Holly Sullivan-Toole
@hollysully.bsky.social
Dev Affective Neuro, Reward, Reinforcement Learning, Anhedonia, Dopaminergic Circuitry, Brain Iron
she/her
she/her
Southern Sunday dinner!! Chicken and cornbread waffles, collard/mustard greens, carrots, parsnips and leeks, and black eyed peas (hiding at the bottom of the bowl)
November 24, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Southern Sunday dinner!! Chicken and cornbread waffles, collard/mustard greens, carrots, parsnips and leeks, and black eyed peas (hiding at the bottom of the bowl)
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Keep this story in the news.
"Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney"
www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee...
"Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney"
www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee...
Man detained by ICE found dead, hanging with hands and feet tied—attorney
The Chinese national died in Pennsylvania in August, but his family's requests for answers from DHS have gone unmet.
www.newsweek.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Keep this story in the news.
"Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney"
www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee...
"Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney"
www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee...
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
🧠💸 Launching the RewardSignals feed
RewardSignals is a custom feed collecting posts about reward processing and decision making.
To appear in the feed, tag your post with #RewardSignals.
You can find and pin the feed from the Feeds tab as “RewardSignals”.
#RewardSignals
RewardSignals is a custom feed collecting posts about reward processing and decision making.
To appear in the feed, tag your post with #RewardSignals.
You can find and pin the feed from the Feeds tab as “RewardSignals”.
#RewardSignals
November 15, 2025 at 8:02 PM
🧠💸 Launching the RewardSignals feed
RewardSignals is a custom feed collecting posts about reward processing and decision making.
To appear in the feed, tag your post with #RewardSignals.
You can find and pin the feed from the Feeds tab as “RewardSignals”.
#RewardSignals
RewardSignals is a custom feed collecting posts about reward processing and decision making.
To appear in the feed, tag your post with #RewardSignals.
You can find and pin the feed from the Feeds tab as “RewardSignals”.
#RewardSignals
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Things that will get you kicked out of academia forever:
- taking maternity leave at the wrong time
- spending too much time with your kids
- reporting harassment
- not moving every 2-3 years
- taking a partner's job/preferences into account
- mouthing off before tenure
- taking maternity leave at the wrong time
- spending too much time with your kids
- reporting harassment
- not moving every 2-3 years
- taking a partner's job/preferences into account
- mouthing off before tenure
A guy makes ONE tiny mistake (has a years-long friendship with the world's worst sex trafficker; brags about sexually harassing colleagues; is racist; says women are stupid) and his whole LIFE is blown up (does slightly fewer speaking engagements; keeps teaching at #1 university)??!?!?!?!?!
So Harvard is keeping this guy, but Claudine Gay had to step down over ginned up plagiarism accusations and bad-faith accusations of anti-Semitism.
Got it.
Got it.
November 18, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Things that will get you kicked out of academia forever:
- taking maternity leave at the wrong time
- spending too much time with your kids
- reporting harassment
- not moving every 2-3 years
- taking a partner's job/preferences into account
- mouthing off before tenure
- taking maternity leave at the wrong time
- spending too much time with your kids
- reporting harassment
- not moving every 2-3 years
- taking a partner's job/preferences into account
- mouthing off before tenure
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Childhood adversity, low positive affect and psychopathology: a meta-analytic structural equation modeling study www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Childhood adversity, low positive affect and psychopathology: a meta-analytic structural equation modeling study - Nature Mental Health
In this meta-analytic structural equation modeling study, Stoia et al. examined whether positive affect mediates the relationship between childhood adversity and psychopathology.
www.nature.com
November 17, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Childhood adversity, low positive affect and psychopathology: a meta-analytic structural equation modeling study www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Check out this cool new experimental study by Jonas Dora, et al on the effects of negative mood ☹️ and alcohol intoxication 🍺🍸on reinforcement learning!!
Our experimental study on the effects of negative mood and alcohol intoxication on reinforcement learning in the Iowa Gambling Task is now published OA in Judgment and Decision Making: doi.org/10.1017/jdm.... as always, anonymized data, materials, and code can be found on the OSF: osf.io/ky3aj/
November 17, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Check out this cool new experimental study by Jonas Dora, et al on the effects of negative mood ☹️ and alcohol intoxication 🍺🍸on reinforcement learning!!
