Katie Insel

Longitudinal changes in T1w/T2w estimates of cortical myelin with age and pubertal timing | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

Children's decision to challenge themselves on a novel task relates to their metacognitive monitoring of their ability Abstract. We examined potential processes by which children decide to make hard as opposed to easy choices to accomplish a goal. Five- to 7-year olds (N =

New paper out in Child Development (@srcdorg.bsky.social) with Dave Sobel (@candmlab.bsky.social)! ✨ We investigated how 5- to 7-year-old children decide to take on easy versus hard tasks while pursuing a goal. doi.org/10.1093/chid...

New paper in Nature Neuroscience! We developed personalized fMRI-based predictive models tracking ongoing spontaneous pain in chronic pain patients—trained on 6+ months of densely sampled data. A true team effort. Deeply grateful to our participants! doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02221-3

Federally funded DEI training programs and grants are disappearing. Meet seven neuroscientists who are filling the gaps.

By Paige Miranda

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/dei/we-still...

BREAKING: We reached a settlement that requires the Trump administration to permanently maintain medical research that had been erased on a government website.

The government doesn't get to censor science.

Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces Nature - The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions

rdcu.be/eRVUk

So proud of @meganspurney.bsky.social and team for this exciting new paper from my lab!

Younger adolescents' working memory performance benefits more from reward than older teens and young adults.

This occurs even though all ages report similar preferences about reward value and cognitive demand.

Dense Phenotyping of Human Brain Network Organization Using Precision fMRI The advent of noninvasive imaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) transformed cognitive neuroscience, providing insights into large-scale brain networks and their link to cog...

My review with @caterinagratton.bsky.social is (apparently) open access for those who couldn't see it before:

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

We discuss individual differences in brain network organization and how to home in on and talk about commonalities in the face of such differences

The cerebellum supports high-level language?? Now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, we systematically examined language-responsive areas of the cerebellum using precision fMRI and identified a *cerebellar satellite* of the neocortical language network!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUU83BtfH...
1/n 🧵👇

Episodic memory facilitates flexible decision-making via access to detailed events - Nature Human Behaviour Nicholas and Mattar found that people use episodic memory to make decisions when it is unclear what will be needed in the future. These findings reveal how the rich representational capacity of episod...

Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter.

How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need?

Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.

Dominance and Prestige Motivations to Lead in Adolescence Introduction Dual strategy frameworks of motivation to lead differentiate Dominance motivations, which leverage fear and control to gain power and status, from Prestige motivations, which rely on re...

Speaking of early leadership motivations, I'm thrilled that this paper is finally out - we establish the emergence of dominance and prestige leadership motivations in adolescence, and further show nomological networks identical to young adults

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

APHA v. NIH | American Civil Liberties Union APHA v. NIH is a legal challenge to the unprecedented and ideologically-driven purge of hundreds of biomedical research projects by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Years of research on a wide...

For anyone trying to keep up with the grant termination/delay litigation against NIH, the ACLU has a good page with summaries and links.

www.aclu.org/cases/apha-v...

netneurotools: a trainee-oriented approach to network neuroscience | doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Our lab’s internal toolkit for accomplishing everyday tasks in brain imaging ⤵️

Very happy to share our paper on the "summer slide" in kid's cognitive test scores is out now in @pnas.org!
We find a replicable dip in performance across multiple domains of cognition in >23,000 kids across 4 datasets!

Check out the 🧵 from @ariellekeller.bsky.social below! 👇

Share Your Story and Your Science Competition Participate in APS's social media video competition designed to bring the importance of psychological science to the public. Deadline: January 12, 2026

The APS Advocacy Task Force is mobilizing scientists to communicate their stories, their research, and the real-world impact of their work.

Learn more about APS's #WhyPsychScience video competition and submit by Jan 12! #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky

www.psychologicalscience.org/2025-why-psy...

This is a fundraising post!

An anonymous donor is matching contributions to Children Helping Science up to 100K through the end of the year - if it's in your giving budget, please consider supporting open science infrastructure!

giving.mit.edu/search/node/...

Details below...

Had a great time talking to Maggie Penman about new research on lifespan brain development led by @alexamousley.bsky.social in @duncanastle.bsky.social's group.

This is a great summary of the study and a broader discussion of what brain research can teach us about important developmental phases.

YouTube video by Vijay Mittal Northwestern's Adolescent Mental Health and Well-Being Anthem Video

I'm so excited to be a Faculty Fellow in the newly formed Institute for Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern! iamh.northwestern.edu

Learn more about IAMH's mission and research: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEyy...

Stay tuned for many exciting opportunities to get involved in 2026!

The effects of task similarity during representation learning in brains and neural networks Nature Communications - Here, the authors show learning tasks with similar structures can initially cause interference and slow down learning, but both the brain and artificial networks gradually...

Our new paper, now published in @natcomms.nature.com , asks a simple question: when two tasks share a common structure, does the brain learn them more efficiently? Surprisingly, this was not the case. Thread below (1/7)
rdcu.be/eSwvU

First one out in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🎉
Can’t wait to read the full @fitngin.bsky.social special issue!

2 weeks left to apply!!

A habit and working memory model as an alternative account of human reward-based learning Nature Human Behaviour - In this study, Collins proposes an alternative dual-process (working memory and habit) model of reinforcement learning in humans.

My paper is out!
Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets.
rdcu.be/eQjLN

A scatter plot of the number of citations associated with grants as a function of percentile score for a data set from NIGMS.

On the subject of data, here is from an analysis that I did when I was at NIGMS.

nigms.nih.gov/loop/2011/06...

This showed that there were some quite productive grants with percentile scores at or worse than the 30th percentile.

5/13

🚨 New preprint on the first infant 7T MRI project in North America! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We showcase that by leveraging 7T for infants, we can improve data quality and thereby facilitate precision functional mapping in early development.

Sign up for our final winter session of Scan Camp!!

Looking for teens in the Chicagoland area!

8-10 MRI scans at Northwestern's Feinberg campus.

Wear an Oura ring and answer daily surveys.

Earn up to $1,360, prizes, and a 3D-print of your brain!

northwestern.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Scaling back DEI isn’t just a moral setback—it’s a loss of innovation.

Bhalla, Trejo & @marymunson4.bsky.social in Nature Cell Biology: limiting who can participate in science “weakens research capacity and stifles discovery.”

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Applications are due December 1, and the GRE is not required!

Learn how to apply here: psychology.northwestern.edu/graduate/pro...

I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠

Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com

Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...

I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com

Understanding barriers to adolescent participation in developmental neuroscience research Increasing representation of youth in developmental neuroscience research is essential to elucidating neurobiological mechanisms of cognition, behavio…

New lab paper in DCN! 🧠 We conducted interviews with adolescents to better understand their perceptions of neuroscience research and barriers to participation, w/qualitative data that is shaping how we design lab studies & efforts to increase representation.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...