Excited to share that our work introducing the Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC) data resource is now published in Neuron!! 🎉 📚 Read the paper: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lpaF3BtfH... 🧠 Explore the RBC dataset: reprobrainchart.github.io
Neuroscientist | Professor of Medical Psychology at U Bonn | PI Neuroscience of Motivation, Action, & Desire Lab at U Bonn & Tübingen aka @cornu_copiae
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Excited to share that our work introducing the Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC) data resource is now published in Neuron!! 🎉 📚 Read the paper: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lpaF3BtfH... 🧠 Explore the RBC dataset: reprobrainchart.github.io
Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Even after recovery, relapse is heartbreakingly common in anorexia nervosa. Could the answer lie in the gut’s hidden signals? 🧵
🧵 New study alert! How does 🌡️ room temperature relate to how our body reacts to 😰 psychosocial stress? We looked at everyday indoor temperature variation (17–28 °C) and measured stress markers in the body.
Check out the final paper from my @bbrfoundation.bsky.social Young Investigator Award, now published in Nature Mental Health! rdcu.be/eHxQr
Effectiveness of Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Protocols on Drug Craving and Consumption/Relapse in Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of 208 Clinical Trials and 36 Protocols https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.21.25335559v1
I feel like this should go without saying, but repeated hits to the head can only be bad: A recent @nature.com paper describes the neuron los and inflammation caused by repeated head trauma in young athletes 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How can we improve transcutaneous VNS? This study uses neural bridging to connect a cutaneous sensory nerve with the cervical branch of the vagus nerve, leading to a 3.5x increase in c-Fos in the NTS (vs. sham). #neuroskyence 🩺 Sun et al, Neurotherapeutics www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵
I created the first statistical framework for using your own data to figure out your own causes and effects—for truly personalized digital health and medicine. All thanks to an NIH T32 grant! tinyurl.com/daza2018
Three rejections for the lab today, so I guess I should close the inbox now 🙈
🚨 2 Postdoc openings in Neuroscience – Liège, Belgium 🚨 We are recruiting for a project on brain development & autism that includes: ⚡ Neuropixels recordings ⚡ Opto/chemo ⚡ Behavior ⚡ Neural network modeling If you know someone, tag them or RT for visibility! 🙏 www.fens.org/careers/job-...
Kelly Cobey’s early career experiences sparked a campaigning zeal, now focused on predatory publishing and responsible research assessment go.nature.com/4gswIWF
Congratulations, Jasper 👏
A comparison of cervical and auricular VNS in rats shows that only cVNS alters heart rate (likely due to efferent effects). aVNS is not inferior to cVNS in terms of modulated EEG power (peaks in somatosensory cortex). Moon et al, Brain Stimul #neuroskyence 🩺 www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S193...
And another preprint from the lab by @alisaloosen.bsky.social 🥳 In a very exciting collaboration with the Yale OCD clinic, we investigated metacognitive processes during cognitive flexibility using our new www.brainexplorer.net app game. See all details in Alisa's thread 👇🏼
Can one bring together Reinforcement learning and Drift Diffusion models to understand collective foraging ? Congrads to Jonathan Marienhagen , Lisa Blum Moyse and Dominik Deffner on this new study. Very happy that I was part of this collaboration. Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Thrilled to share that my 1st paper with @univie.ac.at affiliation is now published!🥳 doi.org/10.1111/aphw... We explored weight-loss & dietary intentions in representative samples from Germany & Austria (N=1,510). Huge thanks to @lauramkoenig.bsky.social for making the data collection possible!🙏
Who knew that one of the most important requirements of faculty life is to soldier through the never-ending editing of ever-changing documents at night 🫠
The gut-brain connection Glia cells mediate cytokine signalling between the gut and the brain, linking sleep to inflammation in the gut.
Lab’s latest is out in Imaging Neuroscience, led by Kirsten Peterson: “Regularized partial correlation provides reliable functional connectivity estimates while correcting for widespread confounding”, where we demonstrate a major improvement to standard fMRI functional connectivity (correlation) 1/n
Thrilled that our new review "Motor Working Memory" is now in press at TiCS! @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social By me + Hanna Hillman We argue that a dedicated research program on 'working memory for movements' is long overdue Link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lmMX4sIRv...
The new {marginaleffects} release for #RStats (0.30.0) comes with two new vignettes: 1. Speed up computation with automatic differentiation (often 10x gains) marginaleffects.com/bonus/perfor... 2. Power analyses with {marginaleffects} and {DeclareDesign}. marginaleffects.com/bonus/power....
