Iris Ka-Yi Chat

Registration for #PNIRS2026 is now open at www.pnirs.org/meetings! Submit your abstracts (content-submission.pnirs.org) for the annual meeting in beautiful New Orleans and join us for a wonderful week discussing the hottest topics in #psychoneuroimmunology research

Upregulation of reward mesolimbic activity and immune response to vaccination: a randomized controlled trial - Nature Medicine Upregulation of the ventral tegmental area via neurofeedback is associated with a stronger immune response to hepatitis B virus vaccination, and VTA upregulation is achieved through conscious positive...

Upregulation of reward mesolimbic activity and immune response to vaccination: a randomized controlled trial

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

Thank you @acnporg.bsky.social for the ACNP Travel Award to make this opportunity happen, and Erika Forbes for nominating me for this award!

Basal Ganglia Dopamine Availability and Immune Activation Interact and Relate to Anhedonia Severity among Youth with Depression Anhedonia emerges in adolescence, has putative substrates in neural reward and dopamine systems, and is a hallmark of poor course in depression. Psychoneuroimmunology models suggest altered immune and...

At #ACNP2026? Come see my poster (W45, 5–7 pm)! We @erika-forbes.bsky.social find that immune activation and basal ganglia dopamine availability interact and relate to anhedonia among youth w/ depression, with evidence for anticipatory and not consummatory anhedonia.

Preprint is now available!

This is your brain on Ritalin. Got your attention? Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) do, but not in the way you might think. They don't act directly on the brain’s attention systems! Find out what's really happening in @cellpress.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Basal Ganglia Dopamine Availability and Immune Activation Interact and Relate to Anhedonia Severity among Youth with Depression https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.23.696320v1

The lab is recruiting a postdoc. Please share with anyone who might be interested.

www.adaptprogram.com/join-adapt

Excited to share that I'm accepting applications for a PhD student to join my lab in Fall 2026!

More info on how to apply can be found here: graduate.catalog.tcu.edu/colleges/eng...

@bsamjournal.bsky.social @pnirs.bsky.social #HealthPsychology #PNI #Psychoneuroimmunology #DevelopmentalPsychology

The Two Faces of #PTSD: Fear vs. Emotional Pain. Our new research in Biological Psychiatry @biologicalpsych.bsky.social identifies distinct clinical & neural profiles.

AI says no one reads long papers, so we made an infographic!👇

Full Paper (for the insistents😉): doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Prevention and intervention for inflammation-associated transdiagnostic psychopathology: A role for clinical psychologists: https://osf.io/qysa2

Congratulations @iriskayichat.bsky.social!!! See you there 😎

Thanks, Kate 😊 Looking forward to learning about your latest research at your coming talk. Let’s catch up!

Thanks, Alex! 😊

Thanks, Steph! 😊

Honored to receive the ACNP Travel Award and looking forward to attending my first ACNP conference in the Bahamas! #ACNP2026 @acnporg.bsky.social

Dr. Iris Ka-Yi Chat explores neurobiological mechanisms of motivation deficits & anhedonia, with a focus on immune function, reward processes, and their crosstalk in adolescents and emerging adults 🧠 #ACNP2026 / @iriskayichat.bsky.social

#RewardSignals

Are you working on #CancerNeuroscience and presenting at #SfN? Let me know! I want to come see your talk or poster and the app is really not helpful for locating your info 🤓. Drop it in 🧵 please 🙏

Unintended bias in the pursuit of collinearity solutions in fMRI analysis Abstract. In task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), collinearity between task regressors in time series models may impact power. When collinearity is identified after data collection, rese...

If you use the Monetary Incentive Delay task or any task with complex events in fMRI, you should read this. We demonstrate that common modeling approaches can result in bias due to omitted variables. By @jeanette-mumford.bsky.social & the ABCD task fMRI team. direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Developing interferon-β as a safe in vivo experimental-medicine model of human inflammation Inflammation is increasingly implicated in a wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders from depression to dementia. Compelling ev…

Developing interferon-β as a safe in vivo experimental-medicine model of human inflammation

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

A photo of me and statement I wrote about running for President/President-Elect of the new HiTOP Society: "I’m so excited to be nominated as President for our new HiTOP Society! I’ve been part of HiTOP for a decade now and have worked hard to advance both the science and the scientific organisation. My research has focused on strengthening the structural validity evidence at HiTOP’s foundations, and I’m committed to improving the model as much as we can. My leadership in HiTOP started with co-chairing the Revisions Workgroup in 2018, and leading the development of our revisions protocol. This role gave me a seat on the Executive Committee of the Consortium where I’ve worked to strengthen the organisation—for example, proposing and writing our monthly updates for six years, building and maintaining our new website, and using feedback from our members to develop a strategic plan to address the issues many of you raised. That work has also underpinned our shift to a society model, and I would be very proud to have the opportunity to lead us in this new chapter. I have some ideas of specific things we can work on—setting up awards and small grants for members, for example—but my main focus would be hearing from you all and working to build an organisation that reflects our shared values and ambitions in shaping the future of HiTOP."

If you're a member of the HiTOP Society, I hope you'll consider voting for me for President 💛

I'd be delighted to lead us in this new chapter

Ballots went out today so we can join the current deluge of exciting election results

And whether or not you vote for me - please do vote!

I’ve spent the last 8 years(!) working from the position that HiTOP relies too much on analyses of traditional diagnoses, baking in limitations of the DSM, and that we need to move to symptom-level analyses to fix it

It turns out that rebuilding HiTOP from the ground up doesn’t change much 💀

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Clinical Psychology Program in the Department of Psychology at UH | Department of Psychology | University of Houston College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Excited to share that I’ll be reviewing applications for the Clinical Child Psychology Program at the University of Houston this cycle!

If you’re interested in clinical neuroscience research of autism, please consider applying to join our growing team.

More info here: www.uh.edu/class/psycho...

Obesity, low-grade inflammation, and inflammatory response to immune challenge modulate willingness to expend effort for reward: https://osf.io/xtkw7

The role of subcortical brain tissue iron as an indicator of dopamine neurophysiology in adolescent cannabis use: https://osf.io/rfh6k

Submit your symposia proposals for the #PNIRS2026 Annual Meeting in New Orleans! This year's meeting theme is Modifiable Risk Factors Across the Lifespan.

More info and submission site here: mss-abstracts.pnirs.org

Thrilled to share that I am planning to admit a grad student and will be reviewing applications to the clinical psychology PhD program at Miami University! Excited to mentor and learn from future mentees! For information about my lab and application FAQ, check out: www.seahpepl.com/joincontact-...

PNIRS 2026

📣 #PNIRS2026: Save the Date‼️

🗓️ June 22–25, 2026
📍 New Orleans, Louisiana 🇺🇸

✨ Whether your PsychoNeuroImmunology research emphasizes the P, N, or I — we look forward to seeing your work and connecting in The Big Easy!

📻 Stay tuned for more info re: call for abstracts. Please spread the word 🙏🏼

It is time for our annual Tell Us About Your Research series!! Please fill out the form here by November 11th if you would like your research to be featured in this fun weekly series! 🔬🧠👩‍🔬

t.co/25hh5XUCKw

Please RSVP & spread the word! #UCLA