1/2 S1 mice display impaired extinction and abnormally sustained VTA-DA activity during US omission. Surprisingly, optogenetic excitation of VTA or IL-terminals failed to rescue the deficit. www.eneuro.org/content/12/1... #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

1/3 SciAdv paper shows that dopamine in ant-lat motor cortex isn't just modulatory, but it drives contralateral movement plan. DA signals and D1R+ neuron activity ramp up earlier and stronger when mice plan licks toward the opposite side. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

La Vida Ciencia!

I only skimmed the introduction and results, and it goes among the top items on my reading list. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

1/3 New eNeuro paper maps how medial prefrontal and subcortical circuits respond when mice earn rewards alone, with a partner, or in direct competition, showing that social context and hierarchy reshape network-wide reward responses. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence www.eneuro.org/content/12/1...

I like this platform, but it still feels like the best way to get the newest paper is.. X. Am I the only one having this impression? I’d like to close my profile there but I still feel like there is value there to stay on top of the literature. Thoughts? #neuroskyence

Check this out! Wonderful resource for grant hunting #neuroskyence #science #neuroimaging

Glad to see the knowledge gained through lesion studies in nonhuman primates being utilized as a foundation for this work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/3 How reward prediction errors shape memory: when people gamble and cues signal unexpectedly high reward probability, those incidental images are remembered better than ones on safe trials, linking RL computations to episodic encoding. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And if you want the full backstory, big thanks to Keith Murphy and Charles Caskey for having me on the FUS Forward podcast to share the journey and pineapple juice addiction :): open.spotify.com/episode/0y2W...

What a great study! #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀? Do they even exist...? Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon. Open to all. Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free) #neuroskyence

AI is getting out of hands folks #neuroskyence #science #skyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ DeepTaskGen learns a mapping from resting-state connectomes to whole-brain task fMRI, generating synthetic contrast maps in >20k UKB sbj that often match or outperform real data for predicting age, sex, cognition, and clinical measures. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s42...

New Sci Adv paper shows that dopamine in SNr does not directly act via D1/D2 receptors but gates striatonigral output indirectly, by boosting serotonin that activates presynaptic 5-HT1BRs to suppress low-frequency D1-MSN GABA release. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41191762/

When people choose to give rather than keep, both altruistic and strategic generosity show robust vmPFC and ventral striatum engagement vs selfish choices. Cool that ‘warm glow’ and payoff both light up classic reward hubs. #RewardSignals #neuroskyence pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30195947/

1/New preprint maps the “brain architecture of punishment learning”: whole‑brain Fos, chemogenetics, spatial transcriptomics, and BLA Ca²⁺ imaging show how actions linked to harm are selectively suppressed while reward seeking is preserved #RewardSignals #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our new paper is out! It offers a tool to assess collinearity impact on contrast estimates *and* uses simulations + MID data to show how common collinearity avoidance strategies can bias results. Huge thanks to @russpoldrack.org , M Demidenko, and the ABCD folks. 🔗 direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Great study!

If your ultimate inference target is the group level, then what matters is the joint contribution of trial number per condition and participant sample size, not either one in isolation. We explored this point in detail here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

yep, and in fact.. there is a secret administrative definition of DEI: Distracting Experts Indefinitely

@davidbaranger.bsky.social would love your take on the fMRI part of this paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... I’m wondering how much of the poor MID reliability is about adolescent samples + long test–retest gaps, rather than the MID itself. #neuroskyence #neurosky #RewardSignals

Reviewer: “lack of details about the software used for connectivity.” Also me: mentioned AFNI several times, with commands. Folks, believe me, there is life beyond CONN, and diversity ≠ opacity. If something is unclear, ask. #neurosky #neuroskyence

Bonus on this paper: there is also a commentary from Masakazu Taira & @melissajsharpe.bsky.social that is certainly worth reading- www.nature.com/articles/s41... #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

1/3 New Nature Neuroscience paper on estrogen & dopamine RPEs. Female rats in high-estradiol phase (proestrus) show stronger trial-by-trial adjustment of response vigor in a RL task: they start the next trial faster after better rewards. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #RewardSignals #neuroskyence

And the next step? Full voxel-level modeling. Recent numerical advances cracked the scalability barrier. Voxel-level hierarchical modeling is now feasible, revealing just how punishing traditional multiple-comparison adjustments really are. arxiv.org/abs/2511.12825

Looking forward to this!

