I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

Our paper is finally out @darbysaxbe.bsky.social @genesisflores.bsky.social! Expectant fathers raised in riskier environments show lower white matter integrity in limbic regions and less effective parenting, even controlling for depressive symptoms. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨 GRADUATE PHD APPLICATIONS OPEN 🚨 I'm accepting students for the next psychology PhD admissions cycle! If you're passionate about developmental neuroscience and clinical psychology, this might be for you 👇 #GradSchool #Psychology #Research /1

After 5 years, I finally carved out time to turn this blog post on FDR (markallenthornton.com/blog/fdr-pro...) into a manuscript. The preprint features a much broader range of simulations showing how FDR promotes confounds, and how this effect compounds with publication bias: osf.io/preprints/ps...

connectivity changes from prenatal to postpartum fatherhood and their relation to affective experiences (e.g., sense of meaning, stress)!

Our new study in Emotion! Parents report higher satisfaction yet lower daily happiness- the 'parenting paradox'. So in the transition to parenthood, how do we study well-being? We studied how new fathers adapt by examining meaning/purpose and brain connectivity. psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Yes it's actually good that we have fMRI to know this, because men's parental bond has been understudied & essentialist narratives continue to insist that only women have "maternal instinct." Showing how the male brain responds to infant stimuli helps us appreciate human adaptations to fatherhood!

👀 New "dad brain" research from @darbysaxbe.bsky.social; Darby Saxbe will join RCGD's fall seminar series on the science of social relationships-- with a talk on the transition to fatherhood 9/29. Check out the series that kicks off next week! rcgd.isr.umich.edu/news-events/...

Our recent paternal brain publication in Human Brain Mapping was featured in @psypost.bsky.social (including some of my comments on the work)! 🔗PsyPost article: www.psypost.org/first-time-f... 📄actual paper: doi.org/10.1002/hbm.... 🧵my thread on the findings: bsky.app/profile/phil...

First-time fathers show distinct brain responses to their own babies

Fresh off the presses brand-new DAD BRAIN research from our lab!

🧠Out now in @ohbmofficial.bsky.social ! 🧠 We scanned 32 first-time dads (~8 mos postpartum) while they watched videos of their baby, an unfamiliar baby, their romantic partner, and an unfamiliar woman…1/8 doi.org/10.1002/hbm....

🙋‍♀️ 👋🚨 Two of my grad students had their NIH Diversity Supplements abruptly cancelled. We plan to appeal. We'd love to coordinate with other folks w/ cancelled grants. Does this already exist? If not, could we start a Slack, email or text thread, or shared Google Drive to share appeals & strategize?

I posted this article about my student's grant cancellation this morning. A few minutes ago, I learned that another very talented student in my lab had their funding cancelled too. I'm heartbroken -- not just about my students, but the future of science. darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/my-student...

1000% ... @mattmattoni.bsky.social @olinotom.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Beyond Increasing Sample Sizes: Optimizing Effect Sizes in Neuroimaging Research on Individual Differences doi.org/10.1162/jocn... new in @jocn.bsky.social

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Julia Moser, Damien A. Fair, et al: Multi-echo acquisition and thermal denoising advances precision functional imaging direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Loved getting to meet with @emilyjacobs.bsky.social and her lab group (including star postdoc @magdamartinezga.bsky.social) at UCSB! @philnewsomejr.bsky.social and Anthony Vaccaro joined me from USC...we got to nerd out about parental brain changes and & see some beautiful intensively sampled data

🚨New paper! "Behavioral & Neural Evidence for Difficulty Recognizing Masked Emotional Faces." During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks were needed to reduce virus transmission but covered facial features. Led by Yael Waizman, our team asked how they affected the processing of emotional faces.

🚨FIRST POST🚨 Hi! I am a first-year Clinical Science PhD Student at the University of Southern California (working with @darbysaxbe.bsky.social). Excited to explore and connect on this platform. thank you @jamielarsh.bsky.social for the invite!