Leonhard Schilbach

The social, decoupled self: interpersonal synchronization of breathing alters intrapersonal cardiorespiratory coupling People synchronize their periodic behavioural and physiological rhythms with each other during social interaction. While this interpersonal synchronization has largely been associated with positive ef...

🫁❤️New preprint out: The social, decoupled self

We show effects of interpersonal synchronization of physiological rhythms on intrapersonal cardiorespiratory coupling: when we sync our breathing, our breathing–heart rhythms decouple, with a perturbed phase-relationship
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to see this work published in @natcomms.nature.com! 🧠📊 In-vivo evidence of E/I alterations underlying functional changes in individuals with autism in the large ABIDE1 dataset AND replication in the independent ABIDE2 dataset.

Abstract Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that has historically been recognised for its role in childbirth, lactation, and sexual reproduction. Subsequently, research expanded its influence to include social bonding and behaviors, emphasising its role in facilitating interpersonal relationships. More recent studies, however, have revealed its broader influence, extending to non-social behaviors and cognitive processes, underscoring its ability to modulate a diverse array of behavioral and mental functions. This evolving understanding calls for a critical re-evaluation of oxytocin’s classification as a “social” hormone. The Allostatic Theory of Oxytocin, which integrates both psychological and physiological dimensions, provides an alternative framework that accounts for how oxytocin modulates both social and non-social behaviors. At the core of this framework is behavioral flexibility, which is essential for adapting to dynamic environments. In this review, we explore the role of oxytocin in facilitating behavioral and cognitive flexibility using mechanistic, survival, and evolutionary perspectives. Additionally, we focus on the interactions between oxytocin and other signalling systems that influence behavioral flexibility. Collectively, our findings underscore the benefits of reframing oxytocin’s function in behavior within a broader framework that encompasses both social and non-social aspects. This more expansive perspective not only deepens our understanding of oxytocin’s multifaceted roles but also opens avenues for novel research approaches.

I think it's time to retire the idea that oxytocin is exclusively a 'social' hormone.

In our latest preprint, led by @kjerstimw.bsky.social, we argue that oxytocin should be reframed as a behavioral flexibility hormone osf.io/preprints/os...

Cognitive emotion regulation enhances aversive prediction error activity while reducing emotional responses sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Cognitive emotion regulation enhances aversive prediction error activity while reducing emotional responses sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Imaging first impressions: Distinct neural processing of verbal and nonverbal social information sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Imaging first impressions: Distinct neural processing of verbal and nonverbal social information sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Young adolescents with autism show abnormal joint attention network: A gaze contingent fMRI study sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Young adolescents with autism show abnormal joint attention network: A gaze contingent fMRI study sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

ECSU's @nicohinrichs.bsky.social just posted an update on his paper on 'Geometric Hyperscanning of Affect under Active Inference' on Arxiv!

Make sure to check out his collabo. with @mahault.bsky.social @dimitrisbolis.bsky.social Yuyue Jiang, Leonardo Christov-Moore, and @leoschilbach.bsky.social

Non-invasive dual-brain stimulation facilitates social cooperation through enhancing interpersonal neural synchronization Reciprocal altruism-based cooperation is ubiquitous among humans and plays a crucial role in the survival and evolutionary trajectories of human being…

Non-invasive dual-brain stimulation facilitates social cooperation through enhancing interpersonal neural synchronization
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Non-invasive dual-brain stimulation facilitates social cooperation through enhancing interpersonal neural synchronization Reciprocal altruism-based cooperation is ubiquitous among humans and plays a crucial role in the survival and evolutionary trajectories of human being…

Non-invasive dual-brain stimulation facilitates social cooperation through enhancing interpersonal neural synchronization
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition | Royal Society Celebrating the power of photography to communicate science.

The annual Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition is now open for entries – closing date the 15th August. Please share this with your colleagues and students!

royalsociety.org/journals/pub...

Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition | Royal Society Celebrating the power of photography to communicate science.

The annual Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition is now open for entries – closing date the 15th August. Please share this with your colleagues and students!

royalsociety.org/journals/pub...

NIH Autism database announcement raises concerns among researchers The U.S. National Institutes of Health announced a plan to pour $50 million into data science projects intended to investigate the condition’s causes, but the initiative’s short timeline and other…

The NIH announced a plan to pour $50 million into data science projects investigating autism’s causes, but the initiative’s short timeline and lack of details have prompted questions about how the work will progress.

By @avaskham.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/nih...

USA: Kennedy will Publikationen in medizinischen Fachzeitschriften untersagen Die US-Regierung will Forschern, die öffentliche Gelder erhalten, das Publizieren in führenden Medizinjournalen verbieten. Wissenschaftler sind entsetzt.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. verkündete, dass er Wissenschaftlern, die öffentliche Forschungsgelder erhalten, verbieten will, in den führenden medizinischen [Peer-reviewed-]Fachjournalen zu publizieren. Stattdessen will Kennedy eigene Fachzeitschriften herausgeben”

www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/us-re...

