Vanessa Teckentrup

1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.

How does metabolic learning shape human behaviour? In our recent study www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti..., we found that it shapes flavour preferences but, surprisingly, not action. Thread 🧵

What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Someone read this + noted a coding error to determine the 3-day mean correlations. Now updated with the new code + submitted a revision to bioRxiv.

On one hand, induced a moderate shame spiral.
On the other, super appreciative to see how I hope these open-science practices will work in action!

New preprint with Nicolai Wolpert and Catherine Tallon-Baudry !

Reaction times across three distinct perceptual tasks (total N = 90) varied with the electrical rhythm of the stomach.

#neuroskyence

Indecision and recency-weighted evidence integration in non-clinical and clinical settings Biases in information gathering are common in the general population and can reach pathological extremes in paralysing indecisiveness, as in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here, we adopt a new p...

New preprint from my postdoc with @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social at the MPC!

TL;DR: there is a strong recency bias in information gathering and it is attenuated in people on the #OCD spectrum - a possible mechanism for #indecisiveness 🤔

Paper here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thread below...

Infinite hidden Markov models can dissect the complexities of learning - Nature Neuroscience Bruijns et al. present a modeling tool that enables the tracking of learning dynamics across subjects to reveal how behaviors emerge and adapt. Applying the tool to a decision-making task in mice unco...

New in Nature Neuroscience: We developed a flexible model that reveals how animals learn tasks—uncovering stages, sudden insights, and gradual improvements unique to each animal.
Learning isn't monotonic, and our model captures that complexity 🐭📊
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks to everyone who was there!

It really is fantastic to know that 70(!) people are interested in storytelling to explain science! 💙 😱

Missed the talk? Don't worry, I recorded it (in German): youtu.be/hUY098T9p-k

Thanks to @psycomm.bsky.social for allowing me to be one of the first talks! ✨

I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature

Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward.

Full text here:
rdcu.be/eY5nh

We’re launching a bi-weekly m-Path blog on #ESM / #EMA measurement, new papers & showcases.

🗓️ Every 2 weeks (Wed).

First up: item quality.
A paper by @gudruneisele.bsky.social introduces ESM-Q: a consensus checklist for good momentary items.

👉 Read the blog: blog.m-path.io/blog/our-blo...

RetINaBox: A Hands-On Learning Tool for Experimental Neuroscience An exciting aspect of neuroscience is developing and testing hypotheses via experimentation. However, due to logistical and financial hurdles, the experiment and discovery component of neuroscience is...

Are you thinking about doing neuroscience outreach but want to make it more exciting or hands on?

Check out RetINaBox! (A collab led by the Trenholm lab)

We tried to bring the experience of experimental neuroscience to a classroom setting:

www.eneuro.org/content/13/1...

#neuroscience 🧪

WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.

If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.

eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

🚨My trainee Victoria Murphy, data architect Gabriel Mongefranco, and I are pleased to share 🌟EMA-CleanR: R code to pre-process, clean, and visualize ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data!

Documentation: teamdynamix.umich.edu/TDClient/210...

Code: github.com/DepressionCe...

🚀 Excited to announce that I'm looking for people (PhD/Postdoc) to join my Cognitive Modelling group @uniosnabrueck.bsky.social.

If you want to join a genuinely curious, welcoming and inclusive community of Coxis, apply here:
tinyurl.com/coxijobs

Please RT - deadline is Jan 4‼️

It’s a great study, and I’m excited to see this entering public awareness! But there’s still much more to cover, as BOLD coincides with other metabolic changes, including anaerobic metabolism and lactic acid production. In fact, others have proposed ↑CBF may help regulate local pH homeostasis.

Horrifying glimpse into a possible future of the scientific information ecosystem.

Fake papers cited dozens of times in real journals, and indexed in our most commonly used databases -- As this grows, it could become a corruption of the literature impossible to undo.

1/2

#academicsky 🧠🟦

The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves | PNAS The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves

Love this short opinion piece on “mechanical bypass” in analogy to “spiritual bypass”.

