🚨Now out in Science Advances @science.org: #Parkinson's patients off dopamine medication (PD-) explore too much and exploit too little. Modeling shows they overvalue uncertainty, not that they choose randomly. On levodopa (PD+) they become comparable to controls www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵👇

Dopamine depletion in Parkinson’s increases directed but not random exploration

Levodopa restores the balance between exploration and exploitation in Parkinson’s disease.

science.org

Excited to share our latest work: Inspired by animal work, we demonstrate that astrocyte reactivity amplifies the effect of lower #locuscoeruleus function on higher ptau, and these processes together are associated with steeper cognitive decline. alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Astrocyte reactivity modifies the effects of locus coeruleus norepinephrine‐related dysfunction on tau and its impact on cognition

INTRODUCTION Animal models demonstrated that pharmacologically-induced lesioning of the locus coeruleus (LC), the brain's primary source of norepinephrine, triggered astrocyte reactivity, exacerbati...

alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The primate claustrum as a hub for precision weighting of prediction errors across the cortical hierarchy. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... #neuroscience

The primate claustrum as a hub for precision weighting of prediction errors across the cortical hierarchy

Understanding how signals are exchanged across the cerebral cortex is a central challenge for theories of perception and cognition. This Essay puts forward a roadmap for investigating cortical network...

journals.plos.org

🧠 A new paper from our lab is out! In this study, we explore how dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) circuits modulate forebrain activity and behavior. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Topographically organized dorsal raphe activity modulates forebrain sensory-motor representations and contributes to defensive behaviors - Nature Communications

Functional heterogeneity of dorsal raphe nucleus is not fully understood. Here authors show topographically organized sensory and locomotor responses from the zebrafish dorsal raphe and its forebrain ...

nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Acetylcholine: a candidate substrate for hippocampal predictive learning? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Predictive models have emerged as a normative lens for understanding neural function. In this Perspective, de Cothi, Shipley and Barry plausibly unify the diverse roles of hippocampal acetylcholine in...

nature.com

I am so excited to get to share this paper that extends our work on understanding how circuitry between locus coeruleus and prefrontal cortex control attention. Just huge congrats to @rehg-j.bsky.social and @jorge-miranda.bsky.social - I am so proud of both of you 💙💙!!!

Jorge Miranda Barrientos@jorge-miranda.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thrilled to share that our latest paper investigating how mPFC-LC projectors contribute to sustained #attention is now out in @npp-journal.bsky.social This is so meaningful to me and the team, Its @rehg-j.bsky.social first first-author paper and my first corresponding one. rdcu.be/fqBJp

LC influences OFC probablistic learning www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Orbitofrontal noradrenaline supports adaptive learning-rate adjustment in probabilistic reversal learning | PNAS

Adaptive decision-making in dynamic environments requires flexible adjustment of learning speed to balance stability and flexibility. When outcomes...

pnas.org

"When I look around this room, I see the people who are committed to celebrating our similarities and discussing our differences of opinion. Committed to seeing our field progress. Committed to global healthy aging. And committed to training the next generation of leaders.”

Fluoxetine did not affect serotonin neurons as one uniform group. In the dorsal raphe nucleus, two populations shifted in opposite directions, with one response appearing early and another later. doi.org/hb6z8d

New map reveals how antidepressants reshape the brain's serotonin system

A new study has uncovered how antidepressants affect different groups of serotonin-producing brain cells in opposite ways, offering new insights into why selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can cause unpleasant side effects at the start of treatment but lead to symptom relief over time.

medicalxpress.com

And for our own contribution to the theme issue: Oliver Warrington and I show that the dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions. This finding complements our previous work showing a transition from errors to predictions during learning (Aitken & Kok 2022). 🧠🟦

Dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions

Abstract. The hippocampus is involved in learning predictive associations, responding to prediction errors as well as representing predictions of future in

royalsocietypublishing.org

Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · last mo.

The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social

How do we update our predictions when our environment changes? The hippocampus rapidly integrates previously distinct sequences to support updated predictions. New work w/ @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social – part of the theme issue on hippocampal predictions!

The hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictions

Abstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the

royalsocietypublishing.org

Norepinephrine signaling in the locus coeruleus causally regulates decision thresholds, a key determinant of the speed-accuracy tradeoff

Regulation of the decision threshold by the locus coeruleus

Neuropsychopharmacology - Regulation of the decision threshold by the locus coeruleus

nature.com

📣 Thrilled to share our recent work in @natneuro.nature.com. Using direct recordings from the human hippocampus and visual cortex, we asked how the brain prepares to encode information when upcoming events are unpredictable, and what ripples do in that process. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Human hippocampal ripples tune cortical responses based on predicted uncertainty - Nature Neuroscience

Using direct recordings from the human brain, Frank et al. show that hippocampal ripples increase ahead of unpredictable events and tune the visual cortex to respond faster and more strongly to surpri...

