Bianca Leonard

See you tonight! Here to chat about motivational conflict, early life adversity, anhedonia, and more 💡

Publishing highlight of 2025, getting to look at PVT neurons under the microscope and co-first-authoring this paper :D

I think these findings raise interesting questions about the adaptive function of anhedonic attitudes. Find @biancaleonard.bsky.social and myself to learn more!

#ACNP2026 - Wednesday afternoon @biancaleonard.bsky.social will present a computational model-driven motivational conflict challenge that identifies novel, *opposing* influences of early-life unpredictability and anhedonia @mikeyassa.bsky.social @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social @malejandra.bsky.social

Anhedonia is associated with higher functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and paraventricular nucleus of thalamus Anhedonia stands as a life-threatening transdiagnostic feature of many mental illnesses, most notably major depression and involves neural circuits fo…

📰👀 What does a chunk of thalamus have to do with mental health?

Find out in my 1st PhD first-author paper✨about functional connectivity between the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) and nucleus accumbens in young adults with anhedonia.

sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My good friend and inspiring colleague Bianca @biancaleonard.bsky.social sharing her work at #ACNP2023 on imaging the PVT in humans and exploring its role in adversity-induced changes in reward behaviors at yesterday’s hot topics session! Check out her poster on Tuesday (T95)!