Our paper showing treatment-resistant depression is marked by WM loss and rewiring of reward circuits. ⬇️ FA in major tracts & hyperconnectivity b/w insula↔vmPFC and striatum↔vmPFC, & hypoconnectivity b/w striatum↔insula—linked to anhedonia severity. #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Final paper of my PhD got published! 🥳 We investigated whether stress increases the desire for immediately available food or alcohol in patients with bulimia nervosa or alcohol use disorder. Check it out here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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
🚨New pre-print out! 🍂 Using daily gamified smartphone 📱 tracking, we found that reductions in both self- and decision-making confidence precede when people are likely to report experiencing symptoms of OCD. www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...
Awesome new preprint from @jasonleng.bsky.social! Deadlines in decision making often truncate too-slow responses. Failing to account for these omissions can (severely) bias your DDM parameter estimates. They offer a great solution to correct for this issue. doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Discovery of a brain center (BNST) that controls consumption (including sweets, fats, salt and other foods) in mice www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
In our new paper 📖🔥, we conducted a pooled analysis (n=443; 5 studies) to test if state affect (momentary mood) or trait dispositions (approach/avoidance) predict cortisol reactivity beyond biological & contextual factors. (1/4) #neuroscience #Neuroskyence #cogpsyc #AffectSci #psychscisky
Our latest work is now out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! We examined the role of the basal forebrain and its influence on intrinsic brain networks in depressive and anxiety disorders. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s44... @psychunimelb.bsky.social, @mbciu.bsky.social, #UnimelbMDHS
A Practical Guide to Identifying Robust Clusters in Neuroimaging Data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
We recently reported higher variability of reinforcement learning in obesity and BED, but what about neural representations? In our new preprint, we show higher variability in NAcc responses to reward cues in obesity and disinhibited eating www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... w/ @nbkroemer.bsky.social
New preprint from the lab! 🧠 Led by Juliana Trach, w/ Sophia Ou Using fMRI, we discovered evidence for time-sensitive reward prediction errors (RPEs) in the human cerebellum. Builds on, and extends, recent work in both rodents and NHPs
Thank you! We had to move many details to the supporting information because most psychiatry journals have a strict word count and typically include the methods in this count. You might also like Anne's @akuehnel.bsky.social recent preprint then: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Application is open! Come join us and our fantastic line-up of speakers next year in March in Bonn!
Wow! Covid vaccine development and delivery cost $79.4 billion, but the health and economic benefits of vaccination were valued between $4.83 trillion–$37.8 trillion. A return on investment of $59.8–$475 per dollar invested!! This is why vaccine equity matters! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
When we encounter the same reward repeatedly, we show variable responses; is this just noise? In our new preprint, we replicate the association of BMI and disinhibited eating with variability of NAcc signals to reward. #neuroskyence 🩺 W/ @akuehnel.bsky.social www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆: 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹, 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝘅, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Excellent review paper about reactive and anticipatory processes. #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Wow, this is great news, Ignacio, and very well-deserved. Congrats 🎉!
Amygdala–liver signalling orchestrates glycaemic responses to stress www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Extraordinary resource! "Comprehensive recordings from 621,733 neurons in 297 brain areas of 139 mice (12 labs) performing a decision-making task with sensory, motor & cognitive components: a public dataset to understand how computations distributed across & within brain areas drive behaviour."👇🧪
Ever wondered why you keep going to that restaurant with stale fries? Is it because you went often in the past (perseveration) or because you remember past good experiences better (positivity bias)? Our study out in PNAS investigates the normative basis for these biases www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🧪 I might be the only author on Blueksy, so here we go. Serotonin in the caudate while doing uniquely human things (a social game) provides information about movement disorder diagnosis. This work started a long time ago with Ken (when he was at Wake Forest) working with Read at VT. rdcu.be/eDDPf
I really love doing translational research in humans, but I had no idea how much time I would spend just working on the entire process. Grant proposals, IRB docs, preregistration, SAPs... Rinse and repeat, and try not to make a stupid mistake you will regret in 2-4 years.
