Andrea Santoro

1/9 🧠🎬 How does the brain represent emotion as it continuously unfolds? Our new preprint finds a division of labour across neural scales: more complex is not always better, and the most informative view of brain activity depends on how finely emotion is described. Link in 🧵

8/9 The larger picture: there may be no single "best" neural representation of emotion, and no single "emotion core." Higher-order topology captures fine-grained affective structure; pairwise connectivity offers a portable readout of broad arousal. Granularity seems to be the modulating factor.

biorxiv.orgHigher-order topology uncovers the multidimensional dynamics of naturalistic emotionEmotions are thought to emerge from co-activation among distributed brain systems, yet traditional fMRI analyses typically examine localized responses and pairwise connections, potentially overlooking...

Huge kudos to Lorenzo Zaffina, who led this massive effort 👏 Very cool collaboration w/ Matteo Diano, Flavia Petruso, Maria Giulia Preti, Enrico Amico, @elliemorgenroth.bsky.social, @lordgrilo.bsky.social, @dimitrivdv.bsky.social & Patrik Vuilleumier. 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

6/9 🌍 Does it generalize? We tested on three independent datasets with entirely different narratives: Sherlock, Merlin and Jojo Rabbit. Arousal predictions transferred most robustly through pairwise connectivity.

7/9 Valence did not reliably transfer. But the relative geometry of affective states stayed aligned across datasets, and connectivity preserved it substantially better than regional BOLD activity.

4/9 🎯 Fine-grained emotion: the homological scaffold best tracked recurrent emotional states in 13 of 14 films. It also most accurately predicted the full 50-feature affective profile.

5/9 🕸️ Broad dimensions: compress emotion into valence, arousal and power, and the scaffold's advantage disappears. Here, simpler pairwise connectivity captures the dominant arousal signal very effectively.

2/9 Emotions are thought to emerge from co-activation among distributed brain systems. Yet fMRI analyses typically examine localized responses or pairwise connections, potentially overlooking interactions among groups of regions.

tinyurl.comPNASProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

3/9 We analysed fMRI recorded during 14 films (~2.5h), continuously annotated across 50 affective features. We compared different "views" of the same activity: regional BOLD, pairwise connectivity, and time-resolved higher-order topology (the homological scaffold).

Andrea Santoro reposted

Project CETI

@projectceti.bsky.social

26 Mar

Female sperm whales support one another during the birthing journey—behavior that was long considered unique to humans and a few primates. Read now in @science.org: bit.ly/4bIKkeo

Andrea Santoro reposted

Project CETI

@projectceti.bsky.social

26 Mar

Explore moment-by-moment of the most in-depth documentation of any cetacean birth in the new CETI paper, “Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key events,” published in @natureportfolio.nature.com’s Scientific Reports: bit.ly/4bIVZKc

Andrea Santoro reposted

Emily Finn

@esfinn.bsky.social

16 Mar

Very happy that this paper from our lab is now out in @pnas.org! What happens when the *same* person experiences the *same* information with a *different* interpretation? Nearly the whole 🧠—well, at least nearly all association cortex—changes how it represents that information! tinyurl.com/p8chj2j7

Andrea Santoro reposted

Giovanni Petri

@lordgrilo.bsky.social

25 Feb

Renormalization in the brain? With @andreasantoro.bsky.social and @jesseba.bsky.social we're organizing a workshop at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social (Lisbon, March 16) on how coarse-graining principles from physics can explain neural computation across scales. nplresearch.github.io/neurorenorm2...

Andrea Santoro reposted

Iacopo Iacopini

@iaciac.bsky.social

8 Jan

🇮🇹 Un articolo di Davide Risso su Wired Italia racconta il nostro lavoro su reti di ingredienti e combinazioni per caratterizzare cucine del mondo: www.wired.it/article/mate... @wired.it @saumitranetsci.bsky.social @andreasantoro.bsky.social

wired.itLa matematica del sapore, si può indovinare l’origine di una ricetta dalla combinazione dei suoi ingredienti?Uno studio di migliaia di ricette da tutto il mondo mostra come diverse cucine seguano schemi ricorrenti. E come questi influenzino le nostre preferenze alimentari

lordgrilo.github.ioThe Topology of Human and Synthetic Minds - Workshop

9 Sept 2025

Latest work at #EUSIPCO25!🚀 We bring Topological Signal Processing to the brain 🧠 — showing that edge-based approaches outperform classical GSP in task decoding. Great collab with M.Nurisso & @lordgrilo.bsky.social 🙌 Paper 👉 eusipco2025.org/wp-content/u... #Neuroimaging #SignalProcessing #TSP

Andrea Santoro reposted

Giovanni Petri

@lordgrilo.bsky.social

9 Sept 2025

Next week (on the 15th and 16th), with @yasserroudi.bsky.social and Federico Turkheimer we will organize a workshop on the "The Topology of Human and Synthetic Minds" Please do join us! (Registration is free but required for access/catering!) lordgrilo.github.io/topology-nat...

