dennis hernaus
@dhernaus.bsky.social
Associate prof @ Maastricht University. Neuroscience, drums & hardcore punk.
And a second new preprint from Lerner Lab on the same day! 👀 🎉 Led by graduate student Nkatha Mwenda! “Dopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking” #neuroskyence🧪
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2d agoDopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.01.742224v1
Clinical 7T gradients can go fast — but peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) stops you at high-res fMRI. ⚡ Meet POPE 🌍: we reshape EPI pulses to dodge PNS exactly when it spikes → robust 0.3mm fMRI, seeing intracortical veins. 🧠 w/ @SiemensHealth 👉 doi.org/10.64898/202...
Metabolic dysfunction is linked to an energy-conserving motivational phenotype that may overlap with neuropsychiatric symptoms
Computational phenotyping of effort-based decision-making in type-2 diabetes on and off semaglutide
Neuropsychopharmacology - Computational phenotyping of effort-based decision-making in type-2 diabetes on and off semaglutide
nature.com
New paper alert! In this paper we were interested to formally test some of the assumptions made by computational psychiatrists - assumptions about parameter recoverability, reliability and validity. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The recoverability, reliability, and generalizability of reward processing parameters and relation to mental health symptoms | Psychological Medicine | Cambridge Core
The recoverability, reliability, and generalizability of reward processing parameters and relation to mental health symptoms - Volume 56
cambridge.org
Pharmacogenetic manipulation of Locus coeruleus activity in monkeys demonstrates its role in cognitive effort https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.23.740243v1
A key challenge for computational psychiatry is to distinguish state from trait markers and go beyond cross-sectional studies. Here we show that as paranoia waxes and wanes in patients with schizophrenia, so too do volatility priors
Biological Psychiatry@biologicalpsych.bsky.social · last wk.Individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders expect greater volatility in the world, and this cognitive bias is linked to paranoia and delusion severity over time.
Pleased to announce that our work on the influence of glucose and acute stress on food craving has been accepted for publication in Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology 📃 The paper will be available #OpenAccess soon! Huge shoutout to my former master student Flora Nasilowski who took the lead! 🌻
OSF
osf.io
Individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders expect greater volatility in the world, and this cognitive bias is linked to paranoia and delusion severity over time.
Longitudinal associations between volatility priors and delusions in individuals recovering from an acute psychotic episode
Computational psychiatry has revealed latent aspects of cognition that relate to psychiatric symptoms. Yet, to understand their clinical utility, it must be known whether these computational…
biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org
Why do people stop pursuing goals they care about❓ Motivational deficits are among the most disabling symptoms, yet current treatments often have only modest effects. In @lillyt.bsky.social new paper, she asks if we're missing an important piece of the puzzle 🧠 #neuroscience #cogpsyc #psychscisky
Arousal shapes motivation: an integrative framework for understanding motivational deficits - Translational Psychiatry
Translational Psychiatry - Arousal shapes motivation: an integrative framework for understanding motivational deficits
nature.com
Really glad to see this work out in PNEC - it turns out we can use tear fluid 👁️💧 to measure cortisol stress reactivity in humans using a relatively simple and established analysis pipeline! #neuroscience #Neuroskyence #cogpsyc #AffectSci #psychscisky
Tear fluid cortisol as a marker of acute stress reactivity: A validation study against salivary measures
Assessing the activation of major stress axes is fundamental to stress research. While saliva and blood are well-established ways for quantifying stre…
sciencedirect.com
Interesting new results on OFC-mediated noradrenergic learning rate adaptation 📈
Jérémie Naudé@jeremie-n.bsky.social · 3w agoNouvel article avec @ecoutureau.bsky.social ☺️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Quand une récompense n'arrive pas, comment le cerveau nous permet de savoir s'il s'agit d'une malchance… ou d'un changement des règles du jeu ? On a suivi la trace d'un neuromodulateur, la noradrénaline, pour comprendre :
📢 Out now in PLOS Comp Biol: **cpm** — a Python library for theory-driven modelling in computational psychiatry. No scikit-learn for mechanistic cognitive models — so we built one: RL, prospect-theory & metacognition, hierarchical Bayes, and as many more as you can code 🔗 doi.org/10.1371/jour...
cpm: A python library for theory-driven modelling in computational psychiatry
Author summary Computational psychiatry is a field that makes extensive use of computational methods to understand mental health. In this field and related disciplines, there is a strong need to desig...
