Tabby cat laying on his side on plaid and gray blankets. The cat's front paws are tucked under and his eyes are closed. He looks very relaxed.

Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1

Relatedly, I will be hiring a post-bacc / lab manager starting this Fall 2026.

This is a great chance to get hands-on didactic training in computational psychiatry, clinical science, computational cognitive neuroscience, fMRI, & psychopharmacology.

Job ad below, Please share with your networks!

I will also be recruiting grad students this cycle - prospective candidates can apply through Psych & Brain Sciences or the Neuroscience grad programs.

Interested postdocs who are aligned with the lab's interdisciplinary interests are welcome to reach out.

...& much more to come down the road!

This is cool! A couple things: could grad student costs and non-personnel research costs be adjustable? Both are pretty optimistic from my experiences.

At least one institute (NIMH) is to my knowledge only awarding MYF to established investigators so I call BS

Anyway, I think we've mostly figured out exposure through trial and error and the idea that it's very theory driven is us deluding ourselves, but maybe I've gotten too cynical.

And the empirical differences in learning in anxiety are mostly with uncertainty learning, safety learning, etc. that don't map onto extinction as the fix...

And we have gotten very good at knowing what modulates fear learning and extinction in basic science but very little of that does anything clinically (e.g., d-cycloserine)...

I think we need to step back further. I dunno if extinction is what's happening. If you look back at the literature over the history of exposure (watson/cover jones, wolpe, foa, now craske) we've had totally different theories of what is going on that often contradict each other...

Yeah there were clear shortcomings in the old Foa-esque model of fear learning such that inhibitory learning was a clear improvement over it. But I don't think any of those theories actually explain what's happening in exposure well at all.

Backlash against the state government in IA that is much more Republican and pro-Trump, and has over-played their hand.

I've written almost the same thing in a paper... not easy to figure out how to make a paper using Bayesian stats meet the statistical reporting requirements for a medical journal + satisfy non-stats-savvy reviewers used to checklists

12 out of 10 stars. would recommend

Now out in JEP: General, "How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently"

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Preprint with final version: osf.io/preprints/ps...

1/n

Yup, clin psych PhDs could apply if the project was within NSF's scope. Now they are specifically excluded.

NRSA is a good fit but not for early grad school or post-bac applicants like the GRFP. Not a whole lot of foundation fellowships for that period of training either 😕

I am looking to hire a great postdoc to join our lab in sunny Eugene at the University of Oregon for fun behavioral/fMRI experiments on sensorimotor control in young and older adults. Please share/get in touch if interested! pages.uoregon.edu/mmar/

I got diagnosed with POTS a few years ago after 20 years of weird symptoms, and this really resonates. Thanks for writing this.

Prefrontal default-mode network interactions with posterior hippocampus during exploration Hippocampal maps and ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) value and goal representations support foraging in continuous spaces. How might hippocampal-vPFC interactions control the balance between behavior...

@andrewpapale.bsky.social 's new explore/exploit paper in JNeurosci with @vanessabrown.bsky.social @drangelaianni.bsky.social Michael Hallquist & Bea Luna: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...
PFC-DMN and hippocampus encode value maxima in exploitation, but their synchronization peaks in exploration.

Home | Emory University | Atlanta GA

Lol that's the work of our old provost (aihumanity.emory.edu) whose departure to OSU wasn't exactly mourned

Wow: @ajc.com's Lautaro Grinspan reports that in just one week in October, ICE spent nearly $950,000 on ads in Atlanta — more spending than in any other U.S. city.

That amount would've been enough to provide SNAP benefits for over 20,000 Atlantans every month.

Screenshot with text: The Computational Mechanisms of Psychopathology Lab (COMPLab; PI: Vanessa Brown, PhD) is recruiting for a postdoctoral fellow to join the lab. Research in the lab uses behavioral tasks (administered in-lab and remotely), functional and structural imaging, computational modeling, and mechanistic interventions (brief psychotherapy, neuromodulation) to investigate learning alterations in anxiety and related disorders. In particular, this position will support research funded by a new NIH R01 using predictive and generative modeling of threat imminence to understand and manipulate avoidance in anxiety. This position is ideal for someone with a background in some combination of behavior/learning theory approaches to anxiety, computational modeling of behavior, and fMRI analysis; and who wishes to gain or deepen expertise in these areas. The postdoctoral fellow will be expected to design experiments, analyze data, present and publish findings, apply for external funding, and assist with training other lab members and with lab management. Dr. Brown and the COMP Lab are strongly committed to mentorship, and support will be provided to assist the postdoctoral fellow to prepare for an independent research career.

I am recruiting a postdoc for a new NIMH-funded R01 using neural and behavioral models to understand anxious avoidance. Please share with anyone who may be interested!

Link: faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/155929/...

Identifying active ingredients in cognitive-behavioral therapies: What if we didn't? Identifying active ingredients of psychological interventions is a major goal of psychotherapy researchers that is often justified by the promise that…

1: In 2023, I wrote this paper arguing that research on active ingredients of CBT, and by extension on their mechanisms, is not close to improving therapy outcomes.

I just read a paper on inhibitory learning improving outcomes of exposure. Egg on my face?

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Systematic misestimation of machine learning performance in neuroimaging studies of depression - Neuropsychopharmacology Neuropsychopharmacology - Systematic misestimation of machine learning performance in neuroimaging studies of depression

I agree, but at the same time I see people get hopeful about all these small-N studies coming across my feed, many of which are, at worst, clearly noise, or at best, unlikely to be replicable (e.g., see here for why the LC vs control prediction is flawed given the N: www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

I dunno if it's worth getting hopes up for.

It's an interesting finding but the sample size is small, it uses a relatively unproven PET tracer, and the statistics are a bit fishy (though I know more about MRI than PET so not sure how fishy). I wouldn't say they've found a definitive biomarker as much as established that it's worth studying.

Try @disabledinstem.bsky.social!

Hey, Neuroimaging friends: I am getting laid off soon due to the cuts to NIH. I have filled out applications far and wide to no avail.

Does anyone have any leads on a lab that might be able to use someone with a strong background in neuroimaging data analytics?

I use it with canvas and there are about 1-2 students each time (out of 30-50) who have glitches. I print off a few paper copies for this. Best approach I have found, esp. since some students need to use computers for disability reasons

I've been trying to switch to an actual stimulant for a couple years now but I guess drs are not too excited about switching to a scheduled drug. If it's an NDRI is it sunosi? Not sure I want to try another NDRI but I'm glad it's working for you!