Mo Costandi

Neuroscientist/ freelance writer.
Author of BODY AM I: THE NEW SCIENCE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

Out now in paperback!

"A fascinating and mind-stretching page-turner" - @davideagleman

"Absorbing and expansive" - @DrLindseyFitz

"Deeply enjoyable" - Frederique de Vignemont

[Jonathan Xu @jonxuxu]

We successfully predicted emotion from brain activity, achieving >2x performance to the previous state of the art.

Alljoined collected a dataset of 3,408 videos paired with EEG data across 24 participants, covering happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust, and neutral emotion.

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

"Neurons fire much more erratically than researchers thought. What does that mean for how the brain works?" https://t.co/ak6DeuRoJ7

[News from Science @NewsfromScience]

Deepfakes are everywhere, but digital forensics investigators are fighting back.

Learn more: https://t.co/KnPIUJmCEp

[nature @Nature]

Octopuses and squid have elaborate brains. How did their intelligence evolve?

https://t.co/qW5dwve4lD

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

Read this instead:
https://t.co/5tYOy2Du7Y

[Jack El-Hai @Jack_ElHai]

This piece on #lobotomy exhibits many of the dangers of AI-generated videos. It uses no real images and is almost 100 percent factually wrong. https://t.co/nu4tYf1fEe

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

"Recently, neuroscientists described a new form of neuroplasticity that might be helping the brain learn across a timescale of several seconds — long enough to capture the behavioral process of learning from a single experience."
https://t.co/RqqhfSDgWb

[The Brain Prize @BrainPrize]

The review article on the 2026 Brain Prize winners' science is out: The cellular architecture of touch and pain, by Professor Fan Wang (MIT, US)

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

Movie reconstruction from mouse brain visual cortical activity
https://t.co/rYmMhICYff

[nature @Nature]

Older people with exceptional memory have a surprisingly high number of young neurons

https://t.co/LOf0ob9zdS

[nature @Nature]

Veins in the skull can rearrange their borders to accommodate patrolling immune cells

https://t.co/xYRyUz2FpU

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

One of the many extraordinary illustrations produced in 1745 by Gautier D’Agoty, which together form his Essai d’Anatomie, a remarkably detailed atlas of the head, neck, and shoulder areas of the human body, with explanatory text in French. More here: https://t.co/LOZ17yrYpE

[allen institute @AllenInstitute]

Our take on the Christmas tree! 🎄🧠

In this video by our #ElectronMicroscopy team, a fluffy pyramidal neuron is lit by twinkling input synapses. To make it, a brain sample was cut into 1000s of nm-thin sections and millions of high-res images were taken.

[Jaan Aru @jaaanaru]

To make real progress on the problem of consciousness, we need a new theory of biological computation.

Our first step to understand what makes neural computations special is out now in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 🎉

https://t.co/bvDrjIOGN0

Spearheaded by @MilinkovBorjan

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

well, this is truly bad news. It turns out Oliver Sacks made up a lot of stuff in his books (books which I loved till now), and also covered up for horrific behavior from others and from himself.
Via @hbdchick:
Depaywalled & dePinkerized version:
https://t.co/W0a8JlYvuZ

[New Humanist @NewHumanist]

✨ New online:

Five experts offer their thoughts on the future of human intelligence - featuring @drkatedevlin, Martha Nussbaum, @richardsusskind, @ZiyadMarar and @mocost
https://t.co/YoqVN7TMQb

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

Or is it a giant Purkinje cell?

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

The Mississippi river and its tributaries.

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

@LucinaUddin I'm writing a feature about cognitive flexibility, and wondered if you might be available for a chat some time in the next few days?

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

In utero cerebrovascular surgery
https://t.co/bZR5WSmUyw
https://t.co/wkULWMNgLo

[Sebastian Seung @SebastianSeung]

Interactive brain-body connectivity at the Codex. Click on thorax, salivary gland, etc, and see the neurons associated with that body part! H/T @mottcallie https://t.co/5KZxJTVdqx

[Mo Costandi @mocost]

Rubber arm illusion in octopus
(Kawashima & Ikeda)
https://t.co/3geaYFaAao

"we used the rubber hand illusion to demonstrate that an octopus, an invertebrate (cephalopod mollusk), also experiences body ownership of its arms."