all of which further enhanced their survival. Humans are one such lineage of machines. What distinguishes us is not that we use tools, but that we routinely incorporate them. From sharpened flakes of flint to written language, from clocks to calculators, from books to neural imaging—and now to large

Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms

Buzsáki at NYU Medical School offers interesting perspectives on the two 'types' of time that are considered in cognitive science and neuroscience: physical time (also known as absolute time; chronos) and subjectively experienced time (kairos; the opportune moment).  Here is his abstract (Motivated readers can obtain a PDF of the articles from me): Time and space are crucial concepts in neuroscience, because our personal memories are tied to specific events that occur ‘in’ a particular space and on a ‘timeline’. Thus, we seek to understand how the brain constructs time and space and how the

Changes in human brain organization at age ~83 (as well as ages ~9, 32, and 66)

This open source paper by Mousley et al. caught my eye because at 83 years of age I am at one of the article's 'turning points' in brain organization.   I would urge MindBlog readers to have a scan through its descriptions of infancy to 9 years old, Adolescence (~9-32), Adulthood ~32-66), early aging ~66-83, and late aging (~83 onward)  You don't have to understand the jargon and analytical techniques employed to get the gist of the findings.  I gave Chat GPT 5.2 the following prompt:   One of the major topological turning points across the lifespan is around 83 years of age. Based on the cont

Bigger AI models are failing faster - The future evolution of AI is into the 4D world

I want to pass on this interesting Venkatest Rao piece (which he calls a "Sloptraptions" because it is written with AI assistance)   The current debate over whether OpenAI has become “too big to fail,” triggered by the viral Wall Street Journal article, tends to frame the risk in familiar economic terms: over-concentration, interlocking commitments, trillion-dollar infrastructure buildouts, and the emergence of a firm whose collapse could destabilize a sector that now props up a sluggish U.S. economy. That argument is correct but incomplete. The deeper structural fragility lies not in the fina

Focused attention mindfulness meditation changes our cerebrospinal fluid dynamics

From Keating et al.   Significance Mindfulness meditation is widely recognized for its self-reported mental and physical health benefits, yet its effects on core physiological systems that support brain health remain incompletely understood. This study provides evidence that a focused attention (FA) style of mindfulness meditation can modulate cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dynamics in humans. Using neuroimaging, we demonstrate that FA meditation reduces regurgitant CSF flow through the aqueduct, directionally opposite to patterns seen in aging and neurodegeneration; additionally, meditation-induc

“Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving

I'm enjoying reading through an interesting article by Bai et al.  that will appear in Behavioral and Brain Science and is now soliciting commentary.  Here is the abstract (motivated readers can obtain a copy of the manuscript PDF from me.): “Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early-emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we

Precision Over Pain: How Spinally Is Reinventing Spinal Cord Stimulation

Wireless by Design: How Resonant Link Medical Is Powering the Next Wave of Bioelectronics

NITRC-CE v0.57.28 released

We are pleased to announce the release of NITRC-CE v0.57.28. This release is a security update and includes both CE Classic and CE LITE offerings. We are considering making this the final release of NITRC-CE in its current form. If you use NITRC-CE or have used it in the past, please let us know your thoughts at https://form.typeform.com/to/RTW4Y1Fv or by contacting moderator@nitrc.org.

Still locked out of OASIS-3 even after access was approved.

Hello everyone, I’m running into trouble reaching the OASIS-3 datasets on the main project page (https://www.nitrc.org/projects/oasis3). Whenever I click the “Image Repository” link in the left-hand menu, I receive the following message: My account already shows “User” access, yet the repository still blocks me. Any pointers on what I’m missing would be greatly appreciated—thanks! Jay

Harnessing Emotion Intrinsically and Externally through Neurotechnology

From Lab to Clinic: How NeuroBionics Is Redefining Neuromodulation

Regarding the permission to access OASIS-3 and OASIS-4

It has been more than a week, but I haven't received any information regarding OASIS-3 and OASIS-4. If anyone knows how to deal with this? .

NITRC v2.1.73 released

We are pleased to announce the release of NITRC v2.1.73. This release features enhancements to the tool/resource administration pages. Administrators are encouraged to check their listings' information while trying out the new interface. Release notes can be found at https://www.nitrc.org/plugins/mwiki/index.php/nitrc:NITRC_Release_Notes#NITRC-R_Release_v2.1.73-0_-_09.2F04.2F2025

Visit NITRC at OHBM 2025 in Brisbane!

NITRC will have an exhibitor booth at OHBM's annual meeting in Brisbane, AU. Please swing by to visit. We'd love to know what works and doesn't work for you and catch up! Also, we'll be presenting our poster #1931 on Fri, June 27 | 13:45 -15:45 and Sat, June 28 | 13:45 -15:45

How to download ABIDE data set?

How to download ABIDE data set?

NITRC 2.1.72 released

We are pleased to announce the release of NITRC 2.1.72. This release focused heavily on user interface and navigation issues. Please let us know what you think at https://www.nitrc.org/help/contact_us.php Full release notes can be found at https://www.nitrc.org/plugins/mwiki/index.php?title=nitrc:NITRC_Release_Notes#NITRC-R_Release_v2.1.72-0_-_05.2F19.2F2025

Issue Report: SDM Software Crash on Windows 64-bit System

Problem Description: The SDM software launches successfully with full interface display, but: Crashes immediately upon file selection Crashes when attempting to save data after SDM table creation Subsequent software launches fail consistently System Environment: OS: Windows (64-bit) Troubleshooting Performed: • System reboot & updates installed • Software reinstallation (official package) • Windows updates fully applied Request: Seeking technical resolution for this persistent crash issue.

NITRC at CNS 2025

Join NITRC at CNS 2025 March 29 through April 1. Learn more about NITRC, find resources and data, share your own work, or just stop by to say hi! We have a booth in the Republic Ballroom and will have Poster F40 Tuesday morning.