Tell me you are a parent without telling me you are a parent …

Fun times were had #ISDP2025. Wish us luck driving home in this rain!! See you in NOLA 2026 ✌🏻

New Paper ‼️ Read @pw-savoca.bsky.social paper on discrimination, alexithymia, and anxiety in women.

So Proud of @fquerdasi.bsky.social and Dr. Jess Uy for this exciting paper linking gut microbiome to mental health in school age kids.

Just out! ✨ Using a novel machine learning approach, we identify a developmental pathway by which the early life gut microbiome may shape mental health at school age via effects on functional brain development. This work can help identify microbial biomarkers of later health issues. 👉 rdcu.be/eNsUK

I really resonate with this sentiment

The Brain & Body Lab at UCLA is hiring a Staff Research Associate to work on a productive and dedicated team under the NIMH funded Teen Bugs study - investigating brain-gut communication in teens. Send your best and brightest! jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8072

So proud of @shibaesfand.bsky.social for this amazing achievement. Very well deserved. What a 🪨 ⭐️

Very honored to have recieved the NSF GRFP amidst all the current budget cuts toward research. Feeling immense gratitude to everyone who supported me, including current @drbcallaghan.bsky.social and past @levelsof.bsky.social @diegopizzagalli.bsky.social mentors! (1/3)

Full of gratitude-my experience as a research assistant in the bablab has meant so much to me. This has been one of the most formative chapters in my life-growing in ways I didn’t even know I needed to. Thank you for opening the door and mentorship @drbcallaghan.bsky.social @pw-savoca.bsky.social

HUGE congratulations to Brain & Body Lab graduating seniors: @maryeford.bsky.social, Andrea Sosa, Angelina Meng, Brandon Parenti, and Naomi Escobar. And special appearance from aspiring Bruin graduate - Freddie! All the best on your wonderful futures in science and life!

Have recent changes led to uncertainty in your future scientific career? Wonder it's like in Australia? Good news! Monash's is seeking to hire talented EMCRs from other countries. Come join a wonderful community of brain mappers & modellers! www.monash.edu/research/eme...

An enormous congratulations to the newly appointed Dr Fran Querdasi!

Looking for a postdoc in stats or a job with computer vision / deep learning? Postdoctoral position in statistics is now out at Australian National University! jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/postdoc... And also APPN is looking for a data lead @scienceanu.bsky.social jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/data-le...

Technically effective July 1st, but I need a celebration today. You are looking at Associate Professor with Tenure at UCLA. Tickled pink! 🤓🥳

Go Mary!! Excited for you to be presenting this!!

⏰🚨 REMINDER that the @isdp.org symposium proposals are due March 31st. Come join us at the beautiful Catamaran Resort in sunny San Diego!🌞🌴 isdp.org/call-for-sym...

Just ordered my copy!! Can’t wait to sit down and binge this!! @drtomori.bsky.social nice work!!

So excited to share our Perspective out this week in Translational Psychiatry! We provide a conceptual framework for studying brain function in infancy. A true labor of love and hopefully useful for many related questions! @drbcallaghan.bsky.social Open access link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Extremely excited to launch our new Brain & Body Lab website and branding today! It was a pleasure to work with the great team at @stellatecomms.bsky.social to create this. I am thrilled with the outcome. Please drop on over and check us out! www.brainandbodylab.psych.ucla.edu

Honored that a piece I wrote made it to NYTimes. It’s about how my mom’s stroke changed my connection to time, science, and nature. What a privilege to honor my mom in Modern Love. Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...

check out the fantastic papers contained in this special issue on maternal cognition in Archives of Women’s Mental Health co edited by Jodi Pawluski and myself link.springer.com/collections/... You can read a summary in our editorial here rdcu.be/d2AZZ ❤️🥳🧠

Today, I’m reminiscing about my summer research stay at @drbcallaghan.bsky.social 's BaBlab @UCLA! 🤩 Thanks to @cfmhlab.bsky.social's support, I spent the summer geeking out on interoception & early adversity research. 🤓 Now there’s even a news piece—read more here: tu-dresden.de/mn/psycholog...

Post thanksgiving - day 4 of appreciating my BABLab peeps. Today is a highlight of our newest lab member @genesisflores.bsky.social who has more than hit the ground running, starting with an NSF GRFP, and working on a protocol paper for our new NIMH funded Teen Bugs study.

Continuing our theme of giving thanks to the graduate students who make the research happen, next up for Black Friday we have a Shiba Shoutout @shibaesfand.bsky.social. Shiba joined the lab last year and has been a delight to have on our team.

Installment #3 of thanks giving to my wonderful students and their cool research. Next is @fquerdasi.bsky.social who is on the job market right now! Fran has been working so hard on her dissertation this year and it has been a pleasure to watch her bring everything together.

Feeling a swell of pride at #Aussie representation at Macy’s TG Day parade. ❤️😍🦃🌟 So special for my American-Aussie boy!

Dan Wuori @danwuori.bsky.social was the best thing about Twitter. Thrilled to see him here in the blue sky! I love using his examples in my child development lectures. Follow along for wonderment and cuteness.

Installment 2 of Thank you to my lab for being so great and making these memories! BABLab hits of the year will next feature the inimitable @ngancz.bsky.social publishing this paper on oral #microbiome changes in maltreated youth. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39280088/

For Thanksgiving I want to spend the week highlighting some work that I’m really proud of from 2024. In doing so I’m going to highlight the wonderful research of students I am so thankful and lucky to work with! 🦃

While I appreciate and share my Uber driver’s Christmas spirit, I do think that suffocating cinnamon air freshener paired with non-stop carols is a bit much for 11am in November.

So neat!

Excited to be heading to Pomona today to talk about #interoception #brain-gut-axis #adversity

Does anyone know of starter packs for brain-gut-microbiome axis?

#HiSciSky I am a developmental psychologist at UCLA Big into brain-mind-body interactions across development. Most recent work focuses on the brain-gut axis and interoception in kids, teens, and pregnant people/mammas. I also study how early experiences (esp. caregiving) impacts our development.