Alex Shackman

Electrophysiological Correlates of Reinforcement Learning in the Human Ventral Tegmental Area
A Ramaswamy, D Steele, JP Roiser, L Simmonds… - bioRxiv, 2026

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A sad day at NIH...

The NIH Record was a great way for NIH folks to find out what was going on across NIH.

Many important stories published there over the years.

nihrecord.nih.gov/2026/01/30/n...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... Are Loneliness Interventions Effective for Reducing Loneliness? A Meta-Analytic Review of 280 Studies

How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

If he was then the Lieutenant Governor takes over, flatters Trump for a day or not, and keeps doing the same thing while agreeing to hand over part of the state's strategic reserve of lutefisk to cat food companies.

👇New biosketch requirement update.

“After evaluating the number and types of recent technical inquiries we received to both the SciENcv and eRA Service Desks, we recognize the difficulties these issues have had on the community’s ability to comply with the original timeline of January 25, 2026.”
👇

Reproducibility Failure in Biomedical Research: Problems and Solutions Reproducibility concerns in biomedical research have persisted for more than a decade, with large-scale assessments revealing significant challenges in replicating findings. Despite widespread acknowl...

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptor Activators as Transformative Therapeutics for Schizophrenia While traditional antipsychotic drugs provide symptomatic relief for positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, many patients are refractory to traditional antipsychotics. Furthermore, these me...

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The Future of DSM: A Strategic Vision for Incorporating Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Environmental Determinants and Intersectionality | American Journal of Psychiatry PsychiatryOnline.org is the platform for all American Psychiatric Association Publishing journals, DSM, and bestselling textbooks, as well as APA Practice Guidelines, and continuing medical education.

The Future of DSM: A Strategic Vision for Incorporating Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Environmental Determinants and Intersectionality | American Journal of Psychiatry psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

The Future of DSM: Are Functioning and Quality of Life Essential Elements of a Complete Psychiatric Diagnosis? | American Journal of Psychiatry psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

The Future of DSM: Role of Candidate Biomarkers and Biological Factors | American Journal of Psychiatry psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Initial Strategy for the Future of DSM | American Journal of Psychiatry PsychiatryOnline.org is the platform for all American Psychiatric Association Publishing journals, DSM, and bestselling textbooks, as well as APA Practice Guidelines, and continuing medical education.

psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

It takes a village!

Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain - Nature Human Behaviour Using intracranial EEG recordings in epilepsy patients, Pacheco-Estefan et al. describe changes in the neural representations of cues and contexts during fear and extinction learning in the human brai...

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

Applications for #UMich #Psychology Diversity Recruitment Weekend are in 2 days! If you are thinking about applying to psychology PhD programs in the future this may be for you! The application is short, but the benefits are big
lsa.umich.edu/psych/divers...

The writing itself is really nice. Well done!

2/n. from hardwired S-R ensembles to broad macroscopic circuits of conscious feelings. See also Fox and Kragel's essays here: shackmanlab.org/wp-content/u...

1/n. I agree w/ Josh's emphasis on computationally grounded approaches, coordinated x-species work, and skepticism that emotion only encompasses constructed feelings. As he notes, hierarchical frameworks can encompass multiple levels of processing,

Ethanol effects on excitability of corticotropin‐releasing factor‐expressing neurons in the medial subdivision of the mouse central amygdala nucleus This paper describes data showing that in the central nucleus of the amygdala, exposure to acute ethanol is associated with decreased endogenous cellular excitability. We find this in spite of multip...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

To apply email xiaosi.gu@yale.edu!!

Looking for a postdoc in #computationalpsychiatry? Apply here to join an interdisciplinary team and work with a large longitudinal transdiagnostic dataset

postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2026-0...

@RobbRutledge @xiaosigu @DrChrisPitt @PearlsonGodfrey @ACNPorg @YaleMed

Why emotion research is stuck—and how to move it forward Studying how organisms infer indirect threats and understand changing contexts can establish a common framework that bridges species and levels of analysis.

My perspective in @thetransmitter.bsky.social on why emotion research feels stuck and how we might move forward—by focusing on how the brain uses internal brain models to shape emotional processing across species. www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/why-...

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

Wise words from WEB DuBois to gird us today: "It would be shame and cowardice to surrender this glorious land and its opportunities for civilization and humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the mobs and profiteers, the monopolists & gamblers who today choke its soul and steal its resources."

On Leakage in Machine Learning Pipelines Machine learning (ML) provides powerful tools for predictive modeling. ML's popularity stems from the promise of sample-level prediction with applications across a variety of fields from physics and m...

arxiv.org/abs/2311.04179

Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review - Cognitive, Affecti... Over the past decades, effort-based decision-making paradigms have become popular and effective tools to assess the neurocognitive mechanisms that support motivated behavior in humans and animals. The...

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026 Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.

🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year.

That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027.

A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications.

A short 🧵