Maria Marga Veldhuizen

Abstract landscape in two hemispheres. The bottom contains a night sky that bleeds into the daytime hemisphere above. There is a network of lines and nodes that span the width of the painting. by Kindra Crick #mixedmedia

‘What Emerges in the Night’
mixed media and cold wax on board

Our brains keep working while we sleep, turning over the puzzles of the day and letting new connections and solutions rise to the surface.

Day 19 #artadventcalendar

#sciart 🧠 #painting #art

Insular cortex predictions regulate glucose homeostasis Brain-body interactions are essential for physical and emotional homeostasis. The brain uses information from the external world to predict upcoming bodily changes. This process involves interoceptive...

lab preprint! Interopceptive predictions are central to many brain-body interactions theories, but it's unclear if/how they affect bodily physiology. We (fearless Einav Litvak et al) show that insular cortex predictions are essential for glucose homeostasis-THREAD.. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Why do old books smell?

"That "old book smell" brings back so many memories, but what creates that distinctive scent?"

#SciComm🧪 by @grrlscientist.bsky.social

#books📚 #BookSky💙📚 #OldBooks #scent #chemistry⚗️ grrlscientist.substack.com/p/why-do-old...

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧵 1/

Due to many requests, we extended the deadline for the special issue 'Philosophy and the Chemosenses' to 1st November! Any philosophical issue related to smell / taste / flavour welcome, so submit away: philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...

Effects of Cervical and Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation on Electrocardiogram and Electroencephalogram in Rats Vagus nerve is the longest cranial peripheral nerve of human body comprising both sensory and motor nerves. Due to its extensive distribution throughout the body, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has bee...

A comparison of cervical and auricular VNS in rats shows that only cVNS alters heart rate (likely due to efferent effects). aVNS is not inferior to cVNS in terms of modulated EEG power (peaks in somatosensory cortex).
Moon et al, Brain Stimul #neuroskyence 🩺
www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S193...

Tastes and retronasal odours evoke a shared flavour-specific neural code in the human insula - Nature Communications Food aromas stimulate smell receptors in the nose but are often mistaken for tastes. This study shows that aromas induce taste-like patterns in the insular cortex. These results explain the illusion a...

Excited 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

See e.g. also @dingemansemark.bsky.social ‘s Generative AI and Research Integrity osf.io/preprints/os...

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

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - scoop.me In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”

It costs a lot less to house people.

Oh

time.com/7295195/ai-c...

🧪 Detailed data viz NYT article, out today, on the extent of funding cuts at the National Science Foundation.

This "broken pie chart" is neat & new to me: Powerfully shows the slowdown in new NSF awards across areas.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Physiological and perceptual effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists during alcohol consumption in people with obesity: a pilot study. Any increase in alcohol use is associated with an increase in risk of illness and mortality and consequences of chronic alcohol use include cancer, hypertension, heart and liver disease, and Alcohol U...

Everything is trash but science still rocks. Concluding this project is bitter sweet, it’s my last collaboration with the late great Warren Bickel. It started at a faculty retreat and if you are also interested in the effects of glp-1s on alcohol consumption take a 👀.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Heard from a former (undergrad) student who just defended her PhD. Students: tell your old profs about your successes and achievements. It's not bragging, and we love to hear about it. It's one of the best parts of being an educator.
#academicsky

The work I love most blends learning about theory with answering something practical. Here, we got to hit both nails on the head!

Come for the "Does implicit bias change generalize across implicit measures?" Stay for the "Can we reduce anti-fat bias?" Or vice versa. Just read the paper; it's great!

A neural mechanism for learning from delayed postingestive feedback - Nature Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavour representations in the amygdala to support learning from delayed postingestive feedback.

How do we associate the flavors we experience during a meal 🍽️😋 with postingestive effects like food poisoning 🤢🤮 that arise much later?

Our answer in @nature.com this week: Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavor representations in the amygdala.

📄: nature.com/articles/s41...

Summary of the study. A: The schematic shows the experimental procedure, illustrating five weekly lab visits followed by 2 MR visits labeled from S1 to S7. After the first session (S1), participants undergo four weeks of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) combined with ecological momentary assessment (EMA). B: The CGM system uses a small flex sensor placed at the posterior upper arm that is inserted in the subcutaneous fatty tissue. The glucose sensor, positioned beneath the skin surface layers (epidermis and dermis), measures glucose levels in the interstitial fluid within the subcutaneous adipose tissue. The data is wirelessly sent via near field communication (NFC) to the FreeStyle Libre 3 app on the participant’s cell phone. The accuracy of the sensor concerning capillary glucose has been validated (Alva et al., 2022). C: Participants rate their metabolic and mood states twice daily using a visual analog scale (VAS), ranging from 0 (not at all) to 100 (very).

Do you get in a bad mood if you are hungry? Over 4 weeks with EMA+CGM, we tested if mood shifts are subconsciously driven by glucose levels or ratings of metabolic state #neuroskyence 🩺

Work w/ @kristinkaduk.bsky.social @akuehnel.bsky.social @derntllab.bsky.social

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

Affective and Social Predictors of Food Consumption During the COVID-19 Lockdown COVID-19 lockdowns were linked to a surge in unhealthy food–related behaviors, potentially as an attempt to cope with disrupted social homeostasis. Here, we tested bidirectional associations between m...

Out in Biological Psychiatry
"Affective and Social Predictors of Food Consumption During the COVID-19 Lockdown"
www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...

What if the secret to winning elections is somehow Trump's syntax. We need a guy to say stuff like "But we're going to abolish billionaires and we'll be doing it very soon. They'll be paying very high taxes but it'll be very fair. And frankly they haven't paid taxes in a very long time"

Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.

Changes in neurotensin signalling drive hedonic devaluation in obesity - Nature In mice, prolonged consumption of a high-fat diet decreases interest in calorie-rich foods as a result of reduced neurotensin expression and signalling, which uncouples hedonic feeding behaviour linke...

Why does obesity change the pleasure of eating, the dopamine rush from hedonic foods? A neural circuit mechanism involving explanation
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

10. This is the reality of being an academic in the United States today.

But Vought and Rufo are missing something.

We aren't cowards.

And we know we are not the enemies of the American people either, much as these ideologues might like to claim that.

Perplexity - 37% wrong; ChatGPT - 67% wrong. Grok 3 - 94% wrong. For free options. Paid options are wrong more frequently.

“…rather than declining to respond when they lacked reliable information, the models frequently provided confabulations—plausible-sounding incorrect or speculative answers.”

I'm glad that NWO has launched a new round of the impactful Mozaïek grant, offering PhD funding funding to traditionally underrepresented minorities. Scheme call here: lnkd.in/eKVdUyqU We might be able to support an application if interests & skills overlap lifespancognitivedynamics.com (dm)

Taro kneels down and points a gun

For #InternationalWomensDay, my favourite photos by my favourite women photographers

Self-portrait, Barcelona, 1935
📷 Gerda Taro

Taro was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937; she was only 26.

Check out the latest preprint from our lab, led by Aytac Kadir Mutlu, on the role of topographically organized dorsal raphe (DRN) activity in regulating forebrain function and adaptive behaviors! 🧵👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I can’t believe this needs to be said.

TransGENIC mice

are not

TransGENDER mice