Giacomo Bignardi
Max Planck School of Cognition PhD candidate
MPI for Empirical Aesthetics, Behavior Genetics Unit
Typos are my owl
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiToday I am wearing #blue4ReNU for ReNU Syndrome awareness day 💙 4th February (or 4/2), was chosen by families to reflect the 4-2 in RNU4-2 🧬 ReNU syndrome is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder impacting ~100,000 individuals globally 🧠 🌎 lnkd.in/dvruKxZH #ReNUSyndrome @renusyndrome.bsky.social
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiGreat piece in the NYtimes with quotes from @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and @sashagusevposts.bsky.social. The misuse of NIH datasets with sensitive personal information for racist aims should be concerning for anybody interested in scientific integrity. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🚨 anyone with methodological skills, an intrest in psychiatric genetics and having impact no psychiatric care should consider this PhD position in Amsterdam with Wouter Peyrot! Its work related to THE first example I give when asked when and how genetics might actually influence care. 🚨
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiAny Dutch who might have thought to contest implementation of the anti-fireworks law next year are going to have a hard time making their case, after the Vondelkerk burnt down tonight www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiPleased to advertise that the auditory labs from UNLV will have presentations from post-bacc, grad student, post-doc, and faculty researchers @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social and the APCAM auditory conference in Denver in a few weeks. Please see the image for details on our presentations.
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiBetter schools can compensate for dispositions
- Interdisciplinary paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on: 🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences 🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiWe have an open postdoc position in Social Science Genomics in Berlin! Includes gene-environment interplay within German population cohorts & experimental online survey studies to probe public perceptions of potential DNA biomarker applications 🔗 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/2196134/2025...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiRate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning www.nature.com/articles/s41... - another example where noise is exploited as a tunable resource to enable exploration
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOPEN PHD POSITION - Come join our group! The IMPRS at @mpi-nl.bsky.social is offering an PhD position on modelling structured meaning in the brain, supervised by me and Helen De Hoop at the Centre for Language Studies in the @dondersinst.bsky.social - www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiMore top notch rigorous scientific building blocks breaking down… www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🚨 I’ll be joining Psychological Science as an Associate Editor starting next month. People at, or near, my intersection of psych genetics, clinical psych, psychological Epidemiology should consider the journal for your best work! (read the EiCs editorial on the journal policies/goals below)
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiCome join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics). More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #AcademicJobs #PhDJobs 🧬🧪
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiThe Estonian Biobank is an awesome resource (and @klehto.bsky.social is similarly awesome) — a fantastic opportunity to do some great science!
- 🎉 Come to see @triinuvarvas.bsky.social poster nr W56 at #wcpg2025 today! Also, we are recruiting in 2026 and if you are interested in PhD or postdoc positions to work with the fantastic Estonian Biobank data then get in touch or fill out the interest form here ➡️ genomics.ut.ee/en/research-...
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🐥 Early-bird announcement The abstract deadline for BGA 2026 will be February 15, 2026. BGA will take place June 23-26, in beautiful Amsterdam. Time to start thinking about the cool findings you want to share with your international colleagues at our annual meeting!
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiSo happy to see this out! 🎉 We surveyed people from 68 countries about how they encounter and engage with information about science! See the thread below for a summary of the main findings 👇 Congratulations to the whole team, especially @nielsmede.bsky.social and @colognaviktoria.bsky.social 👏
- Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiIt's out! 🥁 In this five-episode series, we dive deep into the mysteries of the human brain. 🧠 So how special is the human brain? How did it evolve? And can we ever really understand it? Grateful to all the amazing guests, incl. @matthewcobb.bsky.social, for their ideas. Enjoy! 👏
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiThe recording is now available so that you can confirm that I indeed have a German accent and color-match my outfits with my Zoom background. youtu.be/YL0co26ng-g?...
- Happy to announce that I'll give a talk on how we can make rigorous causal inference more mainstream 📈 You can sign up for the Zoom link here: tinyurl.com/CIIG-JuliaRo...
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🔥🔥🧠PhD positions are open in my lab, studying brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders based on neuroimaging MRI scans. Due: Dec 1, 2025. If you are interested, please DM me.
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardiupdated preprint from @loganjames.bsky.social @themusiclab.org: humans share acoustic preferences with a variety of other species I love this finding—in call/song/noise/etc pairs where we know (from prior work) that animals have a preference, humans reliably identify the more-attractive sound
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiWe couldn't not rate this classic early DAG by our beloved collective granddagy, Sewall Wright. 14/10. Ten for the DAG, plus one for each cute guinea-pig node. From Wright (1920) "The Relative Importance of Heredity and Environment in Determining the Piebald Pattern of Guinea-Pigs"
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiGreat review on The Genetics of Human Handedness: Microtubules and Beyond www.cell.com/trends/genet... - handedness is such an interesting phenotype!
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiI’m looking for a postdoc to join my lab and work on Multi-Brain Stimulation (MBS). Learn more about the project and how to apply below 👇 This position is funded by the @erc.europa.eu Reposts are very welcome 🙏 #Postdoc #Neuroscience #BrainStimulation #EEG #SocialNeuroscience
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiFor anyone who has not read Stigler's wonderful paper on the Epic Story of Maximum Likelihood, I cannot recommend it enough. You will laugh, you might cry, and you will certainly walk away learning something new. #statssky #statistics www.mit.edu/~18.655/pape...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiNew paper alert! Rare DNA changes in the SETBP1 gene are linked to speech problems & diverse syndromes affecting brain development. Work led by ace postdoc @maggiemkwong.bsky.social uncovered impact of different gene variants, coupling clinical/speech evaluation to molecular & cellular readouts.🧬🗣️🔬🧪
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOur conference on Dialectical Biology, the Marxist tradition represented by the work of Richard Lewontin, is this weekend! Join us Friday to Sunday, online or in Toronto, register here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale... Help spread the word if you can!
