Vanessa Teckentrup

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

Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Understanding resilience in medical interns through ecological momentary assessments, predictive modelling, and topic analysis Communications Medicine - Meine, McPherson et al. assess risk and resilience factors in Swiss medical interns predicting skills improvement, burnout, wellbeing and career motivation. Based on...

The first paper from the STRESS human cohort study is now out in Communications Medicine!🎉
rdcu.be/eMz0K

We followed 105 medical students from their first internship through a full year to understand what shapes skills improvement, burnout, and career motivation in trainee doctors. (1/3)

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...

Assessing the feasibility of large-scale digital sensing for depression and anxiety: The Digital Mental Health Study Data passively obtained from smartphones and wearables can provide nearly continuous objective information that enables quantification of states and traits across broad physiological, behavioral, and ...

preprint of Douglas et al's "Assessing the feasibility of large-scale digital sensing for depression and anxiety: The Digital Mental Health Study." Work led by Nelson Freimer @ the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge. comprehensive assessment of almost 4K followed for 12m www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our work making an "allostasis-first" case that brain function is most productively framed in terms of its core regulatory function. We also introduce some new ideas in the context of metabolism and cognitive function in Alzheimer's.
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Out today in Molecular Psychiatry our paper on multiverse computational factor modeling (i.e. a lotta lotta factor analyses). Thread below for the full rundown. Last PhD paper from @celinef.bsky.social YOU'RE FREE!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Report Approval for Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (RATES): expert recommendation based on a Delphi consensus study - Nature Protocols An expert recommendation is presented for the design and evaluation of research studies using transcranial electrical stimulation, resulting in the selection of a 66-point checklist aimed at improving the quality of transcranial electrical stimulation studies.

How can we make sure that studies using transcranial electric stimulation (tDCS, tACS, etc.) are interpretable and reproducible? This new work is a consensus stement about what information is needed when reporting tES studies: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

What influences whether people have fun with a task?

Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports!

rdcu.be/eI069

Paper summary below 1/4

So great to hear! 🎶 Congrats Claire and have a great time setting up the new lab 🥳

Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health A core strength of computational psychiatry is its focus on theory-driven research, in which cognitive processes are precisely quantified using computational models that formalize specific theoretical mechanisms. However, the data used in these studies often come from traditional laboratory-based cognitive tasks, which have unclear ecological validity. In this review we propose that the same theoretical frameworks and computational models can be applied to real-world data such as experience sampling, passive data, and digital-behavior data (e.g., online activity such as on social media). In turn, modeling real-world data can benefit from a theory-driven computational approach to move from purely predictive to explanatory power. We illustrate these points using emerging studies and discuss the challenges and opportunities of using real-world data in computational psychiatry.

Online Now: Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health

An interoceptive model of energy allostasis linking metabolic and mental health Interactions between metabolic interoception and regulation may drive comorbidity between mental and metabolic ill-health.

Mental and metabolic health are closely linked - but what drives this connection? In our new theory paper, we (w/ @camillanord.bsky.social & @hugofleming.bsky.social g.bsky.social) propose dysregulation of interoceptive energy allostasis as a key mechanism.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵 1/n

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

This one looks intriguing. Arousal "embedding" whole-brain dynamics. 🤯

#neuroskyence #compneurosky

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Awesome, congrats Ondrej! 🥳 And welcome to Dublin 🙌

🧠Out now @natcomms.nature.com !
Brain changes linked to childhood maltreatment are among the field's most published findings. Yet, we find extensive replication failure of gray matter correlates in three large cohorts (N=3225), consistent across subsamples, models and operationalizations🧵

The association between subjective and objective cognitive functioning from a transdiagnostic perspective: An umbrella review and meta-analysis The relationship between subjective (self-reported) and objective (performance-based) cognitive functioning has significant clinical implications acro…

A tale as old as time. Different methods of measuring the supposedly same construct simply...do not. I'll add that I think "subjective" and "objective" measures both tell us something meaningful, just about different things.

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

"I feel full with shame": A qualitative perspective on gastric interoceptive sensibility “Am I hungry? Did I overeat at lunch?” Gastric interoception - the sensing, interpretation, and regulation of signals from the gastrointestinal system…

New qualitative paper! A foray into gastric interception. @lucysta02475610.bsky.social ran a LOT of focus groups, across groups with eating disorders, gastric disorders and neither, to understand how people experience the sensations from their GI system. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ecological Momentary Assessment as a Measure of Intervention Change: Evaluation in 4 Digital Mental Health Trials Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is increasingly being incorporated into intervention studies to acquire a more fine-grained and ecologically valid assessment of change. The added uti...

📱EMA is increasingly used in intervention studies to acquire a more fine-grained and ecologically valid assessment of change. But EMA is relatively burdensome. What's the added value? We tried to address this question in our new paper now out @jmirpub.bsky.social www.jmir.org/2025/1/e69297 1/n

🚨New pre-print out! 🍂

Using daily gamified smartphone 📱 tracking, we found that reductions in both self- and decision-making confidence precede when people are likely to report experiencing symptoms of OCD.

www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

We recently reported higher variability of reinforcement learning in obesity and BED, but what about neural representations? In our new preprint, we show higher variability in NAcc responses to reward cues in obesity and disinhibited eating www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... w/ @nbkroemer.bsky.social

The figure depicts the study rationale and procedures. We anticipated differences in reward sensitivity across groups varying in symptoms of binge eating, specifically in the variability.

Patients with binge eating disorder (BED) have a higher variability in food wanting ratings during the effort allocation task in the behavioral session.

Participants with a higher body mass index (BMI) show elevated variability of anticipatory cue responses in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc).

When we encounter the same reward repeatedly, we show variable responses; is this just noise?
In our new preprint, we replicate the association of BMI and disinhibited eating with variability of NAcc signals to reward. #neuroskyence 🩺
W/ @akuehnel.bsky.social
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Amazing, congrats Ignacio! 🥳🥳🥳

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 (𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲) 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺?
Implications for reinforcement learning.
Very interesting paper.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
#neuroskyence

One of the last projects of my PhD looking into insular functional segregation in depression is finally out as a preprint 🙏👇 Have a look and let us know what you think! #neuroskyence

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 👇

We are very excited to host the 2026 conference of @ambulatory-assessment.org at @univie.ac.at! Save the date: 3-5 August 2026 #SAA2026
Follow us for updates on the exciting conference programme and networking opportunities.

a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application ALT: a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

📢 We are hiring! 📢
For our @wellcometrust.bsky.social grant on information gathering biases in #OCD and #Schizophrenia, we are looking for a Postdoc in Computational Modelling, supervised by Peter Dayan and myself.
Interested? See all the details in the job advert here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...

Image of a job ad preview.

While our official job ad is on the way, we are seeking PhD students to join @neuromadlab.bsky.social for projects running in Bonn.

The candidate will lead projects on body-brain interactions using brain stimulation to improve core symptoms of depression: www.neuromadlab.org/jobs #neurojobs

📣Call for applications

We are recruiting the 2nd cohort of PhD students for the international research training group on women's mental health. If you care about translational pharmacoimaging work integrating hormonal states, please apply #neurojobs
jobs.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/Job/6598/PhD...

Postdoc job alert! I’m looking for someone with a PhD in neuroscience/psychology, psychiatry, biomed engineering, computational modeling or a related field to join my NIH-funded team at UCLA studying the neural & computational mechanisms of #interoception in anorexia nervosa 1/2