Unpopular opinion: I love my job.
I love psychiatry, I love neuroscience, I love academia, my patients (but not their insurance company), my students, MATLAB, and maybe even Reviewer 2.
Just wanted to balance the seemingly-opposing viewpoints that seem to be all over Twitter.
@designmom
As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen a situation in which CPS in Boston tried very hard to do something similar to one of my patients. I had to fight with an aggressive CPS worker who clearly had a vendetta and was making false statements about the patient’s psychiatric condition.
Out now in
@NatureHumBehav
@SpringerNature
:
TMS, DBS, and lesions converge on common causal circuits in neuropsychiatric disease.
Lesions reveal better TMS/DBS targets. All 3 modalities can modulate similar circuits.
Thanks
@foxmdphd
and 24 co-authors!
Out now
@NatureHumBehav
w/Joe Taylor,
@foxmdphd
A common brain network unites heterogeneous published atrophy sites across mental illness
Surprisingly, lesions to the network led to DECREASED mental illness, suggesting it's compensatory, not causal
Our latest work, out now in
@ScienceTM
Precision fMRI mapping reveals distinct connectivity patterns for depression associated with traumatic brain injury
A brief explainer thread (1/n)
Thanks to co-authors
@DavidLBrody1
@leuthardt
@MauCorbetta
+ more
NEW
@NatRevNeurosci
Causal Mapping of Human Brain Function
We propose a structured framework, synthesizing great thinkers in theology, philosophy, econometrics, microbiology, epidemiology, computer science, and even neuroscience
Thanks
@foxmdphd
@josef_parvizi
@KordingLab
1/n
I think psychiatry is mostly about treating diseases that haven't been discovered yet
...and psychiatric neuroscience is mostly about discovering them and handing them over to the neurologists.
1st trial comparing TMS to other augmentation strategies for MDD.
Spoiler: TMS outperformed switch to venlafaxine, while Abilify augmentation (the only strategy that's ever been shown to be superior to others) did not.
@esra_mbg
People don't appreciate the value of a passport from the US, Europe, etc (i.e. where white people live). You have the freedom to go wherever you want, no ridiculousness. Giving up my Pakistani passport was the most liberating experience of my life. Hope you get the same chance.
Our latest work, out now in
@NatMentHealth
, amazing collaboration with
@Brainclinics
and led by Eva Dijkstra.
In short, heart-brain coupling may be used to probe TMS targets, and successfully identifies anti-sgACC targets in 12/14 patients.
Excited to see this published in
@NatMentHealth
: Probing prefrontal-sgACC connectivity using TMS-induced heart–brain coupling (HBC)
Read the article here:
Here we validated TMS induced heart-brain coupling as an agile technique to probe DLPFC-sgACC
One of the most interesting findings in TMS research in recent years.
d-cycloserine (NMDA partial agonist) potentiates antidepressant efficacy of TMS, strongly supporting the NMDA-mediated plasticity hypothesis of brain stimulation... and it's actually clinically useful.
In this RCT w 50 participants, those receiving intermittent theta-burst stimulation w adjunctive D-Cycloserine had significantly greater improvements in depressive symptoms compared to stimulation w placebo.
#Research
@DGlaucomflecken
I identify as a weird little guy. I am offended by the implication that this term, or my dreams about p-values, is pejorative.
btw I am indeed a medical doctor (or at least I used to be, before psych residency), and I spend almost all my time on research
Real-world outcomes with 226 patients receiving aiTBS for MDD
TLDR; it usually works, and it works fast.
Outcomes appeared to improve after the clinic switched to fMRI-guided neuronavigation (not randomized).
with
@davidcarreon
@NeuroDanielle
If teaching professors are worried that their assignments can be completed using AI, then it’s time to rethink the assignments.
If AI can do it better than most humans, then why not teach humans to use the AI intelligently (pun) rather than trying to compete with it?
I'm looking for a postdoc
@BrighamResearch
(with appointment
@harvardmed
).
I'm not doing the standard "come work on X with us!" because the most valuable part of my postdoc with
@foxmdphd
and pseudo-postdoc with
@DavidLBrody1
was the intellectual freedom to study what I want.
Looking for a research assistant. Send your CV to BWHCBCTAssistants
@partners
.org.
Only apply if you'd like to be happy and successful. Position is not great for people who don't want those things.
Also nice if you either (a) write code, or (b) want to grow into a lab manager.
Just ran four subjects through
@FreeSurferMRI
in 4 hours on my laptop (Apple M1 Max, 64 gb RAM) without parallelizing each one, and still used my laptop to do other stuff in the meantime.
Just 4-5 years ago, this was unfathomable. Can't believe tech is still moving so fast...
Check out our new commentary: bringing connectomics to clinical practice in psychiatry
Thanks to co-authors
@andreashorn_
,
@foxmdphd
, and Joe Taylor.
