Anne Kühnel

Metabolic Contributions to Learning and Feeling: Why They Matter and How to Make the Most of Them

Thoroughly enjoyed writing a commentary on a great paper by @hugofleming.bsky.social et al for @biologicalpsych.bsky.social:GOS, focusing on how to further explore metabolic contributions to learning and feeling using real-time data and interventional designs:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Metabolism and the Mind: Investigating the Link Between Glucose Control and Reinforcement Learning in Humans Signals from the body profoundly influence cognition. This process is known as interoception, and has been extensively studied in the cardiac, respira…

Thanks to Deanna Barch for the opportunity to write this and @akuehnel.bsky.social for her thoughts on the first draft! And check out @hugofleming.bsky.social's paper for an exciting blend of computational psychiatry & real-time metabolic monitoring: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Effects of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation on pupil dilation are dependent on sensory matching Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) is a promising tool to modulate motivation and affect, with prior studies showing greater pupil dilation compared to sham. However, sensory dif...

Pupil dilation is an established biomarker of arousal, and studies have shown that non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) elicits pupil dilation. Here, we find that it depends on sensory matching.
#neuroskyence 🩺

Now published in @cp-iscience.bsky.social

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Diese Woche berichtet @glassybrain.bsky.social u.a. vom Vagus und von vielen anderen spannenden Neuroscience Themen auf @realscientists.de ! Schaut mal vorbei 🔥

main goal for this year: find a new job! 🙂

looking for a role with fun & complex technical challenges & within a great community. my main expertise is in signal processing/EEG/MEG, but topic-wise I am quite flexible.

science/industry both great! starting mid-year. nschawor.github.io/cv

Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version?

I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/

It all started a few years ago... 🧵

Developmental differences in reward-learning and its connection to resting-state functional connectivity modeled using a hierarchical Bayesian model - PubMed Adolescence is a period of heightened sensation-seeking, risk-taking, and reward sensitivity, characterized by structural and functional changes in the brain. Developmental changes in functional connectivity between cortical and subcortical regions may refine communication within reward-related circ …

📣 Happy to share that our paper with Johan Vegelius is published!

Title: “Developmental differences in reward-learning and its connection to resting-state functional connectivity modeled using a hierarchical Bayesian model”

Find the full paper here:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41478440/

Please spread the word🔊My lab is looking to hire two international postdocs. If you want to do comp neuro, combine machine learning and awesome math to understand neural circuit activity, then come work with us! Bonn is such a cool place for neuroscience now, you don't want to miss out.

Figure 4 from the linked paper.

Spent some time today playing around with the #Rstats package orchaRd 2.0

It offers a really nice way of visualizing #metaanalysis, especially moderator meta-regression models (with both categorical & continuous moderators!) #dataviz

🔗 daniel1noble.github.io/orchaRd/

📄 doi.org/10.1111/2041...

Antidepressant treatment shouldn't be a guessing game. RELMED is working towards using advanced research to predict which medication is most likely to help each person along their individual path to recovery.

Postdoctoral research position in #ComputationalPsychiatry and #EEG as part of relmed.ac.uk trial testing reinforcement learning as biomarker for antidepressant treatment response. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @mikebrowning.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social

A picture of Shamay-Tsoory

A picture of Monika Schönauer

A picture of Micah Allen

I have an early Christmas present for you! 🎅

Happy to announce that we have three excellent keynote speakers at Psychology and Brain 2026 in Heidleberg!

Professors Shamay-Tsoory, Schönauer and Allen will cover topics from empathy over memory to interoception!

pug2026.org

Fast hierarchical processing of orthographic and semantic parafoveal information during natural reading - Nature Communications Combining MEG, eye-tracking, and representational similarity analysis, this study shows that readers rapidly and sequentially extract orthographic and semantic information from upcoming words before fixation, supporting efficient reading.

Ever wonder how you read so fast? Your brain gets a head start—processing the next word before your eyes move. Our MEG + eye tracking study out in Nature Communications study from @thechbh.bsky.social reveals orthographic & semantic previews predicting reading speed www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex, Nature Neuroscience

fMRI signals “up,” but neural metabolism might be going “down.”

In our @natneuro.nature.com paper, we demonstrate that about 40% of voxels with robust BOLD responses exhibit opposite oxygen metabolism, revealing two distinct hemodynamic modes.

rdcu.be/eUPO8
funds @erc.europa.eu
#neuroskyence 🧵:

Thrilled to share our paper is out now in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social 🥳 The interoception accuracy part is still my favorite 🤩 Have a look: www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...