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Any computational RL people have thoughts (or even better a link to a paper) about effect sizes in the context of RL parameters like learning rate?
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
November 17, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Any computational RL people have thoughts (or even better a link to a paper) about effect sizes in the context of RL parameters like learning rate?
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.
Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
November 16, 2025 at 11:43 PM
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.
Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
Any computational RL people have thoughts (or even better a link to a paper) about effect sizes in the context of RL parameters like learning rate?
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
November 17, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Any computational RL people have thoughts (or even better a link to a paper) about effect sizes in the context of RL parameters like learning rate?
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
I vaguely remember talking to someone about effect sizes possibly not being very meaningful…but a paper on the topic would be awesome!!
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Michigan helped reignite the career of cancer survivor Suzanne Perkins @20thofmay.bsky.social, whose research stems from the insight that education plays a key role in recovery for children at risk. Now she's crafting the future of learning: myumi.ch/9pWk3 #LifeChangingEducation #LookToMichigan
November 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Michigan helped reignite the career of cancer survivor Suzanne Perkins @20thofmay.bsky.social, whose research stems from the insight that education plays a key role in recovery for children at risk. Now she's crafting the future of learning: myumi.ch/9pWk3 #LifeChangingEducation #LookToMichigan
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
In the olden dayes we would know by now the relative force impact of a fully laden subway sandwich fired at point blank range by an inebriated individual who hasn’t thrown anything in 15 years. Academic tweetersky is a pale shadow. 🙁
November 5, 2025 at 6:33 PM
In the olden dayes we would know by now the relative force impact of a fully laden subway sandwich fired at point blank range by an inebriated individual who hasn’t thrown anything in 15 years. Academic tweetersky is a pale shadow. 🙁
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Thank you so much to all of my co-authors on this paper; I certainly would not have received this award without all of the brilliant support I have gotten!
@kjobson.bsky.social just won honorable mention as paper of the year from the Neurobiology of Language for our (really her) cerebellar paper.with @ingridsbrain.bsky.social and me. direct.mit.edu/nol/article/...
Language and the Cerebellum: Structural Connectivity to the Eloquent Brain
Abstract. Neurobiological models of receptive language have focused on the left-hemisphere perisylvian cortex with the assumption that the cerebellum supports peri-linguistic cognitive processes such ...
direct.mit.edu
September 13, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Thank you so much to all of my co-authors on this paper; I certainly would not have received this award without all of the brilliant support I have gotten!
Awesome work on dense sampling of reward response from @mattmattoni.bsky.social!!! with a great thread detailing findings!!
🚨🚨New precision imaging study and open dataset 🚨🚨 Featuring almost 200 functional runs acquired in 3-4d intervals and behavioral manipulations focused on intraindividual study of the reward response - The Night Owls Scan Club (NOSC) With @dvsmith.bsky.social and @olinotom.bsky.social!
September 29, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Awesome work on dense sampling of reward response from @mattmattoni.bsky.social!!! with a great thread detailing findings!!
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look"
chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
Feds in military gear flood downtown Chicago; top border official says arrests based on 'how they look'
The immigration agents were spotted making arrests in downtown Chicago and River North neighborhood early Sunday.
chicago.suntimes.com
September 28, 2025 at 11:49 PM
In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look"
chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
somehow I missed this!
Dopamine represents a domain-general teaching signal:
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Dopamine represents a domain-general teaching signal:
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Striatal dopamine signals errors in prediction across different informational domains
Dopamine reflects prediction errors not only about reward but also about valueless stimuli, challenging many current theories.
www.science.org
September 16, 2025 at 7:44 PM
somehow I missed this!
Dopamine represents a domain-general teaching signal:
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Dopamine represents a domain-general teaching signal:
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Corn bread in a waffle iron is next level!!!
September 26, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Corn bread in a waffle iron is next level!!!
