Stoked to share that I was awarded a 2026 BBRF Young Investigator Grant for my proposal "Decoding the Comorbidity of Alcohol and Depression with Dense-sampling fMRI"! Huge thanks to @bbrfoundation.bsky.social and colleagues at @medicalcollegeofwi.bsky.social for their support.

New preprint ! Poor sleep is correlated with accelerated aging. But is this relationship causal? We’re not so sure. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share a paper recently accepted at Nature Mental Health! 😄 For decades, we've assumed that covariance among psychopathology informs comorbidity. What if we’ve been wrong?

PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 4w ago

Covariation among higher-order psychopathology dimensions is driven by nomorbidity, not comorbidity: https://osf.io/3t2cm

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm recruiting a postdoc! The Sheahan Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin is looking to add a postdoctoral fellow to our team to expand our work studying the neurobiology of itch and pain in the central nervous system. Please share and reach out if you have any questions!

Stoked for #SOBP2026! Come by poster F324 to chat about some new imaging genetics work - "Genetic Contributions to Working Memory Activation in Early Adolescence - Links to Psychopathology and Cognition"

The first preprint from the lab is up! Are structural MRI correlates of substance use shared across substances, or are there unique associations? And do these reflect predispositional risk and/or possibly the effects of substance exposure? www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... #neuroskyence

Brain Structure and Substance Use: Disentangling Risk, Exposure, and Drug-Specific Effects

Importance: Polysubstance use is common, but substance use associations with neuroimaging measures have largely been investigated within individual drug types. Whether effects are substance-specific o...

medrxiv.org

So infuriating. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

nytimes.com

Please say hi at #ACNP if you'd like to chat with either of us about this opportunity!!

John Mantsch@jmantsch.bsky.social · 7mo ago

@mcwpharm-tox.bsky.social will be recruiting a mid-career translational neuropharmacologist with a research program focused on SUDs and/or stress-related disorders. Great opportunity in a growing and supportive dept. @davidbaranger.bsky.social and I will be at #ACNP. Reach out if you want to talk!

Toddler requested a "Master Yoda" bedtime story

darth vader is standing in front of a wall with the words join me below him

ALT: darth vader is standing in front of a wall with the words join me below him

media.tenor.com

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬. New from us, led by @sarahepaul.bsky.social. PheWAS in ABCD identifies many potentially modifiable substance use risk factors! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great work led by Andrew Castillo extending sample size stability analyses to interactions! We've also added a function implementing these analyses to the InteractionPoweR R package: dbaranger.github.io/InteractionP... #rstats

Don Lynam@drlynam.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Another paper in our effort to get folks to stop routinely testing interactions. This time from the angle of stability. Led by @andrew-cast.bsky.social with help from @vizecolin.bsky.social, @jdmiller.bsky.social, @davidbaranger.bsky.social, and me. Forthcoming in AMPPS. osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/8

When do interaction/moderation effects stabilize in linear regression?: https://osf.io/35t84

Reliability and sample size have a non-linear relationship. Linear increases in reliability yield diminishing reductions in the required sample size.

If you are ever working on a project and see r=0.98 between variables that are supposedly different, your first thought should be "oh $&*! what went wrong?", NOT "I wonder what mediates this???"

Shout out to BEAR Lab research tech Daniella Fernandez (who only joined 4 months ago!) whose poster abstract was selected for a nanosymposium at the annual meeting of the Upper Midwest Chapter of SFN this weekend! #neuroskyence #MRI 🧠🍺

Applications for the Career Development Institute (CDI) in Psychiatry are open! Strongly recommend for senior grad students and postdocs. cdipsychiatry.org

Interesting approach that aligns mouse and human brain-wide data using transcriptomics and structural connectivity. I'm curious if anyone here has tried using it yet? #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... transbrain.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

TransBrain: A computational framework for translating brain-wide phenotypes between humans and mice

Despite remarkable advances in whole-brain imaging technologies, the lack of quantitative approaches to bridge rodent preclinical and human studies remains a critical challenge. Here we present TransB...

biorxiv.org

Official job ad is up! careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

Postdoctoral Researcher

Medical College of Wisconsin - Postdoctoral Researcher - Milwaukee WI 53201

careers.peopleclick.com

David Baranger@davidbaranger.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Excited to share that I am officially recruiting a postdoc to study the neurobiology of addiction! Looking for someone who would be excited to lead current projects in the lab and develop new directions in related areas. More info: bearlab.science/opportunities/

A new favorite citation appeared!