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.

RL Debates 5: Anne "not everything is RL" Collins Anne delivered an amazing synthesis of her extensive work on how working memory shapes reward-based learning in humans. 📜 Read the paper: nature.com/articles/s41... 📽️ Watch the full presentation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEqZ... 🧠🤖🧠📈

Great resource here ⬇️

1/ New preprint on causal control of Pavlovian go bias: Aster et al. “Continuous theta-burst stimulation of the vmPFC reduces Pavlovian go-invigoration and enhances thalamo-striatal RPE signals” (n=90, cTBS-fMRI Go/NoGo). 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #RewardSignals #neurosky #neuroskyence

We were trained to believe that hard work and good ideas would translate into grants and papers. Now it feels like none of that is guaranteed, and the cost is paid by our families, our students, our teams, and the futures we hoped to build with them. #neuroskyence #neurosky

❤️ Bluesky fMRI people! 3-day #fMRI course live online Jan 7-9, 2026. #SPM, #ICA, GLM, connectivity, mediation, MRI physics, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl. We love talking methods & connecting with colleagues! Come join us! Register here: sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...

1/3 New preprint by Ballard et al. on using resting-state hemodynamic latency as an indirect marker of dopamine physiology: “Temporal fMRI Dynamics Map Dopamine Physiology” (bioRxiv, 2025) 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... #RewardSignals #neurosky #neuroskyence

We're looking forward to telling you what we've been up to at #sfn25. Flagel Lab posters are all on Monday. Come say hi and speak to these amazing trainees about their research!

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...

Come meet Antonella Lupo (grad student, Bari) at #SFN25 late-breaking poster [LBP087]: “fMRI reveals stable sign- and goal-tracking phenotypes linked to dopaminergic modulation and psychopathology”. Mon 17, 8–12 — chat about translating ST/GT models to humans 🧠 #neuroskyence #RewardSignals

🧠💸 Launching the RewardSignals feed RewardSignals is a custom feed collecting posts about reward processing and decision making. To appear in the feed, tag your post with #RewardSignals. You can find and pin the feed from the Feeds tab as “RewardSignals”. #RewardSignals

How prediction error drives memory updating: role of locus coeruleus–hippocampal interactions Looks interesting, from Groves et al #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition

14 months after submission, our article “Stimulus-modulated approach to steady state (SASS): a flexible paradigm for event-related fMRI" is now out in @natmethods.nature.com . You can read it here rdcu.be/ePJo6 It is the first first author paper from my student @renilmathew.bsky.social 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 …1/N

Early life adversity increases striatal dopamine D1 receptor density and promotes social alcohol drinking in mice, especially males https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687736v1

"What are you doing tonight?" "I'm fitting 7,200 HMMs, how about you?" "....." #neuroskyence #Neuroimaging

Hidden Markov Models Speaking of HMMs, really enjoyed this paper on dynamics underlying resting state and other conditions. The idea of a baseline state from which excursions lead to more integrated states is really interesting. doi.org/10.7554/eLif... #neuroskyence

This is 🤯 All publicly available. Looks like an amazing new histology-based human probabilistic atlas and parcellation tool. #neuroskyence #mri #brainmapping A probabilistic histological atlas of the human brain for MRI segmentation | Nature share.google/5AD0iW7pxgb4...

Thrilled to share my very first publication, in Translational Psychiatry! 🧠🧪 We used invasive brain mapping to identify personalized neuromodulation targets for treatment-refractory OCD. Read it here 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #OCD #DBS #Neuroscience #Research

This looks so cool! I’m looking forward to read the paper in detail and try it out

Published! to NAIL human paraventricular thalamus, we imaged & aligned postmortem human thalamus labeled c calretinin. Finally a gold standard allowing mouse, rat human comparisons onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social @flagel-lab.bsky.social @mikeyassa.bsky.social l

Extraordinary resource! "Comprehensive recordings from 621,733 neurons in 297 brain areas of 139 mice (12 labs) performing a decision-making task with sensory, motor & cognitive components: a public dataset to understand how computations distributed across & within brain areas drive behaviour."👇🧪