Want a taste of Flemish culture? A mayor secretly used municipal facilities to meet his girlfriend without paying the rental fee. A deontological commission ruled he can stay in office, but he must pay the rent owed. vrtnws.be/p.Bl8P0Nao3

What’s a psychiatrist doing in computer science? It’s a question I keep getting in the U.S. Luckily, the answer is clear to me: AI holds enormous potential for mental health, but it’s up to us, as clinicians, to guide it in the right direction. Read more in my latest blog post!

It is imperative that all students working with me watch a compilation of funny vine video's. Otherwise you won't understand my memes 😭

Final paper of my PhD got published! 🥳 We investigated whether stress increases the desire for immediately available food or alcohol in patients with bulimia nervosa or alcohol use disorder. Check it out here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I love reinforcement learning, but the most annoying part about reading RL papers is the variety in nomenclature and how some authors seem to go out of their way to use specific terms and symbols in their papers... Oh and everybody needs to give a new fancy name to their algorithm...

Paper accepted today in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, "Establishing minimally sufficient conditions reduces the complexity of symptom presentations in DSM internalizing disorders." A quick thread, below. (link is to a PDF on the paper's OSF page) 1/15 osf.io/fxdm6

Never thought I'd be working with Lagrangian multipliers, but here I am!

I have fully embraced being over thirty. There was a fresh salmon promo in the grocery store and I was ecstatic ☺️.

#SAA2026 key dates: 📭 abstract submissions will open 1 December 2025 and close 16 January 2026 📨 acceptance notifications will be sent at the end of March 2026 - registration will open at the same time 🦜 early bird registration will close at the end of April 2026 univie.eventsair.com/saa2026/

Just spent way too long coding an R function that makes violin plots of SHAP values, where the violins are color-graded based on the original feature’s value at each SHAP value. My hate for the standard bee plots drove me to this ... Reach out to get the code now or wait until the publication ;)

Updated my website! You can now read about my current research project, where I will use off-policy methods for reinforcement learning to identify how we can help people manage their craving in daily life! The Github repo's on prediction models are also still available! nicolasleenaerts.github.io

Getting the proofs of your article is like getting a present 😍 And the gift is discovering how many changes they made that were wrong and you now have to spend time to correct 🤯

So we meet again. Loved to eat the orange chicken and the honey-walnut shrimp again.

Never thought I'd say these words, but it's my first day at Harvard! Looking forward to delve into reinforcement learning for JITAIs.

Today is the day that I can finally call myself a psychiatrist! After 14 years, my residency has come to an end, and what a journey it was. I feel so grateful for all the people who have supported me!

Just finished my final time being on call before I graduate!

Our brains are constantly in flux. So why do we often rely on static snapshots to understand brain function? In this study, we took a different approach, and explored dynamic functional connectivity in people with bulimia nervosa and alcohol use disorder. 📄 Read the full paper here! rdcu.be/euJkS

As a researcher, I just had to go see the School of Athens in the Vatican Museum. Loved seeing it!

My partner: Have you prepared everything for your stay in the US? Me: Yes, ... I identified the nearest Panda Express to my apartment.

Combining clinical work and research is challenging, which is why I’m especially grateful to receive the EFPT Porto Research Award for the best research by a European psychiatry resident this past year! Read about my work on person-specific and pooled prediction models here: shorturl.at/y5HNK

Meeting up with the other #BAEF fellows was great. I loved hearing about everybody's background and where they were going to work in the US. I am looking forward to going to Boston next month!

I had a great time discussing my work yesterday at #SAA2025! If you are interested in building sets of variables, then check out the R package @aaronjfisher.bsky.social and I made: github.com/nicolasleena...

Here at #SAA2025! Come listen to my talk on sets of contextual factors for alcohol use in paper session #4 at 2.15pm. Looking forward to present this work by me and @aaronjfisher.bsky.social.

Looking forward to an invited talk at APS this month. I'll be discussing estimands, linear models, and set theory, debuting a new R package (w/ @nicolasleenaerts.bsky.social), and sharing some data from an ongoing emotion regulation study that identifies sufficient conditions for emotional distress.

I'll be presenting work on a novel method for identifying sets of predictors in Paper Session 4. Hope to see you there!

Posting this to shine a light on psychiatry in Flanders. As a member of VVAP (the Flemish Association of Psychiatry Residents), I had the chance to help organize our annual Residents' Day—this year focused on addiction. We had inspiring talks from Paul Van Deun and David Puder, and had lots of fun!

Just heard I can give an oral presentation at SAA! Come hear about how we found sets of contextuel predictors for alcohol use with a novel mutual information approach. Thanks to @aaronjfisher.bsky.social for the collab!

Registered for the SAA conference in May in Leuven. Looking forward to meet up with you all there!

Exciting news! I’m honored to receive a grant from the BAEF to support my research stay in Susan Murphy’s lab at Harvard University. I’ll be collaborating with Stephanie Goldstein and Lara Coughlin to develop algorithms for JITAIs, aimed at reducing cravings in overweight/obesity and cannabis use!

Going for an interview to the #BAEF to hopefully fund a research stay in the US. Wish me luck!

Spawned Satan with my last analysis. Send help... 😰

Me too Rstudio, me too...

(Being on call)³

My Christmas gift is helping me with my analyses—stay tuned for her soon-to-be-released preprint!

A man just passed by me on a kickbike that was being pullen by 2 husky's! In the middle of Belgium!

Made a video of a Fallypride scan for a presentation, but couldn't include it due to the time limit, so posting it here! Want to read more on the impact of stress on dopamine signaling and its role in negative urgency? Read the paper! nicolasleenaerts.github.io/publication/...

Motivational interviewing is my new drug. Using it to help people make a change is just amazing.

Submitted third and final grant proposal to spend some time as a postdoc in the US. Fingers crossed!

First Udon shop in town 😍

Making some plots with gganimate and really loving the effect! Be sure to take a look yourself!

On call during Halloween. Don't know what to expect...

In Flander's Fields...

I thought publishing a systematic review on the reward system in binge eating would result in a thorough discussion of the problems in the literature. Unfortunately, it just resulted in papers just saying there are disturbances in reward processing in binge eating and citing the paper, ...

I love CBT so much, the last time I fixed my sink, I did it in twelve weekly sessions.

I'd phrase it a bit more nuanced, but you'll have to read the paper to see why!

Saying that negative affect is not related to alcohol use is as extreme as saying that negative affect is the only trigger of alcohol use. Check our new paper where we show that the relation between affect and alcohol use in women with AUD is non-linear. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Here with the gang at EDRS. Come look at our posters, and talk to me, Elske, Emma, and Robin!

Today was my last day working in prison, and I got a painting of a patient there. Was such a nice moment!

Had a great time presenting my NLMLapp to my colleagues in Research Group Psychiatry @KU_Leuven. Want to build pooled and person-specific models with an easy to use app? Look here: github.com/nicolasleena...

There is a spider web in my car. So, if I use the deduction skills I acquired during 4 years of doing a PhD, that means there is a spider in my car 🤔 Any ideas on further steps of action?