Maximilian König, PhD
@mxkoenig.bsky.social
Psychologist studying mental health risk and resilience in young people with childhood adversity.
www.mxkoenig.com
www.mxkoenig.com
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Just published! ✨ Across 15+ timepoints, we found that unpredictability in economic hardship – not only severity – shapes young children’s self-regulation. Understanding these dynamics can help us design supports that promote stability and adaptive development. 👉 bit.ly/4oIZO75
Hidden dynamics of economic hardship: Characterizing economic unpredictability and its role on self-regulation in early childhood | Development and Psychopathology | Cambridge Core
Hidden dynamics of economic hardship: Characterizing economic unpredictability and its role on self-regulation in early childhood
bit.ly
October 30, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Just published! ✨ Across 15+ timepoints, we found that unpredictability in economic hardship – not only severity – shapes young children’s self-regulation. Understanding these dynamics can help us design supports that promote stability and adaptive development. 👉 bit.ly/4oIZO75
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠
Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com
Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...
Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com
Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...
CATS Lab
Child & Adolescent Translational Science Lab at Northwestern University
nucatslab.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:39 PM
I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠
Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com
Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...
Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com
Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...
I’m deeply grateful and proud to have defended my PhD on Thursday! Thankful for an inspiring committee with thought-provoking questions, the love and support from colleagues, friends, and family, and above all, for the best Doktormutter anyone could wish for.
September 28, 2025 at 9:07 AM
I’m deeply grateful and proud to have defended my PhD on Thursday! Thankful for an inspiring committee with thought-provoking questions, the love and support from colleagues, friends, and family, and above all, for the best Doktormutter anyone could wish for.
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
How do we work with young people to develop new mental health interventions that draw on different disciplines? In this new paper, we outline our approach in developing the @resetproject.bsky.social programme, a new transdiagnostic preventative intervention for young people 👇
lnkd.in/eYkuaHZB
lnkd.in/eYkuaHZB
Co-producing an interdisciplinary, preventative mental health intervention: development of the building resilience through socioemotional training (ReSET) programme
Adolescence is a developmental period of increased susceptibility to mental health problems. In response to rising rates of psychopathology in this age group, there have been calls to develop new o...
www.tandfonline.com
September 19, 2025 at 7:31 AM
How do we work with young people to develop new mental health interventions that draw on different disciplines? In this new paper, we outline our approach in developing the @resetproject.bsky.social programme, a new transdiagnostic preventative intervention for young people 👇
lnkd.in/eYkuaHZB
lnkd.in/eYkuaHZB
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Today is #WorldSuicidePreventionDay.
Worried someone might be struggling with suicidal thoughts?
Your presence can be powerful. A simple check-in could be the lifeline they need. 💙
Learn more about #SuicidePrevention 👉 bit.ly/4phPYKi
Worried someone might be struggling with suicidal thoughts?
Your presence can be powerful. A simple check-in could be the lifeline they need. 💙
Learn more about #SuicidePrevention 👉 bit.ly/4phPYKi
September 10, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Today is #WorldSuicidePreventionDay.
Worried someone might be struggling with suicidal thoughts?
Your presence can be powerful. A simple check-in could be the lifeline they need. 💙
Learn more about #SuicidePrevention 👉 bit.ly/4phPYKi
Worried someone might be struggling with suicidal thoughts?
Your presence can be powerful. A simple check-in could be the lifeline they need. 💙
Learn more about #SuicidePrevention 👉 bit.ly/4phPYKi
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Really excited that my first PhD paper is now out in @elife.bsky.social: Sense of control buffers against stress.
This has been a great team effort with Jinyu Shi, Dan McGlade, @docqhuys.bsky.social and Niko Steinbeis, comprising two studies and a total of N=768!
Summary thread below 🧵⬇️
This has been a great team effort with Jinyu Shi, Dan McGlade, @docqhuys.bsky.social and Niko Steinbeis, comprising two studies and a total of N=768!
Summary thread below 🧵⬇️
Sense of control buffers against stress
doi.org
March 28, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Really excited that my first PhD paper is now out in @elife.bsky.social: Sense of control buffers against stress.
This has been a great team effort with Jinyu Shi, Dan McGlade, @docqhuys.bsky.social and Niko Steinbeis, comprising two studies and a total of N=768!
Summary thread below 🧵⬇️
This has been a great team effort with Jinyu Shi, Dan McGlade, @docqhuys.bsky.social and Niko Steinbeis, comprising two studies and a total of N=768!
