Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Maltreatment predicts centiles of individual variation from normative brain growth in children

Abstract Exposure to maltreatment in childhood is posited to profoundly disrupt brain development with adverse consequences for cognitive development and health across the lifespan. Here we use “brain charts” from the largest available neuroimaging database to quantify individual...

Bilateral M1 tDCS selectively modulates dynamic large-scale brain states associated with sensorimotor control relative to sham stimulation

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the primary motor cortex is widely used to influence sensorimotor performance, yet its large-scale neural mechanisms remain unclear. This study examined how unilateral and bilateral stimulation of the primary motor cortex affect sensorim...

Sleep forms flexible context representations in toddlers

Abstract Sleep consolidates episodic memory through a hippocampus-dependent process in adults. Whether and how sleep supports memory consolidation during early life, when hippocampal function is immature, remains unclear. Here, we examined effects of sleep on the consolidation of...

How does explicit reliability guide choices? Effect of trustworthiness on choice and metacognition

A key challenge in today’s fast-paced digital world is to integrate information from various sources, which differ in their reliability. Yet, little is known about how explicit probabilistic information about the likelihood that a source provides correct information is used in de...

Neuropsychiatry genetics in Africa

Across Africa, rising mental health needs coincide with rapid advances in genomics, digital health and continental policy reform. Yet research into the genetic, environmental and social determinants of neuropsychiatric illness remains sparse and underfunded. This review argues th...

Fair distributed machine learning with imbalanced data as a Stackelberg evolutionary game

Abstract Decentralised machine learning systems trained on heterogeneous and imbalanced data face a fundamental tension between predictive performance and equitable contribution across participating nodes. Here, we introduce two contribution-weighting mechanisms inspired by the p...

Neural responses during natural vision are action-timed rather than locked to the onset of stable foveal input

Visual processing is traditionally studied using static viewing paradigms in which researchers analyse brain responses to the onsets of a sequence of randomly selected stimuli. Translating this “stimulus onset” approach to active vision paradigms that allow for free eye-movements...

Multiscale characterization of cortical signatures in positive and negative schizotypy:a worldwide ENIGMA study

Positive and negative schizotypy reflect distinct patterns of subclinical traits in the general population associated with neurodevelopmental and schizophrenia-spectrum pathologies. Yet, a comprehensive characterization of the unique and shared neuroanatomical signatures of these...

Deep learning aging marker from retinal images unveils sex-specific clinical and genetic signatures

Abstract Retinal fundus images offer a non-invasive window into systemic aging. Here, we fine-tune a foundation model (RETFound) to predict chronological age from color fundus images in 71,343 participants from the UK Biobank, achieving a mean absolute error of 2.85 years. The re...