Nicole Rust

Professor (UPenn). Brain researcher. Science advocate. Book: Elusive Cures (2025). https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243054/elusive-cures

https://nicolecrust.com/:

Last Notes

2025-08-27 11:32:08 UTC

Not all scientists appreciate the "why" behind science writing for the public - not just as a service, but for themselves. (I didn't always get it). In this piece for Nature Reviews Neuroscience, I draw on the neuroscience of curiosity & decision making to unpack its value.
Share link - open to all:
https://rdcu.be/eCGr7

2025-06-10 11:59:56 UTC

It's publication day for 📘Elusive Cures. What a moment!
This is my 1st book & my 1st time on Mindscape (one of my favorite podcasts).
Here, @npub1x3g…k6wt and I have a wide-ranging conversation about the brain, including: Why are brain and mental disorders so hard to understand and treat?
The podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/06/09/317-nicole-rust-on-why-neuroscience-hasnt-solved-brain-disorders/
The book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243054/elusive-cures
https://media.neuromatch.social/media_attachments/files/114/658/944/888/594/706/original/53cde2c0d6b78904.jpg

2025-06-02 12:52:29 UTC

I hope Senator John Fetterman and his team enjoy nonfiction books (or at least this one).
Nearly everyone is either themselves afflicted with a brain or mental condition, or knows someone who is. We must do better for those individuals! To achieve that, we need federal support of science.
https://media.neuromatch.social/media_attachments/files/114/613/859/618/180/212/original/33e4569af72342aa.png

2025-05-15 11:12:19 UTC

Day 26 (breakthrough): AI.
"Building" was once held up as a test of understanding. With AI, we can build w/out it. AlphaFold is an AI model that predicts protein structures from DNA, created w/out understanding protein folding.
It changes the game.
#ElusiveCures30
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243054/elusive-cures
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2

2024-10-10 23:11:55 UTC

This is remarkable. How do we talk about [and research] heavy things with the empathetic grace they deserve while also taking responsibility for contributing something valuable AND not self destructing?
Ed Yong’s advice.
https://xoxofest.com/2024/videos/ed-yong/

2024-09-06 15:05:18 UTC

So excited to change my profile from "Writing a book" (which has been up since I joined the Furry Elephant movement in Dec 2022) to include a link to that very book.
Wow - this feeling!

2024-09-05 14:51:25 UTC

Thread for us amateur grammar nerds. (Things I'm learning as I review the copy edits for my book).
(Before I begin, let me voice my appreciation for editors!!)
#1) Comprised vs composed
https://www.scribbr.com/commonly-confused-words/comprised-vs-composed/
The university comprises a number of different campuses.
The university is composed of a number of different campuses.
Amyloid plaques are not comprised of amyloid-beta, they are composed of it - good to know!

2024-08-30 19:29:16 UTC

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Imposing a strong filter (as I've been obsessing about this for over two years as I write my own book and I could go on and on ....)
My take is that we can and should applaud a brilliant high-level synthesis and explanation of the genius of an era. For example, *just this morning* I was on a zoom call with a director-of-a-fabulous-science-institute telling me about how Chaos by @npub1kh4…0dny changed his life, inspiring his career in complex systems. That book was first published in (checks notes) 1987! The fact that it inspired so many notable careers, and those folks are still talking about it decades later, is clear evidence that the book is important and matters.
What we shouldn't confuse ourselves about is the idea that an author is the source of all the ideas (as opposed to channeling the genius of a community). I have a very negative, visceral reaction to books that deliver a genius narrative as if the author ere the source, absent attribution of where it's actually coming from.
I get that it's a bit of cognitive dissonance - as scientists, it's to our benefit to hype the hype to get the papers published and grants funded. That's the thing we need to change, I suspect - the narrative!

2024-08-30 18:38:48 UTC

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@npub18g0…0a9e
I’m optimistic it’s time for a rebrand. The genius narrative is so 1990s. The new era is about collective intelligence. Soon, marketing one’s self as a genius who is here to fix all the things will be regarded as misguided and foolish (hooray!).

2024-08-28 02:24:45 UTC

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I admire the wisdom (to delay) and the commitment (to do something)!

2024-08-16 19:52:20 UTC

Profound and beautuful and wow:
ALS (which afflicted Stephen Hawking and Lou Gehrig) is a terrible neurodegenerative disorder. Researchers have been working to create brain-computer-interfaces to restore communication when patients become locked-in (conscious but unable to communicate) with notable sucess (like they imagine writing letters and they appear on a computer screen). But it’s all a bit tedious and finiky.
One researcher, now an Assistant Professor at UC Davis (Sergey Stavisky) had an idea: if we read out signals from the bits of the brain not used for motor functions like writing but the ones used to speak … well … just watch the video. CW: tears might be shed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=thPhBDVSxz0