Dr Karolina Farrell
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karolinafarrell.bsky.social
Dr Karolina Farrell
@karolinafarrell.bsky.social
Neuroscientist interested in psychiatric disorders. Research Fellow in the Institute of Neurology @uclqsion.bsky.social at UCL; previously at the Crick.
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#blueprint 1/7
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning - Nature Neuroscience
Dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors naturally fluctuates over females’ reproductive cycles with estrogenic signaling due to reduced expression of dopamine reuptake proteins.
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions
Nature Neuroscience - Liu and colleagues show that the vigor (that is, speed and amplitude) of dexterous movements is not controlled by ongoing fluctuations in extracellular dopamine within the...
rdcu.be
November 10, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Proud to have contributed to @gaiabianchini.bsky.social and @flor-iacaruso.bsky.social new paper on how the superior colliculus temporally integrates multisensory information
Functional specialisation of multisensory temporal integration in the mouse superior colliculus - Nature Communications
Whether and how anatomically distinct regions of the superior colliculus (SC) exhibit specialisation in multisensory temporal integration to facilitate different behavioural responses are not fully un...
www.nature.com
November 3, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
How does the brain find its way in realistic environments? 🧠 Using deep RL and neural data, we show that hippocampal-like networks support navigation, learning, and generalisation in partially observable environments—mirroring real animal behaviour. Now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI
Hippocampus supports multi-task reinforcement learning under partial observability - Nature Communications
Neural mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning in naturalistic environments are not fully understood. Here authors show that reinforcement learning (RL) agents with hippocampal-like recurrence, u...
www.nature.com
November 3, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Serial Ketamine Infusions as Adjunctive Therapy to Inpatient Care for Depression
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Serial Ketamine Infusions for Depression
This randomized clinical trial evaluates outcomes following adjunctive ketamine infusions vs midazolam for depression.
jamanetwork.com
October 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Open access link to new study in The Lancet:

The effects of antidepressants on cardiometabolic & other physiological parameters: a systematic review & network meta-analysis.

🧪🧠💊 #medsky
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
The effects of antidepressants on cardiometabolic and other physiological parameters: a systematic review and network meta-analysis
We found strong evidence that antidepressants differ markedly in their physiological effects, particularly for cardiometabolic parameters. Treatment guidelines should be updated to reflect differences...
www.thelancet.com
October 22, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Out today at Neuron, our experiments show that frontal cortical representation of economic variables is jointly determined by spatial organization and downstream
connectivity of neurons, revealing a structured, multi-scale code for economic variables. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
October 16, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
In this review, @kangjoolee.bsky.social and colleagues propose a provisional formalism, considering mechanism type, severity, and time, to map neuropsychiatric behavioral pathology to its underlying dynamic neural mechanisms to advance the development of precision treatments.
A framework for advancing mechanistic neuro-behavioral biomarkers in psychiatry
Neuropsychiatry has yet to surmount the fundamental challenge of mapping behavioral pathology to its underlying neural pathology. This gap limits the development of treatments for specific circuit pat...
www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com
October 13, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
All-optical experiments are great but @neurorussell.bsky.social found that opsin desensitization due to cross-talk between the imaging laser and the opsin causes major issues. These can be ameleorated with long inter-stimulus intervals & short imaging doses. All here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Desensitization of opsin responses during all-optical interrogation depends on imaging parameters
Significance The combination of two-photon calcium imaging and two-photon optogenetic stimulation, termed all-optical interrogation, provides spatial and temporal precision when recording and manipula...
www.biorxiv.org
October 12, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Sorry all, been a bit away from social media - but very happy to show our latest, slightly massive review on neuro gene therapy. Some quite amazing co-authors who dwarf me in their amazingness. Here, as a pre-proof. Still some (quite a bit) of finessing pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/article/S003... 🧪
Genetic therapies for neurological diseases
Often, gene therapy reviews concentrate upon specific therapeutic modalities – particularly either viral vector-mediated or a non-viral approach. Here, we draw together a comprehensive array of knowle...
pharmrev.aspetjournals.org
October 3, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Post doc job alert 📢! Announcing a v exciting job on a Wellcome-funded project in my group at UCL, looking at auditory hallucinations... Advert here 👀: rb.gy/230w8l - deadline is end of Oct. Please apply! 1/5
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
rb.gy
September 30, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
New #job alert! Clinical research fellow / postdoc in #computationalpsychiatry at the @mpc-comppsych.bsky.social / @uclqsion.bsky.social and UCL psychiatry. We will aim to understand the computations engaged by serotonin in the treatment of depression. Please re-sky. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
October 1, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
We have a PhD project here, along with many other cool projects:

"Characterising and predicting seizure onsets from longitudinal sEEG data",
www.crick.ac.uk/careers-and-...

with @flor-iacaruso.bsky.social (Crick), Torsten Baldeweg (UCL) and Martin Tisdall (UCL).

