🧠 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧’𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐡𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧?
In this study, we showed that tuning a brain rhythm called the individual alpha frequency (IAF) through #neurofeedback improves attentional performance. 1/7 🔗https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121912
Title page and abstract. Abstract text: "Making decisions regarding data processing and analysis are crucial steps toward extracting insights from data in clinical trials. Trial registries like clinicaltrials.gov promote transparency about these decisions and encourage making them in advance. However, clinical studies often face decisions with multiple reasonable options outside the bounds of preregistration, such as when studies conduct post hoc analyses, deviate from preregistered plans, or simply were not preregistered. Additionally, even a priori decisions often have multiple reasonable options from which to choose. Methods that maximize transparency and minimize bias in such situations are needed. This paper advocates for applying a “multiverse” approach to analyzing such data from clinical trials. The multiverse approach simultaneously selects and analyzes the various reasonable options for each decision and presents results across all analysis “universes.” We highlight common challenges and decisions when analyzing clinical trial data, review and expand upon the multiverse approach and show how it can address these challenges, and demonstrate the approach using data from a small randomized psychotherapy trial for posttraumatic stress disorder. In the example presented, results were fully consistent across the multiverse for one outcome (posttraumatic stress symptoms), partially consistent for another (relationship satisfaction), and mostly inconsistent for a third outcome (fear of intimacy). The multiverse approach is a flexible and transparent analysis option for clinical trials in the presence of uncertainty regarding data processing and analytic choices."
1/7 Clinical trials should preregister analyses. But even careful plans leave room for defensible alternatives, and problems often arise that create decisions no one anticipated. Instead of picking just one defensible option, what if you ran them all? New paper in @collabrapsychology.bsky.social
In memory of Vincent Hayward, a final study with our chair Merle Fairhurst shows that even when touch isn’t more accurate than vision, we still trust it more.
Read it here doi.org/10.1163/2213...
#Haptics #Neuroscience #Perception
Missed the socialBRIDGES - Presence conference, or want to revisit the discussions? The recordings are now available on YouTube!
We brought together experts from different disciplines to answer: what does it mean to be present in a mediated world?
Check them out: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
“Mindbrain” - thoughts?
Reading a book that uses the term “mindbrain“. eg “The function of the mindbrain is not easily understood as ..” I like it! You?
OED lists “mind-brain” (paywalled). Miriam Webster has nada. SEP has “mind/brain”
The book:
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
A new study had people take a "Digital Detox": their time online decreased from 314 to 161 minutes, and it improved their attention, mental health & well-being.
We are running a social media detox on 8000 paper around the globe.
Read more about it here:
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...
These studies were dubious enough to begin with, even without dodgy "data"...
How do we feel the world around us? The 2026 Brain Prize Winners have made pioneering discoveries on how the somatosensory system enables us to perceive external stimuli...
#SomatosensorySystem #Neuroscience
Just dropped an episode on somatosensory #neuroprosthetics 🦾🧠⚡️ Give it a listen! Thanks Eddie!
@NeuralBionicsLab #bionics #BCI @chalmers
youtu.be/fkSQDXyX9f4?...
What’s the impact of the 2026 Brain Prize winners’ discoveries? According to Prof. Håkan Olausson, the winners’ work has provided vital new clues to the mechanisms of touch and pain in humans
youtu.be/0VYOKk4jnO0
#Somatosensation #BrainPrize2026
This article is so validating as I 'mildly'struggle to simplify and explain everything dopamine does AND does not do in the context of substance use disorders to undergraduate students. Wish I could attend the meeting in Seville this May www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Trainees need to learn how to identify a paper’s major takeaways and integrate them into their understanding. In her essay, @norabradford.bsky.social argues that this skill doesn’t come from outsourcing the work to large language models.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neuro-educat...
🎉 Excited to share our publication in PNAS! 🎉
What happens when our stream of consciousness turns towards the body? Our fMRI study of 536 individuals finds that 'body-wandering' is associated with patterns of brain connectivity, physiology, affect, and mental health:
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
There are not such thing as the brain area for x @pessoabrain.bsky.social
Our first book review on Dr. Rachel Zoffness's latest book "Tell Me Where It Hurts."
It's not just an educational text, but "a narrative-driven argument about how pain is misunderstood—and how it might be reframed."
massagefitnessmag.com/massage/book...
🧠 The brain doesn’t just feel the body—it already knows it.
Join our online seminar with Prof. Patrick Haggard
📅 April 15th |
Discover how touch perception relies on an internal body map—and why illusions like Weber’s reveal hidden self-knowledge.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Information transfer between the brain's hemispheres is not passive process. It is an active process under top-down influence.
Interhemispheric transfer of sensory and working memory information is dictated by behavioral strategy
doi.org/10.64898/202...
#neuroscience
Our collaborators at Dutch Touch Society have been nominated for the Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs! Their project explores how social touch can reduce stress.
Help them win and bring touch research to national TV! Vote: hetklokhuis.nl/dossier/153/...
Select Hand in hand tegen de spanning & click “stem”
So proud of my lab mate @ericmulhall.bsky.social and honored to help with this amazing project he led using MINFLUX to study why PIEZO2 behaves differently than PIEZO1 from the lab of @ardemp.bskyverified.social share.google/2Uln5O5OyqhM...
And Paula Cocozza's pre-pandemic reporting on the crisis of touch points to a bunch of cultural symptoms of not enough touching.
www.theguardian.com/society/2018...
Congratulations to David Ginty and Patrik Ernfors for receiving The Brain Prize! 🎉👏
You can help David celebrate at this conference:
www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...
My Beautiful Bullshitty Baby:
Episode 2 of our blog series on methods renovations. Diving into my Science and Critical Thinking module - layout, rationale, & the first few weeks.
willgervais.com/blog/2026/2/...
Read! Share! Tell us what you think!
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching
THAMES Time, MFers!!
Episode 3 of the blog series, all about the SIX SECRET LETTERS FOR CRITICAL THINKING THAT THE SCIENTISTS DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW
willgervais.com/blog/2026/3/...
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching
New research on autism and touch.
Makita et al. (2025) show that adults with ASD perceive softness normally, but experience less increase in pleasantness when touching soft, skin-like materials.
Suggests differences in affective evaluation of touch, not sensory detection.
New preprint! We systematically examine touch aversion: its measurement, behavioural correlates, and links to individual differences. Findings point to a multidimensional construct and the need for better alignment across measures.
Link: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-8...
One thing that really surprises me as #Reviewer & #Editor is that, given the same set of data, most researchers seem to prefer reporting a weak, confounded, positive result instead of a stronger, well-controlled, negative result.
It's a lack of bravery &/or self-awareness &/or something else?
🧪🧠⚡
Interesting paper on vicarious touch in Scientific Reports. 84% report feeling touch when observing it Importantly, the findings also point to substantial heterogeneity, identifying distinct experiential profiles that reflect variability in how individuals perceive and experience vicarious touch.
The review article on the 2026 Brain Prize winners' science is out: The cellular architecture of touch and pain, by Professor Fan Wang (MIT, US)
brainprize.org/article/cellular-archite...
#BrainPrize2026 #MITResearch
"Their methods have revolutionized the studies of the somatosensory system." Prof. Håkan Olausson on the groundbreaking work of The Brain Prize winners 2026
https://youtu.be/jV0TXjKUSf8
#Neuroscience #BrainPrize2026
"The Brain Prize winners 2026 have redefined how we think about somatosensation. Their work addresses very current, timely, and urgent questions that we encounter in the clinic", Prof. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Chair of The Brain Prize selection committee
youtu.be/j9RlGjObXfw
#Somatosensation