tor wager

Neuroscientist, psychologist, occasional poet, father. Studying how thoughts and feelings are constructed in the brain, esp. with fMRI.

[tor wager @torwager]

#fMRI Analysis courses with @fMRIstats free on @coursera, now rolling enrollment! https://t.co/nauONlIQ7I https://t.co/E7mXqHC7td

[Keck School of Medicine of USC @KECKSchool_USC]

Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC @USCLONI built a brain "growth chart" from 54,583 MRI scans. It detected Alzheimer's and schizophrenia-linked changes before symptoms. Published in Nature Communications today. https://t.co/IizPjXavbX

Photo/Stevens INI

[Rui Costa @ruimcosta]

Today I am proud to announce the launch of the Brain Health Accelerator, a global initiative to transform our understanding of brain disease and accelerate the development of new treatments.

For more than 20 years, the @AllenInstitute has built foundational data, tools, technologies, and knowledge that have helped reshape neuroscience. Today, we are taking the next step: bringing together scientists, clinicians, technologists, AI experts, patient advocates, philanthropists, and industry partners around a shared mission to tackle some of the world’s most devastating brain diseases.

#BrainHealth will initially focus on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, ALS, and Lewy body disease, while building a radically open and collaborative framework designed to accelerate progress across many neurological disorders.

This effort launches with a total commitment of more than $400 million, including $200 million from the Allen Institute (supported by the Fund for Science and Technology), $100 million from the Bezos family, and an additional $100 million from @awscloud, @NIH-supported programs, and @Everything_ALS.

We believe the future of brain health will be built through unprecedented collaboration, cutting-edge biology, advanced AI, and open science.

Science unites us. Together, we can go farther and create a healthier world.

#BrainHealth #Neuroscience #OpenScience #AI #BrainInitiative #NIH #Neurodegeneration #Alzheimers #LewyBodyDisease #Parkinsons #ALS #HuntingtonsDisease

[Ruben Laukkonen @RubenLaukkonen]

Abstraction is insufficient for consciousness.

[Sophont @SophontAI]

NEW RELEASE:

Today we're releasing CortexMAE: a family of fMRI foundation models trained on 2.1K hours of open fMRI data.

We're also releasing Brainmarks: an open benchmark suite for evaluating fMRI foundation models.

Full paper is on arXiv (accepted to ICML 2026)

A thread:

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

Recent studies have revealed the synchronization of neuromodulators including norepinephrine, serotonin, acetylcholine, dopamine, and histamine during sleep.

A new #ScienceReview explores what potential role the synchronization of these oscillations may play in health. https://t.co/fcDdHm1SDP

[Earl K. Miller @MillerLabMIT]

Brains seem to be wired so that signals are “just right”. This paper argues that there is a special “sweet spot” in how the brain is organized that keeps activity balanced.
https://t.co/kIIAqCbYAM
#neuroscience

[Ishmail Abdus-Saboor @IshmailSaboor]

Long-term editing of brain circuits with engineered electrical synapses! I still remember years ago when @KafuiDzirasa from @DukeU @hhmi_science called me beaming with excitement about this new technology. Here it is today @Nature.

https://t.co/5fnW6zW0z6

[kurt.schilling @kurtschilling5]

(1/5) Out today in @Nature! We all know pediatric growth charts for height and weight, but what about the brain's wiring?

Excited to share our new work establishing comprehensive lifespan reference charts for human brain white matter pathways.

https://t.co/xQtsHBpOGR

[CyrilXBT @cyrilXBT]

ANTHROPIC JUST DROPPED 13 FREE CLAUDE CERTIFICATIONS AND ALMOST NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT IT.

Not a YouTube playlist.

Not a third-party course.

Official certifications from the team that built Claude.

Free. Forever.

