Nick Holmes
LightNews LightNews
banner
thehandlab.bsky.social
Nick Holmes
@thehandlab.bsky.social
1.8K followers 940 following 820 posts
handy neuroscientist | touch & movement | brain stimulation | neurobiography.info | pod @theerrorbar.bsky.social theerrorbar.com | @tmsmultilab.bsky.social https://tms-rat.org https://tms-smart.info | b. 335ppm C💚2 | pro birds | Associating with Professors
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
thehandlab.bsky.social
Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · Aug 11
I'm happy to report that @valedichiaro.bsky.social 's 2nd PhD paper is in press! :-). Brief explainer...

- 2-coil #TMS over left & right primary motor cortex
- TMS in the ~300ms before one hand responds
- corticospinal excitability increases before response
- no changes in non-responding hand

1/n
image describing the trials in the experiment. at the start of each trial, a random 1-3 foreperiod contains a fixation cross to warn the participant. The first event in the trial is a 200ms period with two coloured squares left and right of the (now disappeared) central fixation point (both are red, blue, yellow or green). These are the distractor 'Flanker' stimuli. A third coloured square is then presented centrally. This is the target stimulus. If the target is red or blue, the participant must grip a left force meter; if green or yellow, they grip the right force meter. They try to respond as quickly and as correctly as possible. In the ~300ms before their response, two pulses of TMS are delivered, one over each motor cortex. This TMS pulse excites the corticospinal tract and results in a muscle contraction. The size of the muscle contraction is used as a proxy for corticospinal excitability and response preparation.
thehandlab.bsky.social
In the era of papermills & #AI, the concept of the academic #journal is having to be re-invented for #preprints, which are now being assessed for suitability by a team of volunteers (ie, academic editors).

If suitable -> publish; if not -> reject.

Interesting! 👇

blog.psyarxiv.com/2025/09/18/p...
PsyArXiv Returns to Normal Operations – PsyArXiv Blog
Thanks to PsyArXiv’s amazing team of 100+ moderators, all preprints meeting PsyArXiv’s requirements have now been approved! Thank you to everyone who volunteered and worked tirelessly over the past 3 ...
blog.psyarxiv.com
November 13, 2025 at 6:09 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Fabulously useful!
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 2d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
Canada has just lost measles elimination status. The U.S. will undoubtedly follow shortly.

Elimination means that there is no continuous spreading of measles within the country for a year or longer.

Canada and the U.S. have blown it, and it’s largely the fault of the anti-vaccination movement.
Canada loses measles elimination status after three decades, health agency says
Canada has lost its measles elimination status after nearly three decades due to its failure to curb a year-long outbreak, the country's public health agency said on Monday.
www.reuters.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:52 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Cut out the middle man:

"AI could replace minister with savings of £100k per year"
November 10, 2025 at 7:57 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
I finally found an actual use for CoPilot!

When updating a file on GitHub (e.g., a readme file), the AI summarises the changes so i don't have to write a commit message. It does a good job.

That's about 20 seconds saved today :-)

(it took me 3 minutes to write this post)
November 9, 2025 at 12:53 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Hello #Bird lovers. What the hell is this big feathery thing flying through my garden at midday in Warwickshire UK?

Owl? Red kite? Buzzard? 🤔

At this position from the camera, this is a big bird!

#Ornithology #Birding #Twitcher
A large bird flying around a tree at midday in Warwickshire, UK. I don't know what kind...
November 7, 2025 at 10:33 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Have asked my line manager for a £999,999,937,482 pay rise next year 🤞
November 7, 2025 at 8:31 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
"GLMMs are black boxes into which stats-naïve authors can throw anything they like."

Discuss.
November 7, 2025 at 7:11 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Deep.
Notice on train schedule app: "This train has been delayed by this train being late"
November 6, 2025 at 7:40 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Can academics Take Back Control of publishing?

(Do we want to?)

👇
November 6, 2025 at 6:55 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
TIL: Fifteen 2-factor authentication challenges per week is the "expected" number of times needed to authenticate for an academic working in a modern university

15 per week: every 2.5 working hours I need to re-enter my credentials on my private phone

#MFA #2FA
November 5, 2025 at 10:10 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
what fresh hell is this?

