Lisa S. Scott 🧠

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚 Occasionally, I make threads on social media about papers and books that I read. It helps me focus and process deeper when I share highlights and thoughts with others. In this blogpost, I compile a…

For more such works and threads, also check out this blogpost (will be expanding with new threads over time) irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...

We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨
🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes

Yes…I thought the bad parts were figured out with besh.

NIH rolls back red tape on some experiments — spurring excitement and concern Some human research will no longer be classified as a clinical trial, easing the paperwork burden, but not everyone agrees with the approach.

Bye clinical trials for experimental research? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Deep learning in fetal, infant, and toddler neuroimaging research Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being integrated into everyday tasks and work environments. However, its adoption in medical image analys…

This paper was an awesome collaborative effort of a @fitngin.bsky.social working group. It provides a detailed review of how DNNs can be used to support dev neuro research

@lauriebayet.bsky.social and I wrote the network modeling section about how DNNs can be used to test developmental theories 🧵

Thrilled to share our paper on the formation of brain shape in human newborns, just out @natneuro.nature.com: tinyurl.com/2ty4ef43
Using #fractal analysis of #MRI data from the developing Human Connectome Project (lnkd.in/dxeHbJX6), we show that brain shape closely captures infant age and genetics ⬇️

The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy - Nature Communications A classic feature of human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. Here, the authors show that before the emergence of self-concept, infants instead remember informa...

Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Walz: "What's happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN"

Income insufficiency impacts early #brain development in infants facing increased psychosocial adversity: A network-based approach Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceThis paper demonstrates the key role of adversity on the earliest stages of postnatal brain development. Data from the Baby Steps study, an ongoing longitudinal study collecting electroencephalography (EEG) and socioeconomic status related ...

Income insufficiency impacts early #brain development in infants facing increased psychosocial adversity: A network-based approach @PNAS.org

"They conjure up these really emotive conditions in our soul... We know that something is out there in the dark doing something that we can't do. I think that's one of the real fun things about owls." —Dr. Rocky Gutierrez

Dressed in a spotted owl sweater handmade by his wife, ecologist Rocky Gutierrez explains why he thinks so many people share his love for owls. 🦉

Matrix: A Novel Matrix: A Novel - Kindle edition by Groff, Lauren. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Matrix: A Novel.

#FLORIDA AUTHOR E-BOOK DEAL ALERT: Bookseller & author @legroff.bsky.social brilliant novel MATRIX is only $1.99 for Kindle today. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...

We have longitudinal multimodal (EEG, MRI) datasets to richly characterize developmental plasticity and an interest in public health relevant prenatal factors (e.g. iron deficiency, prenatal stress) and postnatal factors: caregiving, music, and language experiences!

We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team!

More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...

Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...

t-shirt that says save the electrons

Transparent and comprehensive statistical reporting is critical for ensuring the credibility, reproducibility, and interpretability of psychological research. This paper offers a structured set of guidelines for reporting statistical analyses in quantitative psychology, emphasizing clarity at both the planning and results stages. Drawing on established recommendations and emerging best practices, we outline key decisions related to hypothesis formulation, sample size justification, preregistration, outlier and missing data handling, statistical model specification, and the interpretation of inferential outcomes. We address considerations across frequentist and Bayesian frameworks and fixed as well as sequential research designs, including guidance on effect size reporting, equivalence testing, and the appropriate treatment of null results. To facilitate implementation of these recommendations, we provide the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology (TSRP) Checklist that researchers can use to systematically evaluate and improve their statistical reporting practices (https://osf.io/t2zpq/). In addition, we provide a curated list of freely available tools, packages, and functions that researchers can use to implement transparent reporting practices in their own analyses to bridge the gap between theory and practice. To illustrate the practical application of these principles, we provide a side-by-side comparison of insufficient versus best-practice reporting using a hypothetical cognitive psychology study. By adopting transparent reporting standards, researchers can improve the robustness of individual studies and facilitate cumulative scientific progress through more reliable meta-analyses and research syntheses.

Our paper on improving statistical reporting in psychology is now online 🎉

As a part of this paper, we also created the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology checklist, which researchers can use to improve their statistical reporting practices

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Automated detection of mouth opening in newborn infants - Behavior Research Methods Automated behavioral measurement using machine learning is gaining ground in psychological research. Automated approaches have the potential to reduce the labor and time associated with manual behavio...

First human newborn paper from my NSF CAREER Award! Automated detection of mouth opening in newborn infants - with our amazing @umiamipsych.bsky.social team: Guangyu Zung, Yeojin Amy Ahn, @tiffany6390.bsky.social, @semaylott.bsky.social, Arushi Malik, @dmessinger.bsky.social doi.org/10.3758/s134...

The findings suggest that the brain's ability to prioritize and streamline learned objects develops with experience during the first year of life and that competitive neural interactions support early attention, perception, and learning.

We showed that competitive neural interactions increased with age. While 6-month-old infants showed no competition, by 9 and 12 months, visuocortical responses favored the trained objects at the expense of untrained objects. And the type of label in the storybook didn’t seem to matter.

Competitive Cortical Prioritization Emerges for Trained Objects across the First Year of Life Learning to detect and recognize a broad range of visual objects is a crucial developmental task during the first year of life. However, many of the neurophysiological changes underlying the emergence...

Im very excited about this work out from our recent infant ssVEP study! Led by postdoc Maeve Boylan! After infants learn about objects while reading a book with a parent, their brains prioritize the processing of familiarity. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Distinct alpha networks modulate different aspects of perceptual decision-making Fluctuations in alpha-band neural oscillations influence whether we perceive faint stimuli, but how these oscillations relate to different perceptual processes is not clear. This study shows that alph...

Check out our latest work led by @joeyzhou.bsky.social on alpha oscillatory networks in PLOS Biology!
➡️ journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Do ongoing alpha activity fluctuations influence perceptual sensitivity or criterion?

Developmental alterations in brain network asymmetry in 3- to 9-month infants with congenital sensorineural hearing loss Early sensorineural hearing loss disrupts lateralization development of the brain network.

Expecting experience, not getting it, the brain adapts
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Paid parental leave would be great too :) journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Yup

I don’t even know what an ai wrapper is 😬

That’s what I’m going to try to do in a grant writing class. Give them time in class to work and provided guided direction: e.g., this is how to write an abstract now write the first part and post in your google doc. Also partner work decreases AI use I think???

I guess we need to find ways to encourage active learning. Maybe more frequent testing or in class reading workshops- where students read/work in class without AI. Or tasks that involve AI but encourage active learning. At this point I think it all needs to change.

Yes, maybe. But try putting a pdf of a paper in and hit the create video button. I’ve found the videos do a better job of explaining complex papers than I can. I’ve used it to explain things to me I don’t understand.

Learning about notebooklm this past week was a defining moment/realization for me. Students don’t need me to lecture. The classroom is for human connection.