Caesar Liu

Somatosensation and the sense of self In this primer, Patrick Haggard and Matthew Longo consider how sensory signals from receptors throughout the body are integrated to produce the sense of a coherent, continuous, sentient body that form...

New primer in Cell from Patrick Haggard & @mattlongo.bsky.social

Somatosensation and the sense of self: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

#interoception #exteroception #affect #neuroskyence

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, respiratory, and gastric domains; in contrast, metabolic ...

Fleming and colleagues show that poorer glucose control is linked to greater reliance on recent rewards during learning, which subsequently linked to higher depression symptoms, identifying a potential pathways linking metabolic health to mental health.

Causal Effects of Enhanced Parenting on Resting-State Graph Properties of Adolescents at Risk for Maltreatment This study investigates the sustained causal effects of enhanced early caregiving quality on adolescent brain network properties, approximately 11 years after families received an attachment-based par...

Korom and colleagues show that attachment-based parenting intervention delivered during infancy shapes functional brain networks and associated regulatory health in youth at risk for maltreatment.

Young girls may be less responsive to food fullness cues than young boys | Penn State University Young boys and girls eat different amounts if provided with fruit before a meal, with girls consuming more, according to a new study led by researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Scie...

Young girls may be less responsive to food fullness cues than young boys, according to lead researcher Kathleen Keller. @katkellerlab.bsky.social
www.psu.edu/news/health-...

📣 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...

We built the openESM database:
▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place
▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software
▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python

Find out more:
🌐 openesmdata.org
📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

YouTube video by TEDx Talks The surprising science of adolescent brains | Jennifer Pfeifer | TEDxPortland

Excited to share that my TEDx talk is finally available online. I loved sharing what the science shows us: that it's time to reframe adolescence - from problem to ✨ potential ✨ 1/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr8V...

The process of affect labeling Affect labeling can shape how emotions are experienced and shared, with important consequences for both well-being and relationships. While decades of research have explored the impact of articulating emotions through language, the labeling process itself has received limited attention until recently. We suggest that affect labeling can be considered analogous to perceptual decision making, as both involve accumulating evidence toward a decision. Building on perceptual theories of emotion, we explore how this perspective provides new insights into the mechanisms underlying affect labeling. We then review existing research applying sequential sampling models to affect labeling, illustrating how it accounts for the different processes involved in labeling and may explain mechanisms underlying individual differences in the labeling process.

Online Now: The process of affect labeling

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...

The exposome and the developing adolescent brain: understanding mechanisms of neuroplasticity - Neuropsychopharmacology Neuropsychopharmacology - The exposome and the developing adolescent brain: understanding mechanisms of neuroplasticity

#ThisWeekInNPP

This 🔥 Hot Topic 🔥 from @tiffanycheingho.bsky.social discusses how the exposome - the sum of internal, external, and contextual exposures - shapes adolescent neuroplasticity & mental health risk and could present a novel opportunity to guide strategies to promote adolescent 🧠 health

Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories

Review by Sophia Vinci-Booher, Xueying Ren, Kendrick Kay, Chen Yu, Franco Pestilli, & James Booth

tinyurl.com/jhb5py5d

Want to learn more about the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study?👀 Check out the ABCD-ReproNim course! The Fall 2025 course is going on NOW✨ Students may have the opportunity to participate in the 2026 hackathon in Miami🏝️ For more info: abcd-repronim.org 🎉

Task and resting state fMRI modelling of brain-behavior relationships in developmental cohorts Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are often used to inform individual differences in cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric phenotypes. These so-called “brain-behavior” association stu...

In this review, @lucinauddin.bsky.social and Hugh Garavan examine how task and resting-state fMRI can reveal brain-behavior relationships in youth, highlighting current controversies and challenges, outlining solutions, and proposing future directions in developmental neuroscience research.

Brain–body states as a link between cardiovascular and mental health Numerous studies in humans have demonstrated a strong link between heart and brain function at different timescales. We conceptualize this functional …

Interested in the link between cardiovascular and mental health or, in other “words” the ❤️ and 🧠 through brain-body states? A new paper by our speaker and fellow Arno Villringer with @michaelgaebler.com and Vadim Nikulin sheds more light on these interactions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Villringer et al. Figure 1. Conceptual framework for brain–body states

Villringer et al. Figure 2 Brain–body micro-, meso-, and macro-states can be distinguished on the basis of their duration and reversibility