doi.org
Ventral tegmental area acetylcholine generates appetitive and aversive incentive motivation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.09.737546v1
Evidence from this phase 2 randomized controlled trial suggests that enhancing NMDA co-agonist signaling via D-serine may not translate to clinical improvement of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia
A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of luvadaxistat in treatment of adults with cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia: results from the ERUDITE study
Neuropsychopharmacology - A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of luvadaxistat in treatment of adults with cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia: results from the ERUDITE study
nature.com
Just in time for the start of next week's Braitenberg 100 symposium, I'm excited to share "Dopamine: From prediction to error," a site I built to better understand where the dopamine RPE hypothesis came from and where it might be headed. efharkin.com/s/dopamine-h... 1/3
Really excited about this work with the awesome Will de Cothi & @shipleysj.bsky.social, out in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. We propose acetylcholine is an analogue of dopamine — tracking not reward prediction errors but state-transition prediction errors. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01058-w
#eNeuro | Effect of Functionally Selective Dopamine D1 Receptor Agonists on Complex Cognitive Processes in a Rodent Touchscreen Operant Chamber Task https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0296-25.2026
In this recent study, the authors find that different antidepressants modify affective biases through distinct mechanisms, which may contribute to variability in clinical onset and efficacy 💊
Comparing affective bias modification by first- and second-generation antidepressants in male rats using a translational behavioural task
Neuropsychopharmacology - Comparing affective bias modification by first- and second-generation antidepressants in male rats using a translational behavioural task
nature.com
After years following @flagel-lab.bsky.social 's work on sign-trackers and goal-trackers in rodents, we asked: can we find this dissociation in the human brain? And does ST depend on dopamine, like in rodents? Preprint out, 5 cohorts, N=1,251. 🧵 #RewardSignals #neuroskyence #Neuroimaging #Science
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 3mo agoReproducible Human Reward Imaging Phenotypes Exhibit Differential Sensitivity to Dopamine D2 Receptor Antagonism https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.14.724267v1
📢PhD job alert! A exciting PhD project that involves using MEG and biophysical modelling to try to predict effects of a glutamatergic treatment for psychosis... plus you can develop your own side project. Join our great team! www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
ucl.ac.uk
📢 New paper! Schreiber, A. M., & Hallquist, M. N. (2026). Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account. Not sure the authors are on BlueSky... Check it out here: doi.org/10.5334/cpsy...
Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account | Computational Psychiatry
doi.org
❤️🔥 Exciting new preprint ❤️🔥 #Pupil constriction causes, by itself and independently of visual stimulation, activity in the human #retina and #visual system. w/ @anavili.bsky.social @veerahelmisofia.bsky.social @hakankarsilar.bsky.social @olaf.dimigen.de 1/4 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1
biorxiv.org
Correlating brain maps across datasets is everywhere in neuroimaging. Here we ask: when you contextualize a brain map against genes, metabolism, or connectivity... What can you really conclude? How can we do better? We explore these questions here: tinyurl.com/2dudkevc
Opportunities and pitfalls of data contextualization in neuroimaging - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Despite rapid exploitation of the opportunities that contextualization of brain maps affords, potential limitations have received little attention. In this Roadmap, Royer et al. provide practical guid...
tinyurl.com
Simulator of the following (attentional) models: 🔎 Rescorla-Wagner 🔎 Pearce-Kaye-Hall 🔎 Mackintosh Extended 🔎 Le Pelley’s Hybrid 🔎 Rescorla-Wagner with a unified variable learning rate (integrating Mackintosh’s and Pearce and Hall’s quasi-opposing conceptualisations). github.com/cal-r/PALMS-...
Esther Mondragón@e-mondragon.bsky.social · 6mo agoNew preprint and simulator of associative learning attentional models. Have fun! 👁️ arxiv.org/abs/2602.07519 cal-r.org/index.php?id... #simulation #associative_learning #attention
#BIDS has been extended to #EyeTracking data! There is now a standard for organizing and sharing eye tracking, covering gaze position, pupil size, meta data, messages, and more. Great news for #OpenScience! 🎉 Martin Szinte et al: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Happy to share our new work: A simple measure of motor control and fitness is very informative... Transdiagnostic Patterns of Grip Strength in Schizophrenia, Current Depression, and Remitted Depression url: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
What's the relationship of apathy to depression and anhedonia? Sijia Zhao led our work on this to show that many individuals qualify for the diagnostic criteria of 2 or even 3 of these syndromes. But factor analysis reveals that the syndromes are highly dissociable jnnp.bmj.com/content/earl...
Some thoughts on @franziskaknolle.bsky.social recent paper on speech expectations, hallucinations, and glutamate: illness and chronicity may be important in understanding the role of glutamate in prior weighting www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...
Hallucinations, Prior Overweighting, and Glutamate
Perception is not passive. It is a synthetic process, governed not only by the information incident on our sensory epithelia but also by our knowledge and prior experiences of the world, through model...
biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com
Two new papers out! 🎉 We revisited the idea that oxytocin promotes prosocial behaviour by collecting new data (n=211) and pooling it with data from another recent large-scale replication attempt (n=321).
Absence of a meaningful effect of intranasal oxytocin on trusting behavior: a registered report with pooled equivalence testing
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is thought to modulate important aspects of prosocial behavior. In a seminal paper, Kosfeld et al. (2005) reported tha…
sciencedirect.com