Marc L Seal @parkvillegeek.bsky.social · 10mo ago

👀 From Maps to Models: A Survey on the Reliability of Small Studies of Task-Based fMRI | bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TIL in Windows you can use PowerShell to search not only file names but also text file contents - including .R and .Rhistory files. In a moment of pure insanity, 1.5 years ago I did not save the code for a figure, but it was recorded in an old .Rhistory file!

Excited to share that I am officially recruiting a postdoc to study the neurobiology of addiction! Looking for someone who would be excited to lead current projects in the lab and develop new directions in related areas. More info: bearlab.science/opportunities/

Opportunities

Interested in the neuroscience of addiction? We are recruiting at all levels!! Reach out to Dr. Baranger – dbaranger@mcw.edu Postdoctoral fellows/Senior Scientists: Please send an email conta…

bearlab.science

🧠📊 New research examines potential bias in brain age algorithms across racial groups 📈 Study of 6 popular algorithms found lower accuracy for African American participants (r=0.51-0.85) compared to White/Hispanic participants (r=0.57-0.89)/1

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐭-𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 | "The predominant lifespan trajectory is inverted U-shaped, rising from childhood to peak in young adulthood before declining in later adulthood" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The lifespan trajectories of brain activities related to conflict-driven cognitive control

Cognitive control is fundamental to human goal-directed behavior. Understanding its trajectory across the lifespan is crucial for optimizing cognitive…

sciencedirect.com

𝐀𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬 | "Although interaction effects were detected, they were small and practically negligible in their explanation of variance in externalizing behaviors" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Additive and Interactive Relations of Personality and Cognition With Externalizing Behaviors - Nathaniel L. Phillips, Nathan T. Carter, Kevin M. King, Courtland S. Hyatt, Max M. Owens, Donald R. Lynam...

Personality and cognition offer robust frameworks to understand the individual differences associated with externalizing behaviors. However, these literatures h...

journals.sagepub.com

Wooo NOA day! Phew.

If you're looking at pre-6.0 ABCD results with subcortical rs-fMRI correlations, the labels are all wrong! We reported a result as Auditory - L Putamen, but it it was actually Default Mode - L Cerebellum. docs.abcdstudy.org/latest/docum...

David Baranger@davidbaranger.bsky.social · 2y ago

Our article exploring the neurobiological correlates of prenatal cannabis exposure is now out! "Prenatal cannabis exposure, the brain, and psychopathology during early adolescence" https://rdcu.be/dMJqH

If interactions are incorrectly used when the actual hypothesis is an additive effect, then what's the appropriate test? stats.stackexchange.com/questions/66... #stats #rstats

Test if two coefficients in a linear model are both significant

Is there a single test one can perform that would be significant if two coefficients in a linear model are both different from 0, but would not be significant if only one of them differs from 0? Ye...

stats.stackexchange.com

Folks who had RAs learn R while in your lab - what resources were helpful? Are things like datacamp worth it?

Don't miss this interview with ✨new✨ @npp-journal.bsky.social Associate Editor Dr. Arpana Agrawal & our Special Projects Manager @brikchen.bsky.social Hear Dr. Agrawal's thoughts on the scope of the journal, NPP articles, and the role of peer reviewers (aka YOU!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HqN...

npp's "Meet the Editor" with Dr. Arpana Agrawal

YouTube video by NPP Journal

youtube.com