'Brain–body states as a link between cardiovascular and mental health'

by Arno Villringer, Vadim Nikulin & Michael Gaebler @mbe-lab.bsky.social @michaelgaebler.com @mpicbs.bsky.social sky.social

www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

An interoceptive model of energy allostasis linking metabolic and mental health

New article by @saramehrhof.bsky.social and colleagues!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Most striking: altered gut perception patterns predicted six-month relapse risk and eating disorder symptom severity. This is the first evidence that gut interoception can forecast relapse in AN. Full details in our new preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Two new preprints on multilevel HMMs! Time series data is now pervasive in psychology and new methods are needed to model the dynamics in such data. Hidden Markov Models (HHMs) are powerful models for dynamics in which a system is switching between a number of discrete states.

a woman in a black coat stands in front of a sign that says hey ALT: a woman in a black coat stands in front of a sign that says hey

🚨 GRADUATE PHD APPLICATIONS OPEN 🚨
I'm accepting students for the next psychology PhD admissions cycle! If you're passionate about developmental neuroscience and clinical psychology, this might be for you 👇
#GradSchool #Psychology #Research /1

Stomach–brain synchronisation is associated with poorer mental health In common parlance, ‘being in touch with your body’ is often used positively. However, in a recent study, Banellis, Rebollo, and colleagues show that better stomach–brain synchronisation is actually a...

In this @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social Spotlight, I describe how a recent paper by @leahbanellis.bsky.social, @brainandstomach.bsky.social, et al. opens new avenues in interoception research, including those focussed on the subjective interpretation of internal signals: www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

So happy to share our paper on the role of the hippocampus as a mismatch detector:
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We show that the hippocampus detects mismatches between ongoing experiences and episodic memories but not generalised schematic knowledge.

See 🧵for how we got here:
#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky

Graphical summary of the analysis pipeline

Decreased similarity within the anterior insula cortex drives group differences between patients with MDD and healthy control participants. This difference is illustrated by shift functions and compared to control regions in the temporal cortex.

Patients with depression can be robustly classified based on functional connectivity profiles, and the accuracy improves with increasing symptom severity.

New preprint...and this one is truly EPIC 🚨.

Using a large group of patients with depression and healthy controls (N>800), we show differences in the functional segregation of insular subnetworks. And we can use it to classify!
Led by @glassybrain.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Interoceptive Ability is Unrelated to Mental Health Symptoms: Evidence From a Large Scale Multi-Domain Psychophysical Investigation Interoception-the sensing and perception of the internal viscera-is widely cast as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking brain-body interaction to mental illness. Prevailing models propose that altered ...

Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇

Spread the word!! DANS 2025 registration is opening very soon…take a look at some of our amazing speakers! You can present a poster you will present or have presented elsewhere…the goal is to foster discussion. Check dans.pitt.edu for updates!

Neurodevelopmental Timing Links Stress and Psychopathology This Viewpoint discusses the importance of contextualizing stressful experiences and the neurodevelopmental trajectory to predict the risk of psychopathology.

Timing and plasticity are critical to progress in research on stress and neurodevelopment

@ariellekeller.bsky.social
@jamapediatrics.com
@utdallas.bsky.social
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

image shows four children posing as if they are thinking or considering an option with thought bubbles depicted above their heads

Demonstrates that while preschoolers initially rely on perceptual information from faces, this diminishes with age; the crux of emotional development in children shifts to conceptual knowledge gained through social experience. 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#cogsci
#devsci
#AffectSci
#PsychSciSky

Positive Affect as a Developmental Mediator of Early Adversity and Internalizing Psychopathology Early life adversities (ELAs) including experiences such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction are strongly linked to psychopathology; yet, the developmental pathways connecting ELA to external...

🆕 RESEARCH: Not all kids respond to early adversity the same way. We examined data from ~7,400 children for 4 years and found something notable about positive emotions & mental health outcomes...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A thread 🧵 #MentalHealth #ChildDevelopment #Resilience /1

Trauma-predictive brain network connectivity adaptively responds to mild acute stress | PNAS Past traumatic experiences shape neural responses to future stress, but the mechanisms underlying this dynamic interaction remain unclear. Here, we...

Trauma-predictive brain network connectivity adaptively responds to mild acute stress www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Absolutely loved discussing our recent @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper on IhmCurious
YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTv...), thank you for having me! & to
@micahgallen.com @brainandstomach.bsky.social & the @the-ecg.bsky.social team for all their hard work 🧠

The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making Author summary Breathing is more than just a vital process for survival — it influences how we perceive and interact with the world around us. Recent research suggests that the rhythm of breathing, fr...

🧠 New paper on breathing and the brain, out now
@plos.org Computational Biology! 🫁
"The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making"
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
We show how respiratory 'tidal computations' alter our decisons!