Our latest publication seems to have drawn some new followers! So I’d like to use the opportunity to share what our lab studies (beyond attention & inflammation). We study how what goes on in our minds can shape what happens in our bodies, and ultimately, our physical health.

Postdoc job alert! I’m looking for someone with a PhD in neuroscience/psychology, psychiatry, computational modeling or a related field to join my NIH-funded team at UCLA studying the neural & computational mechanisms of #interoception in anorexia nervosa 1/2

Amygdala dopamine is often studied in response to external rewards or threats. But what happens during self-initiated exploration? Our new preprint suggests a broader role: a state-dependent salience signal linking exploration and associative learning. 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Basolateral amygdala dopamine signals behavioural salience across exploration and learning

Animals must balance exploration with threat avoidance, yet how neuromodulatory signals shape information-seeking states remains unclear. Using fibre photometry recordings in the basolateral amygdala ...

biorxiv.org

Big news! 🎉 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚜 1.0.0 for #Rstats is out. It’s a big number and it feels like a big step. I wrote a blog on the challenges of interpreting statistical models, SPEED, cool new features, the future, and a 5 year package development and writing odyssey. arelbundock.com/posts/margin...

Nothing quite like finding a perfect home for work close to your heart. Out now in @plos.org CompBiol is our #open-source toolbox for circular permutation testing in #brain-body #neuroskyence. 🫂 @teresaberther.bsky.social & @eliobalestrieri.eurosky.social 🔗 journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... 🧵🔽

We ( @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social and I ) wrote a "Hot Topics" piece for @npp-journal.bsky.social on the potential utility of frontopolar cortex TMS in precision psychiatry. Relevant now that this region has been accessed in some excellent recent NHP studies. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Translating macaque frontopolar cortex discoveries into psychiatric treatments - Neuropsychopharmacology

Neuropsychopharmacology - Translating macaque frontopolar cortex discoveries into psychiatric treatments

nature.com

I’m very happy to share our new preprint on how acute stress responses in the lab relate to stress experienced in everyday life: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Stronger brain responses to acute stress reflect greater everyday stress variability

Laboratory stress tasks are widely used to assess individual differences in acute stress reactivity, yet it remains unclear how these responses correspond to stress experienced in everyday life. Here,...

biorxiv.org

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-...

Pathogens sense #stress hormones in the gut and use them to regulate motility and virulence. Weston Whitaker explores a new @PLOSBiology.org study which transfers this pathway to a #probiotic bacterium, redesigns it to drive programmable outputs 🧪 Article plos.io/4zI6itm Primer plos.io/4qE1npb

Out now @natcomms.nature.com. how do deadlines shape effort processing? We show that deadlines cause us to seek high effort rather than avoid it. Why? Becease effort makes progress towards completing goals, making it valuable, a process coordinated by fronto-striatal computations.

Neural and computational mechanisms of effort under the pressure of a deadline - Nature Communications

People are effort-averse in most situations but can exert effort for little reward when progressing towards goals. Here, the authors show that under deadline pressure people become effort-seeking whil...

nature.com

Andrea Pisauro@andreapisauro.bsky.social · last mo.

Under pressure? It may not be bad. We think of pressure when there is too much of it, but in the right doses it is what makes us reach our goals on time. That's the idea @brainapps.bsky.social & I developed in this paper finally in press at @natcomms.nature.com nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75987-6

Are you on the #neurojob #psychjob market this fall? Come be my colleague! The Psych and Brain Sciences department @psychiowa.bsky.social is hiring TT faculty in clinical science and neuroscience, as well as clinical-track faculty. The initial review deadline is Sept 28. More info below!👇

Mark Blumberg@marksblumberg.bsky.social · 4mo ago

1/2 We have 3 current and upcoming faculty searches in our department. First, we are currently doing an open-rank Clinical-Track Faculty search. Interest in leadership (clinic director) desirable. Learn more here: psychology.uiowa.edu/about/job-op...

For you to collect good data, your participants need to have a good experience. Ch 12 of Experimentology takes that seriously, covering informed consent, how to make good online experiments, and participant compliance checks. 🧵 experimentology.io

Please share widely! 🚀 I am recruiting a PhD student for an exciting cross-species collaborative project using layer fMRI to investigate how interoception shapes cognitive control - Application deadline is: 1.10.2026 - Start: Jan 2027 www.mpg.de/26934670/phd...