Here is the full list with links:

START HERE

01. Claude 101 — Learn Claude for everyday work
https://t.co/7y3hN0bL8Q

02. AI Fluency: Frameworks and Foundations
https://t.co/juausxFh7O

03. Introduction to Agent Skills
https://t.co/11ZlK1OaVC

FOR DEVELOPERS

04. Building with the Claude API
https://t.co/aJAciAEw3y

05. Claude Code in Action
https://t.co/c0norD7CU0

06. Intro to Model Context Protocol
https://t.co/iywBhaZn8Z

07. MCP Advanced Topics
https://t.co/y2XQ1snBl9

FOR EDUCATION AND NONPROFITS

08. AI Fluency for Students
09. AI Fluency for Educators
10. Teaching AI Fluency
11. AI Fluency for Nonprofits

FOR ENTERPRISE

12. Claude with Amazon Bedrock
13. Claude with Google Cloud Vertex AI

13 courses. 6 skill levels. 5 audiences. 100% free forever.

The engineers getting hired at $150,000 to $300,000 to work with Claude at the highest level are learning exactly this material.

Anthropic's team just made it available to everyone.

Pro tip: Start with Claude 101 then go straight to Claude Code in Action. That is the fastest path from beginner to builder.

Bookmark this before you pay for another AI course.

Follow @cyrilXBT for every Anthropic resource that compounds your skills the moment it drops.

[Nature Rev Neurosci @NatRevNeurosci]

Large-scale electrophysiology at single-spike resolution — a Review by Joshua H. Siegle & Nicholas A. Steinmetz

https://t.co/LDnMNDCboO

[nature @Nature]

All 22 members of the board that advises and oversees the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a leading funder of basic science, were fired on 24 April without explanation.

https://t.co/HObFlD8bLg

[Zizhuang @zizhuang_miao]

All code and data are publicly available. Maps in Figures 5-6 are available at https://t.co/M5kBxuQJKM. The public fMRI dataset includes this narrative task plus five other tasks and resting-state scans, detailed in https://t.co/DHZdJCzqNP. (10/11)

[Zizhuang @zizhuang_miao]

Excited to share my first-author paper now out in @natcomms (https://t.co/ujkyj4z7ZM)! Here, we asked whether verbal narratives about social interactions engage the same brain areas as audiovisual presentations, and whether they overlap with theory of mind (ToM). (1/11)

[Erik Nook 🏳️‍🌈 @ErikNook]

New paper: @zakijam and I integrate theories of empathy + emotion regulation to describe how therapists have to regulate a "therapeutic emotional circuit" in each session. Lots of applications and avenues for new research. Just published in CPS! https://t.co/YxlHRgn1hA

[NASA @NASA]

LIVE: Watch with us as the Artemis II astronauts make their closest approach to the Moon, traveling farther from Earth than ever before. https://t.co/Zpy7GdTqA8

[NASA @NASA]

Good morning, world! 🌎

We have spectacular new high-resolution images of our home planet, all of us looking back through the Orion capsule window at our Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon.

[bachlab @bachlab_cog]

⏳ Only 1 week left to submit your abstract for #NN2026! Join us in Bonn (May 28-29, 2026) for "Naturalistic Neuroscience: from perception to action and back." Register & submit now: https://t.co/RBAScB4bsX

#Neuroscience #BrainResearch #UniBonn #CognitiveScience #NN2026

[nxthompson @nxthompson]

The US has canceled hundreds of millions in science grants and driven thousands of Ph.D.s out of the federal workforce. China, meanwhile, has poured evermore resources into its research efforts.

If they pass us as a scientific superpower, we shouldn't act surprised. https://t.co/7p01A0YxTn

[North American Pain School @NAPainSchool]

Meet #NAPainSchool 2026 Science communicators!

💫 Stephanie Voss from Mass General Brigham
💫 Lydia Rader from the University of Colorado Boulder
💫 Batu Kaya from the @UofT_Pain
💫 Ynaluak (Nya) Gayluak from The University of Texas at Dallas
💫 Hajira Elahi from @UTMDAnderson

[Claudia Jakubzick @claudjak]

Excited to share- Building on our work defining TRMacs heterogeneity, we show that distinct chemokine+ IM subsets and recruited TAM niches shape pro- and anti-tumor immunity within to the TME, while Ag+ moDCs trafficking to LNs dampen DC-based neoAg vac
https://t.co/iYpHv6O1S4