📣 Please submit to this year's conference in Montréal!🧠 We would love to include all kinds of measures that can inform our understanding of the social brain, including physiological and neuro measures, computational models, theory pieces, and behavioral data!

SANS@sansmeeting.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Symposium submissions are now open for #SANS2027! Submissions must be made through the online submission portal by 23:59 (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. More details here: socialaffectiveneuro.org/symposia-sub...

Breaking: Judge blocks Trump administration plans to limit visa length for grad students, postdocs www.statnews.com/2026/09/14/c...

Judge blocks Trump administration plans to limit visa length for grad students, postdocs

A federal judge halted a Trump administration plan to place a four-year cap on the kinds of visas used by graduate students and postdocs

statnews.com

The CATS Lab is moving to Columbia next year, and I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle to start Fall 2027 in the Department of Psychology. Learn more about how to apply here: psychology.columbia.edu/content/prep... I am also recruiting a postdoc and staff for 2027. More info coming soon!

I used to love this time of year, hearing from students applying to work in my lab. No more. Every day a fresh batch of nearly identical emails with nonsensical remixes of the text on my lab website. It makes me so sad.

Launching scienceofplacebo.org: a living bibliography of placebo and nocebo research. New papers screened & tagged daily by design, population, outcome and findings, with a searchable database (currently about 5,000 papers), an interactive researcher map, events, news and discussion.

Science of Placebo

A research hub for the science of placebo and nocebo effects: a daily-updated feed of new papers, a searchable tagged database, bibliometrics, events, resources and discussion.

scienceofplacebo.org

🚨🧠📄 @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: L5 ACC engages dlPAG to facilitate affective pain First, map opioid+ pain ACC neurons: nature.com/articles/s4158… Next, ID endogenous opioid control across PAG: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11��� Now, we link the ACC→dlPAG circuit: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

We're hiring! PNI is recruiting an assistant professor of neuroscience working with non-human primates in any area. Review begins Oct 19: apply.interfolio.com/192521 #NeuroJobs #Neuroskyence

42 new #fmri tutorials to accompany our new book Elements of fMRI, with @fMRIstats. Run code in both #python and #matlab in your browser to explore. 7 sections, from conceptual foundations to machine learning and AI. torwager.github.io/elements-of-...

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your #fmri results? Have you been worried about potential reproducibility issues? Well, this new @natmethods.nature.com article with 40+ coauthors shows how the simple change to transparent thresholding helps both. Go Figure! rdcu.be/B4tikBETdQZa

Just accepted the 2nd study section invitation for this autumn/winter. If you can serve on study section, please accept when asked. The SROs and the POs are working so hard to get good science funded.

On Aug 14, NIH held a webinar assuring researchers nothing was changing under the new funding strategy. Hours later, NIH proposed hiding peer review scores from program staff and investigators. My latest essay lays it out. formernih.substack.com/p/nih-direct...

NIH Directors Decide, Except When HHS Says No

A June 2026 Nature report revealed that mandatory reviews by top officials, checking for a list of 235 disfavored terms, have left hundreds of meritorious NIH applications in administrative limbo (Koz...

formernih.substack.com

Perhaps you're having FOMO over missing GRC Frontal Cortex this year. Understandable, regrettable BUT BE NOT AFRAID because you're going to GRC Frontal Cortex 2028!! with your chairs @drbediya.bsky.social and @kacummings.bsky.social and your new vice chairs @markgbaxter.bsky.social and...MOI 🧠💅💖

GRC Frontal Cortex@grc-frontal-cortex.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Calling all PFC and PFC-adjacent neuroscientists--registration for the GRC Frontal Cortex - "Frontal Cortex in Function, Dysfunction, & Therapies" is open! Check out the amazing lineup of speakers for this year's program, feat. keynotes by Geoff Schoenbaum & Helen Mayberg www.grc.org/frontal-cort...

This plan will make peer review less transparent and more confusing to applicants and program staff. Y'all killed it on the OMB proposal, you know what to do here. Comment deadline is October 13.

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Of course this RFI drops late on Friday. NIH proposes to stop providing specific scores and instead bin grants into 3 broad categories: most competitive, competitive, not discussed. A score would be calculated but not provided to the PI (or PO). grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

The Center for Open Science recently announced its decision to phase out OSF Projects. We want to share how those changes will affect PsyArXiv, a psychology preprint server run and maintained by SIPS volunteers but hosted on the OSF platform. improvingpsych.org/2026/08/11/w...

