Cassandra Lowe

Genome-wide analysis of brain age identifies 59 associated loci and unveils relationships with mental and physical health - Nature Aging This genomic study of magnetic resonance imaging-based brain age in 56,348 people identifies 59 genetic loci, links brain aging to mental and physical health, and suggests high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes as causal factors of brain aging.

🧠 Why do some brains age faster than others?
🧬 Our new Nature Aging study of over 56,000 participants explores the genetics of the “brain age gap” — the difference between your brain’s biological and chronological age.
nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00962-7

Thread below 👇

People complaining about Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl are out here acting like they don’t go absolutely feral when Gasolina comes on.

Menstrual cycle phase alters corticospinal excitability and spike-timing-dependent plasticity in healthy females The known fluctuations in ovarian hormone concentrations across the eumenorrheic menstrual cycle contribute to modulations in cortical excitability and inhibition. However, how such changes affect spi...

Preprint is up for the first of my PhD studies on the menstrual cycle and its effects on cortical excitability and neuroplasticty. Feedback welcome!

@paul-ansdell.bsky.social @nuneurofunc.bsky.social @elisanedelec.bsky.social @stuart-goodall.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cover of the 2025 EAT–Lancet report, featuring an image of a person scooping up green vegetables in their hands from a large plate. The report quote: “The targets of the EAT–Lancet Commission for healthy people on a healthy planet with just food systems can only be met through concerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative change.”

The world produces enough food, yet billions lack access to healthy & sustainable diets. A new EAT–Lancet report presents a science-based approach to improve health, safeguard our environment & provide for a projected 9.6 billion people by 2050.

🔗 bit.ly/3W7rxlP

Absolutely brilliant paper!

Wondering about how to promote healthy eating in daily life? New research reveals it's not just about willpower, but about which strategy you use, and what you target. 1/9

Feeding gut microbes to nourish the brain: unravelling the diet–microbiota–gut–brain axis - Nature Metabolism This Review provides an overview of the interplay between host diet and the gut microbiota, and how this affects brain function.

#Throwback 🧪

REVIEW | Feeding gut microbes to nourish the brain: unravelling the diet–microbiota–gut–brain axis

@elizschneider.bsky.social‬
‪@jfcryan.bsky.social et al

Macroeconomic income inequality, brain structure and function, and mental health - Nature Mental Health Rakesh et al. used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development cohort study to evaluate the relationship between state-level income inequality, brain structure and function, and mental health in young people.

“Our findings suggest that structural income inequality is associated with neurobiological differences, even after accounting for absolute income and poverty. These brain differences, in turn, help explain links to adverse mental health outcomes.”

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Study links greater inequality to structural changes in children’s brains Researchers say findings show inequality creates toxic environment and reducing it is ‘a public health imperative’

Living in an unequal society, regardless of individual wealth, can lead to structural changes in the brains of children.

#ScienceatKings #PopulationHealth

Internal uncertainty impacts social information use in risky choice across adolescence - Communications Psychology Adolescents’ choices are influenced by others. A social risky choice experiment and Bayesian modelling reveal that age differences in internal uncertainty, being unsure how to choose, relate to differences in susceptibility to social influence.

😍 Our latest is out now in @commspsychol.nature.com. 🤩 We show with Bayesian modelling and experimental manipulation of uncertainty that developmental differences in social influence depend on differences in the internal uncertainty people have about their choice
doi.org/10.1038/s442...

The gut-brain connection Glia cells mediate cytokine signaling between the gut and the brain, linking sleep to inflammation in the gut.

The gut-brain connection

Glia cells mediate cytokine signalling between the gut and the brain, linking sleep to inflammation in the gut.

Hard agree. I was so disappointed

How undermining and underfunding women directly affects men and boys - Alliance magazine A dangerous narrative is spreading across philanthropic and policy circles: that men and boys are being ‘left behind’ as women advance economically and politically. This zero-sum thinking has infected...

When women are underfunded, boys & men are hurt
- Boys grow up in trauma w/o DV shelters & mental health svcs
- Men face economic pressure when women lose income, healthcare, credit
- Economies contract when women can't get capital for business
www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/how-und...

this! the commercialization of education via the integration of AI in classrooms and big tech infrastructure is the most dangerous and destructive capitalisation of education

Not every study is replication-ready. We need a good understanding of the phenomenon before we know how to design and perform a robust experiment. Sometimes researchers never take such a programmatic approach and leave it at initial exposition. That is not to be treated as a discovery or replicated.

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

"Unproven" is a hell of a word choice, AP. It's made up. It's a blatant lie. It's absolute nonsense. I can say I'm part unicorn. That's not just "unproven". It's literal BS I just made up!

God, I hope the villains at Big Pharma tie his office up in a million lawsuits.

Ontario PC MPP Chris Scott booted from caucus after arrest Premier Doug Ford removed the first-term MPP who represents Sault Ste. Marie

If Ford booted him within minutes of finding out about the charge and refuses to disclose what the charge is, you know it's sketchy as hell.

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Confronting the connectivity crisis in human M/EEG research The cognitive neuroscience community using M/EEG has not converged on measures of task-related inter-regional brain connectivity that generalize acros…

In our Trends in Cogn Sci paper we point to the connectivity crisis in task-based human EEG/MEG research: many connectivity metrics, too little replication. Time for community-wide benchmarking to build robust, generalisable measures across labs & tasks. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Job Offer: Postdoctoral Researcher in Disinformation As part of the strategic plan linked to the María de Maeztu Seal of Excellence award, the CIMCYC is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher with experience in the field of the psychology of disinformatio...

We are offering a 2-year postdoctoral position at CIMCyC (Granada, Spain) to work on the psychology of dis(mis)information.

Apply before 26th September. Nice city, great environment ☺️

Please share! 🔃

cimcyc.ugr.es/en/informati...

#socialpsychology
#cogpsyc
#PsychSciSky
#PsychJob
#PhDJob

🧠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🧵

Funny, I thought that a guy using his social media platform to call for the overthrow of the UK government would be news

"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...

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

PhD:GW4 BioMed2 MRC DTP Studentship | University of Exeter   The GW4 BioMed2 MRC DTP is offering up to 17 funded studentships across a range of biomedical disciplines, with a start date of October 2026.

Funded PhD studentship at Exeter University!

Unravelling Moral Injury in Eating Disorders in Young Adults.
MRC GW4 BioMed DTP PhD studentship for 2026/27 Entry

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Driven by the pain of endometriosis, this scientist is uncovering clues to its causes Katie Burns is helping reveal the immune system’s role in the long-neglected disease

So, right now, the only reliable way to diagnose endometriosis is with exploratory surgery. But finally, real scientists (instead of male scientists), are on the job & of course they’ve identified multiple markers in menstrual blood that point to noninvasive testing.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Neighbourhood out-of-home food environment, menu healthiness, and their associations with meal purchasing and diet quality: a multiverse analysis - Nutrition Journal Background Governments worldwide have implemented various interventions to improve the healthiness of food offered by out-of-home outlets. However, there is limited evidence on whether healthier…

Study of 3,481 people in Great Britain finds that people bought out-of-home meals more often when there were more food outlets nearby, not based on how healthy the menus were.

@jeanmadams.bsky.social and colleagues recommend limiting outlet numbers may help improve diets.