Nicola Sambuco
@nicolasambuco.bsky.social
Assistant Professor, University of Bari. https://nsambuco.github.io/ Former CSEA trainee at UF
This paper aged well. It was provisionally accepted in Nature Communications pending editorial editing 😃
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
Computational modeling suggests that decision-making efficacy may be a strong marker of vulnerability to addiction
Model-based analysis of stop-signal data reveals robust neural and clinical correlates of evidence accumulation but not inhibition
Neuropsychopharmacology - Model-based analysis of stop-signal data reveals robust neural and clinical correlates of evidence accumulation but not inhibition
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 · last mo.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
🎉 Now published in Nature Communications! 🧠 We develop a novel computational reinforcement learning & habit model of Twitter data, and show that younger people & women are more behaviourally sensitive to 'Likes'. Read the paper: bit.ly/4f1vsKS
A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media - Nature Communications
The cognitive processes driving social media use could be key to understanding social media’s impact. Here, the authors develop a computational model of real-world social media behaviour, identifying ...
bit.ly
Georgia Turner @georgiaturner.bsky.social · 2y ago🚨New preprint 🚨 **A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media** 🧵 We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...
www.nature.com/articles/s41... been wanting this for my classroom teaching
Persistent vulnerability to heroin relapse after more than one year of abstinence in rats - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - Persistent vulnerability to heroin relapse after more than one year of abstinence in rats
nature.com
Are eLife papers no longer indexed in Scopus? #NeuroSkyence
Excited to see this out. Network Similarity Index (NSI) gives the precision fMRI field an objective way to ask whether an individual dataset can support precision mapping. Glad to have served as one of the expert raters. Congrats to @cjl2007.bsky.social and team!
@cjl2007.bsky.social · last mo.Happy to share that our paper on objective quality assessment for "precision" fMRI is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social A recap of what it does, what's new since the preprint, and code you can run on your own data. cell.com/neuron/fullt...
1/9 📄 New in the Journal of Neuroscience: "Faster but less precise: expectation enhances response speed while reducing sensory fidelity" Does the brain prioritise the events it expects, or the ones that surprise it? We find it does both — at different stages. 🧵 doi.org/10.1523/JNEU...
Faster but less precise: expectation enhances response speed while reducing sensory fidelity
The brain’s remarkable ability to process continuous sensory inputs with adaptive efficiency – balancing flexibility while minimizing metabolic cost – is thought to rely on predictive mechanisms that ...
doi.org
Happy to share that our paper on objective quality assessment for "precision" fMRI is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social A recap of what it does, what's new since the preprint, and code you can run on your own data. cell.com/neuron/fullt...
New paper led by @phoebethomson.bsky.social showing that childhood cognitive ability predicts multimodal brain development during adolescence. Now out in DCN @fluxsociety.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @kingsioppn.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com
Updated this preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Lots of new analyses, but among the coolest is the demonstration that communities -- defined from connectivity information alone (w/o distinguishing NTs/morphology/space) --recover neuronal lineages. Kind of neat!
Rick Betzel@richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 8mo ago🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding. How is this massive network organized? Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
Check our new work! Studies led brilliantly by @louisakuper.bsky.social. We investigate the parafascicular thalamus as an interface of sensory, attention, and movement signals that guide exploration and cue-related learning.
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe parafascicular thalamus steers attention to facilitate learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.18.733204v1
The parafascicular thalamus steers attention to facilitate learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.18.733204v1
Paper here - www.cell.com/current-biol...
Tachykinin 1 neurons in the lateral habenula signal negative reward prediction error
Suzuki et al. show that tachykinin 1+ neurons in the lateral habenula signal negative reward prediction error. Cell-type-specific fiber photometry recordings in freely moving mice across appetitive an...
cell.com
Fun to write about this cool recent paper from Emily Sylwestrak's lab in @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...
Neuroscience: Habenula neurons help learn from loss
Adjusting expectations is key for thriving in a dynamic environment. A new study suggests that a specific set of neurons in the habenula contributes to this process by specifically signaling worse tha...
cell.com
Glewwe et al. demonstrate that female mice outperform males in a touchscreen set-shifting task, suggesting that stable choice commitment in females paradoxically enhances cognitive flexibility
Sex-biased computations underlying differential set shift performance in mice
Neuropsychopharmacology - Sex-biased computations underlying differential set shift performance in mice
nature.com
Thrilled (really) to share recent evidence from our READY study led by @paulaphilippi.bsky.social w/ @aidangcw.bsky.social: "Minutes that matter: A microburst approach to adolescents' resolution of affect in response to daily stressors" 🧵1/9
Aleksa Kaurin@aleksakaurin.bsky.social · 3mo agoMinutes that matter: A microburst approach to adolescents’ resolution of affect in response to daily stressors osf.io/preprints/ps...
Can’t be explained better than this. Anyone trying to say that each of them, independently from the others, is “gold standard” is wrong. Plain and simple.
Alex Shackman@ajshackman.bsky.social · 2mo ago5/n. So, I do my best to remain mindful of the suggestions of Block, Kagan, Lang/Bradley, & Darwin: don't neglect behavior and peripheral phys. Test and observe, don't just ask. Hope that helps unpack my dumb one-liner. Have a lovely day. - Shackman
Feelings = subjective, not Emotions. Peter Lang has been said for 40+ years that emotions can be studied with 3 type of measures: subjective, behavioral, physio/neural.
Kimberly Quinn 🇨🇦@kimberlyquinn.bsky.social · 2mo agoSelf-reports aren't objective, but neither are emotions. Subjective measures to assess subjective constructs. Seems easy enough to me. Of course, finding ways to help respondents better articulate their emotional states is important, but these will still be subjective. Emotions, subjective.
We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇
Scott Marek@smarek0502.bsky.social · 2mo agoWhat 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/...
Add fentanyl to the list! Acute semaglutide blocks cue-, drug-, and stress-induced fentanyl seeking in rats, with drug- and stress-induced reinstatement dropping to the floor at every dose, and cue-induced seeking down about 70% at the higher doses.
And a real thank you to our NIDA program officers and the study section reviewers who backed this epic study when it was far from a sure thing 8 years ago... doi.org/10.1038/s41...
Genome-wide association study of cocaine self-administration behavior in Heterogeneous Stock rats
Nature Communications - The genetic basis of cocaine use behaviours is poorly understood. Here, the authors identify genome‑wide loci in an outbred rat population linking variants in...
nature.com
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.
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/...
The nucleus accumbens shell regulates hedonic feeding via a rostral hotspot doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Great work by @labouessemarie.bsky.social and her student Alina! Congrats
The nucleus accumbens shell regulates hedonic feeding via a rostral hotspot
Within the nucleus accumbens shell, a spatially defined rostral subregion selectively modulates hedonic feeding, revealing functional heterogeneity in reward circuitry underlying food consumption.
doi.org
Deep brain stimulation induces white matter remodeling and functional changes to brain-wide networks www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Deep brain stimulation induces white matter remodeling and functional changes to brain-wide networks - Nature Neuroscience
In a nonhuman primate model, Fujimoto et al. show that deep brain stimulation promotes white matter remodeling and reorganizes brain-wide functional networks, detailing a mechanism through which this ...
nature.com
New MEG preprint out! Huge congrats to postdoc Rohit Yadav. We (among other things…) decoded explore-exploit decisions in the human brain, revealing the lateral frontopolar cortex kicks off the shift to exploration hundreds of milliseconds before the choice itself. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Chenonceau: mesoscopic MRI deep phenotyping of a post-mortem human brain at 7 and 11.7 Tesla https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.26.726838v1