Very cool 👏
New preprint! We are pleased to share our Hierarchical Bayesian framework for Interoceptive Psychophysics! Implemented in rstan, we provide a complete suite of tools spanning model comparison, parameter recovery, multifactor designs, power analysis, and more! 🎯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
does someone good at coding & analysis want to work remotely w/ us in the coming few months (before end of 2025), as a paid consultant? project will be on neurofeedback (fMRI, ECoG, calcium imaging). we'll work towards developing the experiments & analysis pipelines together. if so pls DM me ur CV🧠📈
If you are interested in using functional neuroimaging and neuromodulation to improve key symptoms of depression, we are still looking for PhD students: Official ad (in German, B2 level or better is required): karriereamukb.de/jobs/doktora...
Yeah, I agree. There are many mood induction studies, but to the best of my knowledge, I am not aware of a similar analysis, so it is definitely worth looking into this.
One of the last projects of my PhD looking into insular functional segregation in depression is finally out as a preprint 🙏👇 Have a look and let us know what you think! #neuroskyence
Thank you. It is a great idea to estimate the state component in healthy participants. In our fMRI studies, we usually collect mood ratings before and after the scan, but we typically manipulate mood only indirectly. Will keep this in mind (and maybe someone has good data on it).
Thanks! I don't want to say how long it took us to finish the paper 🫠. It would be nice to see how well it replicates across samples as well.
Nature research paper: Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning go.nature.com/41rFGxa
The enteric nervous system (ENS) is an insanely complex nervous system that controls our gut, interacts with our brain, and is vital to our wellbeing. 🥼 Our lab is interested in how the cells of the ENS are regulated in many aspects of health and disease.
We use (normalized) voxels and the Hammers atlas, not individual vertices. There are concerns about spurious correlations in surface-based analysis, so ours is comparatively straightforward (using the default CONN pipeline). direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
New preprint...and this one is truly EPIC 🚨. Using a large group of patients with depression and healthy controls (N>800), we show differences in the functional segregation of insular subnetworks. And we can use it to classify! Led by @glassybrain.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺 osf.io/preprints/ps...
New findings help to explain why it has been so challenging to predict brain signaling from the connectome alone. By Holly Barker #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/w...
What can *genetic insensitivity to opioids* teach us about endogenous opioid function in humans? Fully funded position in Oslo (PhD student or postdoc) Interested in pain, mu/kappa opioids, behavioural genetics, RCTs, or related? Apply here: 2411.webcruiter.no/Main2/Recrui... Please RT for reach
Brain area 46 is at the center of a network for emotion regulation in marmosets, a new Science study finds. The results relate directly to motivation and responsiveness to threat, which play important roles in depression and anxiety. Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/4fTlB8M
This paper in J Neuroscience provides evidence that some of the heterogeneity in dopamine signals in the striatum is related to value decay - interesting idea, I hadn't encountered this before: www.jneurosci.org/content/45/3... 🧠📈 🧪 #NeuroAI
I agree it should be combined, and more naturalistic settings (vs. rest) likely help. You may want to check out our recent preprint as well because we find that interoceptive accuracy concerning metabolic states is associated with mood variability (+BMI): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Great summary, Micah. One quick thought: Do you think you could break it down to the single-item level to identify questions that may load on psychophysiological measures of interoception? Or necessary to start from scratch?
Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇
Come hear me talk about mice doing mouse stuff, at the birthplace of Beethoven and the gummy bear. Or three days later at the Gutenberg workshop gutenberg-workshops.uni-mainz.de/flexibility-...
Stratifying Eating Disorders with Clustering: From Diagnosis to Phenotypic Diversity https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.25.25334344v1
Wow, this is the kind of evidence we need to move ahead in the field. I'll go out on a limb here: I guess it is more about the gut than cardiac and respiratory domains. Huge effort by @leahbanellis.bsky.social @micahgallen.com and the entire team 👏
New preprint just dropped, (working) title: "Blunted Reward Prediction Error Encoding Drives Diminished Motivation to Explore in Apathy Associated With Traumatic Brain Injury" www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
A pancreas–hippocampus feedback mechanism regulates circadian changes in depression-related behaviors www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Congratulations, Alea 🥳
An exciting 🆕 extension of our sLFO/FC inflation work (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) Extracting the sLFO signal from BOLD data not only sharpens FC estimates.. ..the sLFO itself - via links to arousal - captures variability in trait + state drug use phenotypes: tinyurl.com/msanmrnc #neuroimaging
Congratulations, Prof. Weber 🎉 😀
In other news, I am now a ✨ COXI ✨ (cognitive scientist in Osnabrück, Germany) www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/campus-li... I'll be looking for PhD students & postdocs later this year, so watch this space if combining cognitive modelling, EEG & tFUS to study flexible cognition sounds exciting to you 🚀
Great, congratulations! We will be part of a symposium at FENS as well.
"Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind" www.nature.com/articles/s41... Very interesting "Restaurant Row" task from @perothwell.bsky.social lab and co
"Decision Making: Fundamentals and Applications". Our new edited book due to appear in @springernature.com later this year! @carstenmurawski.bsky.social #DecisionScience #DecisionMaking #Psychology #Psychiatry #Neuroscience #Philosophy link.springer.com/book/9783032...
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
Yeah, BIA would be nice, but you need a good BIA system to get accurate measurements. Even then, the agreement on individual differences with DXA measures is not great: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
What would you use instead? Whether we like it or not, most studies in the field use BMI, and if we want to relate it to this body of work, we have to look at BMI (we collected additional measures, e.g., HOMA-IR & WHR).
We are wrapping up some of our older work and have two more manuscripts almost ready for submission. Watch this space for an update on the association of BMI with the variability of reward responses and functional segregation of insular networks in depression.
Just to be clear. My issue was with the headline, not the study. I am sure fMRI can be useful for those questions. Still, I think the actual experience of most fathers already contradicts the claim that only women would react differently.
Excited to share our Version of Record in eLife! We find that two ways of inhibiting a brainstem structure (PPN) actually result in completely different and even opposite behaviors. One inhibitory connection is rewarding and one is aversive.
Only the brain scans can reveal the truth.
They all look the same, essentially 😅
Whew, glad we have fMRI to know this.
Now out in @natneuro.nature.com What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed? Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7 🧵1/18
Disentangling prediction error and value in a formal test of dopamine’s role in reinforcement learning CurrentBiology
Cool application of microbiome in food science Using metagenomics on Colombian cacao, they mapped how microbes influence chocolate flavors. Then they built a defined microbial consortium that replicates premium chocolate flavors -- validated by trained tasters! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Now on CRAN, ggdiagram is a #ggplot2 extension that draws diagrams programmatically in #Rstats. Allows for precise control in how objects, labels, and equations are placed in relation to each other. wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
Very happy to share my first preprint from @oxexppsy.bsky.social @oxneuro.bsky.social ! We (me + co-first authors @lilweb.bsky.social @mirunarascu.bsky.social + PI @mkflugge.bsky.social + many others) used transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation (TUS/tFUS/LIFU) of the human amygdala ... (1/15)
Do researchers’ financial conflicts of interest in clinical trials of internet-based interventions for depression affect the outcomes? This meta-analysis suggests that COIs may lead to inflated effect-size estimates. 🩺 #neuroskyence www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Congrats with this nice paper Floor! @floorburghoorn.bsky.social on Intertemporal Pavlovian biases and mental health rdcu.be/eBawi
Monster review of uses of concurrent TMS to map excitability www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🦴 New fossils reshape human evolution timeline New finds from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, reveal Australopithecus and Homo co-existed over 2.5 million years ago, suggesting greater early hominin diversity than thought. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #SciComm 🧪
I'm more than psyched to share that my PhD paper is now out in Neuron! It's also my first paper as both first author and corresponding author, which means even more to me! Thank my partner Chi-Chieh for her contribution to the most adorable ever graphic abstract 🥰
Do you have experience turning amateur data analysis scripts into robust, scalable code? I’m hiring (hourly pay) to professionalize Python scripts for scientific data analysis, making them reusable across multiple datasets. Tromsø/Norway-based candidates preferred, but all are welcome! DM me!
"COVID-19 vaccination was associated with better work and financial outcomes." Study highlights "mitigating associations of prior vaccination..." Long COVID, Work Impairment & Financial Outcomes jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... #VaccinesWork, helping individuals, companies, economy...
12 Promotionsstellen - jetzt bewerben: Das Graduiertenkolleg IRTG 2804 „Women’s Mental Health Across the Reproductive Years“ vergibt 12 finanzierte Promotionsstellen im Bereich mentale Gesundheit von Frauen. 📅 Bewerbungsschluss: 07.09.2025 🛜 irtg2804.de
Sogar mehrere Stellen und man kann bei uns arbeiten 😀!
Sehr coole PhD Student Stelle in Tübingen: Thema Women's Mental health und man darf 4-6 Monate nach Uppsala??? Ich LIEBE Uppsala www.psychjob.eu/de/job/phd-r...