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

"Science is an investment.

We will put forward a new 500 million package for 2025-2027 to support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world."

— President @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu at the ‘Choose Europe for Science' event at La Sorbonne 🇫🇷

Gorillas offer clues to how social relationships work in humans – study Survey of 164 primates in Rwanda shows how impact of being close to others is affected by group size and sex Human friendship groups are complex – and often fraught – but a study of mountain gorillas has found that their societies can also be head-scratchingly complicated. The study, which took in 20 years of health data involving 164 gorillas in Rwanda, discovered that the costs and benefits of being close to others changed depending on the size of groups and differed for males and females. Continue reading...

Gorillas offer clues to how social relationships work in humans – study

Title slide: Trust the process? (Causal) Mediation analysis

Decision flowchart "So you want to conduct a mediation analysis"

This Thursday I will give a talk on (causal) mediation analysis -- happy to have finally worked out what I want to tell people.
And happy to pilot a new mode of slide sharing: just putting them on my website (juliarohrer.com/resources/)

Really great stuff. Have you thought about how this might be different for persons with autism?

Top: Damage to dmPFC (area 9) enhances susceptibility to impulsive social influence. Left: Permutation-based, whole-brain, nonparametric voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) showed that damage to dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC, area 9) was associated with heightened susceptibility to impulsive relative to patient social influence. Right: Plotting the ranked contrasts between susceptibilities to impulsive and patient social influence, separately for participants with damage or no damage in the areas identified by the VLSM analysis. N = 26 for this analysis where data from patient and impulsive was present. Bottom: Damage to vmPFC and ventral striatum increases temporal impulsivity. Left: Permutation-based, whole-brain, nonparametric voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) showed that the areas 13 and 25 in the vmPFC as well as ventral striatum where damage was correlated with increased temporal impulsivity. Right: Plotting the ranked self baseline discounting preferences, separately for participants with damage or no damage in the areas identified by the VLSM analysis (N = 33).

The medial #PFC is involved in economic & social #DecisionMaking in humans. @zhilinsu.bsky.social l @sdnl.bsky.social &co show that dorsal mPFC is causally implicated in susceptibility to social influence, while ventral mPFC is involved in temporal discounting @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3GwXqQ7

Jedes Gehirn tickt anders ADHS und Autismus sind mehr als Modethemen auf TikTok und Instagram.

Jedes Gehirn tickt anders #ADHS #Autismus

Soon available at a toy store near you… 😂 Happy Easter everyone!

Soon available at a toy store near you… 😂 Happy Easter everyone!

Collective decision making by embodied neural agents Abstract. Collective decision making using simple social interactions has been studied in many types of multiagent systems, including robot swarms and huma

New paper in @pnasnexus.org: we study how collective decisions emerge via sensorimotor coordination between multiple neuroinspired artificial agents. Successful consensus requires balanced internal neural dynamics, environmental coupling & social interactions. #SocialNeuroAI #Alignment #MultiAgents

Self-experience of a negative event alters responses to others in similar states through prefrontal cortex CRF mechanisms - Nature Neuroscience Maltese et al. show in mice that experiencing an adverse event affects future interaction with others experiencing the same stressor. These self-experience socioemotional reactions are orchestrated by...

Our new paper is out!! 🥳😊. Emotional Self-Experience Modulation of Reaction to Others Emotions (in mice)! @ IIT www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Using personalised brain stimulation to modulate social cognition in adults with autism-spectrum-disorder: protocol for a randomised single-blind rTMS study - BMC Psychiatry Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments of social interaction and communication as well as repetitive, stereotyped behaviour. Previous r...

Using personalised brain stimulation to modulate social cognition in adults with autism-spectrum-disorder: protocol for a randomised single-blind rTMS study
bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

The Unintended Negative Consequences of Help in Childhood - Jellie Sierksma, Kristin Shutts, 2025 Exchanges of help in childhood produce many positive consequences, such as increasing academic success, promoting happiness, and fostering positive peer relatio...

"providing and receiving help do not always produce positive outcomes"--authors calling for "more research on how helping promotes negative perceptions of the self or others and when and how it perpetuates inequality and hampers learning" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... autism-relevant

Using personalised brain stimulation to modulate social cognition in adults with autism-spectrum-disorder: protocol for a randomised single-blind rTMS study - BMC Psychiatry Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments of social interaction and communication as well as repetitive, stereotyped behaviour. Previous r...

Using personalised brain stimulation to modulate social cognition in adults with autism-spectrum-disorder: protocol for a randomised single-blind rTMS study
bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....