Juan Balcazar, PhD

Transdiagnostic stage-based monitoring of public mental health

Review by Claudia Buchweitz, Anna Viduani, Helen Herrman, Brandon A. Kohrt, Patrick McGorry, Giovanni Salum, Claudia Sartor, Shekhar Saxena & Christian Kieling

Web: go.nature.com/3YsOUHG
PDF: rdcu.be/eX0gz

screenshot of article title & author team

New paper & a thread on the results 👇

‘Reward-specific learning parameters change across normative adolescent development and are blunted in youth with high risk for depression’

acamh-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/doi/full/10....

🎶

Congratulations! this research is soo vital to the field right now!

Is this unique to DMN? This suggests the DMN literature needs further clarification. And perhaps the canonical regions of DMN need to be re-evaluated??

The Entangled Brain Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, cognition, or memory, but The Entangled Brain tackles a much bigger ...

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻
Annual reminder that the book is open access.
How do we think of the brain as a deeply interconnected system with highly distributed, non hierarchical processing.
Want to learn about the brain from a fresh perspective?
#neuroskyence
mitpress.mit.edu/978026254460...

Yeah i am not sure what to make of it first impressions. Reading the paper is on my list. I personally feel abit unraveled, at face value alone, given that BOLD and its assumptions underlie a majority of the literature. In particular, it suggets DMN is nowhere near straightforward as we once thought

Anyone else feel a taddd nauseous & unraveled at this conclusion? If valid, it seems to shake core assumptions for BOLD— in some ways, it might successfully redirect research that was in need of clarification but in other ways, i fear it brings us back to the drawing board for many other claims

Very well deserved! Congrats to Andy & Rich!

How to communicate the value of curiosity-driven research The burden of proof is on us, as researchers, to explain why what we do is valuable to society.

Terrific how-to on communicating the value of basic research to the public in @thetransmitter.bsky.social by @tonyzador.bsky.social.

You may be curious. But when you are communicating the value of what you do, it’s not about you. Point to discoveries.

www.thetransmitter.org/outreach/how...

Very cool!

Predictive coding: a more cognitive process than we thought? In predictive coding (PC), higher-order brain areas generate predictions that are sent to lower-order sensory areas. Top-down predictions are compared…

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Predictive coding: a more cognitive process than we thought?

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Call for submissions to the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology special issue on transdiagnostic approaches in neuropsychology.

Deadline is May 1.

Details here: think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

Mapping Lesions That Cause Psychosis This case-control study analyzes published cases of lesion-induced psychosisTo assess whether lesions that cause secondary psychosis have functional connections to a common brain circuit

JAMA Psychiatry

Mapping Lesions That Cause Psychosis to a Human Brain Circuit and Proposed Stimulation Target

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Some NIH study sections will resume reviewing grants, but final funding decisions are still in limbo While some NIH study sections will resume, advisory council meetings, which make final funding decisions, seem to still be held up.

STAT story is up about study section restart.

www.statnews.com/2025/02/24/s...

This is figure 3, which shows the predictors of dream recall and memory.

The likelihood to recall a dream in the morning and the ability to remember its content are modulated by a combination of stable individual traits and dynamic night-by-night and seasonal change, according to a study in Communications Psychology. https://go.nature.com/3EKJaCd 🧪

Global to local influences on temporal expectation in marmosets and humans Dragoi et al. utilize a timing task in marmosets and humans to show that both species share similar internal models of temporal expectation. Animals first acquire global and then local features of tem...

Global to local influences on temporal expectation in marmosets and humans
www.cell.com/current-biol...
#neuroscience

The frequent explanation from the decision-making literature is reduced information sampling linked to anxiety and depression. One other related factor is abnormal learning rates explaining underconfidence.What are your thoughts on those 2 as potential and (interacting) factors in this work?

Stage is set for Tidal 2025, perhaps the hippest conference I have been invited to speak at. Can’t wait to tell them about Rescorla and Wagner :-)

Every scientist, long before they were a scientist, was a little kid who stood in front of a fish tank or stared up at the stars or turned over a rock to look at the bugs underneath and said “wow”. On the best days, working in science still feels like that.

I love this so much

This would be a gigantic loss if true

Some good news for a change.

Hi all! I will be finishing my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in a few months and I am looking for a new role. Connections, advice, or opportunities (especially industry opportunities or insight into that market) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance !

Understanding learning through uncertainty and bias - Communications Psychology Flexible learning requires humans to adjust their behaviour to uncertainty. While normative learning models explain many adaptive behaviours, systematic biases-arising from inaccurate assumptions or c...

In our new @commspsychol.bsky.social review, we explore how humans adjust learning to different types of uncertainty, why biases arise, and what this reveals about learning and psychiatric conditions.

📖 Read more: nature.com/articles/s44...

With Matt Nassar & @haukeren.bsky.social

Neurobiological mechanisms of forgetting across timescales Every species in the animal kingdom that learns, also forgets. Despite this balance between learning and forgetting, most neuroscientific explorations…

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

Neurobiological mechanisms of forgetting across timescales

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The time course and organization of hippocampal replay The mechanisms by which the brain replays neural activity sequences remain unknown. Recording from large ensembles of hippocampal place cells in freely behaving rats, we observed that replay content i...

1/19 I’m thrilled that my postdoctoral work, with John Widloski and David Foster is now out in @science.org, along with a wonderful preview by Daniel Bendor!

From movement to motivation: a proposed framework to understand the antidepressant effect of exercise - Translational Psychiatry Translational Psychiatry - From movement to motivation: a proposed framework to understand the antidepressant effect of exercise

Great piece! We think it's also potentially very important in depression and its treatment, especially in relation to motivation

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Largest Study Ever Done on Cannabis and Brain Function Finds Impact on Working Memory Large study examined the effects of cannabis use on 1,000 adults. Researchers found 63% of heavy cannabis users exhibited reduced brain activity on a task.

This is important context for folks thinking about cannabis use. It affects important, cognitive brain functions 🧠 🧪 #neuroscience