Mikko Peltola

Emotion research has a communication conundrum In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight.

These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them.

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Our new study in Emotion!

Parents report higher satisfaction yet lower daily happiness- the 'parenting paradox'. So in the transition to parenthood, how do we study well-being? We studied how new fathers adapt by examining meaning/purpose and brain connectivity.
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Our findings suggest that securely attached infants may associate maternal positive signals with greater reward value, possibly through repeated experiences of positive interaction with the caregiver.

ERP responses to the mother's happy and angry faces in securely and insecurely attached infants.

At 7 months, infants who were classified as securely attached at 12 months showed larger attention-related brain responses to their mother's happy than angry faces, while no difference was found in insecurely attached infants.

Exploring Associations Between Infant Attachment, Maternal Sensitivity, and Attention to Maternal Emotion Expressions Recent studies have indicated that patterns of infant-caregiver attachment are associated with differences in infants’ processing of social signals of emotion, such as facial expressions. In the cur...

Happy to share a new paper (w/ Biro, Huffmeijer, @hannelis.bsky.social, Bakermans-Kranenburg & @mhvij.bsky.social). We explored whether infants' brain responses and attention to their mother's facial expressions predicted infants' attachment security. 👶😀😠🧠 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Human newborns spontaneously attend to prosocial interactions Nature Communications - Abilities to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial actions are crucial for sustaining cooperative systems. Here, the authors show that human newborns with just 5 days...

New paper! Here (in Nature Communications) we (Ale Geraci, Luca Surian, Lucia Gabriella Tina, & I; work led/run by Ale) show that 5-day-old newborns selectively attend to two distinct forms of prosocial over antisocial action: approaching versus avoiding and helping versus hindering.
rdcu.be/evorW

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Are you interested in what to do with all that movement data you often get in your neuroscience measures? Is it just noise, or how can we make use of it? This December, we are organizing a workshop in Lübeck to discuss precisely these questions. (1/2)

The NIH Brain Development Cohorts (NBDC) Data Hub is now available!

•Researchers can explore ABCD & HBCD Study data in one place – with robust query & data analysis tools, documentation, & workflows
•Learn more & apply for data access: www.nbdc-datahub.org

@theabcdstudy.bsky.social

Suomen Akatemian suurilta tuntuvat myönnöt herättävät keskustelua. Saako tutkija tosiaan yli puoli miljoonaa veronmaksajien rahaa omaan taskuun? Miksei niillä rahoilla hoideta vanhuksia?

Seuraa pitkä ketju siitä, mihin Akatemian myöntämä tutkimusrahoitus oikeasti menee ja miten raha kulkee.

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new preprint - do you use #fnirs to study cognition? do you want to learn how to design better studies? our primer aims to get you started on using #fnirs for real-world #cognitive #neuroscience

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Verotulot suhteessa BKT Ruotsi: 26,80% Tanska: 24,50% Islanti: 22,40% Norja: 21,30% Suomi: 20,00%

Ketju vähemmän tunnettuista tilastoista Suomesta, vertailukohtana muut pohjoismaat.🧵

Aloitetaan verotuksen tasosta. Verotulot suhteessa BKT on Suomessa pohjoismaiden alhaisimmat. Tämä ei sisällä esim. eläkemaksuja ja muita sosiaalivakuutusmaksuja. 1/

Practical Vision Science Amazon.com: Practical Vision Science: 9781032691121: Balas, Benjamin: Books

Random self-promotion, but my hands-on #VisionScience textbook is available for <$50 at the moment! If you're excited about using analog demos of visual phenomena in your classroom, it's a great time to snag a copy! #STEMed

Extremely excited to share the first effort of the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium: A highly-powered, comprehensive GWAS of the Big Five personality traits in 1.14 million participants from 46 cohorts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#Attachment #MythBusting #29: Getting stuck in certain “brain or nervous system states” - especially in relation to #insecure #attachment and #trauma.

