dennis hernaus

Statistical evidence in psychological networks - Nature Human Behaviour Psychometric network models have become increasingly popular in psychology and the social sciences. Huth et al. show that a large proportion of reported network findings are based on weak or inconclusive evidence inviting caution when interpreting results.

A new take on the limitations of "psychometric networks" now out in Nature Human Behavior. You don't want to put too much confidence in individual edges. Something we cautioned against in 2017.

1/2

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Published now (after long last & 10 citations). Although tVNS does not alter food reward ratings in healthy people, it acutely improved liking ratings in patients with MDD (also correlated with anhedonia). #neuroskyence 🩺

Work w/ @akuehnel.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

With over 7000 participants @ecnp.eu annual meeting in Amsterdam is kicked off by President @martienkas.bsky.social - Congrats to program chair Barbara Franke on an excellent program starting with an impactful keynote from Eveline Crone on the mysterious adolescent brain. #ecnp2025

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

This one looks intriguing. Arousal "embedding" whole-brain dynamics. 🤯

#neuroskyence #compneurosky

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

'Memento', but it's every plot you make in R

Striatal dopamine signals errors in prediction across different informational domains Dopamine reflects prediction errors not only about reward but also about valueless stimuli, challenging many current theories.

somehow I missed this!

Dopamine represents a domain-general teaching signal:

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Lab’s latest is out in Imaging Neuroscience, led by Kirsten Peterson: “Regularized partial correlation provides reliable functional connectivity estimates while correcting for widespread confounding”, where we demonstrate a major improvement to standard fMRI functional connectivity (correlation) 1/n

Graphical summary of the analysis pipeline

Decreased similarity within the anterior insula cortex drives group differences between patients with MDD and healthy control participants. This difference is illustrated by shift functions and compared to control regions in the temporal cortex.

Patients with depression can be robustly classified based on functional connectivity profiles, and the accuracy improves with increasing symptom severity.

New preprint...and this one is truly EPIC 🚨.

Using a large group of patients with depression and healthy controls (N>800), we show differences in the functional segregation of insular subnetworks. And we can use it to classify!
Led by @glassybrain.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺
osf.io/preprints/ps...

A brain center that controls consummatory responses The BNST brain region integrates a broad range of external and internal signals to flexibly regulate consumption, revealing a unified control over consummatory responses.

Discovery of a brain center (BNST) that controls consumption (including sweets, fats, salt and other foods) in mice
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

SPM as a cornerstone of an open source software ecosystem for neuroimaging Abstract. The SPM software package played a major role in the establishment of open source software practices within the field of neuroimaging. I outline i

This was a fun piece to write

We think these results highlight how cortisol stress reactivity is shaped by small distributed contributions across states, biology, and context.

No single psychological variable dominates in our sample. This raises questions re psychological interpretations of cortisol reactivity (caution!). (4/4)

Findings: 🔽 Positive affect during stress → very modest but consistent predictor of cortisol reactivity. 🔼 Negative affect → only linked to one cortisol metric, not robust. BIS/BAS traits → no association. (3/4)

We used the Maastricht Acute Stress Test to assess cortisol reactivity (peak, turnover, responder status) and measured affect (PANAS), traits (BIS/BAS) and biological & contextual covariates

Then we used LASSO regression to find the most robust predictors of cortisol stress reactivity. 🤠 (2/4)

Unpacking cortisol stress reactivity: Associations with psychological state and trait data in a pooled data sample Prior research suggests that cortisol responses to acute stress induction paradigms (i.e., “cortisol stress reactivity”) likely arise from complex int…

In our new paper 📖🔥, we conducted a pooled analysis (n=443; 5 studies) to test if state affect (momentary mood) or trait dispositions (approach/avoidance) predict cortisol reactivity beyond biological & contextual factors. (1/4)

#neuroscience #Neuroskyence #cogpsyc #AffectSci #psychscisky

a donkey is standing on a dirt field and asking for something . ALT: a donkey is standing on a dirt field and asking for something .