- “Do the results support the conclusion? Is the analysis sound? If yes and yes, keep your review brief and constructive.”
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiI finally have some new work to share - some thoughts on how we perceive style with a sprinkle of aesthetics, Fechner, and most importantly: labradors 🐕 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiQUESTION 🚨: I wrote code that uses methods of moments too generate realistic synthetic data for a UKB trait from the showcase page. I might be able too add corelation between traits (have to find a source) to allow multivariate synth data, is this usefull enough to wrap in an R package??
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi📢 Call for Abstracts! The 2nd Annual Conference on #AestheticDevelopment takes place on Nov 20, 2025, at the MPIEA. We invite submissions on how children engage with and develop through the arts. 🗓 Deadline: Oct 12, 2025 🔗 indico.ae.mpg.de/event/29/abstracts/ #Aesthetics #Conference
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOut today! www.cell.com/current-biol...
- On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°! In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🧩Learning to talk & read isn’t just about effort or teaching—it’s shaped by biology, experience & context 🧠Our new review links genetics, neuroscience, psychology & education to show why some children find language or reading easier. 📖 doi.org/10.31234/osf... 🖼️genes→brain→cognition→behaviour 🧵👇
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiTwo birds of a gene - catch Matt Keller's webinar at @uio.no on October 15th. Please share www.sv.uio.no/promenta/eng... @ispg.bsky.social @behaviorgenetic.bsky.social @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social @essgn.bsky.social @ibg.colorado.edu
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiNow I know what you’re thinking: Did they make a video abstract for this important study? Reader,
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiTwenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350.... A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n 🗣️🧬🧪
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiMathematical psychology uses simulation as well, to understand models that are too complex to understand completely without it. It can help uncover surprising behaviour or predictions. Crucially, the sims are helping understand models, not people. The *psychological* knowledge is gained elsewhere.
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiNew publication from our lab: Brain Dynamics during Architectural Experience: Prefrontal and Hippocampal Regions Track Aesthetics and Spatial Complexity 1st author is Lara Gregorian, with collaborators @pfvelasco.bsky.social Zita Patai and Fiona Zisch Stimuli: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiNew preprint with @rogierk.bsky.social @paulbuerkner.com - we introduce "relative measurement uncertainty" - a reliability estimation method that's applicable across a broad class of Bayesian measurement models (e.g., generative-, computational- and item response theory-models osf.io/h54k8
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiWe’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOur paper "A fragmented field" has just been accepted at AMPPS. We find it's not just you, psychology is really getting more confusing (construct and measure fragmentation is rising). We updated the preprint with the (substantial) revision, please check it out. osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiIntervening on a central node in a network likely does little given that its connected neighbors will "flip it back" immediately. Happy to see this position supported now. "Change is most likely [..] if it spreads first among relatively poorly connected nodes." www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiThe most universally agreed upon property that sets emotion/affect apart from everything else is valence: approach/avoid; pleasant/unpleasant. Here they target its computation in flies, where you can really figure out the biology. We know so little about how valence is computed by brains. Exciting!
- How is valence computed in the brain? Check out our new preprint about a single cell that integrates excitatory and inhibitory input across modalities according to valence and impacts behavioral decisions. An exciting collaboration across many labs. Enjoy reading! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOur new paper is out, in which we developed an approach to transform Polygenic Scores (PGSs) into disorder probabilities (i.e., the absolute lifetime disorder risk). Below a thread 👇 open access link: rdcu.be/eIjvC
- Reposted by Giacomo Bignardi🚨 New preprint out! We reconstructed parental haplotypes in >440k individuals (UK & Estonian biobanks) to estimate assortative mating directly in the parental generation. This reveals intensified assortment in recent generations. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiCongratulations to one of #GENEAmsterdam's founding members, Wouter Peyrot, for receiving an ERC starting grant! www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiBrilliant paper by Visscher et al. Populations differ in traits/disease burden. Are these differences due to genetics? Comparing single variants or polygenic scores between populations is biased due to environmental confounders correlated with the variants. 1/3 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiIt was a pleasure introducing PsyNet and its many applications at the Laboratory for Experimental Social Psychology today! Thanks @felixhermans.bsky.social for the invitation and all PsyNet developers, incl. @pmcharrison.bsky.social and @norijacoby.bsky.social for creating such an amazing platform!
- Tremendously grateful to @elinevg.bsky.social for providing an introduction to PsyNet (www.psynet.dev) at the Laboratory for Experimental Social Psychology in KU Leuven today! PsyNet is a new platform uniquely suited to crafting complex experimental designs in an efficient manner!
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiOur genome-wide meta-regression of social behaviour is out as a preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Wonderful @eagle-genetics.bsky.social work with first author @luciadehoyos.bsky.social! We model and predict genetic variation according to social context: outcomes, informants and age!
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiAndrej is a great scientist and teacher, highly recommended!
- Dear colleagues, we have an open PhD position in computational neuroscience - spatial memory models and intracranial recordings - fully funded. Re-advertised, candidates are ideally available in the near future. A collab. with 4 labs. Apply here: tinyurl.com/yc84ctap
- Reposted by Giacomo BignardiPick an idiom: "more than meets the eye", "beauty more than skin [feather] deep" etc. In work led by Rosalyn Price-Waldman, we describe a hidden (and ignored!) black or white layer found below the visible surface of bird feathers which helps make bird colours so striking! 🧪 🪶 #colsci
