Helen Blank

This is cross-species research

Neurobiological illness models of schizophrenia and stigma reduction: has that ship sailed? - Schizophrenia Schizophrenia - Neurobiological illness models of schizophrenia and stigma reduction: has that ship sailed?

Delighted to share our new paper on schizophrenia-related stigma. We argue that explanatory models grounded in predictive processing may offer advantages over classical neurobiological illness models in understanding psychosis — and may even help reduce stigma. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Humans can use positive and negative spectrotemporal correlations to detect rising and falling pitch Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 09 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02371-7Vaziri et al. examined how humans detect changes in auditory pitch, revealing that listeners rely on correlations in sound intensity over frequency and time, processing that is reminiscent of visual motion detection.

Humans can use positive and negative spectrotemporal correlations to detect rising and falling pitch

free video for intro lectures on auditory perception

Top left: Experimental paradigm. The authors analyzed EEG data recorded from 49 sleeping human newborns while being exposed to monophonic piano melodies composed by J. S. Bach (real condition) and control stimuli (shuffled condition). Top right: Surprise and entropy. Surprise and entropy associated with each note’s timing (green, St and Et, respectively) and pitch (yellow, Sp and Ep, respectively) were estimated using an unsupervised statistical learning model trained on all stimuli. Dot plots display mean surprise and entropy associated with real and shuffled music, averaged across melodies (left panel), and separately for each melody (right panel). Bottom: Analytical approach. Multivariate Temporal Response Function (mTRF) models were fit to describe the forward relationship between multiple stimulus features and the EEG signal. The full TRF model (leftmost panel) included acoustic low-level features (spectral flux, acoustic onset, IOI, and IPI) and high-level features (surprise and entropy of pitch and timing).

Does our very human ability to anticipate #musical structure exist at birth? @robertabianco.bsky.social @giacomonovembre.bsky.social &co show that #newborns encode #rhythmic (but not melodic) expectations based on statistical regularities in real #music @plosbiology.org plos.io/4kqKVWg

When you agree to serve in a committee

Die Rückkehr eines Kunstwerks Die Arbeiten am Schriftzug an den Kunstsammlungen sind abgeschlossen. Jetzt bringen LED-Buchstaben die Südseite der Universitätsbibliothek zum Leuchten.

Das Comeback, auf das wir alle gewartet haben: Die Arbeiten am Schriftzug an den Kunstsammlungen sind abgeschlossen. Jetzt strahlt das Werk von Licht- und Konzeptkünstler Mischa Kuball wieder über unseren Campus.

Episodic memory facilitates flexible decision-making via access to detailed events - Nature Human Behaviour Nicholas and Mattar found that people use episodic memory to make decisions when it is unclear what will be needed in the future. These findings reveal how the rich representational capacity of episod...

Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter.

How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need?

Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.

How the brain predicts objects in a changing world | Radboud University In everyday life, we often encounter objects that are partially hidden or only seen from the corner of our eye. Our brain is remarkably good at keeping track of objects, and new research reveals how t...

New research from @peelen.bsky.social, shows our brain actively predicts how they should look based on the 3D structure of the environment. Even when objects are temporarily hidden from view, their expected orientation can be decoded from activity in the visual cortex. 👇

www.ru.nl/en/donders-i...

Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEMM fields, at top institutions, and in senior positions. This study analyzes millions of biomedical and life science articles, revealing that f...

Cost of being female lead/corresponding author in biomedical sciences: "[T]he median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles" even in disciplines where women well-represented. #AcademicSky

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

🎓Fully-funded PhD studentship in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience!!!

Join @seanfw.bsky.social and myself at @tcddublin.bsky.social for a PhD at the intersection of cutting-edge cognitive neuroscience (OPM-MEG) and neuro-AI.
🗓 Deadline: 5 Feb 2026

#neurojobs #neuroscience #compneuro

Our A19 PI @helenblank.bsky.social investigated the brain's predictions during speech comprehension 🗯️

Evidence from EEG shows that two mechanisms operate at different hierarchical levels during speech perception 🗣️

Super relevant work for our CRC about how communication works in the brain! 🧠 ↘️

Paradigm and behaviour. Left: Stimuli. Sixty word pairs were created (e.g., sea-tea) where words within a pair sounded similar and could each be associated with one of six semantic contexts (e.g., sea-tea corresponding to nature-food). To decrease clarity and to induce ambiguity, words were slightly degraded to sound like a whisper and morphed into an intermediate acoustic signal between two words from two different contexts. Morphs were validated in a separate validation experiment (see Stimulus creation). Right: EEG part one with morphed words. Trials began with a fixation cross, followed by a visual speaker cue. Morphs were presented binaurally. Participants then indicated the word they had heard by button press. Finally, feedback was given in a speaker-specific manner such that each speaker could be associated with one specific semantic context. Faces were generated using FaceGen.