Commentary out by
@shansiddiqi
w/ Joe Taylor &
@foxmdphd
on how we could bring human brain connectomics into clinical practice in psychiatry (imho directly translatable to neurology).
This will go down as a seminal paper in neuroimaging by
@DrScienceMan1
@DrDamienFair
in
@NatureNeuro
.
Can't recall the last time I read a paper that will singlehandedly change how I do multiple different things.
Also, the intro is very well-written for a novice or an expert.
Our paper “A Precision Functional Atlas of Personalized Network Topography and Probabilities” is out now in
@NatureNeuro
! The MIDB Precision Brain Atlas is a collection of individualized neural network maps from n~10,000 and probabilistic atlases (1/8)
You often see a scientist's best research, and maybe clinical innovations. But you don't always see the life-changing mentorship that the best Professors provide to their trainees as they grow from student to expert.
Congrats to Professor
@foxmdphd
from your eternal student.
I really wish our institutions would allow us to offer higher pay to postdocs, RAs, and everybody else. Has anybody come up with creative solutions to this problem?
We've tried buying everybody a laptop and paying for trips to conferences, but that doesn't feel like enough.
Ran into my uncle who has two daughters with treatment-resistant schizophrenia. He said "when will you make a circuit for them?" I told him we're at least 10 years away. Of course, that wasn't good enough.
We need to work faster.
Great review about how to avoid over-interpreting BOLD findings. Written by two of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
Spoiler: functional connectivity measurements are not a proxy for cognitive processes.
Fantastic new opinion piece by Tim Laumann & Avi Snyder. A must-read for anyone thinking about what spontaneous BOLD activity and resting-state functional connectivity actually means.
Part of a great special issue organized by
@GrattonCaterina
&
@RodBraga
NEW: Monthly BWH Brain Circuit Therapeutics Speaker Series
Thursday 9/9/21 5pm EST
Talk and Q&A open to all
Inaugural speaker: Konrad Kording
@KordingLab
, on
"The use and misuse of causality in neuroscience."
@foxmdphd
@neuromichael
@harvardbrainsci
This keeps coming up in conversation, so I’m pinning it on my profile.
Our thoughts on bringing human brain connectomics to clinical psychiatry, with
@andreashorn_
, Joe Taylor, and
@foxmdphd
Looking for a research assistant to do imaging analyses (computational), and sometimes TMS (clinical).
Need somebody good with data, ideally MATLAB, but I can tolerate Python.
Only apply if you want to work with awesome people and be happy.
Apply:
For Neuroimaging beginners: Ever found yourself lost in the world of atlases and needed someone to create a summary to find an atlas best suited for your study? Here it is -
Neuropsychiatrists should read/publish more case reports, even when the case is not totally novel.
Looking through a bunch of case reports of lesion-induced OCD, and I feel like my clinical intuition subtly grows each time - each case is slightly different.
Attention future clinical neuroscience postdocs!
Excited to announce that our lab is accepting applications (mentored by
@foxmdphd
or other BWH faculty) for the T32 Clinical Research Training Program
@harvardmed
, led by the legendary Martha Shenton!
(1/n)
@martinmbauer
The integer values are usually used to teach beginners. Advanced players know that:
Bishop +Knight > Rook + Pawn
two Bishops >> two Knights
Queen > Rook+Knight +Pawn
Or in a “closed” position, Knight > Bishop
Or Knight at outpost past 5th rank = Rook
Super exciting Phase 3 trial of a first-in-class antipsychotic: an M1/M4 agonist, paired with trospium (peripheral antimuscarinic that doesn’t cross BBB) to prevent GI side effects.
Spoiler - it seems to be effective, with no weight gain or EPS.
Somebody needs to make a guide for students on different names for similar brain regions (i.e. ventral striatum and NAcc), and similar names for very different regions (i.e. pgACC, sgACC, and "ACC" aka dACC).
Keep seeing students drawing false distinctions or similarities.
Out now in JAMA: Despite very strong correlative literature, mindfulness and exercise didn’t prevent cognitive decline in a large RCT.
Lesson for science: strong/reproducible correlations are no more causal than weak ones.
Our new study, published in JAMA today:
#exercise
and
#mindfulness
do not boost cognitive function in older adults.
Controversial? Probably. Disappointing? Maybe. But my lab will continue to test new ways to help older adults have a Healthy Mind.
@AjvictoryMD
@chandan_khandai
I’ve done this for my wife and I’m about to do it again. My dad did it for my mom twice. People keep patting me on the back for making some great sacrifice, particularly given my cultural background. I think those sorts of comments are standing in the way of “normalizing” this.
Excited to be part of this fascinating new paper in
@NatureMedicine
. I may be listed as co-first, but full credit to
@JJoutsa
and
@foxmdphd
for carrying this from conception to completion!
Thanks to a series of unexpected cancellations, I have FOUR CONSECUTIVE HOURS with no meetings!
