The contradiction at the heart of Republicans’ embrace of psychedelics “The research is clear about one thing: Recovery is not primarily a pharmacological event,” write Dimitri Mugianis and Ross Ellenhorn.

This is it. This is the editorial that nails everything wrong with not only celebrating the recent psychedelic EO but the flaw at the heart of where our modern psychedelic renaissance has ended up.

I don't know if I'm just turning into a Luddite but replacing participants with technology seems just preposterous to me. Imo it completely destroys the human part of psychological science.

Years ago @mikeduncan.bsky.social told me "you can rewrite shit but you can't rewrite nothing" and it's made every draft easier since.

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

That's it for this week. Spend the first half of the week on finishing Invincible (again) but next week will have more time for papers🥳

Some great insights into the drug discovery process. Also kind of a bummer since imho nothing has fundamentally changed in the 20 years since publication.
www.nature.com/articles/130...

Empathy Regulation in Clinical Science: Regulating the Therapeutic Emotional Circuit - Erik C. Nook, Jamil Zaki, 2026 Is a more empathic therapist more effective? Classic models in clinical science rightfully describe empathy as an important therapeutic tool, but emerging evide...

Very much appreciate the clear language and straightforward argument made here. A convincing model of adapting empathy to the therapeutic situation, especially appreciate the discussion of Motivational Interviewing .
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Complete biosynthesis of psychedelic tryptamines from three kingdoms in plants Tryptamine psychedelics from plants, fungi, and toads are produced in planta through cross-kingdom pathway reconstruction.

The technical details are beyond me but the idea itself is incredible. Impressive effort and extensive work to actually invent something that never occurred before (afaik).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I was excited for more drug user research but it turned out to be a very biological paper with a focus on preclinical data. Still interesting but for humans we just don't have any reliable data regarding most drug interactions.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Thinking Clearly About Age, Period, and Cohort Effects - Julia M. Rohrer, 2025 Psychological researchers are interested in how things change over time and routinely make claims about age effects (e.g., personality maturation), cohort effec...

As promised I read this fantastic paper by @dingdingpeng.the100.ci next. An inspiring use of clear language to describe a complex problem. Also a great reminder in general to be clear about the assumptions plating a role in your research.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Functional hierarchy of the human neocortex across the lifespan - Nature fMRI data from individuals of a wide range of ages (from a few days to 100 years old) are used to map the key organizational axes of functional connectivity in the human cortex throughout the lifespan...

Quite a fascinating look into a topic I don't understand. Definitely an ambitious project that reminded me that I had wanted to read a paper on cohort effects for ages (see next skeet).
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ian Hacking · Making Up People: clinical classifications

Not a paper per se but nonetheless a very interesting read and highy relevant to clinical psychological science.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

Neuroanatomy reflects individual variability in impulsivity in youth - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - Neuroanatomy reflects individual variability in impulsivity in youth

I don't recall how many papers I've read about the ABCD study but I'm always impressed with the potential such a well-conducted study holds. The paper itself is also quite interesting, even though I'm kind of skeptical regarding the concept of impulsivity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Paper haul for April 13th-April 19th:

I feel like this is part of a broader cultural tend towards an exclusive focus on "critique" - we're developing infinite ways to articulate how things can be bad and/or getting worse, but very little to balance it out and recognize that good things are good.

PhD Student in Meta-Science and Clinical Psychology - Universität Bern Universität Bern is looking for PhD Student in Meta-Science and Clinical Psychology

I’m hiring a PhD student!

The candidate will work alongside @zefreeman.bsky.social, who is joining our research group as postdoc.

jobs.unibe.ch/job-vacancie...

Yeah - unser SFB Podcast „Wirkstoff Wort - der Podcast für Gute Kommunikation in der Medizin ist draußen!
Hört mal rein.
Danke an das großartige Public Outreach Team des SFBs!

An international mega-analysis of psychedelic drug effects on brain circuit function - Nature Medicine Analysis of neuroimaging datasets across five major psychedelics revealed a shared brain signature and provides a comprehensive insight into how these drugs reorganize brain architecture.

Now that it has been out for a week, I thought I’d address a few strange takes regarding our recent mega-analysis on the effects of psychedelics on brain function (specifically, resting-state functional connectivity). 1/15
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An image of the article "Desistance": A Multimethod Review of the Literature on Gender Identity Variability in Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth

New publication alert! After four years of analysis, synthesis, and careful writing, I am pleased to announce a brand-new article, “Desistance”: A Multimethod Review of the Literature on Gender Identity Variability in Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth (1) 🧵
psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

Concentrated academic recruiting. 10% of political science departments produce 60% of all polsci professors in Germany. FU Berlin produced most professors, followed by Mannheim, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg. In psychology,...

Our work with Karl Friston on Self-Orthogonalizing Attractor Neural Networks is now out in Neurocomputing!

What does this theoretical model mean for our understanding of the brain? I’ve mapped out the key neuroscience implications below.

Read the thread for a neuroscience walk-through ↓

Brainwide blood volume reflects opposing neural populations - Nature Combined functional ultrasound imaging and Neuropixels recording of mouse brains identify two neuronal populations with opposing arousal-related activity and distinct haemodynamic response functi...

BOLD is not a simple monotonic readout of local firing. Instead, it reflects the net activity of two opposing neural populations. Interpreting it may require modeling their latent composition, not just overall activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

1/6 Our paper is out today in Nature Communications!

From the SFB/TRR 289 Treatment Expectation @sfb-trr-289.bsky.social we show that temporal expectations shape somatosensory perception - for both painful heat AND non-painful cold stimuli.

That's it for the week. Gonna spend Sunday Re- reading some Invincible comics 😎

Junius Verlag | Ingrid Scharlau: Jean Piaget zur Einführung Jean Piaget zur Einführung - Der Ruf Jean Piagets (1896–1980) gründet sich in erster Linie auf seine Beiträge zur Entwicklungspsychologie des kindlichen Denkens. Weniger bekannt ist, dass seine Intere

I also was able to read some actual books which is always a pleasure. This week I finished a short introduction to the epistemology of Jean Piaget which was quite interesting (www.junius-verlag.de/Programm/Zur...)

Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving - Nature Neuroscience Jang et al. measured dopamine and acetylcholine release in the striatum of rats performing a decision-making task and found that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release gates whether d...

I understand none of the details but am still quite impressed (again) by the complex interaction between different neuromodulary systems.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does the cerebellum contribute to cognitive functions? The role of the cerebellum in motor functions is well understood. But why is the same circuitry engaged in functions such as working memory, language, and social cognition? This Unsolved Mystery looks...

A really cool type of article! Would love to see some "Unsolved Mysteries" of Psychology. The paper itself by @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social is also a great read. Very easy to follow while clearly describing the open questions in Cerebellum research.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The nature of depression and the biomedical model: ten questions in search of an answer - Translational Psychiatry Translational Psychiatry - The nature of depression and the biomedical model: ten questions in search of an answer

While I very much agree with the basic premise (all psychology is fundamentally biologically caused) I vehemently disagree with everything else in this polemic.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The myth of the Bayesian brain - European Journal of Applied Physiology The Bayesian brain hypothesis—the idea that neural systems implement or approximate Bayesian inference—has become a dominant framework in cognitive neuroscience over the past two decades. While mathem...

Didn't actually work through the whole article (it's quite a long but very thorough read) but think it delivers a really important and simple message: metaphorical understanding of brain functioning needs to be biologically realized to be of proper scientific use.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Great overview over pharmacological treatments for PTSD. My (biased) main takeaway: Psychotherapy > Pharmacology
www.nature.com/articles/s41...