Mac Woodburn, PhD

Headed to #CNS2026 in Vancouver for the rain and brains! Say hey if you’re there!

The effects of a second pregnancy on women’s brain structure and function - Nature Communications Extending their previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, the authors show that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks.

Extending previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, a study in Nature Communications shows that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks. #Neuroskyence #medsky 🧪

Brain scans of young horses show that prolonged contact with their mothers supports brain development, social behaviour, and lower stress, reports @natcomms.nature.com: spklr.io/63325D4ulh

#AnimalBehaviour #AnimalWelfare

Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow Osuna-Mascaró and Auersperg report flexible, multipurpose tool use in a cow, expanding the known range of mammalian tool users and underscoring overlooked cognitive capacities in livestock.

An emerging field - cowgnitive neuroscience

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Communications Job Title: Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Communications Location: Shanghai or Pune - Hybrid working model  Application Deadline: 29th January 2026 About Springer Nature Springer Nature is one of ...

The neuroscience team at Nature Communications is hiring a new editor to be based in either Shanghai or Pune with experience in computational neuroscience or neuroimaging!

springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/de-DE/Spring...

Just ahead of the year of the horse - the most detailed horse brain atlas to date and preliminary evidence for default mode network organization!

Very happy to see this last thesis paper in press @natcomms.nature.com! We combine intracranial EEG with multimodal MRI to study how interregional similarity in neurophysiology relates to different network scales ⚡ 🧠

Full story 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The biochemical organisation of the brain revealed through the use of fast whole-brain 3D proton MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI). Fantastic work led by @fedlucchetti.bsky.social, based on a brain imaging technique developed by Antoine Delattre-Klauser! @fbm-unil.bsky.social @snf-fns.ch

Very impressed with @didacvp.bsky.social's work in @natcomms.nature.com, the most thorough mapping of longitudinal memory-atrophy relationships in normal aging, showing both global and memory-specific associations, which grow stronger with age. Early accsess here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new paper is out in Nature Communications! nature.com/articles/s41...

We combined psychophysics, 7T fMRI, and computational modeling of vision with placebo, 5mg, and 10mg psilocybin, in the same group of participants, to clarify the computational mechanisms of psychedelics. 🧵

This is figure 2, which shows encoding model prediction performance.

Dance styles engage the brain in different ways depending on the movements, aesthetics, and emotions associated with the dance, according to a study in Nature Communications. go.nature.com/4i8eLO2 #Neuroskyence 🧪

Reduced brain structural similarity is associated with maturation, neurobiological features, and clinical status in schizophrenia - Nature Communications Individuals with schizophrenia show reduced structural similarity in temporal, cingulate, and insular lobes, especially those with worse cognition and symptoms, affecting late maturing association areas with low metabolism and high neurotransmission.

Reduced brain structural similarity is associated with maturation, neurobiological features, and clinical status in schizophrenia www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧠Out now @natcomms.nature.com !
Brain changes linked to childhood maltreatment are among the field's most published findings. Yet, we find extensive replication failure of gray matter correlates in three large cohorts (N=3225), consistent across subsamples, models and operationalizations🧵

Lifespan changes in the human brain This cross-journal collection invites submissions that investigate human brain changes across all or multiple stages of life, from in-utero to older age.

📢 The new cross-journal Collection “Lifespan changes in the human brain” with @commsbio.nature.com, @natcomms.nature.com, @natneuro.nature.com, and Scientific Reports is now open for submissions! 📭

🌍 Learn more: www.nature.com/collections/...

#Neuroscience #Brain #Lifespan #Neuroimaging

Tastes and retronasal odours evoke a shared flavour-specific neural code in the human insula - Nature Communications Food aromas stimulate smell receptors in the nose but are often mistaken for tastes. This study shows that aromas induce taste-like patterns in the insular cortex. These results explain the illusion and the prominent role of odours in food reward.

Food aromas stimulate smell receptors in the nose but are often mistaken for tastes. A study in Nature Communications shows that aromas induce taste-like patterns in the insular cortex. These results explain the illusion and the prominent role of odours in food reward. 🧪

Tastes and retronasal odours evoke a shared flavour-specific neural code in the human insula - Nature Communications Food aromas stimulate smell receptors in the nose but are often mistaken for tastes. This study shows that aromas induce taste-like patterns in the insular cortex. These results explain the illusion a...

