Joel I Berger
@joelberger.bsky.social
Neuroscientist at University of Iowa Neurosurgery, researching into the neural bases of auditory perception. Also a musician.
Pinned
Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans
In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, w...
doi.org
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
Brain-wide single-neuron bases of working memory for sounds in humans
In order to understand the constantly changing acoustic world our brains must maintain elements of auditory scenes in memory. The neural mechanisms for this fundamental process remain unclear. Here, w...
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM
I rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
Reposted by Joel I Berger
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 27, 2025 at 8:17 PM
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Joel I Berger
Out now in Nature Comms. To learn a new word, we need to remember it. We track factors driving memory of novel words, showing which words we remember or forget is predictable across people, and isolate a distinct region of fusiform cortex sensitive to this memorability.
🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬
🧵👇
🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬
🧵👇
Memorability of novel words correlates with anterior fusiform activity during reading - Nature Communications
To learn new written words, we need to be able to remember their associated letters. Here, the authors show the factors that predict how memorable or forgettable new words are and show a region of hum...
doi.org
February 24, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Out now in Nature Comms. To learn a new word, we need to remember it. We track factors driving memory of novel words, showing which words we remember or forget is predictable across people, and isolate a distinct region of fusiform cortex sensitive to this memorability.
🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬
🧵👇
🧠📈 #VisionScience 🧠💬
🧵👇
Our new preprint is up now, wherein we directly record from a relatively large population of single neurons in human insula, as well as primary auditory cortex, while intracranial participants passively listen to simple sounds (tones/clicks). doi.org/10.1101/2025... (1/5) 🧠📈🧵👇
Human insula neurons respond to simple sounds during passive listening
The insula is critical for integrating sensory information from the body with that arising from the environment. Although previous studies suggest that posterior insula is sensitive to sounds, auditor...
doi.org
March 14, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Our new preprint is up now, wherein we directly record from a relatively large population of single neurons in human insula, as well as primary auditory cortex, while intracranial participants passively listen to simple sounds (tones/clicks). doi.org/10.1101/2025... (1/5) 🧠📈🧵👇
Reposted by Joel I Berger
New results!
Despite their varied molecular actions, anesthetics alter brain wave alignment in the same way.
Convergent effects of different anesthetics are due to changes in phase alignment of cortical oscillations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroscience
Despite their varied molecular actions, anesthetics alter brain wave alignment in the same way.
Convergent effects of different anesthetics are due to changes in phase alignment of cortical oscillations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroscience
March 21, 2024 at 11:30 AM
New results!
Despite their varied molecular actions, anesthetics alter brain wave alignment in the same way.
Convergent effects of different anesthetics are due to changes in phase alignment of cortical oscillations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroscience
Despite their varied molecular actions, anesthetics alter brain wave alignment in the same way.
Convergent effects of different anesthetics are due to changes in phase alignment of cortical oscillations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroscience
Our new paper on tinnitus and the hippocampus is out now in Human Brain Mapping: doi.org/10.1002/hbm.... The TL;DR is that we are highlighting a role for the hippocampus that focuses on sustaining the memory of a phantom percept, based on current literature. 1/4
🧠📈 #PsychSciSky
🧠📈 #PsychSciSky
February 21, 2024 at 6:47 PM
Our new paper on tinnitus and the hippocampus is out now in Human Brain Mapping: doi.org/10.1002/hbm.... The TL;DR is that we are highlighting a role for the hippocampus that focuses on sustaining the memory of a phantom percept, based on current literature. 1/4
🧠📈 #PsychSciSky
🧠📈 #PsychSciSky
Our study examining intracranial responses to vocoded speech, relevant to cochlear implants, is out now ( www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... ), led by Kirill Nourski & Mitch Steinschneider. Some very interesting dorsal/ventral stream differences dependent on task performance.
Intracranial electrophysiology of spectrally degraded speech in the human cortex
Cochlear implants (CIs) are the treatment choice for severe to profound hearing loss. Variability in CI outcomes remains despite advances in technology and is attributed in part to differences in cort...
www.frontiersin.org
January 26, 2024 at 3:56 PM
Our study examining intracranial responses to vocoded speech, relevant to cochlear implants, is out now ( www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... ), led by Kirill Nourski & Mitch Steinschneider. Some very interesting dorsal/ventral stream differences dependent on task performance.
I'll be presenting the poster below at APAN this afternoon and SfN on Tuesday afternoon, based on the intracranial local field potential and unit data we collect at Iowa. Come and say hi! Thank you to my lovely colleagues and our patients 🧠🟦
November 10, 2023 at 7:33 PM
I'll be presenting the poster below at APAN this afternoon and SfN on Tuesday afternoon, based on the intracranial local field potential and unit data we collect at Iowa. Come and say hi! Thank you to my lovely colleagues and our patients 🧠🟦
Reposted by Joel I Berger
Our work on decoding speech using high-density micro-scale recordings was published today in Nature Communications! We demonstrate the potential of high-spatial sampling technology for future neural speech prostheses.
nature.com/articles/s4146…
The thread below outlines our main findings.
nature.com/articles/s4146…
The thread below outlines our main findings.
https://nature.com/articles/s4146…
November 6, 2023 at 7:05 PM
Our work on decoding speech using high-density micro-scale recordings was published today in Nature Communications! We demonstrate the potential of high-spatial sampling technology for future neural speech prostheses.
nature.com/articles/s4146…
The thread below outlines our main findings.
nature.com/articles/s4146…
The thread below outlines our main findings.
