Benjamin Kay
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benjaminkay.bsky.social
Benjamin Kay
@benjaminkay.bsky.social
Neuroscientist, statistician, programmer, and dad in St. Louis, Missouri
Check out some compelling and timely work by @nasiametoki.bsky.social on sex vs gender differences in the developing adolescent brain!
Is resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), cortical thickness (CT), or cortical volume more effective at capturing sex and gender differences in the brains of preadolescents?

Check out our new article (doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...) now out in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
October 7, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Ever wondered if your interesting brain-behavior correlation was over- or under-estimated due to head motion, but were afraid to ask? We’ve created a motion impact score for detecting spurious brain-behavior associations, now available in Nature Communications!
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
September 30, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
Poor image quality introduces systematic bias into large neuroimaging datasets, new study of ABCD data shows.

By Natalia Mesa

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/poo...
Poor image quality introduces systematic bias into MRI data
Analyses that include low-quality MRI data underestimate cortical thickness and overestimate surface area, according to new work from the ABCD Study.
www.thetransmitter.org
July 31, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Excited to see the latest paper from @bttyeo.bsky.social's lab finally published in Nature! Now I know the most economical way to spend my grant money on MRI! No surprise, sample size matters, but adequate sampling in scan time can reduce the cost of sampling adequate numbers of participants.
1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social

AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements...

doi.org/10.1038/s415...
July 17, 2025 at 2:42 AM
Once again, if you give @gordonneuro.bsky.social et al a network, they're going to want to characterize its subnetworks... A thought provoking read on the AMN (née CON) and the brain architecture of the decision-action-feedback loop. I always feel smarter after reading these kinds of papers!
July 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Fantastic work from @drdamienfair.bsky.social's using the latest in precision neuroimaging and neuromodulation to untangle the mechanisms of chronic pain!
Alert!!!!

“An Action Networks Model for Pain”

We propose a new model for chronic pain — and highlight two functionally connected cortical networks that could revolutionize how we treat it.

👉 thread below 🧵

osf.io/preprints/ps...
June 26, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
It's not surprising to see that cutting off funding disrupts science and impacts its novelty, but I think it's important that this is documented and shared 🧪 . For more see the news coverage in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Renewal of NIH grants linked to more innovative results, study finds
Survey of hundreds of scientists’ work suggests that cutting off funding disrupts focus and reduces the novelty of research.
www.nature.com
May 23, 2025 at 7:53 PM
My med school textbook says stimulants like Ritalin treat hyperactivity by “stimulating” the brain’s attention and cognitive control systems. We studied children taking stimulants in the ABCD Study, and the largest differences were actually in arousal and reward networks! Check out our preprint!
May 22, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
Had a great time speaking with Sydney about our most recent paper out now in @natcomms.nature.com @macwoodburn.bsky.social . Paper link here: rdcu.be/ehbOy
May 16, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
The brainstem’s red nucleus is an evolutionarily old structure that emerged as animals began to use limbs for walking, but its function in humans reaches beyond motor control, a new study suggests.

By @sydneywyatt.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...
‘Old’ brainstem structure evolved beyond basic motor control
The human red nucleus may also help coordinate action, reward and motivated behavior, a new study suggests.
www.thetransmitter.org
May 16, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
It turns out the brain🧠is silently🤫working when your arm is in a cast. 🩼 🚧
Plastic changes occur, and revert again when the cast is removed … not just in cortex.
April 12, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
It's shocking how little is known about the brainstem red nucleus. In our new paper “The human brainstem’s red nucleus was upgraded to support goal-directed action” out now in @naturecomms.bsky.social we show that current thinking on the red nucleus is in need of a serious upgrade. rdcu.be/ehbOy
April 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
The brain’s action-mode network — a Perspective by Nico U. F. Dosenbach, Marcus E. Raichle & Evan M. Gordon
@ndosenbach.bsky.social @gordonneuro.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The brain’s action-mode network - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
The brain enters an action-mode of function during goal-directed behaviour. In this Perspective, Dosenbach, Raiche and Gordon describe “action-mode” as an informative functional label that reduce...
www.nature.com
January 17, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
The brain’s action-mode is created by a dedicated action-mode network (AMN) rdcu.be/d5odm. In the brain’s mode continuum, AMN sits opposite DMN’s default-mode, as yin-yang. AMN might be key in pain, apathy, Parkinson’s. New @natrevneurosci.bsky.social w/ Marc Raichle & @gordonneuro.bsky.social 🧵 ⬇️
January 2, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Kay
Is it critical to stimulate @ndosenbach.bsky.social's SCAN and CON networks for clinical improvements of Tourette's patients that undergo DBS?

Carlos Baldermann says yes in a cool new paper out in @natureportfolio.bsky.social comms today!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
December 16, 2024 at 6:55 PM