Brandon Forys
PhD student at UBC Psychology (MCLab, BAR Lab). fMRI methods, choices and thoughts about cognitive effort, avoidance + reward. Opinions my own.
- CNS 2026! Be sure to register - it will be great to see so many cognitive science and neuroscience folks coming to Vancouver. And be sure to also check out the affiliated International Sleep Replay Workshop: isrw.bio.uci.edu
- #CNS2026 Registration is OPEN! 🎉 Join us in Vancouver, BC for an unforgettable meeting packed with cutting-edge science! Don’t miss out — secure your spot today! cogneurosociety.org/registration/ @cogneuronews.bsky.social #CognitiveNeuroscience #Neuroscience
- Reposted by Brandon Forys1. Media coverage of a new paper by @ryantomm.bsky.social w @brandonforys.com, @dr-stan.bsky.social et al. Building on Stan’s rodent work, Ryan found that > depression levels were associated w reduced capacity to learn to actively button-press to avoid a nasty sound www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...
- For >5 years, the International Sleep Replay Workshops have brought together scientists studying sleep & memory. The next ISRW will be on March 6th in Vancouver (before @CogNeuroNews). Follow the link for details + to join the mailing list - see you there! isrw.bio.uci.edu
- Reposted by Brandon ForysThe recording of yesterday's multi-echo fMRI users meeting is now up! youtu.be/LUyvXA81AEs?... @enekourunuela.com @tsalo.bsky.social
- The next multi-echo fMRI users meeting is scheduled for May 27th. Details here: groups.google.com/g/tedana-new...
- Reposted by Brandon ForysI just published a new substack post focusing on "holding in personhood." Stefanie Blain-Moraes, Naomi Askenazi, & Ariane Boulet describe their work using dance, music, and technology to hold people in relationship when communication channels are restricted: open.substack.com/pub/becketto...
- So wonderful to be a part of this awesome meeting - thanks @danielhandwerker.bsky.social! If you're interested in working with multi-echo and tedana, be sure to join these monthly meetings.
- The recording of the multi-echo fMRI users meeting is now live! youtu.be/dlFtgWP4ItY?...
- Reposted by Brandon Forys𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 "theoretical framework to analyse individual variability in biological and artificial systems that perform flexible decision-making tasks" Looks like must read! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience
- Reposted by Brandon ForysInteresting🧵⤵️
- Why can sounds like dogs barking or a phone ringing sound pleasant in some situations, but very unpleasant in others? We explored this question in our new paper out now in @plosone.org: doi.org/10.1371/jour... (a thread):
- Reposted by Brandon ForysAn image-computable model of speeded decision-making - our latest in @elife.bsky.social combining a CNN with a response time model. TL/DR: Training to reproduce human RTs results in different kinds of representations versus purely task-optimized training.
- Reposted by Brandon ForysThanks to everyone's feedback, we have updated our calculator to optimize sample size N & scan time T for fMRI studies: leonoqr.github.io/ORSP_Calcula... The first new feature is that users can explore how different N & T leads to different accuracy, e.g., N=1000 & T=30min => 81% max accuracy. 🧵
- Reposted by Brandon ForysCool new paper from Brandon Forys et al. Congrats! [Bonus: the figure in the paper suggests that the "newer" (and nicer) building is where my lab is. 😀]
- Why can sounds like dogs barking or a phone ringing sound pleasant in some situations, but very unpleasant in others? We explored this question in our new paper out now in @plosone.org: doi.org/10.1371/jour... (a thread):
- Why can sounds like dogs barking or a phone ringing sound pleasant in some situations, but very unpleasant in others? We explored this question in our new paper out now in @plosone.org: doi.org/10.1371/jour... (a thread):
- Imagine yourself in a dark building with narrow hallways. You hear a dog barking. You're likely to rate this sound as being more unpleasant compared to if you heard this sound in an airy, well-lit space. The meaning of sounds can be easily misinterpreted based on past experiences with them.
- The features of one's environment can prime us to interpret experiences in that environment in different ways. In this way, even an everyday sound presented in an unpleasant environment could be rated as unpleasant, or aversive.
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View full threadThanks for reading along! Thanks to Alan Kingstone, @beckety.bsky.social, and Emily Qi for all of their support on this project, as well as NSERC and @ubcpsych.bsky.social!
- Yesterday, I taught the first class of the first undergrad course I'm teaching - cognitive neuroscience - and it was so exciting to see so many students from a variety of academic backgrounds coming together. It looks like it will be a great semester with this talented group!
- Reposted by Brandon ForysA related question: I would really like to incorporate LLMs into the class. Does anyone have good examples of how they have used them in graduate teaching?
- I have been teaching a grad seminar for 10 years and I'd like to rework it to make it more engaging. Have any of you brought active learning techniques into your graduate seminars? I'd love to hear how you went about it and any tips you might have. Here is the syllabus: github.com/poldrack/psy...
- Great talk by @ar0mcintosh.bsky.social at #UBC on the amazing work being done with the Virtual Brain to model and understand how brain activity - and corresponding network - shift with aging. A very powerful tool!
- I know many people use VSCode or similar for fMRI analysis scripting, but I’ve really come to like PyCharm - good SFTP interface for working with compute clusters, Copilot inline for code checking, etc. I just wish it could handle remote Jupyter notebook mounting a little more nicely…random thought!
- Reposted by Brandon ForysOpenNeuro.org is now on Bluesky! Follow us for project updates and exciting new datasets.
- Reposted by Brandon ForysWith so many new people flooding onto Blue Sky I thought I'd re-post this just-out cognitive neuroscience paper from my lab - the fruit of many years and much labour.
- Our paper led by Mana Ehlers w James Kryklywy, @brandonforys.bsky.social, et al. is finally out! We model neural instantiation of specific affective information acquired with learning. It's the result of a huge amount of work and persistence in the face of obstacles: direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
- Reposted by Brandon ForysHow do DA and 5HT drugs alter reinforcement learning? Join us next Wednesday for talks by @anahitm.bsky.social, Diego Pizzagalli, Michael Browning, Roshan Cools, Emma Robinson, Yael Niv, Cath Harmer, Isabel Berwian, @nathanieldaw.bsky.social and Anne Collins. Links etc: acplab.org/2024/11/15/r...
- 👋 I’m Brandon, a PhD student at UBC Psychology with @beckety.bsky.social and Alan Kingstone. I investigate factors driving our choices in cognitive effort + features of our environment that affect how we interpret everyday stimuli, as well as the neural representations of avoidance and reward.
- Reposted by Brandon ForysAnnouncing: BIDS Validator 2.0 This is a complete rewrite to base the validator on the declarative BIDS schema. Most importantly, this validator boasts long-awaited support for BIDS Derivative datasets. bids-standard.github.io/bids-validat... #BIDS #BrainImagingDataStructure
- Thanks for the post @beckety.bsky.social - well said and excited to see this out at long last!
- Our paper led by Mana Ehlers w James Kryklywy, @brandonforys.bsky.social, et al. is finally out! We model neural instantiation of specific affective information acquired with learning. It's the result of a huge amount of work and persistence in the face of obstacles: direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
- Reposted by Brandon ForysNew substack post. I interview entrepreneur & special effects producer Philipp Wolf on his strengths-based approach to neurdivergence, his midlife autism diagnosis, and swyvl, his company designing XR to share the experience of neurodivergent nervous systems: open.substack.com/pub/becketto...
- Reposted by Brandon ForysI just published a new substack post on dancing with neurodiversity. If you like it please subscribe (for free). open.substack.com/pub/becketto...
