Tim Lawn
LightNews LightNews
timlawn.bsky.social
Tim Lawn
@timlawn.bsky.social
130 followers 150 following 14 posts
Postdoctoral fellow 🧠 @MGHMartinos @harvardmed
Neuromodulatory systems | Heterogeneity | Networks
https://timlawn.github.io/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Tim Lawn
springernature.com
A recently discovered brain network that links cognition (thinking) and actions may have an important role in Parkinson’s disease and could improve its treatment, according to a study published in Nature: spklr.io/63320DMwOi

#Neuroscience #Neuroskyence #Parkinsons 🧠 🧪
Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder - Nature
The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.
spklr.io
February 4, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
richardfbetzel.bsky.social
Excited to share a new preprint, led by the inimitable @colleenhughes.bsky.social!

Individualized Mapping of Functional Brain Networks in Older Adulthood

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A short 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org
February 3, 2026 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
Individualized Mapping of Functional Brain Networks in Older Adulthood https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.30.702883v1
February 3, 2026 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
nathumbehav.nature.com
Luppi et al. identify transcriptomic and connectomic controllers of information integration and its breakdown induced by anaesthesia across species
Convergent transcriptomic and connectomic controllers of information integration and its anaesthetic breakdown across mammalian brains - Nature Human Behaviour
Luppi et al. identify transcriptomic and connectomic controllers of information integration and its breakdown induced by anaesthesia in humans, macaques, marmosets and mice.
dlvr.it
January 29, 2026 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
plosbiology.org
How are energy #metabolism pathways distributed across the #cortex? @alaindagher.bsky.social &co map five pathways in the human #brain, linking metabolic organization with brain structural & functional properties, as well as developmental dynamics @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c1JVp8
Left: Pathways involved in brain energy metabolism. Energy metabolism refers to processes involved in energy production from nutrient molecules. Glucose is the main energy source in the brain under normal physiological conditions. Glucose entering brain cells can be utilized in three parallel pathways. It can be processed through glycolysis to produce 2 ATP and 2 pyruvate molecules (blue). Lactate dehydrogenases catalyze the interconversion of lactate and pyruvate (purple). Pyruvate is transported into mitochondria, where it enters the TCA cycle to generate high-energy electron carriers NADH and FADH2 (green), driving the complete oxidation of glucose through the mitochondrial electron transport chain (red). Glucose entering the brain can also enter the PPP. PPP is an anabolic pathway that uses glucose to produce 5-carbon sugars and NADPH, an essential co-factor used in nucleotide and lipid biosynthesis (yellow). Glucose can also be stored in the form of glycogen via glycogen synthase, a process mainly active in astrocytes. Right: Energy pathway maps. Colors show z-scored mean expression values across all genes in each pathway. ppp, pentose phosphate pathway; tca, tricarboxylic acid cycle; oxphos, oxidative phosphorylation; lactate, lactate metabolism and transport.
February 2, 2026 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
plosbiology.org
How are energy #metabolism pathways distributed across the #cortex? @alaindagher.bsky.social &co map five pathways in the human #brain, linking metabolic organization with brain structural & functional properties, as well as developmental dynamics @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c1JVp8
Left: Pathways involved in brain energy metabolism. Energy metabolism refers to processes involved in energy production from nutrient molecules. Glucose is the main energy source in the brain under normal physiological conditions. Glucose entering brain cells can be utilized in three parallel pathways. It can be processed through glycolysis to produce 2 ATP and 2 pyruvate molecules (blue). Lactate dehydrogenases catalyze the interconversion of lactate and pyruvate (purple). Pyruvate is transported into mitochondria, where it enters the TCA cycle to generate high-energy electron carriers NADH and FADH2 (green), driving the complete oxidation of glucose through the mitochondrial electron transport chain (red). Glucose entering the brain can also enter the PPP. PPP is an anabolic pathway that uses glucose to produce 5-carbon sugars and NADPH, an essential co-factor used in nucleotide and lipid biosynthesis (yellow). Glucose can also be stored in the form of glycogen via glycogen synthase, a process mainly active in astrocytes. Right: Energy pathway maps. Colors show z-scored mean expression values across all genes in each pathway. ppp, pentose phosphate pathway; tca, tricarboxylic acid cycle; oxphos, oxidative phosphorylation; lactate, lactate metabolism and transport.
February 2, 2026 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
plosbiology.org
How does superficial white matter contribute to large-scale #brain function? @borismontreal.bsky.social &co use an approach based on 3D histology & 7-Tesla MRI to reveal associations between superficial #WhiteMatter microstructure & diverse cortical properties @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/460WNIz
Histology-based SWM microstructure intensity profile. Top: SWM sampling framework from 3D postmortem histology. The Laplacian field within the white matter domain was solved for each histological classified volume to sample 50 SWM surfaces, spanning from the GM/WM interface to 3 mm into the white matter. These surfaces were then mapped to each histological staining method, allowing the extraction of intensity profiles for each vertex across SWM depths. Bottom: Alterations in the intensity distributions of histological features across SWM depths. The GM/WM interface (0 mm) and 25 representative SWM surfaces (up to 3 mm into the white matter) are shown. The surfaces showing the greatest variation in SWM, from 0 to 1.8 mm into the white matter, were mapped onto the brain alongside the intensity profiles on the left.
February 2, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
giuliaabaracc.bsky.social
Now in press one of my last PhD projects! We traced the neurobiological profile of fMRI BOLD signal variability, a measure that has been related to age, behaviour, disease status, but had not yet been fully contextualised within the brain's multiscale architecture. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The biological role of local and global fMRI BOLD signal variability in multiscale human brain organization - Nature Communications
Baracchini et al. reveal that temporal variability in fMRI brain signals encodes biologically meaningful information across spatial and temporal scales, highlighting its role in healthy brain function...
www.nature.com
January 30, 2026 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
cate-cholamine.bsky.social
We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867
January 24, 2026 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
drbreaky.bsky.social
People have been looking at "AI & brains" through the lens of LLMs/transformers. But what latent diffusion? (think text-to-image/video platforms such as Midjourney).