#Speech comprehension relies on prediction, but does the #brain prioritize expected or unexpected info? @fabianschneider.bsky.social & @helenblank.bsky.social show that sharpening of #SensoryRepresentations & #PredictionError processes co-exist at different levels @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/49kkNs0

How do priors influence speech processing? Do they enhance expected signals or highlight the unexpected (prediction errors)? @fabianschneider.bsky.social' s work shows: It depends!

Our new preprint has now been reviewed at @elife.bsky.social ✨

We report that nocebo effects in pain are stronger and more persistent than placebo effects in healthy individuals!

Read it here: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Professur (W3) für Pädagogische Psychologie - Universität Bielefeld Universität Bielefeld bietet Stelle als Professur (W3) für Pädagogische Psychologie in Bielefeld - jetzt bewerben!

Bei uns ist die eine W3 Päd. Psychologie zu besetzen ! jobs.zeit.de/jobs/profess...

🚨Paper alert: So great to see this published. Our review on the predictive processing account of psychosis!

Thanks to the amazing team 🧠 - it was so much fun writing this piece. 🤩

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

🚨Call for papers: Computational markers of psychosis - From latent states to neurobiological mechanisms!

Special issue in Schizophrenia Bulletin🧠

Deadline extended to April 30, 2026

We are looking forward to your papers!!

We are delighted to invite you to the upcoming “Psychology and the Brain” conference, which will take place in Heidelberg from June 3 to 6, 2026. Conference registration and submission of contributions are now open. Visit us at pug2026.org
#pug2026 #biopsychology #psychophysioloy #neuroscience

BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex, Nature Neuroscience

fMRI signals “up,” but neural metabolism might be going “down.”

In our @natneuro.nature.com paper, we demonstrate that about 40% of voxels with robust BOLD responses exhibit opposite oxygen metabolism, revealing two distinct hemodynamic modes.

rdcu.be/eUPO8
funds @erc.europa.eu
#neuroskyence 🧵:

Ok, this is nuts. Once you see it you cannot unsee it. Do you see it?
(OP @drgbuckingham.bsky.social )

Many congratulations, Peter!!

We are advertising **11 new PhD positions** in the second cohort of our RTG on Curiosity (details on all 11 positions here: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/open+posi...). One of these positions is in my group looking at the role of curiosity in early word learning (www.uni-goettingen.de/en/644546.ht...)

Just published my "Programming for Psychologists" course! 👩‍💻 github.com/Naubody/prog...

Designed for Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience Master's students starting their programming journey at @vuamsterdam.bsky.social.

Feel free to share! Feedback welcome!

Controllability changes pain perception by increasing the precision of expectations Nature Communications - Control over pain changes how intense it is perceived. Here, the authors show that this effect results from increased expectation precision with control, which changes...

Excited to share that the main work of my PhD has been published!

We found that having control over pain makes expectations more precise, and changes pain perception. This is accompanied by activation changes in the PAG, SMA and ACC.

You can read the full version of the paper here: rdcu.be/eQy6X

Many congratulations, Marie!

Hierarchical interactions between sensory cortices defy predictive coding Perceptual experience depends on recurrent interactions between lower and higher cortices. One theory, predictive coding, posits that feedback from higher to lower brain regions decreases neuronal activity predicted by higher-level representations. Despite the widespread adoption of predictive coding in neuroscience, the correspondence to neurophysiological findings in sensory cortices remains elusive. Here, we review how the canonical patterns of intra- and inter-cortical interactions that occur during perception and shifts of attention deviate from those predicted by predictive coding. We argue that these circuit interactions are better captured by alternative theories, which we summarize under the umbrella term BELIEF. We review how BELIEF theories account for the inter-areal interactions during attentive perception.

Online Now: Hierarchical interactions between sensory cortices defy predictive coding

proud to share this work, led by the brilliant @ilinabg.bsky.social, now out in Nature! Ilina finds that speech-sound neural processing is VERY similar in a language you know and one you don't. differences only emerge at the level of word boundaries and learnt statistical structure 🧠✨

🚀 BIDS Consultation Hours are back next week!

Need support converting your data to BIDS?
Bring your questions and get hands-on guidance from experienced BIDS users to make your data shareable and reproducible 🧠♻️

📅 Friday, Nov 28 | 12:00 PM CET
🔗 Info & materials: tinyurl.com/igor-bids

Tagging @isnlab.bsky.social @stefaniebrassen.bsky.social @helenblank.bsky.social @janhaaker.bsky.social @christianbuchel.bsky.social @aulenkamp.bsky.social @wohrlab.bsky.social @sheddenmora.bsky.social @rief01.bsky.social and all other CRC members! 😍

Starter pack: go.bsky.app/TgjkCXL