Steve Smith
Brain imaging research, Oxford
EiC, Imaging Neuroscience https://bsky.app/profile/imagingneurosci.bsky.social
- Reposted by Steve SmithSave the date! FSL Course 2026 is provisionally planned in-person for June 22nd - 26th in Bordeaux, France. More details and the registration link will be posted on the FSL Course website soon. open.oxcin.ox.ac.uk/pages/fslcou...
- three owl species that we saw near Chambal, India
- One lovely day in the middle of a cold, grey, wet week. Pond is semi-frozen, sun is shining on the pollarded willows who are growing back red. A few bullrushes are starting to go to seed.
- Reposted by Steve SmithMy new gig is PI of the CANN group at Trinity College Dublin and University of Oxford (50/50). Funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, we'll be recruiting postdocs, PhDs and an RA in Dublin and Oxford soon. So exciting! @oxcin.bsky.social @tcddublin.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @tcdscss.bsky.social
- Hey Siri, can you remove the scaffolding. But seriously, even with bits of scaffolding, this is the most beautiful building I've seen.
- Just got back from India - amazing wonderful country. Some pictures from the "Baby Taj" in Agra.
- Preprint on PANDORA by Aslan Abivardi: A massive archive of UK Biobank brain imaging from 82K subjects. For each of 98 sub-modalities (e.g., FA from dMRI), the images are collated into a convenient subjectsXvoxels HDF5 file. pages.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/pandora/web/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Plus a tool for easy voxelwise cross-subject regression against variables such as genetics and lifestyle factors. Also a highly efficient supervoxel version of the data - much smaller and faster to work with, but in general losing no signal or spatial detail, while also denoising.
- Easy and quick to use on the UKB RAP. Getting a local copy of one sub-modality from the central store takes a few minutes. Regression across 82K subjects and 2M voxels takes between a few seconds and a couple of hours.
- For people using the @ukbiobank.bsky.social UKB RAP cloud system for brain imaging analyses: In order to make RAP much easier to use, we have created a Docker which is easy to install and gives you a graphical desktop, FSLeyes and the HCP wb_view. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
- (with apologies to non-UK folks) - we just discovered this *amazing* cheese - semi-hard, with a taste that is a confusingly incredible combination of being both subtle and yet rich and complex. parkfarm.co.uk/products/mer...
- Reposted by Steve SmithI often think about the fact that all the universities in 🇨🇦 together did not produce 11 Nobel Prizes in that period (or since). Not from a lack of brilliance, but from a lack of steady funding and the insistence on significant teaching loads and mind-numbing committee memberships for all faculty.
- Latest processing of UK Biobank brain imaging data - now with 82,000 usable first-scan datasets. Correlating brain IDPs with 13,000 non-imaging variables gives a rich manhattan-stye plot. 324,000 Bonferroni-significant associations.
- Reposted by Steve SmithMany UK universities likely to walk away from journal agreements after publishers put forward proposals with “year-on-year price rises” rather than cheaper deals demanded by national negotiators, @davidprosser.bsky.social tells @jgro-the.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/busines...
- Reposted by Steve SmithWhere is the money going? In the case of for-profit publishers it's very clear: Your open access fees fund corporate profit margins. Profit margins for large academic publishers can far exceed those of household names like Amazon and Apple. chart source: bit.ly/4leULKi #scipub #academicsky
- It shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars to publish #OpenAccess. Where is that money even going??? #SciPub 🧪
- Reposted by Steve SmithCongratulations to Holly Schofield and @curlyryes.bsky.social for being chosen from over 350 papers that were published by @imagingneurosci.bsky.social in 2024. Holly accepted the award at OHBM in Brisbane and Ryan celebrated the win from Dublin! www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/scienti...
- Reposted by Steve SmithIt's Pride Month. On the weekend, we were delighted to have a Pride breakfast celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer members of the University of Oxford. And then proceeded to join the Oxford Pride parade. The weather was wet -- but that didn't dampen spirits
- Reposted by Steve Smith🧪 Scientists are pushing back against the gutting of US research funding. Now scientists outside of the NIH and members of the public can sign on in support of the Bethesda declaration: www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec... More about the Bethesda declaration: apnews.com/article/nih-...
- I guess the main difference between social media and the BBC is that you won't see "popcorn" on any BBC pages today?
- Indeed - and Oxford Labour just as bad, concreting over every bit of green they can, destroying the countryside for future generations. @cllrsbrown.bsky.social @maryoxford.bsky.social @annarailton.bsky.social
- What did we do to deserve this government? It promised change, and many people voted on that basis, in good faith. But the change is from bad to worse. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
- Reposted by Steve Smith🏳️🌈Happy Pride Month from OxCIN! 🏳️🌈 If you're in Oxford, come and say hi at our inclusive research-themed stall at the Pride festival in South Park this Saturday!