Hello hivemind! I haven't seen one of these in a while but I know that back-in-the-day they were all the rage: does anyone have a funky spreadsheet of MH/psych/neuro-relevant grants/fellowships for ECRs that they wouldn't mind me sharing with my lab?

check out Jake Russin's new paper on how the interplay between in-context and in-weight learning in neural nets can explain tradeoffs in human learning!
pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Looks like a great show. Saw them in Manchester. Truly biblical.

My latest: a short review on latent variable models to help uncover trial-to-trial structure in perceptual decision-making strategies

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMiv4sIRv...

I am delighted to announce registration and abstract submission is open for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" to be held at the Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham, UK on 3-5th November 2025. uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Alert!!!!

“An Action Networks Model for Pain”

We propose a new model for chronic pain — and highlight two functionally connected cortical networks that could revolutionize how we treat it.

👉 thread below 🧵

osf.io/preprints/ps...

To determine distinct learning and decision-making profiles in obesity and binge eating (BE), we combined ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in a large online sample with a neuroimaging study. The figure shows the elements of the paper.

Binge eating (BE) is associated with reduced but more variable reward sensitivity. The panels show associations of BE with learning parameters and an fMRI-based reward sensitivity measure derived from the cue stage of an effort task (independent of learning).

Our big behavioral precision mapping preprint is out. Based on 1,486,950 observed choices in a reward learning task, we show that BMI is associated with higher and more variable learning rates. Binge eating was associated with lower reward sensitivity. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain - Nature Methods In this Analysis, Liu et al. benchmark more than 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure–function coupling and behavio...

An Analysis of 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure-function coupling and behavior prediction highlights their effectiveness for neurophysiological applications.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The history and future of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging - Nature This Review provides an overview of the history of resting-state functional MRI research, which has helped to reveal the spatiotemporal organization of the brain, and discusses how it can contribute f...

When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

MSCA-PF in Cognitive Neuroscience with Dr Dennis Hernaus

Still open for expressions of interest until June 15th! Do reach out directly (or see link) if you're interested in developing an MSCA-Postdoc. Fellowship application on the (cognitive) neuroscience of motivation/goal-directed behaviour 🧠

👇

#cognitiveneuroscience #Neuroscience
#postdoc #cogsci

A Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making framework for understanding Mental Disorders: https://osf.io/s58jh

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) and fMRI: a great combination to test the mechanism of action driving stimulation effects 🧠
But how to use the stimulation safely within the magnetic field? We looked into this! #neuroskyence
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Serotonin neurons are known for their puzzling responses to rewards and punishments that don't quite fit with simple theories based on reward, punishment, surprise, salience, or uncertainty. Theories of serotonergic function seem to be diverging over time.

efharkin.com/blog/2024-07...

3/6

20 Years of Aberrant Salience in Psychosis: What Have We Learned? | American Journal of Psychiatry Twenty years ago Shitij Kapur’s “Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience” captured the attention of clinicians and cognitive and behavioral neuroscientists. It has become the de facto way of talking...

Out today in American Journal of Psychiatry: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...
@kurtfraser.bsky.social and I evaluate the Aberrant Salience hypothesis of psychosis in light of the work it inspired over the last 20 years. We still find it ambitious and beautiful, but the devil is in the details

Temporal fMRI Dynamics Map Dopamine Physiology Spatial variations in dopamine function are linked to cognition and substance use disorders but are challenging to characterize with current methods. Because dopamine influences blood vessel dilation,...

Interested in dopamine? Have fMRI data? We’ve identified a temporal BOLD feature that carries rich information about dopamine physiology. This measure, obtainable from resting-state and task fMRI, opens new ways to indirectly probe dopamine’s role in cognition and disease. 1/n tinyurl.com/bddyz67b

🥂 IT'S A WRAP !!!
💡ENIGMA's 2024 End-of-Year VIDEO ( youtube.com/watch?v=lJ9E... ) highlights discoveries by 2,000+ scientists from 45 countries, investigating 30+ brain diseases through brain mapping, genomics, environmental studies, treatments, neurostimulation, prevention across cultures (1/n)..