Omid V. Ebrahimi

Anyone willing to confidentially share their successful 2025 VICI application docs with me? Thanks gang.

Symptom-specific links between internalizing problems and functional connectivity in adolescents: a network analysis - European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Previous fMRI studies have documented links between internalizing problems in youth and brain functional connectivity of the default (DN), frontoparietal (FP), and salience (SA) networks. Characterize...

Very excited to share that our paper “Symptom-specific links between internalizing problems and functional connectivity in adolescents: a network analysis” has been published in European Child & Adolescence Psychiatry doi.org/10.1007/s007...

Go grace!

Thanks for the shoutout, Emma! :-)

Network analysis of multivariate data in psychological science - Nature Reviews Methods Primers Network analysis allows the investigation of complex patterns and relationships by examining nodes and the edges connecting them. Borsboom et al. discuss the adoption of network analysis in psychologi...

These are helpful starting points in general:

- www.nature.com/articles/s43...
- www.routledge.com/Network-Psyc...
- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

For 'over time', look for articles on GVAR, panelGVAR, and mlVAR to advance to the next step - e.g:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Tropical diseases spreading in Europe due to global warming.

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

The question is whether democracy becomes a contest of genuine idea diversification, or, a contest of coordination apps.

Thanks to lead author @jonassjostedt.bsky.social

Open access preprint:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

6/6: We provide a research & policy agenda to:

▶️ Shift detection from individual accounts to network-level synchronicity
▶️ Study psychological effects of AI-mediated political expression
▶️ Focus governance on coordination hubs rather than individual speakers

Led by @kunstjonas.bsky.social w/@kbierwiaczonek.bsky.social, Cha, Fawcett-Atkinson, Følstad, @antongollwitzer.bsky.social,
@nckobis.bsky.social, @garymarcus.bsky.social, Roozenbeek, @daniel-thilo.bsky.social, @jayvanbavel.bsky.social, @profsanderlinden.bsky.social,
@rorywh.bsky.social &Wilhelmsen

5/6 - Crucially, cyborg propaganda exploits a regulatory gray zone:

Because a verified human ultimately clicks 'post', liability frameworks built around automation (e.g., bot bans) struggle to apply.

Regulation aimed at “inauthentic accounts” misses coordinated authentic behaviour.

4/6:

This results in a closed-loop influence engine that mimics organic consensus while evading duplicate-content detection.

This can make individuals relay nodes manufacturing consensus & distorting public knowledge, with critical impact on opinion polls, dynamics & apparent consensus.

3/6 Mechanism:

Coordination hub issues directive ▶️ AI multiplier generates thousands of stylistically unique messages ▶️ Verified users post them ▶️ 
Real-time monitoring feeds performance data back into the system.

2/6:

Traditional frameworks separate:

▶️ Synthetic identities (botnets)
▶️ Fake personas run by humans (troll farms)
▶️ Genuine grassroots expression

Cyborg propaganda collapses the distinction:
▶️ Identity is authentic; articulation synthetic
▶️ Authenticity (account level). Automation (narrative)

📝 New preprint on the threat of cyborg propaganda to democracy.

We discuss how the key divide in online influence is no longer bots vs humans. We are entering an era of 'cyborg propaganda':

Verified human identities disseminate centrally generated, AI-crafted narratives 🧵

osf.io/preprints/ps...

The Matrix of Coordinated Influence. Traditional frameworks for analyzing online influence focus on the distinction between human and automated actors (Identity Axis) or between spontaneous and coordinated behavior (Articulation Axis). Bot Nets (top-left) rely on synthetic identities and automated scripts. Troll Farms (bottom-left) use human operators to manage fake personas. Grassroots Action (bottom-right) involves verified citizens sharing self-authored views. Cyborg Propaganda (top-right) represents a new paradigm: verified human users disseminating centrally generated, algorithmically generated narratives, effectively ‘hybridizing’ the authenticity of the grassroots with the scale of the botnet.

The distinction between grassroots activism and automated influence is collapsing.

We typically worry about "bot farms" or "troll factories." But a distinct, more complex threat is emerging. We call it "Cyborg Propaganda."

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Well done, @fbartos.bsky.social!

Many thanks for your kind words, Ludvig!

Fabolous course on network analysis and psychometrics in Oxford this summer - highly recommend!

So sad to be missing this! If any of you are lucky enough not to have other commitments late June and are interested in psychological networks, I would highly recommend the summer school (below) organised by @omidvebrahimi.bsky.social (who has the amazing skill of making complex topics accessible!)

Many thanks, Sam. Much appreciate your kind words!

4/4: This practical workshop is therefore designed to equip participants to directly apply network analytic methods to their own research.

To apply, and for more information about the course, visit our website:

oxfordpns.com

3/4: Participants will have the opportunity to work with their own data, high-quality openly available datasets, as well as carefully curated example data, enabling them to learn how different network analytic models are specified, estimated, interpreted, and reported in practice.

2/4: OxPNS is a 5-day state-of-the-art course designed to provide researchers with a rigorous & practical foundation in network analysis, from core principles to advanced modelling techniques.

It provides training in the understanding, application & interpretation of a wide range of network models.

Thrilled to announce the Oxford Psychological Networks Summer School (OxPNS)!

This is the first-ever psychological network analysis workshop in the UK, to be held in magical Oxford from June 22-26, 2026.

To apply and for more information, please visit: oxfordpns.com

A brief thread 🧵

Hierarchical Phenotyping of Psychopathology: Implications and Opportunities for Precision Psychiatry When Biology Could Be Associated With Both Symptoms and Syndromes As psychiatry increasingly embraces precision medicine principles, there have been efforts to characterize the specificity of biology-psychopathology associations (e.g., is biology associated with syn...

Excited for the 1st lab paper to be live @biologicalpsych.bsky.social !

@emilyrperkins.bsky.social @keananjoyner.bsky.social and I discuss testing biology as simultaneous + unique predictors of different levels of psychopathology hierarchies 1/7🧵

www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...

Grateful to @chopwood.bsky.social & @aidangcw.bsky.social who trained me to proactively make decisions during my editorial training by extracting key changes necessary after reviews, clearly communicate these to authors, & make decisions asap after without unnecessarily using authors&reviewers' time

An essential take amid article inflation & overburdened reviewers

Editors aren't supposed to excessively return manuscripts & outsource decisions to reviewers

Many psych journals can learn a lot here from medicine & epi, where these decisions are equally robust, but far more efficient (eg. Lancet)

Led by the wonderful @leaschumacher.bsky.social with @jmbh.bsky.social, @adamfinnemann.bsky.social, L. Kriston, & JP Klein.

🌟📝 Just out in World Psychiatry:

Our new piece demonstrates the added value of dynamic symptom networks for predicting treatment outcomes beyond baseline severity & common covariates, with an added explained variance of 9-22% at post-treatment & follow-up.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...