PhD Position (m/f/d) | Ultra-High-Field Layer fMRI of Cognitive Control and Interoception

PhD Position in Ultra-High-Field Layer fMRI of Cognitive Control and Interoception

mpg.de

Super excited to see our review out in TiCS! Here me & @cogsci.nl present the first comprehensive framework of the mechanisms driving relationships between spontaneous pupil-size fluctuations, neural activity, and behavior 👀🧠👩🏻‍💻 Spoiler: arousal is only one of at least four 😶‍🌫️ doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

For the first time, I have now seen a journal advertisement during my YouTube playlist (Springer Nature's BMC Microbiome). It is either cheaper to advertise than I thought, or the margin is not too bad 🙃.

The Department of Neuroscience at Yale is hiring faculty members. We have 2 searches: one general (deadline Oct 15), one focused on computational neuroscience (deadline Nov 30). Apply! apply.interfolio.com/190736 & apply.interfolio.com/190740

The DFG and @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca expand their partnership for German-Canadian International Research Training Groups in Social Sciences and Humanities and hereby invite proposals under a joint proposal and funding scheme. Virtual information event on 29 Sep 26. Details and schedule: sohub.io/s01l

DFG and SSHRC Expand Partnership for German-Canadian International Research Training Groups in Social Sciences and Humanities

sohub.io

Psychology has been riding the intensive longitudinal train for a bit, but what about immunology? Now live @brainbehavimm.bsky.social, our physiometric report on the stability of inflammatory proteins collected every 3 days for 22 days during a natural stressor 1/X

Inflammatory Proteins are Highly Variable During a Natural Stressor: A Call for Intensive Longitudinal Blood Microsampling

Although research into how inflammation mediates the effects of stress on disorders such as heart disease and depression has grown rapidly, standard l…

sciencedirect.com

Cutting a nerve of the hand alters the organization of digit maps in primary somatosensory cortex

Cutting a nerve of the hand alters the organization of digit maps in primary somatosensory cortex

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 13 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02548-8Weber et al. show that the normally conserved spatial organization of the digit response maps in primary somatosensory cortex is altered in patients with surgically repaired hand nerves.

dlvr.it

🚨Preprint alert!🚨 Have you ever wondered what imagination is good for? A new preprint from our lab tests the idea that imagination helps us develop generalizable strategies by bootstrapping experiences that haven’t happened in order to learn. We look at this in both man and machine. 1/9

Big changes ahead: the OSF will stop support sharing (new) data, materials and code. Feels like the end of an era!

Brian Nosek@briannosek.bsky.social · last mo.

Over the next several months, we will phase out some popular OSF features. These changes do not affect current public content, which remains safe and accessible. We have prepared support material to help users adapt. I am very sorry for the disruption to your work. Please read this post for details.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Stomach-brain coupling with EEG decreases during cognitive engagment

1/ New paper out today from my group, in @natneuro.nature.com, in which we review the anatomical & functional data on insula structure across species. This was a "whole lab" project led by @joeycharbonneau.bsky.social. It's been a 5 year in the making (a full 3 years in review)! rdcu.be/fyd7T

Comparative insights into insula structure and function

Nature Neuroscience - Charbonneau et al. compare how the insula is structured and functions in humans, monkeys and rodents, revealing similarities and differences across species that are likely to...

rdcu.be

1/ I’m delighted to share our new paper, out now in @cpsyjournal.bsky.social with @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social and @micahgallen.com, correlating variations in cortical microstructures with individual differences in gamified exploration-exploitation behaviours! 🧵 doi.org/10.5334/cpsy...

Cortical Microstructural Variations Correlate With Individual Differences in Gamified Exploration–Exploitation Behaviours | Computational Psychiatry

doi.org

Happy to share our preprint! We show that hypothalamic hunger-promoting AgRP neurons reflect proximity to food across different mazes in hungry mice. After mice discover food, AgRP activity decreases as they approach the food and increases as they move away.

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · last mo.

Hunger neurons track available food locations during foraging and spatial memory recall https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.28.741066v1

New Study! @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social Often foraging models assume that the forager knows the environment and proceed to predict decision strategies but how does the foraging learn the structure of the environment ? A new preprint delves into this question

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

Hunger neurons track available food locations during foraging and spatial memory recall https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.28.741066v1

The brain uses a lot of energy. But it's not using that energy all the time and at the same intensity. It's not just more neuronal activity = more energy. There is also a lot of background process demending energy. 🧪 Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-026-10646-6​

jaxon: a differentiable, GPU-native simulator for peripheral-nerve fiber models https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.30.741846v1