Monitoring gene expression in the brain with a simple blood test? In collaboration with @jerzyszablowski.bsky.social & his lab we figured out how to do it nonhuman primates using noninvasive neuroengineering of synthetic serum markers. nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Excited to share our new preprint on how feedback improves pain assessment accuracy when people learn from nonverbal reactions! See @yilizhao.bsky.social thread below.

When we modeled endocannabinoids and beta-endorphins together, we found that beta-endorphins moderated the effect of FAAH substrates.

Changes in FAAH substrates were associated with individual differences in placebo analgesia. There was no effect of 2-AG

Check out our latest paper: The Contribution of endocannabinoids to placebo analgesia www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... This is an ongoing collaboration with David Finn & @laurenatlas.bsky.social Take away: beta-endorphins gate the contributions of endocannabinoids to placebo analgesia.

New paper in Nature Neuroscience! We developed personalized fMRI-based predictive models tracking ongoing spontaneous pain in chronic pain patients—trained on 6+ months of densely sampled data. A true team effort. Deeply grateful to our participants! doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02221-3

Wow are they fortunate to have Daphna Shohamy at the helm - selecting her was a wise move (and I do hope they appreciate her for it). Looking for your next Director of a Fancy Thing? Pick a Daphna. www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2023/04...

Excited to share our new preprint on how feedback improves pain assessment accuracy when people learn from nonverbal reactions! See @yilizhao.bsky.social thread below.

What NIH Staff Can’t Tell You—And Why That Matters open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

NEW: Another NIH institute director hasn't been renewed — the director of NIAMS (arthritis, musculoskeletal and skin diseases institute). That leaves a whopping 15 of 27 institutes and centers without a permanent director.

🎉 Excited to share our new paper on how the brain forms first impressions, now out (open access)! In our EEG study, we tested how the brain responds to two kinds of social information: what we see (like perceived race) and what we know (like a person’s socioeconomic status). 🧵

NIH, CDC, HHS, and all of US cancer research and public health needed and still needs protection from Russell Vought and the P2025 White House. The defining feature of 2025 at NIH was not merely grant changes. It was unprecedented levels of presidential interference with NIH decision-making. 1/

I'm on Capitol Hill watching NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya testify to the Senate HELP committee. Thankfully I haven't been escorted out of this event (yet). Here's what I'm following. You can also watch live here: www.help.senate.gov/hearings/mod...

HEAL Initiative, BRAIN initiative, Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, all now leaderless with Walter Koroshetz gone...

I want to start by saying thank you, truly, to my friends, family, and so many good people who have reached out to check on me during this hard moment in Minnesota. I love you all. I am okay. See thread....

🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year. That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027. A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications. A short 🧵

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

The NIH's MYF policy in 2025 resulted in 4000 fewer grants and fellowships that touched every area of biology and medicine; continuing it in 2026 would be disastrous for science, technology and health in the United States 🧪 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Hmmm - 75 followers in the last 24 hours. Am I on some new list? Anyway hello to my followers, new and old. I used to be way more active on social media, but nowadays it's rough. Here's our most recent paper while I have your attention: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Banned from travel to #ACNP2026 at the last minute, the NIH Institute Directors will join the meeting via remote. Koob, Volkow and Acting Director Beckel-Mitchener for NIAAA, NIDA and NIMH.

Want to learn about FMRI visualization, processing and group analysis? Join us for the next AFNI Bootcamp (Jan. 27-29, 2026) for a fun few days of theory and interactive practicals. Details+registration for this virtual course: afni.nimh.nih.gov/bootcamp

7/ Fig 5 🔬 Ensemble properties explain why the regions differ Timing, response size, synchrony, and contribution to population dimensions Bottom line: ACC emphasizes ongoing nociceptive processing, RSC transforms aversion into predictive codes 🔮🧠

✨New Corder Lab preprint 🧠⚡️ - from Dr Sophie Rogers ! Differential modulation of aversive signaling by expectation across the cingulate cortex We image the same ACC + RSC neurons over time during noxious fear learning to ask: who encodes aversion vs who predicts it 🔮 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In case you need a last minute gift for a sciency colleague or yourself, the pink and purple action potentials / HRFs are somehow still in the shop! On sale too! These colors are usually first to be snagged! www.brainedglass.com

End of an era. Major loss for NIH and our tiny pain program at NCCIH. wishing you all the best in your next steps, @alexchesler.bsky.social

#JNeurosci: @yilizhao.bsky.social, Lee, @laurenatlas.bsky.social et al. found that associative learning across contexts triggered overlapping brain pathways, suggesting that the brain may use the same network for learning in different contexts. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1103-25.2025

I am so excited to share our newest preprint, inspired by @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social, “A multiverse approach to heat-evoked skin conductance analysis: Evaluating the influence of analytic pipeline on associations between skin conductance and pain osf.io/preprints/ps...

