xkcd nails car bloat
xkcd: Car Size xkcd.com/3167/
@agustation.bsky.social
Postdoc researcher in nutritional neuroscience @ Nutrilab, KI (Stockholm, Sweden) Interested in what makes us eat what we eat he/him
xkcd nails car bloat
xkcd: Car Size xkcd.com/3167/
Ericsson & Simon (1980) takes the middle cell psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-...
Now, your nominations for minimal citation impact but moderate actual impact?
A contribution that altered policy or practice...
A paper that extinguished an active area of research...
An uncredited gem...
A diagram showing how 13 minutes' walk gets you to just 75% as many places as a 15-minute walk
My new newsletter is out, in which we use basic high-school maths to complain about street design
simple.ghost.io/lets-do-the-...
detection d' is generally overestimated, coz we tend to be too lazy to collect the necessary data in order to correct for the unequal variance between target present vs absent distributions. turns out we can do this for free - using reaction times data. so, let's do it~
osf.io/preprints/ps...
π§ π
Last year a study of >2.4 million kids born in Sweden looked at Tylenol exposure and autism
At first, it seemed like there was a small association.
But then they compared siblings where one was exposed in utero and the other wasnβt and found no increased risk jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Are you a woman in midlife (or older) who has struggled with an eating disorder as an adult? A new anthology,Β βThis Is Not Your Motherβs Eating Disorder,βis looking for your story in the form of a personal essay!Β
You can read more about the anthology and submit your writingΒ here!
If thereβs one place on Earth you donβt want to be, itβs in the mouth of a Komodo dragon.
Not convinced? No problem - you can see all of their deadly dental secrets in this weekβs #SurprisingScience π¦ β οΈ
too many people only ask one question when they see the impact of disinformation
(how do we stop this disinformation)
when you should really ask a second
(how do we stop the sentiment that made these people seek out disinformation and accept it uncritically)
Ever thought that food tastes bland when you have a cold? In this piece, I explain how that happens as I summarise my latest article on the neural encoding of odours in the canonical taste cortex!
theconversation.com/smell-trigge...
Thank you, Ian!
12.09.2025 12:42 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Our findings highlight the insula's crucial role in flavour integration, explaining why smells are so vital to our perception of taste. So next time you enjoy a meal, appreciate the complex interplay happening in your brain! π§ π½οΈ #Neuroskyence #FlavourPerception 10/10
12.09.2025 12:27 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0This implies that the insula encodes a property that doesn't change throughout the session, such as identity. Meanwhile, the convergence in the OFC suggests that it likely encodes something that dynamically changes throughout the session, e.g. subjective value. 9/10
12.09.2025 12:27 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0In fact, we developed a method to examine runwise representational drift of flavours in the insula, and we saw a slight divergence between similar and different flavours in the insula over the course of a session, but we could see the opposite effect in the OFC. 8/10
12.09.2025 12:27 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0We're the first to show this direct shared encoding between retronasal odours and tastes in humans at the neural level, challenging the current consensus that this integration only happens further downstream in the OFC. 7/10
12.09.2025 12:27 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Why does this matter? Imagine reducing sugar or salt in foods without sacrificing flavour! If certain aromas can trick your brain into perceiving sweetness or savouriness, we could design healthier foods that still taste great. #HealthInnovation 6/10
12.09.2025 12:27 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0This integration isn't just anywhere in the insula. We pinpointed it to specific subregions β the dysgranular and agranular anterior insula. Meanwhile, only tastes could be decoded from the activation patterns in the granular subregion. 5/10
12.09.2025 12:26 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0What was most interesting, however was that a decoder trained on the tastes and tested on the odours (and vice versa) also performed significantly above chance. This showed that that retronasal odours (aromas) elicit similar activations to their associated tastes in the insula. 4/10
12.09.2025 12:26 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0We then used mass-univariate GLM to identify a taste activation map. Within this map, a decoder was able to separate the sweet and savoury tastes. Interestingly, it could also separate 'sweet' and 'savoury' odours. 3/10
12.09.2025 12:26 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0We first familiarised participants with sweet & savoury flavours (taste + aroma). They then attended two fMRI sessions where they received just the taste (without smell) or just the smell (without taste). 2/10
12.09.2025 12:26 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Excited to share my first postdoc project in collaboration with @jseubert.bsky.social and @margaveldhuizen.bsky.social , now published with @natcomms.nature.com, where we describe a potential mechanism for flavour integration in the insula. #NeuroSkyence #FlavourScience doi.org/10.1038/s414... 1/10
12.09.2025 12:25 β π 25 π 7 π¬ 2 π 0Police and military brutality in Indonesia is escalating exponentially. Military personnel are laying siege to universities (Unispa & Unpas) in the middle of the night, with rubber bullets and tear gas. youtube.com/shorts/IeuDh...
01.09.2025 20:11 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0tiktok taking down their live feature in indonesia while the protests are happening shows they understand the ability that app had to show people what was really happening in gaza and they intend not to let it happen again
31.08.2025 16:05 β π 935 π 339 π¬ 8 π 8Literally haven't seen this mentioned on any of my socials but Indonesia has erupted after a cop ran over a delivery courier.
01.09.2025 02:41 β π 203 π 84 π¬ 3 π 3Come by and have a chat about crossmodal flavour representation in the insula! #OHBM2025
27.06.2025 06:38 β π 4 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Good read on the need for us to integrate fMRI research with other fields of neuroscience. Now to look at how I can do it in my own work... π€
08.04.2025 18:21 β π 3 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0The time is now: accounting for time-of-day effects to improve reproducibility and translation of metabolism research | Nature Metabolism
Great collaboration led by Satchin Panda and team! Happy to contribute.
Time to take timing into consideration!!
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
π¨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. π¨
I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk.
My op-ed in @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Replacing "I hope this email finds you well" with "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." in all emails from now on.
23.02.2025 22:20 β π 407 π 52 π¬ 3 π 2Aaaand the paper is out on Imaging Neuroscience! π€©
To learn about cool new (and old) features to be used in classifying M-EEG brain states, check it out:
doi.org/10.1162/imag...
Big thanks to all the co-authors and the reviewers for their great input π«Ά
[deep sigh] ourobor-ass
16.02.2025 20:37 β π 52 π 6 π¬ 1 π 0