- Happy to see my first first-author paper in Imaging Neuroscience (along with @fmrib-karla.bsky.social and @nichols.bsky.social): Characterising ongoing brain aging and baseline effects from cross-sectional data doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
- We present a method for disambiguating subject-varying aging rates from fixed baseline effects, in single-timepoint data. If estimating a single brain age delta per subject, baseline effects dominate. With multiple modes of brain aging, some modes do reflect aging rates varying across subjects.
- sunny spring day yesterday - time for some macro pics in the garden
- Not *always* so cute!
- First trip to The Mainland
- Geese exploring Beckmann Island
- Gosling Birth Day! Best part of May.
- Reposted by Steve SmithRegistration Open! FSL Course 2025 will be held fully online, 15th – 26th September. Details & registration info here: open.win.ox.ac.uk/pages/fslcou... The course covers lectures & hands-on practicals on structural, functional, diffusion and resting state brain image analysis.
- Reposted by Steve SmithThanks @bradpostle.bsky.social & @wmatchin.bsky.social for organizing this, for giving me the opportunity to present on behalf of @imagingneurosci.bsky.social, and for this excellent write-up of the session 🙏🏻 Next up: #ISMRM2025 🏝 diffusion study group, where I'll make a cameo to talk about this!
- New post by @bradpostle.bsky.social and @wmatchin.bsky.social: "New Directions in Scientific Communication", regarding symposium at #CNS2025, including participants @anastasiayendiki.bsky.social, Jacqueline Fulvio, and Michael Frank www.cogneurosociety.org/symposia/?sy... doi.org/10.21428/8e6...
- Reposted by Steve SmithWe're excited to announce that WIN is now the Oxford University Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging: OxCIN! Our mission: developing and deploying neuroimaging and related technology to solve big challenges in basic neuroscience and brain health. oxcin.ox.ac.uk/about/vision
- Reposted by Steve SmithAs well as a new name, OxCIN also has a brand new Director: Karla Miller! @fmrib-karla.bsky.social We are grateful for 10 years of superb leadership by Heidi Johansen-Berg @heidijoberg.bsky.social and excited to see the new ideas Karla will bring. More about Karla: oxcin.ox.ac.uk/people/karla...
- And Early Purple Orchids also near Oxford - who knew some orchids come out so early!
- University Arboretum on a sunny weekend. Best bluebell woods :-)
- Reposted by Steve SmithThere is ONE WEEK left to vote in the OHBM Council Election. 🔗 in comments! #OHBMCouncil #Elections #VoteToday
- Does anyone with a Siemens Trio have the gradient distortion correction .coef file they'd be willing to send us? Thanks!
- Reposted by Steve SmithIncredibly flexible simulator brought to you by the talented @michielcottaar.bsky.social. Can feed arbitrary sequences (e.g. with pulseq) and model lots of microstructure features (diffusion, permeability, susceptibility, MT). Allows multimodal simulations. Fully documented and open. :)
- Reposted by Steve SmithI'm a day late with this because #CNS2025 ended yesterday, but the MIT Press has launched the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science that covers many CS topics with peer reviewed articles from experts. @cogneuronews.bsky.social @mitpress.bsky.social @jocn.bsky.social oecs.mit.edu
- Reposted by Steve SmithExcited to represent the Imaging Neuroscience editorial team in this! If you're at #CNS2025 this Sunday, join us for the symposium on new directions in scientific communication! 💚🧠📃
- This weekend at #CNS2025, Anastasia Yendiki presents lessons from the first year of Imaging Neuroscience & how the journal can serve as a blueprint for similar transitions in other journals. Join us on March 30th. Link for details: www.cogneurosociety.org/symposia/?sy... @imagingneurosci.bsky.social
- Excited to announce the 500th paper published by Imaging Neuroscience ! @imagingneurosci.bsky.social @mitpress.bsky.social We've come a long way in a short time and are hugely grateful to the neuroimaging community for your support. Hope to see lots of you at OHBM @ohbmofficial.bsky.social
- New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Britta U. Westner, Floris P. de Lange, et al: Typical neural adaptation for familiar images in autistic adolescents doi.org/10.1162/imag...
- First goose visit of the year to our garden - unusually, they've stuck it out the whole day. Will these lovelies gift us the 2025 goslings..?
- Lovely sunny early Sunday morning walk over at Otmoor. Barn Owl !
- squirrel enjoying the snowdrops
- Reposted by Steve SmithA new FSLeyes is out, with improved support for tractograms - it is now possible to display 3D tractograms in 2D (ortho and lightbox) views. Details at open.win.ox.ac.uk/pages/fsl/fs.... Thanks to dipy and mrtrix3 for some example data sets. Also, hello bluesky!