**Class conditioned latent diffusion and semantically cued hippocampus share a remarkably similar computational architecture...**
January 25, 2026 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
lampinen.bsky.social
Should you go to academia or industry for research in AI or cognitive science? It's the most common question I get asked by PhD students, and I've written up some of my thoughts on the answer, as an epilogue to my research-focused series on these fields: infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/on-researc...
On research careers in academia and industry
The epilogue to a series on Cognitive Science and AI
infinitefaculty.substack.com
January 23, 2026 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
earlkmiller.bsky.social
George Mashour "Consciousness and the Dying Brain" at the MIT Consciousness Club.
#neuroscience
January 22, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
estamatakis.bsky.social
Consciousness is personal. Awake story listening fMRI shows that default mode network dynamics diverge across individuals, supporting personal experience, while auditory & attention networks stay aligned, underpinning shared experience. #Neuroscience #Consciousness
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
The neural correlates of shared and individual experience - Communications Biology
The authors find a correspondence between dynamic ratings of subjective experience and brain network dynamics during a naturalistic auditory story. They then explore which networks differentially supp...
www.nature.com
January 22, 2026 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
pessoabrain.bsky.social
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻?
Almost always we average responses thus equating response variability with noise.
Well, we shouldn't because variability is also signal, not noise to be entirely discarded.
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
January 21, 2026 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
thetransmitter.bsky.social
When a brain researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.

By @lyrebard.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...
A brief history of precision self-scanning
When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.
www.thetransmitter.org
January 21, 2026 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
tobywise.bsky.social
Now online in @biologicalpsych.bsky.social CNNI - our paper showing that reliance on habitual responding in transdiagnostic compulsivity may be underpinned by uncertainty about learned environmental structure

📃 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
January 21, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
mattwall.bsky.social
New theory of psychedelic mechanisms just dropped:
"Learning as the unifying mechanism of psychedelic action."

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Learning as the unifying mechanism of psychedelic action - Alice Caulfield, Allan H. Young, Mitul Mehta, 2025
Psychedelics are gaining attention as putative treatments for a range of psychiatric conditions, and evidence suggests that they produce sustained behavioural a...
journals.sagepub.com
January 20, 2026 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
thetransmitter.bsky.social
More than 200 published studies and at least seven ongoing clinical trials rely on potentially faulty brain network maps, according to a study published yesterday.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...
Methodological flaw may upend network mapping tool
The lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks for clinical stimulation, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study.
www.thetransmitter.org
January 16, 2026 at 3:18 PM
timlawn.bsky.social
Really thorough breakdown to methodological limitations of lesion network mapping!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Investigating the methodological foundation of lesion network mapping - Nature Neuroscience
The lesion network mapping method links diverse brain lesions to similar functional brain networks, reflecting general brain organization rather than disorder-specific circuits.
www.nature.com
January 16, 2026 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
eikofried.bsky.social
We have reached a situation where (1) the time/resources spent by people applying for grant X often outweighs (2) the time/resources awarded.

For these grants, society loses net time/resources.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Client Challenge
www.nature.com
January 13, 2026 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
wiringthebrain.bsky.social
Gonadal and sex chromosomal contributions to sex differences in mammalian brain organization www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... - really nice work from Armin Raznahan @bogglerapture.bsky.social and colleagues
January 11, 2026 at 8:54 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
tatjanat.bsky.social
Please spread the word🔊My lab is looking to hire two international postdocs. If you want to do comp neuro, combine machine learning and awesome math to understand neural circuit activity, then come work with us! Bonn is such a cool place for neuroscience now, you don't want to miss out.
January 10, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
ndosenbach.bsky.social
Why are gliomas overwhelmingly found in the action-mode network (AMN)? Could its function be contributing or is it that its function lines up with gene expression & receptor patterns? Either way, it raises the possibility of using inhibitory neuromod of the AMN to treat gliomas. #cancerneuroscience
weigangcui.bsky.social weigangcui.bsky.social @weigangcui.bsky.social · Jan 6
Check out our new work on the relationship between glioma and system-level functional networks! We identify that nearly all gliomas localize within a common brain functional network, Action-Mode Network (AMN) .

biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697608v1
January 11, 2026 at 12:54 AM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
flybottleescape.bsky.social
🧠⚡️💊New @nature.com publication !

Mimicking opioid analgesia in cortical pain circuits

We built a brain-behavior framework to decode spontaneous chronic pain in mice—and to biologically mimic morphine with a synthetic opioid gene therapy

nature.com/articles/s41...

@pennmedicine.bsky.social
January 8, 2026 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Tim Lawn
eikofried.bsky.social
After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.

If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.

eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried
If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...
eiko-fried.com
January 7, 2026 at 7:39 PM