Will finish the response to reviewers on that paper I've been working on for 7 years... get ready, it should be out any year now!
All NeuroImage and NeuroImage:Reports editors have resigned over the high publication fee, and are starting a new non-profit journal
This comes with great regret, and a huge amount of thought and discussion- please read announcement to get more details.
Congrats
@sbfrandsen1
for receiving a super-competitive NSF fellowship for grad school!
If you can take a clinical psychology PhD student in your lab this summer, you should get in line.
Spent a couple of weeks traveling, lecturing, meeting people, planning stuff. Started to feel a bit disenchanted with my job, and even started googling career change possibilities.
Then I caffeinated and sat down to do some science... and suddenly I love my job again, as usual.
How many combined MD and PhD degrees does it take to figure out how to log in to an NIH website?
Just did the experiment with
@foxmdphd
, and found that the answer is 6.
I'm thinking about becoming one of those psychiatrists you see in movies... with a really nice office, a really nice couch, and insightful opinions on everything.
@NateurNeuro
Ha they never made me take psychology or statistics or neuroscience, and now they have me doing computational modeling with neuroimaging and behavior… joke’s on them, I’m also an asst prof at HMS now…
I get a strange satisfaction every time I cite something that was published >100 years ago.
If you're reading my papers, I apologize for excessive references to Kraepelin/Alzheimer/Nissl, Ibn Sina, Aristotle, Hume, Phineas Gage/Harlowe, Broca, Aquinas, Al-Razi, or Al-Ghazali.
First study exploring the impact of 7T vs 3T MRI on DBS outcomes for tremor: Our study shows 7T offers superior precision, improving tremor reduction & requiring lower stimulation current!
@TheJNS
@MayoRadiology
#MayoClinicFlorida
🧵
Older age is associated with better antidepressant response to
@BrainsWay
H1-coil TMS in women
Congrats to Maria Kryatova
@BWHPsyResidency
for leading this study!
#Anxiety
disorders in older adults are common, impairing, and treatable. That's the point of a new article by
@paula_span
in
@nytimes
:
Thanks to US Preventive Services Task Force for advocating for research on this!
Amazing paper (and awesome explainer thread) by
@b_hollunder
and
@andreashorn_
using differential DBS outcomes to start generating a causal taxonomy of prefrontal fiber tracts!
Intrigued to discover more about how DBS reveals & therapeutically impacts on the dysfunctional circuits behind different brain disorders, from OCD to dystonia? 🪄🧠
So were we! Join us on this deep dive from core to cortex – now out
@NatureNeuro
:
A 🧵
Me, every single time: "Oh no, the reviewer found the fatal flaw on my paper with this new analysis they recommended... PROCRASTINATE!"
(8 months of procrastination)
"Oh, it still works, and now it actually looks better. Thanks, insightful reviewer!"
🧠⚡️To personalize or not to personalize? That is the question...
...that we address in our latest review
@BiologicalPsyc1
with
@AndrewZalesky
🥳
Open access:
We examine (& illustrate)
the rationale, latest evidence, controversies & opportunities🧐
If I had a nickel for every time I heard "doctor, [phenelzine or tranylcypromine] has changed my life," I'd have several nickels.
I get why it makes people nervous, but MAO-A inhibitors must be the most underprescribed medication class in psychiatry.
@DJGould94
I submitted a paper I've been working on for 7 yrs. Also on Friday.
Actually it was Sat, but that sounds less fun.
I recall telling my wife shortly after our first date (5 yrs ago) that I wast just finishing it up. Yes, I'm a nerd - but to be fair, she asked me what I'm up to!
@tezos_jeff
@AjvictoryMD
I hope you meet the right person someday. I used to think I wanted to spend the rest of my life in St. Louis, until I met my wife and suddenly didn’t care anymore.
Honored to be part of this extraordinary collaboration to synthesize a lot of cutting-edge science into a single place! Massive academic street cred to
@andreashorn_
for herding cats to make this happen.
We are pleased to announce, Colleen Hanlon, PhD, is the recipient of the 2023 International Brain Stimulation Early Career Award, which will be presented at the
#BrainStimConf
, 18-22 Feb, 2023, in Portugal. Learn more about Colleen Hanlon here.
Multiple times this year:
Me: "Ugh, that reviewer comment was actually insightful - running that additional analysis could totally invalidate my results."
(procrastinates for 9 months, then runs the analysis)
Me: "Oh, the paper is actually even better now. Thanks, reviewer 2!"
Reducing antipsychotics doesn’t help with social function, but leads to relapse/hospitalization.
I’m glad they put this debate to rest, but why are people surprised by the fact that mainstream medicine actually works?
@AjvictoryMD
I usually say “I’m from a lot of places, but more St. Louis than anywhere else... how about you?”
Usually the question is innocent, but rooted in underlying bias. I want to help people realize that they’re really trying to ask “what’s your ethnicity?”