One initial line of defense could be to require transparency statements regarding how instruments have been vetted to combat malicious users, based on best practices (like a STAR editor check). In a recent workshop, we aimed to create such a compendium (see @andreaaaaa.bsky.social for access)!

Image illustrating sensor placement. The reference sensor is placed on the xiphoid process (just under the sternum), the ground is placed on the left costal margin (just under the bottom rib), and sensors one through four are place over where the stomach would be. Sensor 3 is midway through the umbilicus (navel) and the reference sensor. Sensor 4 is roughly three centimetres from sensor 3 to participant-right. Sensors 2 is also roughly three centimetres away from sensor 3, but along a 45 degree angle upwards and to participant-left. Sensor 1 lies 3 centimetres further from sensor 2, along the same 45 degree line.

Two-panel image showing a processed electrogastrogram. The left panel shows five minutes of raw data from four different leads (measured from the four sensors in the previous image and their common reference). The right panel shows the same signal in frequency space, illustrating the typical normogastric peak at 3 cycles per minute.

Are you curious about electrogastrography, but keep getting chicken-related results when googling "EGG"? We have the preprint for you!

In this tutorial, we describe how to acquire and analyse gastric data from human participants. Plus FREE software! Read it here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.17260

A figure showing that non-invasive transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) modulates Pavlovian bias in a state-dependent manner. A milkshake vs. water load reduces hunger and these changes are associated with the effects of tVNS on Pavlovian bias.

Last preprint 🎶(of the year).

If vagus nerve stimulation alters motivation by amplifying internal signals, then bodily states should matter. Using milkshake vs. water loads, we show that tVNS-induced changes in Pavlovian bias are dependent on hunger. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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 🧵:

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...

An obviously AI-generated figure with AI slop and fake text all over it, recently published in Scientific Reports.

Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing.

Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this?

Background readings:
Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r
Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

Exemplary analysis pipeline for respiratory data

'Robust circular cluster-based statistics
for respiration-brain coupling'

New preprint, and what a way to welcome @teresaberther.bsky.social to the #neuroskyence community. With @eliobalestrieri.bsky.social, she developed CBPT for circular #bodybrain analyses.

Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵🔽

** Recruiting a postdoc ** We are looking for a postdoc to work on emotion, mental health, and interoception, based in London at @ucl.ac.uk in my lab (Clinical and Affective Neuroscience). Part of a large Wellcome Grant (co-led with the brilliant @camillanord.bsky.social)

🚨 Preprint alert: Do 1) smartphone event log data access and 2) the Experience Sampling Method cause reactivity effects in studies? @dougaparry.bsky.social, @klingelhoefer.bsky.social, and I investigated this very question using data from 815 German Android users.

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

New perspective paper out now in @plosbiology.org with a few thoughts on #interoception: What it is (or rather is not), how it can inform therapeutic interventions, and where (we think) the field of brain-body #neuroskyence has yet to find more solid ground to build on.

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Top: Experimental set up. Single pulses of TMS were applied to the hand area of the right primary motor cortex with an inter-pulse interval randomized between 6 and 10 s. Simultaneously, the neuronavigated coil position (yellow), electrocardiogram (red), respiratory signal (blue), electrogastrogram (green), and electromyography from the left hand (gray) were recorded. The figure shows traces of a 20-s time segment from one participant of the cardiac (raw), respiratory (filtered), gastric (filtered), and EMG (raw) signals. The experimental measure was the Motor Evoked Potential amplitude measured on a hand muscle (first dorsal interosseous), analyzed against the phase of the cardiac, respiratory, and gastric rhythms. Note that the three rhythms have very different periods (~1 s for the heart, ~ 5 s for respiration, and ~20 s for the gastric rhythm). Bottom: Artwork illustrating how rhythms of the internal organs interact with the moment-to-moment fluctuations observed in corticospinal motor excitability. Image depicts an outline of a brain with representations of the three rhythmic organs influencing the motor system: the heart, lungs, and stomach. Image credit: Tahnée Engelen.

How do internal bodily rhythms influence #brain activity & motor function? @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social &co show that #cardiac, #respiratory & #gastric rhythms independently modulate motor excitability, revealing distinct #interoceptive profiles across individuals @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4nMtpLT