What Researchers Need to Know about PsyArXiv Given Upcoming Changes to OSF Projects

In just a few short days (August 15th, 2026), PsyArXiv – the community preprint server for psychology – turns 10! 🥳 Over the past decade, our community has published over 58,000 preprin…

improvingpsych.org

You can use this R function to download all of the files associated with an OSF project. Improvements are coming in the next version to include registrations. Should we add a function to download all your public and private projects? osf_file_download(“abcde”) www.scienceverse.org/metacheck/

Check Research Outputs for Best Practices

A modular, extendable system for checking research outputs for best practices using text search, R code, and/or (optional) LLM queries.

scienceverse.org

Joe Bak-Coleman@jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

On the off chance you're relying on OSF to store your data; put copies of it somewhere safe ASAP. I like to think they've got the runway to keep storing things like they suggest, but it wouldn't be the first time something like this went dark on the internet. www.cos.io/osf-changes

It has been painfully clear since Fall’24 that US science funding would tank, universities would be targeted, and any assertions about a new “gold standard” disingenuous. The question has not been “will it be that bad,” but “how bad will it be.”

Nicole Rust@nicolecrust.bsky.social · 2mo ago

US scientists: Going into fall 26, how are you thinking about things? Following Fall 24 events and a tumultuous spring 25, I remember a convo with a colleague in which we agreed we just needed to wait things out until fall 25 and we'd have some clarity about the landscape (eg for funding). /1

Yesterday’s beltway bridge message ❤️❤️

The final version of our amygdala dopamine paper is out! BLA dopamine dynamically tracks emotional salience and not value or reward prediction error. Congrats to Dr. Megan Brickner!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Basolateral amygdala dopamine transmits emotional salience - Nature Communications

The basolateral amygdala dopamine system has received little attention. Here, authors show that BLA dopamine plays a unique role in learning, by encoding the emotional salience of sensory cues to supp...

nature.com

Okay so this is OFFICIALLY officially published today. TLDR: use ledalab following manual artifact detection if you’re interested in associations between SCR and thermal pain (or temperature). www.ovid.com/10.1097/j.pa...

A multiverse approach to heat-evoked skin... : Pain

Indices of physiological arousal and sympathetic nervous system activity provide important information about pain that can supplement verbal reports....

ovid.com

Lauren Atlas@laurenatlas.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our multiverse analysis of associations between skin conductance and acute pain is published! >550 participants x 18 SCR pipelines = 1 winning approach to SCR analysis! (Ledalab + artifact detection). thread below. We hope others find this useful! Please RT :) journals.lww.com/pain/fulltex...

More than words: Experience shapes #placebo pain relief through additional brain pathways 🧠 We're excited to share our latest publication in @natcomms.nature.com! 🤩 🔗 Read the paper: rdcu.be/fuxmn #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #PainResearch #BrainImaging #TeamScience #Reproducibility

Please scientists and Friends of Science, comment. We need you.

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I submitted my comment on the proposed OMB rule. Sharing here to the extent it’s useful. Today is the last day to comment. If you have not yet commented, please do! substack.com/@jennanorton...

Four hours left. Do it. Two or three paragraphs of your own text are enough.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦@merz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

There are only a few hours left to comment on the proposed OMB rule that would eviscerate American science. This is the single best summary, and guidance for how to write a comment, that I have seen. PLEASE submit something, even if it is only 2 or 3 paragraphs.

Very proud to share the first preprint from the Sheahan Lab, where we answer, ‘How does the kappa opioid system influence pain in the spinal cord?’ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Kappa opioid receptors in excitatory spinal neurons gate acute pain: evidence from mouse and human

The kappa opioid receptor (KOR) has emerged as a promising, nonaddictive analgesic target, yet the neural mechanisms underlying KOR inhibition of pain are not entirely understood. Here, we provide con...

biorxiv.org

PSA for trainees cold emailing with interest in joining a lab: Be careful about your use of LLMs in writing these emails!! It is now *extremely* common to get emails with a bizarrely-detailed, clearly-LLM take on a paper finding or with specific phrases pulled from the lab website. Don’t do this!

A 20 year study on 2 NIH diversity programs in Science Advances shows they doubled undergrads' odds of getting a Ph.D. That is, before the funding for those programs and for the study itself was terminated last year: www.statnews.com/2026/06/17/n...

NIH diversity programs doubled undergraduates’ odds of getting a Ph.D., 20-year study finds

A new study found that two diversity-oriented programs supported by the NIH doubled the odds that an undergraduate would earn a Ph.D.

statnews.com

So much interesting work at #OHBM2026. With simultaneous sessions on "within person studies" & another full of within person studies on the menstrual cycle, it would be fun to have a follow-up round table where the two groups talk to each other.

This week, @thetransmitter.bsky.social will be at the @ohbmofficial.bsky.social conference. In light of our participation at the conference, here's a roundup of coverage highlighting a range of topics, from open-source tools to brain imaging. #OHBM2026 #neuroskyence

Today the #OHBM2026 poster session reminded me just how much I love this meeting, in spite of the heat & ceiling leaks! One more day to check out our poster #0736 where Xue Davis is presenting on how multiecho pipelines impact performance of a pain signature. Also, one postdoc position available!

Clever use of a complex behavioral task to show that BLA dopamine tracks emotional salience, not value or prediction error. Threat/Safety cues drive larger, sustained signals than reward/neutral cues. Dopamine in the BLA is very much different than in the striatum.