I am so excited to share our newest preprint, inspired by @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social, “A multiverse approach to heat-evoked skin conductance analysis: Evaluating the influence of analytic pipeline on associations between skin conductance and pain osf.io/preprints/ps...

Overall, these findings suggest that shared neural circuits mediate the effects of learned expectations on perception, linking pain with other areas of affective processing and perception across domains.

Pain specificity was evident when we measured variations in stimulus intensity, whether we used univariate or multivariate approaches, but there was minimal evidence of specificity by modality or aversiveness when we examined cue effects on medium trials.

Notably, the left anterior insula mediated domain-general cue effects on subjective intensity and the thalamus mediated cue effects on subjective valence, which two regions were nearly identical to those previously implicated in mediating cue effects on pain (Atlas et al., 2010).

Results showed learned cues modulated expectations and subjective outcomes similarly across domains. Consistent with this, the orbitofrontal cortex exhibited domain-general anticipatory activation.

Delighted to share our latest article on brain mechanisms of pain, appetitive & aversive learning, led by @yilizhao.bsky.social & In-seon Lee, out now in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show that brain mechanisms of expectancy are domain general, not unique to pain! www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Dear journals, collaborators, potential trainees, & colleagues: Please be patient with your nih friends. Those of us who are still around are doing everything in our power to focus on science & keep the long view in mind. But life is very much one day at a time, & catch up from shutdown is a beast 🫠

In case you missed it yesterday - black Friday sale at www.brainedglass.com! Last chance for action potentials or custom brains in time for the holidays.

In case you missed it yesterday - black Friday sale at www.brainedglass.com! Last chance for action potentials or custom brains in time for the holidays.

Thanksgiving / early Black Friday flash sale on action potentials at www.brainedglass.com! Also last chance to order custom brains in time for holidays. I’m very grateful to all who supported my side gig during the recent govt shutdown: Thx for helping me not lose my mind during a very hard time 💕🧠

Excited to share that the main work of my PhD has been published! We found that having control over pain makes expectations more precise, and changes pain perception. This is accompanied by activation changes in the PAG, SMA and ACC. You can read the full version of the paper here: rdcu.be/eQy6X

But the truth will always out. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Here is the full article from Bloomberg: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

One of the giants of social psychology was a serial sexual harasser. This new report reveals how Miles Hewstone touched, bullied, and sexual harassed numerous women during his 18 years at the University of Oxford. It's amazing how often bullying and sexual harassment go together in academia.

Is the “standard workflow” holding back fMRI analysis? Mass-univariate analysis is still the bread-and-butter: intuitive, fast… and chronically overfitted. Add harsh multiple-comparison penalties, and we patch the workflow with statistical band-aids. No wonder the stringency debates never die.

Our lab has 2 new papers in the current issue of @painthejournal.bsky.social: The first study, by Georgia Hadjis, shows that motivational conflict, rather than resource competition, determines priority assignment when pain is concurrent to competing demands. journals.lww.com/pain/fulltex...

Going to #SFN2025. Check out the Costa Lab posters on Sunday and Monday afternoon!

While the government was shut down, 379 NIH study section meetings (containing 24,380 grant applications) were postponed. NIH is committed to getting these reviewed, but please be patient and understanding with staff, as this is a complex and heavy lift.

Looks like we may finally be going back to work tomorrow (but still no SFN 😢), so this is your last chance to order a custom brain, an action potential, or the USE YOUR BRAIN - FUND SCIENCE / SUPPORT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH stickers available at my website. Www.brainedglass.com

Looks like we may finally be going back to work tomorrow (but still no SFN 😢), so this is your last chance to order a custom brain, an action potential, or the USE YOUR BRAIN - FUND SCIENCE / SUPPORT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH stickers available at my website. Www.brainedglass.com

I realize that these timelines are absurd and wanting to take on one of these important positions under the present circumstances is problematic, but NIH needs qualified applicants to apply. Please consider applying, even if you are not sure you would accept the position if offered. 3/3

the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), Fogarty International Center (FIC), and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Applications for NIMH are due by Friday. The remaining 5 (NIGMS, NICHD, NICDR, NHGRI, and NLM are due by 11/21 2/3

More new NIH institute and center director positions posted with a closing date of 11/26/25. hr.nih.gov/careers/open... These include the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), ... 1/3