Andrea Santoro reposted

Nicholas Landry

@nwlandry.bsky.social

17 July 2025

🚨🚨 New preprint just dropped! In collaboration with @colltoaction.bsky.social, Cliff Joslyn, @fralotito.bsky.social, Audun Myers, Joshua Pickard, Brenda Praggastis, and Przemysław Szufel, we define a new data sharing standard for higher-order networks. arxiv.org/abs/2507.11520

Andrea Santoro reposted

Simone Poetto

@poetz.bsky.social

30 June 2025

Thrilled to finally share a huge piece of my PhD project! Our paper “The Topological Architecture of Brain Identity” is now out on bioRxiv: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/n

🧠 Want to understand how different higher-order methods compare in brain connectivity analysis? Check out our new preprint — a fantastic collab with past & present NPL members @lordgrilo.bsky.social : 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A thread🧵

14/ This work takes an important step toward a unified roadmap for navigating the complex, fragmented landscape of higher-order brain connectivity.

Huge thanks for this fun collaboration to past and present members of the NPLab — Matteo Neri, @poetz.bsky.social, Davide Orsenigo, Matteo Diano, @marilyngatica.bsky.social, @lordgrilo.bsky.social 🙌🧠

12/ One standout: topological scaffolds. They act as integrators — capturing synergy in nodes, and structure-function coupling at edges. They're central in linking connectivity patterns to behavior.

13/ In short: ✅ HOIs provide richer, biologically grounded insights into brain function ✅ The research landscape is now organized — synergy, redundancy, topology ✅ HOIs better capture traits; FC better captures states ✅ Tools are available for broader use (HOI toolbox, TDA code, etc.)

10/ HOIs also help explain how the brain reconfigures during different tasks. Social/emotional tasks show more synergy, while sensorimotor ones lean on redundancy.

11/ Even dopamine levels relate: lower dopamine -> more flexible task-related reconfiguration.

8/🧠 For task decoding, though, classic FC is still one of the top methods.

9/ This shows a key trade-off: 🔍 If you want to understand who a person is (trait-level): use HOIs ⚡ If you want to know what they're doing (state-level): FC is often enough

6/ But there's more. These metrics also reflect the brain’s neurochemistry: • Redundant metrics correlate with metabolic maps • Synergistic & topological metrics align with receptor distributions

7/ When it comes to applications, HOIs show their power: 🎯 For brain fingerprinting (ID'ing individuals), HOI metrics outperform classical functional connectivity (FC)

4/ First big insight: HOI metrics fall into 3 categories: 🔴 Redundant: capture overlapping info (e.g., within sensory networks) 🔵 Synergistic: capture integrative info (e.g., across systems) 🟣 Topological: bridge the two, identifying mesoscale structures

5/ Despite different math, rank differences of all HOI metrics align with the brain's core hierarchy: from sensory (unimodal) to associative (transmodal) cortex. This "HOI axis" reflects fundamental computational principles embedded in the brain’s layout. 🧭

2/ Brain models often focus on pairs of regions, but real interactions might involve groups acting together HOI methods aim to capture this, from detecting synergy and redundancy using different information-theoretic approaches to mapping topological cycles in brain networks.

3/ Yet with all these new tools — PhiID, O-information, PED, persistent homology, triangles, scaffolds — no one knew how they compared, what they captured, or when to use which. This paper tackles this directly with a comprehensive comparison across 10 HOI metrics.

arxiv.orgThe topology of synergy: linking topological and information-theoretic approaches to higher-order interactions in complex systemsThe study of irreducible higher-order interactions has become a core topic of study in complex systems. Two of the most well-developed frameworks, topological data analysis and multivariate informatio...