(error when viewing a work document in a work email from a work colleague on a work computer)
"Microsoft Word: Sorry, your session will expire at 22:52. You can refresh the page to continue."
November 4, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
martinhebart.bsky.social
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026.

The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.

Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
View from your office onto Giessen and surrounding villages.
November 4, 2025 at 1:57 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
"The solution to the climate crisis isn’t going to come from fairy-dust-sprinkled flying unicorns. They don’t exist. The solution is going to come from everyone else, using every tool to push back against an ecocidal agenda driven by plutocrats, polluters, petrostates, propagandists & the press." 🌏
November 3, 2025 at 11:27 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
How many Slack workspaces is too many? Currently on 5...
November 3, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
tmsmultilab.bsky.social
Many thanks to the 60 gorgeous #TMS researchers who took a few minutes to complete our user survey.

The quantitative results have been processed and summarised, and are now available in full on our GitHub page:

github.com/TMSMultiLab/...

A quick breakdown follows in this thread:

#PieChartHeaven
TMS User Survey
Resources, data and code to help you run a TMS laboratory - TMSMultiLab/TMSMultiLab
github.com
November 2, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
jendavies.bsky.social
**Come work with us!!**

Three-year post-doc position funded by Parkinson's UK available Cardiff University - using TMS to study inhibition of planned stepping movements and better understand freezing of gait. Full details here - krb-sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...

Please share!!
Research Associate: Neural Control of Movement in - Cardiff University - Job Details
Job Details: Research Associate: Neural control of movement in Parkinson's Disease School of Healthcare Sciences, Card
krb-sjobs.brassring.com
October 31, 2025 at 8:55 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Has anyone made the "Andrew formerly known as Prince" joke yet?
October 31, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
sirileknes.bsky.social
Please RT
2 new positions in the lab as postdoc & PhD!

Interested in stress, pain, or reward? This project has it all!

We are a friendly but ambitious group. Oslo is a capital city on the fjord & bordered by forest, great urban & outdoors opportunities: 💃 ⛷️ 🚣 🎭 🎶

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (286516) | University of Oslo
Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (286516), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
www.jobbnorge.no
September 24, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
tmsmultilab.bsky.social
Our next monthly meeting:

Dr Daniel T Corp will talk about:

Big NIBS data: a repository and pipeline for big data analyses in NIBS

bignibsdata.com

Friday 31st 🎃ctober at 14:00 GMT

Meeting link via Slack & GitHub (link in profile) - join us!

#TMS #BrainStim #NIBS
bignibsdata.com
October 28, 2025 at 5:17 PM
thehandlab.bsky.social
The #Christmas Market is being set up in Birmingham city centre.

The Halloween-to-Christmas buffer gets shorter each year: it's now -3 days.

🎃🎅🤔
October 28, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
tmsmultilab.bsky.social
Many thanks to all the researchers who have told us about how they use #TMS - the results are looking really useful and very interesting!

We'll keep the survey open until 31st October, so if you can please spare 5 minutes:

Complete the #TMS User Survey!
forms.gle/95EW1PVC3JQV...

🙏 🧠 🧲 ⚡ 🙏
October 26, 2025 at 8:09 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Every hour that I listen to YouTube while working, I am exposed to about 4 adverts for 'AI' tools encouraging me to stop reading, writing, editing & thinking for myself, and instead sign up to a "technosolution" to do it for me.

Here's why I shouldn't
👇
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 19d
"Many scholars, including us, have highlighted the threat posed by techno-solutionism in education: Rather than expanding our intellectual horizons, these technologies undermine the very conditions that allow us to think for ourselves."

1/n

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...
October 25, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted by Nick Holmes
hpspodcast.bsky.social
🎉 50,000 listens! Thanks to everyone supporting The HPS Podcast, we're so grateful

We're proudly graduate-run— & work hard to provide episodes that reflect our community’s questions and passions, and the richness of ideas across HPS

Lots to come! Including some exciting developments for S6
(1/2)
October 24, 2025 at 2:43 AM
thehandlab.bsky.social
Mice have hands!
kelseytea.bsky.social Kelsey Tyssowski @kelseytea.bsky.social · 21d
🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!

We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
October 22, 2025 at 9:39 PM