Excited to share my first postdoc project in collaboration with @jseubert.bsky.social and @margaveldhuizen.bsky.social , now published with @natcomms.nature.com, where we describe a potential mechanism for flavour integration in the insula. #NeuroSkyence #FlavourScience doi.org/10.1038/s414... 1/10

I am very excited to let you know that my first PhD study has now been published in Nature Communications. 🧠📄 See the link to the article or read a summary in the post below! ⬇️

#alzheimersdisease #tau #amyloidbeta #neuroimaging #MRI #PET

Developmental cognitive neuroscientists - I'll be attending #FluxCongress2025 in Dublin this week. Say hello!

Now published 🍾🎉

Neural and behavioral reinstatement jointly reflect retrieval of narrative events - Nature Communications When people recall a movie, their eye movements and brain activity resemble those observed during the viewing. These behavioral and neural reactivations are linked through a common process, likely ref...

Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory!

We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9

People’s brains aged faster during the COVID pandemic — even the uninfected Study of nearly 1,000 people showed that brain ageing was not linked to infection status, but cognitive decline was.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Decade + long work at UNC here - we longitudinally link prefrontal thickness peaks at 12 months to 8-12 yr working memory performance + activation!

Tremor is a common symptom across many neurological disorders.

But is there a shared tremor circuit across disorders - one that could guide treatment, regardless of diagnosis?

We think: yes.

Our study is out now in @natcomms.nature.com:

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 A thread.

Modulating cortical excitability and cortical arousal by pupil self-regulation - Nature Communications Weijs, Missura, Potok et al. showed in this study with brain stimulation and electrophysiological methods that self-regulation of pupil size via pupil-based biofeedback modulates cortical excitability...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to see this out in @natcomms.nature.com today!

This paper builds on the lab's work on self-regulation of arousal through pupil-based biofeedback. We assessed several markers of cortical and cardiac arousal in a pure self-regulation and dual task setting.

Human V4 size predicts crowding distance - Nature Communications Across 49 observers, we found large variations in crowding distance and retinotopic map size. These measures covary, conserving a 1.4-mm cortical crowding distance in the human V4 map. This links the ...

“Human V4 size predicts crowding distance”.
@jankurzawski.bsky.social, now Assistant Professor at U Maastricht, led a big effort over a few years. We used individual differences in object recognition and the size of brain maps to identify a perceptual bottleneck.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Individual variation in the chimpanzee arcuate fasciculus predicts vocal and gestural communication Nature Communications - Here, authors reveal the anatomy of the chimpanzee arcuate fasciculus predicts use of intentional, communicative gestures and sounds. The chimpanzee arcuate is not...

Hey Arcuate freaks and geeks!

I first contacted Erin in 2019. I was working on my PhD in France on communication correlates of homologous language regions in primates. But what about their interconnections?

The article: rdcu.be/eifzU

Had a great time speaking with Sydney about our most recent paper out now in @natcomms.nature.com @macwoodburn.bsky.social . Paper link here: rdcu.be/ehbOy

in press @natcomms.nature.com 🌟

"Multimodal gradients unify local and global cortical organization"

7T MRI + cytoarchitectonics reveal a sensory-paralimbic axis of areal specialization & integration

led by superstar Yezhou Wang & a terrific team of friends & colleagues

▶️ doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Charting brain functional development from birth to 6 years of age - Nature Human Behaviour Yin et al. harmonized 1,091 fMRI scans across five imaging cohorts to map developmental trajectories of brain functional connectivity in early childhood, revealing early brain development and its link...

New study by Yin et al. charts early brain development (0-6 yrs) using fMRI, revealing key connectivity patterns tied to cognitive abilities. #earlybraindevelopment #braincharts
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's shocking how little is known about the brainstem red nucleus. In our new paper “The human brainstem’s red nucleus was upgraded to support goal-directed action” out now in @naturecomms.bsky.social we show that current thinking on the red nucleus is in need of a serious upgrade. rdcu.be/ehbOy