🧵 1/ Over the past years, brain connectivity research has moved beyond simple pairwise interactions. A wide range of higher-order interaction (HOI) methods — from information theory to topological data analysis — have emerged. But the field is quite fragmented. Let's dive in. 🧠

Andrea Santoro reposted

Thomas F. Varley

@thosvarley.bsky.social

15 Apr 2025

New pre-print just dropped, with @doctorjosh.bsky.social, @alicepatania.bsky.social, and Pedro Mediano. In it we ask: when an algebraic topologist and an information theorist talk about "higher-order" structure, are they talking about the same thing? A 🧵1/n arxiv.org/abs/2504.10140

Andrea Santoro reposted

Rick Betzel

@richardfbetzel.bsky.social

12 Feb 2025

Connectome architecture favours within-module diffusion and between-module routing. Really cool multi-species work from Caio Seguin on module-defined communication policies in connectomes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Andrea Santoro reposted

Alessandro Vespignani

@alexvespi.bsky.social

12 Feb 2025

Wastewater from airplane toilets? We introduce a global Aircraft-Based Wastewater Surveillance Network (WWSN) for pandemic monitoring in Nature Medicine 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415... Aircraft-based wastewater surveillance allows for real-time, non-invasive monitoring of global pathogen spread Short 🧵

doi.orgPandemic monitoring with global aircraft-based wastewater surveillance networks - Nature MedicineBy simulating the implementation of airport-based wastewater surveillance sites at the global level, a modeling study shows how this early warning system would perform in identifying sources of pandem...

@richardfbetzel.bsky.social

12 Feb 2025

Thrilled to announce that I've been awarded a #MSCA fellowship! I'll continue my work at CENTAI in Turin with @lordgrilo, while collaborating with the NERV team in Paris with @DeVicoFallani at the intersection of neuroscience & higher-order interactions. Thanks to everyone who supported me!

Andrea Santoro reposted

Rick Betzel

4 Feb 2025

Also! The symposium on higher-order interactions, chaired by @manishsaggar.bsky.social and @lordgrilo.bsky.social, was accepted. Absolute must-attend if you're at OHBM 2025, with talks from: @popeme.bsky.social, @andreasantoro.bsky.social, and @novelli-leo.bsky.social! @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Andrea Santoro reposted

Giovanni Petri

@lordgrilo.bsky.social

27 Jan 2025

And here we go! First position on my ERC grant is officially open. Fully funded 3.5 years PhD position at NetSI London working with me and the @nplab.bsky.social on modeling and reconstructing higher-order systems. Application deadline: 16th February 2025. Bring your A game!

jobs.ac.ukPhD Studentship (Fully Funded) in Network Science - Reconstruction and Modeling of Higher-Order Interactions in Complex Systems at Northeastern University LondonStart your UK & international job search for academic jobs, research jobs, science jobs and managerial jobs in leading universities and top...

Network Science Institute@nunetsi.bsky.social

Congratulations to Giovanni Petri @lordgrilo.bsky.social on being awarded the prestigious #ERCCoG for the project "Reconstruction and Unification of Neural and Ecological Systems" #RUNES! This nearly €2M grant will support in the next 5 yrs. his groundbreaking research on higher-order interactions.

Andrea Santoro reposted

NetScience

@netscience.bsky.social

27 Nov 2024

Higher-order connectomics of human brain function reveals local topological signatures of task decoding, individual identification, and behavior www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comHigher-order connectomics of human brain function reveals local topological signatures of task decoding, individual identification, and behavior - Nature CommunicationsHere, the authors perform a higher-order analysis of fMRI data, revealing that accounting for group interactions greatly enhances task decoding, brain fingerprinting, and brain-behavior associations c...

Really happy to share that our latest work on "Higher order connectomics of human brain function" is now out in NatComms @naturecomms.bsky.social. One of the most fun projects that I've worked on! Big thanks to the friends involved F Battiston, M Lucas, @lordgrilo.bsky.social, E Amico doi.org/nt34

8/n Our findings reveal that higher-order approaches are preferable in certain contexts for exploring brain dynamics, uncovering insights that pairwise models might overlook.

9/n This topological perspective parallels ongoing research efforts using information-theoretic approaches, emphasizing the importance of considering complex, multi-region interactions to truly understand brain function. 🌌

6/n 2️⃣ Individual Identification: Known as "functional brain fingerprinting" 🕵️‍♂️. While higher-order methods may not add much at the whole-brain level, they excel at capturing individual uniqueness within specific networks, such as within and across functional resting-state networks.

7/n 3️⃣ Brain-Behavior Associations: With higher-order connectivity, we observed stronger links between brain activity and behavior, especially for complex cognitive abilities. Pairwise approaches showed weaker relationships.

4/n Analyzing fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project, we found that higher-order methods significantly outperform traditional pairwise models in three key areas:

5/n 1️⃣ Task Decoding: By capturing unique topological patterns of brain activity, our approach better distinguishes between different cognitive tasks. Higher-order connections enhance task distinguishability compared to lower-order approaches! 🧩

Below a short thread 🧵: 1/n We've uncovered how higher-order interactions, extracted using a topological framework, reveal complexities in human brain fMRI data that traditional models miss. This offers fresh insights into brain function. 🧠✨