Today I am excited to introduce respyra - an open-source Python toolbox for respiratory tracking experiments in interoception research!
Now on PyPI (pip install respyra) with a preprint on PsyArXiv:
osf.io/preprints/ps...
GitHub: github.com/embodied-com...
Body and brain signalling during naturalistic learning situations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.09.698657v1
New preprint! 🧠🫀
Combining #EEG and #HRV, we examined how students' and instructors' cardiac and brain activity varied across the progression of a naturalistic learning situation in aviation and forestry contexts.
@uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social @tiinapa.bsky.social #neuroskyence
After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.
If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.
eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
📆 updated for 2026!
list of summer schools & short courses in the realm of (computational) neuroscience or data analysis of EEG / MEG / LFP: 🔗 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Very proud to announce that the final chapter of my thesis is now out in Cell Reports! How do neurophysiological traits that characterize individuals evolve across the lifespan? We combined data from over 1,000 individuals aged 4–89 to answer this question. (1/6) 🧠👶👦👧👱👩🦱🧔♂️🧓👴
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
📣 New Event!
🧠 #turkubrainandmind is collaborating with Jyväskylä Brain & Mind to host a BrainBreak webinar on Big Data in Brain & Biobank Research.
📅 January 19, 2026
⏰ 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
🌐 Online (Zoom)
Register here: buff.ly/v45DLPn
@uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social
@utu.fi
#brainbreak
🫀 New preprint alert! 🌆
Thrilled to share the first paper of my PhD on heart-rate synchrony during social interactions in urban environments. @sinelabdtu.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New preprint: "Bodily Rhythms Gate Action–Perception Coupling"
Cardiorespiratory cycles gate when it's best to sense & act on the world, shaping when precision peaks
Active sensing + Interoception + Active inference 🧠
🔗 bit.ly/3MinQIi
w/ @micahgallen.com; Lucas Naranjo; @jameskilner.bsky.social
Stylized logo of the MindBrainBody Symposium
*13th MindBrainBody Symposium*
📆 Mar 9-11, 2026
🏠 #Berlin & virtual
(deadline: Jan 8, 2026)
Keynotes:
- @ulrikebingel.bsky.social
- Karl Friston (online)
- @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social
- Sonja Kotz
- Julian Thayer
...& so much more: prizes, posters, talks, food, drinks, encounters.
Let's meet!
Recording setup and data analysis. Top left panel: Schematic of the position of the electrodes to record EEG (white), ESI (black), ECG (red), somatosensory activity at Erb’s points (green), and the positions of Common Mode Sense (CMS) (blue) and DRL (orange) electrodes. Note that Erb and ECG electrodes were placed on the chest, while ESI electrodes were placed on the back. Top right and bottom panels: Flowchart describing the analysis procedure. (1 and 2) Raw ESI signals are first re-referenced to the most caudal dorsal electrode (S64). (3) The artifact caused by the electrical stimulation of the median nerve is removed by linear interpolation. (4) The ECG is used to identify ESI time windows contaminated by the QRS complex (orange). This allows subsequent selection of ESI time windows to retain. (5) These time windows are epoched around the somatosensory stimulus. (6) An amplitude-based threshold is used to identify and remove artifactual epochs (red). (7) Resulting artifact-free epochs are averaged across stimuli of each block. Subject-level average waveforms are subsequently averaged across participants. (8) Images of the spatial distribution of spinal cord activity are calculated by spline interpolation across ESI electrodes. The figurine depicts spinal cord activity at the latency of the N13 wave.
The role of the #SpinalCord in relaying brain-body signals has been hard to study noninvasively. @giuliog.bsky.social &co develop Electrical Spinal Imaging (ESI), enabling high-resolution, noninvasive recordings, revealing how #attention modulates spinal activity @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3MswZOf
Exemplary analysis pipeline for respiratory data
'Robust circular cluster-based statistics
for respiration-brain coupling'
New preprint, and what a way to welcome @teresaberther.bsky.social to the #neuroskyence community. With @eliobalestrieri.bsky.social, she developed CBPT for circular #bodybrain analyses.
Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧵🔽
** Recruiting a postdoc ** We are looking for a postdoc to work on emotion, mental health, and interoception, based in London at @ucl.ac.uk in my lab (Clinical and Affective Neuroscience). Part of a large Wellcome Grant (co-led with the brilliant @camillanord.bsky.social)
🥳👏
Transparent and comprehensive statistical reporting is critical for ensuring the credibility, reproducibility, and interpretability of psychological research. This paper offers a structured set of guidelines for reporting statistical analyses in quantitative psychology, emphasizing clarity at both the planning and results stages. Drawing on established recommendations and emerging best practices, we outline key decisions related to hypothesis formulation, sample size justification, preregistration, outlier and missing data handling, statistical model specification, and the interpretation of inferential outcomes. We address considerations across frequentist and Bayesian frameworks and fixed as well as sequential research designs, including guidance on effect size reporting, equivalence testing, and the appropriate treatment of null results. To facilitate implementation of these recommendations, we provide the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology (TSRP) Checklist that researchers can use to systematically evaluate and improve their statistical reporting practices (https://osf.io/t2zpq/). In addition, we provide a curated list of freely available tools, packages, and functions that researchers can use to implement transparent reporting practices in their own analyses to bridge the gap between theory and practice. To illustrate the practical application of these principles, we provide a side-by-side comparison of insufficient versus best-practice reporting using a hypothetical cognitive psychology study. By adopting transparent reporting standards, researchers can improve the robustness of individual studies and facilitate cumulative scientific progress through more reliable meta-analyses and research syntheses.