Reposted by Joel I Berger
Have you heard that PLOS Mental Health is now open for submissions? Learn more about this new global, multidisciplinary #OpenAccess journal: plos.io/MHOpen
PLOS Mental Health
plos.io
November 2, 2023 at 8:18 PM
Have you heard that PLOS Mental Health is now open for submissions? Learn more about this new global, multidisciplinary #OpenAccess journal: plos.io/MHOpen
Reposted by Joel I Berger
We publish today with @alexwiesman.bsky.social in Progress in Neurobiology another advance in the fight against Parkinson’s disease.
Slowing of 🧠 activity is not systematically an adverse effect of pathology: it can also be a sign of compensatory activity that preserves cognitive functions.
Slowing of 🧠 activity is not systematically an adverse effect of pathology: it can also be a sign of compensatory activity that preserves cognitive functions.
Adverse and compensatory neurophysiological slowing in Parkinson’s disease
Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) exhibit multifaceted changes in neurophysiological brain activity, hypothesized to represent a global cortical …
www.sciencedirect.com
October 25, 2023 at 1:31 PM
We publish today with @alexwiesman.bsky.social in Progress in Neurobiology another advance in the fight against Parkinson’s disease.
Slowing of 🧠 activity is not systematically an adverse effect of pathology: it can also be a sign of compensatory activity that preserves cognitive functions.
Slowing of 🧠 activity is not systematically an adverse effect of pathology: it can also be a sign of compensatory activity that preserves cognitive functions.
Reposted by Joel I Berger
Are you a neuroscientist who recently joined Blue Sky? Don't forget to like and pin #neuroskyence, the largest channel for all things brain-science related! You can post with #neuroskyence or 🧠🟦 ! #psychscisky 🧪 #academicsky bsky.app/profile/did:...
October 25, 2023 at 7:49 AM
Are you a neuroscientist who recently joined Blue Sky? Don't forget to like and pin #neuroskyence, the largest channel for all things brain-science related! You can post with #neuroskyence or 🧠🟦 ! #psychscisky 🧪 #academicsky bsky.app/profile/did:...
Two new misophonia papers from our group. First (bit.ly/mismi), led by Paris Ash and Sukhbinder Kumar examines the incidence of mimicry in misophonia. The second (bit.ly/SocMi, preprint) presents misophonia within a social cognitive framework (1/6)🧵in comments #Psychology #PsychSci 🧠🟦
October 21, 2023 at 11:48 PM
Two new misophonia papers from our group. First (bit.ly/mismi), led by Paris Ash and Sukhbinder Kumar examines the incidence of mimicry in misophonia. The second (bit.ly/SocMi, preprint) presents misophonia within a social cognitive framework (1/6)🧵in comments #Psychology #PsychSci 🧠🟦
Reposted by Joel I Berger
Come join the lab! I'll be at SfN if you want to chat about the cool things we're up to or about the position.
Do you have (or about to have) a PhD and are you interested in speech and intracranial recordings (seeg, ecog, and micro-ecog)? The Cogan Lab at Duke is looking for a postdoc! International applicants are welcome. Join us!
coganlab.org/postdoc23
coganlab.org/postdoc23
October 16, 2023 at 7:16 PM
Come join the lab! I'll be at SfN if you want to chat about the cool things we're up to or about the position.
Our new paper is out now in Nature Communications, highlighting what happens in the brain during a semantic context task when you disconnect the anterior temporal lobe: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈
Immediate neural impact and incomplete compensation after semantic hub disconnection - Nature Commun...
The human brain is a distributed system composed of highly interconnected hubs. Here, patients undergoing a rare operation reveal the immediate impact and compensatory brain network changes that occur...
www.nature.com
October 11, 2023 at 5:58 PM
Our new paper is out now in Nature Communications, highlighting what happens in the brain during a semantic context task when you disconnect the anterior temporal lobe: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈
My colleague Phil Gander and I are looking to hire a postdoc for collaborative misophonia research in Iowa. We're keen for people who are interested and experienced in fMRI/EEG analyses, with the opportunity to learn analyses of human intracranial data: jobs.uiowa.edu/postdoc/view... #neuroskyence
October 6, 2023 at 3:02 PM
My colleague Phil Gander and I are looking to hire a postdoc for collaborative misophonia research in Iowa. We're keen for people who are interested and experienced in fMRI/EEG analyses, with the opportunity to learn analyses of human intracranial data: jobs.uiowa.edu/postdoc/view... #neuroskyence
Hi Bluesky peeps, a brief introduction - I'm a neuroscientist working with amazing intracranial patients in Iowa, recording single neurons and local field potentials, mainly to understand aspects of auditory cognition and pathological auditory processing #neuroskyence #introduction
September 15, 2023 at 2:41 PM
Hi Bluesky peeps, a brief introduction - I'm a neuroscientist working with amazing intracranial patients in Iowa, recording single neurons and local field potentials, mainly to understand aspects of auditory cognition and pathological auditory processing #neuroskyence #introduction