What started as a spinoff project for Madeleine's PhD became one of the most striking indications that glucose levels play an important role in regulating everyday stress responses. This shows the potential of biosensors to evaluate whether metabolism alters stress reactivity #neuroskyence 🩺

Higher glucose levels buffer against everyday stress load Adaptive stress responses are dependent on the availability of energy and the body's effectiveness in metabolizing glucose as fuel. However, it is not well understood if glucose levels contribute to t...

📣I’m excited to share our new preprint on how our body’s energy supply shapes everyday stress experiences:

📄𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐠𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Graphical visualization of the research question

Your stomach called – your striatum picked up!

But does this actually happen in humans?

Using simultaneous dopamine PET/fMRI, we show that the gut hormone ghrelin helps the brain adjust motivation to current metabolic need.

Here’s what we found👇
Preprint: shorturl.at/pq4A3

#neuroskyence #🩺

A graphical abstract showing the research question and the operationalization of the study.

Out now in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social 🚨.
Hunger often affects our mood, but is this a conscious or a subconscious process? Using continuous glucose monitoring, we show that differences in mood are driven by hunger ratings, not just glucose. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.thelancet.com/journals/EBI...

Please share! - 🚨⚠️ PhD position alert ⚠️🚨 - Please share!

Come work with @ldeserno.bsky.social and yours truly on an exciting DFG-funded project on the neurocognitive mechanisms of (noise in) learning and decision-making in development and ADHD!

There are 3 Oxford-based post doc positions for this Wellcome Trust project that will be advertised soon!

If you have experinece in neurostimulation (tms/tus) and/or modelling of cogneuro data in humans do contact one of us (me, @mkflugge.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social, Jacinta OShea) to discuss!

Really excited about this 5-year project starting, funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social, where we will combine ✨computational modelling✨ with causal intervention techniques such as ✨tFUS✨ to study the neurocognitive mechanisms of repetitive negative thoughts 🚀 led by @mikebrowning.bsky.social

The relationship between anxious traits and learning about changes in stochasticity and volatility Author summary Adapting to changes in our environment is a daily endeavour. To do so, humans and animals alike make use of feedback to guide future actions. Uncertainty in the environment can arise fr...

First up, this paper led by Bronagh McCoy: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

When noise and volatility are independently manipulated people behave differently depending on their anxious traits.

Happy to say that our overview of how to modify your taVNS setup for safe use in the MR scanner is now published!
dx.doi.org/10.1111/jon....

There are more details in the thread below but next to lower temperatures 🌡️, we also saw better signal-to-noise ratio with the modification 📶 #neuroskyence

Decision Making This book offers reports on new findings relating to mechanisms of decisions, modeling of decision making and impaired decision making upon diseases.

I am pleased to announce that our new book on "Decision Making: Fundamentals and Applications" is now published by @springernature.com ! A collection of 17 chapters over 325 pages on #DecisionMaking #Psychology #Philosophy #Psychiatry @carstenmurawski.bsky.social link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

🔈 Our edited volume "Decision Making: Fundamentals and Applications", co-edited with @ulrichettinger.bsky.social and Bert Heinrichs, is out.

url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/9P5mCROAEn...

#DecisionScience #DecisionMaking #Psychology #Psychiatry #Neuroscience #Philosophy

📆Save the date: new lecture series

[1/4] This Wednesday, October 29 at 1 p.m., we are launching a new, hybrid series of guest talks organized the Center of Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience (CAIAN) in Bonn.

Effort choices are sensitive to prior learning Motivated behaviour relies on both learning and effort-based decision-making, yet these processes are often studied in isolation. We developed a novel paradigm combining probabilistic associative lear...

My first post into the bsky void, the first preprint of my PhD! A novel task to bridge learning and effort decision-making.

Of course, we find that effort choice is sensitive to prior learning, but this integration of beliefs into action is affected by anhedonia.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

📣 Excited to share that my first paper is now published!

📄"Metabolic state shapes cortisol reactivity to acute stress: A systematic review and meta-analysis of metabolic and hormonal modulators"

You can find the full paper here:
doi.org/10.1016/j.yn...

So glad to have been part of the #ECNP2025 conference!

It was a great opportunity to present my poster on how different oral contraceptive states affect physiological and neural stress reactivity, and discuss new perspectives on mental health and well-being 🧠

1st Sharp Lab preprint! 🚨 We tested how anxiety affects task generalization—not how people generalize threat stimuli, but how they reuse action-outcome structures when planning in new contexts.

Worry makes people avoid reusing actions that co-occurred w/ threat!
📄: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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