Our paper on improving statistical reporting in psychology is now online 🎉
As a part of this paper, we also created the Transparent Statistical Reporting in Psychology checklist, which researchers can use to improve their statistical reporting practices
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
New perspective paper out now in @plosbiology.org with a few thoughts on #interoception: What it is (or rather is not), how it can inform therapeutic interventions, and where (we think) the field of brain-body #neuroskyence has yet to find more solid ground to build on.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
So happy this paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! We investigated whether fluctuations in MEPs can be explained by phasic influences from internal bodily rhythms, and whether this might happen independently per organ system.
#interoception #neuroskyence
More on the link brain-heart axis and sensorimotor function, relevant for BCI research 🤖: Different bodily rhythms are coupled with cortical regions at rest. Here we show that motor imagery triggers a decoupling of cardiac dynamics with motor cortex functional connectivity 🧠🫀 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
How does mindfulness change body awareness? Excited to share our meta-analysis on mindfulness training and #interoception. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New paper just accepted in NBBR investigating the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and stress. Some relationships....but it’s complicated! One area where how we measure both interoception and stress really matters. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
📣 Out in TINS (@cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social):
Neural processing is often described as either externally or internally directed. In our new Forum article, we (@freekvanede.bsky.social & Kia Nobre) propose a multilevel framework for conceptualising external and internal continua of brain processes.
Logo of the MindBrainBody Symposium
Nice things for the
**13th #MindBrainBody Symposium 2026**
happening under the hood 😊
Save the date: 📆 March 9-11, 2026 (Berlin and virtual)
Stay tuned for the call and announcement!
(For info about the last 12 MBBSymposia: mindbrainbody.de)
#interoception #neuroskyence
schematic of fetal OPM-MEG
📈🧠 We're looking for brains! 🧠📈
Postdoc + PhD positions are available to help pioneer fetal MEG with optically pumped magnetometers, measuring prenatal responses to sound and light to understand how we start making sense of the world even before we're born. 🐣
Please get in touch to hear more!
I'm thrilled to share that our new paper is now published in Psychophysiology (Open Access):
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@zacndr.bsky.social @teamlabuda.bsky.social @fraferri.bsky.social @danlikesbrains.bsky.social
In some way, it's trivial:
The #brain & the rest of the #body (e.g. the #heart) are coupled.
Yet, we spelled it out
w/ A. Villringer & V. Nikulin for current scientists (below)
w/ @martager.bsky.social @agatapatyczek.bsky.social @el-rei.bsky.social for future scientists bsky.app/profile/mart...
Villringer et al. Figure 1. Conceptual framework for brain–body states
Villringer et al. Figure 2 Brain–body micro-, meso-, and macro-states can be distinguished on the basis of their duration and reversibility
'Brain–body states as a link between cardiovascular and mental health'
by Arno Villringer, Vadim Nikulin & Michael Gaebler @mbe-lab.bsky.social @michaelgaebler.com @mpicbs.bsky.social sky.social
www.cell.com/trends/neuro...
📢Our peer-reviewed article about the AffectTracker is finally out! 😲🕹️📈
Traditional methods for rating emotion often miss the dynamic, moment-to-moment nature of feelings. We designed a tool to capture this continuous affective experience in real-time during dynamic emotional stimulation.
Tervetuloa Tutkijoiden yöhön!
🧠 Muuttuvat aivot
🕛 26.9. 16.00-21.00
📍 Alfa, Agora, @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social
#TutkijoidenYö #ResearchersNight #Tiedetaivas
🧠🫀 New from our lab on Frontiers for Young Minds:
Ever wondered how the heart and brain communicate? Think the heart as the drummer 🥁 & the brain as the singer 🎤 keeping the body's band in tune!
Read here (for ages 8–15): kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2025.1536787/full
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Absolutely thrilled to share the 🌟 FIRST PAPER 🌟 from ACORN Lab! 🐿️ I’m beyond proud of all-star grad student @heatherarobinson.bsky.social for this review of “exposome” effects on neurodevelopment & cognition! Paper here rdcu.be/ezUqx & thread below 👇 /1
#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #devsky #cogdev