nature.com

Excited to see this study from @darshanakapri out in @npp_journal showing norepinephrine regulates mitochondria within hippocampal neurons via a β2-AR–Gs-cAMP–PKA-PGC-1α cascade, suggesting links between NE effects on mitochondria and cognition. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Norepinephrine regulates hippocampal mitochondrial biogenesis via β2-adrenergic receptor signaling and PGC-1α - Neuropsychopharmacology

Neuropsychopharmacology - Norepinephrine regulates hippocampal mitochondrial biogenesis via β2-adrenergic receptor signaling and PGC-1α

nature.com

Cholinergic and noradrenergic modulation of perceptual decision making and learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.22.732890v1

I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student, funded by a new ERC grant. The grant focuses on the role of the hippocampus in visual perception, using 7T fMRI (hippocampal subfields, cortical layers) and MEG+iEEG. The intended start dates for both positions are in early 2027. 🧠🟦 1/3

Interested in how dysregulation of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine circuits contribute to neuropsychiatric symptoms in early Alzheimer's disease? Check out our new review article from freshly minted Dr. Anu Korukonda! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A new hope: locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system at the nexus of neuropsychiatric symptoms - Molecular Psychiatry

Molecular Psychiatry - A new hope: locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system at the nexus of neuropsychiatric symptoms

nature.com

The UK National Institute for Health and Care Research developed a systematic drug prioritization pipeline to identify repurposed drug candidates for inclusion in a planned platform trial for clinical AD. The norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine came in #1. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42186115/

Really excited about this work with the awesome Will de Cothi & Sarah Shipley, just 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

New preprint w/ @akalt.bsky.social, Juliane Schubert, Nathan Weisz, & @clarepress.bsky.social 🎉 Predictive-brain accounts treat "prediction error" as one signal. We find it's two jobs, in two dissociable systems. And one of them you can watch in the pupil, as people listen to a story. 🧵 (1/9)

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Niek Stevenson, Steven Miletić, and Birte U. Forstmann: Building bridges between brain and behavior: An open-source toolbox for joint modeling with fMRI doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

For those attending @ohbmofficial.bsky.social @ohbmtrainees.bsky.social come check out our poster on E/I imbalance in pre-dementia individuals and the relationships with blood/CSF biomarkers. Poster 1059 Stand-by time: Monday, June 15 | 13:45-14:45 & Tuesday, June 16 | 12:30-13:30

I'll be presenting two posters at OHBM this week - come say hi! [0510] Spatial collinearity constrains multivariate molecular enriched network estimation ↳ Monday & Tuesday [1985] Locus Coeruleus Connectivity Confers Cognitive Resilience in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease ↳ Wednesday & Thursday

Here's a bit of unusual work on error processing and error awareness from our lab, which we've been working on off and on for around eight years: www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245... Details in thread

Pupil dilation indexes – but does not causally influence – conscious error detection: a double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of performance-monitoring using atomoxetine.

Conscious error detection is accompanied by error-related changes in phasic autonomic activity. This autonomic response is diminished in older age – accompanied by impairments in the conscious detecti...

biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org

🧠 New paper out in 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 Why does tau pathology often begin in the entorhinal cortex in Alzheimer’s disease? We show that brain-wide gradients of neuronal activity and amyloid-β may make this region particularly vulnerable to tau pathology. academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

1/ New preprint from our lab: “Locus coeruleus activation transforms cortical taste representations” We asked how a major neuromodulatory system reshapes cortical taste coding toward behaviorally meaningful features. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Exciting progress, lots of new things coming!! Today we tested our new sequential predictive processing task in the new Cima.X scanner with new sequences and our eye-tracker system (now redesigned from 7T to 3T setup)! #locuscoeruleus @mghmartinos.bsky.social

Postdoc opportunity to investigate the role of noradrenaline in Alzheimer's disease. Require: strong fMRI (fMRS) skills and interest in predictive coding. The Martinos Center in Boston is a superb place to work. Reach out for info; I will be in London (AAIC) and NL in July shorturl.at/1HSey

Postdoc at MGH | Heidi Jacobs

Postdoctoral opportunity to work on understanding the role of the noradrenergic system in Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology and symptoms. The focus is on integrating 3T and 7T MRI (sMRI, fMRI, MRS)...

shorturl.at

I am recruiting an exceptional postdoc to join my lab at UC Irvine. Must be a productive researcher with experience in functional neuroimaging, network neuroscience, AI/ML, who is interested in aging, neuropsychiatric or neurodegenerative illness. www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/44...

Recent studies have revealed the synchronization of neuromodulators including norepinephrine, serotonin, acetylcholine, dopamine, and histamine during sleep. A new #ScienceReview explores what potential role the synchronization of these oscillations may play in health. https://scim.ag/3PEGdsW

The oscillatory biology of sleep: Linkage to dementia

During wakefulness, neuromodulators operate largely independently to support behavior and cognition. By contrast, sleep reorganizes their activity into a coordinated brain rhythm. During sleep, the ma...

scim.ag