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
August 28, 2025 at 10:24 AM
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Do late adolescents and emerging adults who live in a communities with higher violent crime rates exhibit altered reward-related neural activation? This question was recently investigated in a sample of 101 adolescents.
Read more in BSAM, free for the week!
#healthpsych #psychscicky
Read more in BSAM, free for the week!
#healthpsych #psychscicky
Residence in Communities With Higher Violent Crimes... : Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine
dequately understood. Furthermore, most of the adversity literature examines individual-level exposure (eg, crime victimization), whereas efforts to consider neighborhood-level factors (eg, neighborho...
journals.lww.com
August 20, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Do late adolescents and emerging adults who live in a communities with higher violent crime rates exhibit altered reward-related neural activation? This question was recently investigated in a sample of 101 adolescents.
Read more in BSAM, free for the week!
#healthpsych #psychscicky
Read more in BSAM, free for the week!
#healthpsych #psychscicky
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
✨ New paper ✨ in JAMA Pediatrics! We discuss how understanding the timing ⏰ of stressful events relative to neurodevelopment can help us better identify risk factors (looking backward) and predict future psychopathology (looking forward) at the individual level
#neuroskyence #devpsych #PsychSciSky
#neuroskyence #devpsych #PsychSciSky
Timing and plasticity are critical to progress in research on stress and neurodevelopment
@ariellekeller.bsky.social
@jamapediatrics.com
@utdallas.bsky.social
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
@ariellekeller.bsky.social
@jamapediatrics.com
@utdallas.bsky.social
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Neurodevelopmental Timing Links Stress and Psychopathology
This Viewpoint discusses the importance of contextualizing stressful experiences and the neurodevelopmental trajectory to predict the risk of psychopathology.
jamanetwork.com
August 19, 2025 at 5:56 PM
✨ New paper ✨ in JAMA Pediatrics! We discuss how understanding the timing ⏰ of stressful events relative to neurodevelopment can help us better identify risk factors (looking backward) and predict future psychopathology (looking forward) at the individual level
#neuroskyence #devpsych #PsychSciSky
#neuroskyence #devpsych #PsychSciSky
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions
The paper highlights actionable steps to help improve these double standards, including more RESEARCH RELATED LANGUAGE in P &T letters for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous women to improve their outcomes.
Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions - Nature Human Behaviour
Masters-Waage et al. report that underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in the USA face barriers in the promotion and tenure process, receiving more negative votes and fewer unanimous positive decisi...
www.nature.com
August 16, 2025 at 12:54 AM
Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf
TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .
TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .
Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model
Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...
rdcu.be
August 13, 2025 at 9:55 PM
My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf
TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .
TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
I will be interviewing for a clinical psychology PhD student in the Precision Psychopathology + Dynamic Immunopsychiatry Lab this interview cycle.
Please see our website for more info about what we do + share with applicants you think might be a good fit.
share.google/uJRyS3NY9Kdo...
Please see our website for more info about what we do + share with applicants you think might be a good fit.
share.google/uJRyS3NY9Kdo...
Precision Psychopathology + Dynamic Immunopsychiatry Lab – University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology
share.google
August 7, 2025 at 11:23 AM
I will be interviewing for a clinical psychology PhD student in the Precision Psychopathology + Dynamic Immunopsychiatry Lab this interview cycle.
Please see our website for more info about what we do + share with applicants you think might be a good fit.
share.google/uJRyS3NY9Kdo...
Please see our website for more info about what we do + share with applicants you think might be a good fit.
share.google/uJRyS3NY9Kdo...
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Matthew Mattoni, Thomas M. Olino, et al:
Functional connectivity heterogeneity and consequences for clinical and cognitive prediction: Stage 2 registered report
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
Functional connectivity heterogeneity and consequences for clinical and cognitive prediction: Stage 2 registered report
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
August 13, 2025 at 8:09 AM
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Matthew Mattoni, Thomas M. Olino, et al:
Functional connectivity heterogeneity and consequences for clinical and cognitive prediction: Stage 2 registered report
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
Functional connectivity heterogeneity and consequences for clinical and cognitive prediction: Stage 2 registered report
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...