👉🏻 pvrticka.com/attachment-m...

#neuroskyence #DevSci #DevPsy #PsychSciSky #CogSci #brain

Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Essex An opportunity for an academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

My @soneatlab.bsky.social @universityofessex.bsky.social is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Fully funded for 2 years starting 01 October 2025. Application deadline is 01 June 2025.

👉🏻 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMX778/p...

#fNIRS #hyperscanning #neuroskyence #DevSci #DevPsy #PsychSciSky #CogSci

Wanted to share a handy little resource with you all (especially those in dev psych) — my lab & I made a "journal submission cheat sheet" that summarizes article types, word limits, & other requirements for the journals we typically submit to. Link below 👇🏼
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Developmental Science is looking for new Associate Editors. Details are at lnkd.in/eDggC6WQ
Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Join us! @health.nationalacademies.org is organizing a FREE virtual workshop May 19 and 21 on the neurobiology of empathy and compassion and their roles and applications in brain function, medical treatments, and human well-being. Register here: bit.ly/427yN4M

The question we ask: when do face responses arise in human infant cortex?

Neuroscientists and developmental psychologists (my two disciplines) have different intuitions.

What they call pedants (people who can’t resist correcting you’re spelling and grammer) in five different countries….

5. Comma fucker (Finland)
4. Little dot shitter (Switzerland)
3. Whittler of woodchips (Norway)
2. Counter of peas (Germany)
1. Sodomizer of flies (France)

Cutting international bachelor programs threatens psychological science » Eiko Fried Two days ago, four Dutch universities announced discontinuing their English-speaking psychology bachelor programs (1, 2). I will briefly explain (1) how this decision came to be, (2) why this is such ...

Four large Dutch universities, including Leiden University where I work, have decided to throw international psychology bachelor programs under the bus in an effort to appease the rightwing government.

Here's my blog why this is a terrible idea.

eiko-fried.com/cutting-inte...

The pioneering child development study monitoring babies’ brains A unique study is tracking the development of hundreds of babies whose parents have also been studied since birth.

Very excited to finally share this! In this new study with co-investigators @rogierk.bsky.social and Mara Cercignani, we are following 300 children longitudinally between 6 months and 5 years to establish the building blocks of cognition and their neural foundations.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New study on the brain topographies of perceived and felt emotions by Heini Saarimäki now out in @imagingneurosci.bsky.social 🎉🧠

Issue 61, Volume 4 is now out for Developmental Psychology!

psycnet.apa.org/PsycARTICLES...

Topics Include

-Emotion Processes
-Empathy across the Lifespan
-Memory
-Maltreatment & Victimization

@apajournals.bsky.social

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Tampere University offers support for preparing applications for the MSCA program. If you would like to do a postdoc in @hiplabtampere.bsky.social on social neuroscience in infants, children and adults (fNIRS, EEG, EMG, eyetracking etc.), please get in touch! #academicskye #neurosky

Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants Humans lack memories for specific events from the first few years of life. We investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magne...

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Toddlers 🤝 President

Jean Piaget

A method for dyadic cardiac rhythmicity analysis: Preliminary evidence on bilateral interactions in fetal–maternal cardiac dynamics Cardiac activity responds dynamically to metabolic demands and neural regulation. However, little is known about this process during pregnancy. Reports show occasional fetal–maternal heart rate coupl...

Is there a fetus-mother communication through their hearts? Our study in @expphysiol.bsky.social shows delayed, co-varying patterns in heart rate and rhythm, suggesting bilateral interactions. This dynamic intensified during labor, indicating ongoing co-regulatory mechanisms: doi.org/10.1113/EP09...

Tampere Institute for Advanced Study has a call open for 2-3-year fellowships. Get in touch if you fancy collaborating with us @hiplabtampere.bsky.social to study social information processing with EEG, fNIRS, EMG, eyetracking etc. 🧠 Links to calls on the IAS website 👇 research.tuni.fi/tampere-ias/