Apply by: 14 November 2025.
October 2, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.
September 24, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Nature Neuroscience

Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind - Nature Neuroscience
Differences in neuroeconomic decision-making influence nucleus accumbens dopamine dynamics and reflect choice confidence during evaluation, as well as past and future value during re-evaluation, which...
www.nature.com
August 25, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Prefrontal contribution to passive coping behaviour in chronic stress and treatment by fast-acting antidepressant
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prefrontal contribution to passive coping behaviour in chronic stress and treatment by fast-acting antidepressant - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - Prefrontal contribution to passive coping behaviour in chronic stress and treatment by fast-acting antidepressant
www.nature.com
August 18, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
This paper has everything:
- a predator avoidance task with an eagle puppet 🦅
- rigid place coding and behavior in an #Alzheimer's model
- another predator avoidance task, with a taxidermied weasel 👀

Run, don't walk, to read one of my favorite papers this year: www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Disruption of hippocampal-prefrontal neural dynamics and risky decision-making in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease
Kim et al. show that 5XFAD mice exhibit persistent risk-taking and reduced behavioral flexibility in naturalistic “approach food-avoid predator” foraging paradigms. Simultaneous neural recordings reve...
www.cell.com
August 11, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
New lab paper by @merridee.bsky.social identifying a novel role for VTA GABA neurons in behavioral flexibility

GABA, but not dopamine, neuron activation correlates with behavior when cues unexpectedly shift from predicting punishment to predicting reward www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Flexible updating of reward and punishment contingencies by VTA GABA neurons
In dynamic environments where stimuli predicting reward or punishment unexpectedly change, it is critical to flexibly update behavior while preserving…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 31, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
The potential for 2 cancer drugs in combination to impact Alzheimer's disease as an outgrowth or single-cell RNA -seq, review of electronic health records from 1.4 million patients, and whittling down 1,300 potential repurposed drugs to 2.
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Cell-type-directed network-correcting combination therapy for Alzheimer’s disease
A multi-cell-type drug discovery strategy targeting dysregulated gene networks in neurons and glia identified letrozole and irinotecan as a combination therapy that significantly improved memory and r...
www.cell.com
July 21, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Burnout is clinically understood as a combo of 6 factors—work overload, lack of control, insufficient rewards, breakdown in community, absence of fairness, & value conflicts—and only a fraction of it is under your control. Burnout is a systemic problem, so be kind to yourself and hard on the system.
Hey gang I've had to learn recently that the whole "burning out" thing is real so if you find yourself being panicked every waking second that you're not working on something, despite those seconds being very rare, you should maybe listen to the signals and take an intentional break before you crash
July 13, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
June 11, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
🧠💥 Our new preprint is out!

We pooled 5 RCTs on intranasal esketamine for treatment-resistant depression—and found clear sex-specific patterns in how patients respond.
Read it here: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

#TRD #Esketamine #Neuropsychiatry #OpenScience #MentalHealth
Sex differences in placebo and antidepressant response to intranasal esketamine for treatment-resistant depression: a pooled participant analysis of randomized controlled trials
Background Racemic ketamine and its enantiomer, esketamine, have emerged as fast-acting antidepressant options for individuals with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Yet, despite growing clinical ...
www.medrxiv.org
June 28, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
Reposted by Dr Karolina Farrell
"When you outsource the thinking, you outsource the learning." deplet.ing/the-copilot-...
The Copilot Delusion
Disclaimer: This post was written May 2025, and the arguments apply to AI code capabilities at this time. The arguments around lack of competence are certainly likely to become less prevalent-while th...
deplet.ing
June 24, 2025 at 7:57 PM