The research group “Sensory Dynamics and Behaviour” of Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels at the Institute of Experimental Epilepsy and Cognition Research at the University Hospital Bonn invites applications for a position as: Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d) The position is initially limited to three years (TV-L E13/100%), starting from April 2026 or as soon as possible.

Postdoc position in systems neuroscience!
Excited to recruit a postdoc for my lab at the University of Bonn.
🔬 In vivo physiology (Neuropixels, 2P/miniscope)
🐭 Head-fixed & freely moving behaviour
💡 Optogenetics/chemogenetics
⏳ Start: ASAP | Application deadline: 28.02.2026
More info below ⬇️

New brain maps challenge traditional descriptions of the brain For more than a century, maps of the brain have been based on how brain tissue looks under the microscope. These anatomical maps divide the brain into regions according to structural variations in the...

Activity-based maps of the prefrontal cortex in mice, presented in @natneuro.nature.com today, challenge classical descriptions of the brain. The new maps reveal functional territories that differ from traditional, tissue-based maps. #Neuroscience #Brain 🧪 news.ki.se/new-brain-ma...

Mind blown!

Did you know about EMERGE, this amazing resource on self-report scales? All items listed and psychometric properties assessed, in ONE place & user friendly to boot

emerge.ucsd.edu/emerge-searc...

Non-invasive ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human nucleus accumbens impacts reward sensitivity - Nature Communications This study shows that non-invasive ultrasound to the human nucleus accumbens can modulate deep brain activity and enhance reward-guided learning, offering a potential alternative to invasive neuromodu...

New study out today in Nature Comms: www.nature.com/articles/s41..., in which we set out to test whether ultrasound could influence the reward-related learning computations of the nucleus accumbens, building on decades of work on dopaminergic prediction error and reinforcement learning. And it did.

So happy this paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! We investigated whether fluctuations in MEPs can be explained by phasic influences from internal bodily rhythms, and whether this might happen independently per organ system.
#interoception #neuroskyence

Lura din hjärna - få äckligt att smaka gott YouTube video by UR Play

A few weeks ago, utbildningsradio visited my lab to understand what we do and what it’s good for. Check out the result: youtu.be/1BbcqBywSdc?...

Title: Understanding Brain-Body Interactions to Advance Brain Health: A Workshop. Photo: picture of a transparent person with brain and nervous system illuminated.

Save the date 📆. On Oct 22/23, @nationalacademies.org will hold a stellar virtual workshop on brain/body interations (open to all).

www.nationalacademies.org/en/our-work/...

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (286516) | University of Oslo Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (286516), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Please RT
2 new positions in the lab as postdoc & PhD!

Interested in stress, pain, or reward? This project has it all!

We are a friendly but ambitious group. Oslo is a capital city on the fjord & bordered by forest, great urban & outdoors opportunities: 💃 ⛷️ 🚣 🎭 🎶

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Emotion research has a communication conundrum In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…

My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight.

These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them.

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

I am curious, why do you think people would not consider hunger an “edge case”? I would argue that it can be triggered by external cues (not typically when internal signals signal fullness, but surely that’s also the case for eg happiness that is difficult to trigger externally while sad)?

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

We found the opposite to be the case: a hungry state enhanced our participants' ability to detect deviant notes in food stimuli. We interpret this as a potential preparatory mechanism for food intake that facilitates discrimination of food and nonfood odor. (3/3)

In our new paper, @leonieseidel.bsky.social @kkilteni.bsky.social @odorjohan.bsky.social and I asked whether hunger would shift perceptual attention for odor mixtures away from potential indicators of contamination and instead emphasize their food-like components. (2/3)

Sensitivity to contamination of food odours depends on hunger and attention Detection of deviant notes in food odours protects against accidental contaminant ingestion, but this risk needs to be weighed against the potential c…

🍲🍲 NEW PAPER 🍰🍰
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Food choices are always a tradeoff between the benefits of energy intake and the risk of accidental contamination. The relative importance of these two varies depending on a person's current metabolic need. (1/3)

Dynamics of specialization in neural modules under resource constraints - Nature Communications The extent to which structural modularity in neural networks ensures functional specialization remains unclear. Here the authors show that specialization can emerge in neural modules placed under reso...

What's the right way to think about modularity in the brain? This devilish 😈 question is a big part of my research now, and it started with this paper with @solarpunkgabs.bsky.social, finally published after the first preprint in 2021! 🤖🧠🧪

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

Thanks to everyone's feedback, we have updated our calculator to optimize sample size N & scan time T for fMRI studies: leonoqr.github.io/ORSP_Calcula...

The first new feature is that users can explore how different N & T leads to different accuracy, e.g., N=1000 & T=30min => 81% max accuracy. 🧵

Only now saw this-congrats Siri!!!

PREPRINT ALERT!
Come and check out our (with @margaveldhuizen.bsky.social and @jseubert.bsky.social) on how overlapping insular codes of retronasal odours and their associated tastes!
1/n

And I look forward to hearing your thoughts 🙂

Happy to hear!

If you are thinking that smell and taste probably grasp bodily information, then I think that might be true. Can’t say much about touch :)

This has been such a pleasure to work on and make new friends across the senses! In this review, we compare the evidence for perceptual penetrability across the senses-that is, to what extent cognition shapes experience as opposed to biasing it. High in olfaction, low in gustation is my take home :)

🌶️🌶️JOB ALERT 🌶️🌶️Nutrilab@KI is recruiting a postdoc to join the team working on ERC StG OLFLINK. ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/... suits a candidate with a cog neuro background, expertise in perception/motivation and interest in gut-brain interactions and food consumption. Come join us in Stockholm!

Here is the link to the ad in English: ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

New preprint with @agustation.bsky.social and @odorjohan.bsky.social on contributions of perception and metabolic state to flavor pleasantness perception. We find additive instead of the expected interactive effects-also, mere exposure arises rapidly and obscures these effects if not accounted for 🍔

Aw, thanks Siri!

🍔🍕Job Alert 🍩🍭 Nutrilab@KI is now recruiting a postdoc to join our team working on ERC StG OLFLINK. ki.varbi.com/se/what:job/... suits candidates with a cog neuro background and an interest in gut-brain interactions and food perception! Come join us in lovely Stockholm

For years we have tended to discount activation signals in the white matter as artifact. It's becoming clear now that this was a mistake - white matter shows stimulus-driven activation similar (though much smaller) to gray matter. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37824529/

Hey #NeuroSky, we have published the paper from my PhD work, where we show that the orbitofrontal cortex encodes the texture and reward value of fat. Decoding strength is correlated with high fat consumption during a real-life eating task.
www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...
#neuroscience #PsychSciSky

We are a fun and collaborative little team of 4 and there are opportunities to also work with neuroimaging or get training in data analysis or other research methods according to your interest.