Summary thread below 🧵⬇️
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
I still get chills
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
August 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM
I still get chills
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
🆕 RESEARCH: Not all kids respond to early adversity the same way. We examined data from ~7,400 children for 4 years and found something notable about positive emotions & mental health outcomes...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
A thread 🧵 #MentalHealth #ChildDevelopment #Resilience /1
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
A thread 🧵 #MentalHealth #ChildDevelopment #Resilience /1
Positive Affect as a Developmental Mediator of Early Adversity and Internalizing Psychopathology
Early life adversities (ELAs) including experiences such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction are strongly linked to psychopathology; yet, the developmental pathways connecting ELA to external...
doi.org
August 6, 2025 at 12:47 PM
🆕 RESEARCH: Not all kids respond to early adversity the same way. We examined data from ~7,400 children for 4 years and found something notable about positive emotions & mental health outcomes...
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
A thread 🧵 #MentalHealth #ChildDevelopment #Resilience /1
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
A thread 🧵 #MentalHealth #ChildDevelopment #Resilience /1
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Psychologists & related fields: what is a big methods question that you believe remains somewhat unanswered & that you'd love to see adressed? There may be an opportunity for a large-scale meta-science project with many teams trying to figure out a question.
Any thoughts welcome! #psychscisky
Any thoughts welcome! #psychscisky
July 30, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Psychologists & related fields: what is a big methods question that you believe remains somewhat unanswered & that you'd love to see adressed? There may be an opportunity for a large-scale meta-science project with many teams trying to figure out a question.
Any thoughts welcome! #psychscisky
Any thoughts welcome! #psychscisky
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
As I am going over old blog posts, here is a nice blog by @bwroberts.bsky.social on qualities in graduate students that, in his opinion, lead to a successful career in academia. Still very good advice. pigee.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/a...
A Lay Theory of the Successful Graduate Student/Academic
Just recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece on what it takes to be successful in an academic career. It was a pleasant essay, which emphasized some of the usual suspects like indu…
pigee.wordpress.com
July 10, 2025 at 4:44 AM
As I am going over old blog posts, here is a nice blog by @bwroberts.bsky.social on qualities in graduate students that, in his opinion, lead to a successful career in academia. Still very good advice. pigee.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/a...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.
July 1, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨
We used machine learning to examine how early life adversity ⚠️ is associated with the adolescent brain 🧠 in the ABCD Study across 7 adversity dimensions and 3 timepoints.
👉https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.11.659188v1
We used machine learning to examine how early life adversity ⚠️ is associated with the adolescent brain 🧠 in the ABCD Study across 7 adversity dimensions and 3 timepoints.
👉https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.11.659188v1
www.biorxiv.org
June 16, 2025 at 3:51 PM
🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨
We used machine learning to examine how early life adversity ⚠️ is associated with the adolescent brain 🧠 in the ABCD Study across 7 adversity dimensions and 3 timepoints.
👉https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.11.659188v1
We used machine learning to examine how early life adversity ⚠️ is associated with the adolescent brain 🧠 in the ABCD Study across 7 adversity dimensions and 3 timepoints.
👉https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.11.659188v1
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Pro tip, folks: if you make a figure for a publication, don’t just hand the copyright over to the publisher. Post it on OSF first and then give yourself permission to use it in the first publication and then all future publications. That way, no permissions issues.
June 10, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Pro tip, folks: if you make a figure for a publication, don’t just hand the copyright over to the publisher. Post it on OSF first and then give yourself permission to use it in the first publication and then all future publications. That way, no permissions issues.
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Are you an international early career scholar considering spending time in the Netherlands? We likely have capacity to host a Marie Curie Fellow if you are interested. Our lab (lifespancognitivedynamics.com) works on modeling cognitive change in early or later life, at short and long timescales.
May 6, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Are you an international early career scholar considering spending time in the Netherlands? We likely have capacity to host a Marie Curie Fellow if you are interested. Our lab (lifespancognitivedynamics.com) works on modeling cognitive change in early or later life, at short and long timescales.
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
My article in The Times today
Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain
www.thetimes.com/article/fdbc...
Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain
www.thetimes.com/article/fdbc...
Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore explains what happens to brains under pressure
www.thetimes.com
April 25, 2025 at 6:19 PM
My article in The Times today
Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain
www.thetimes.com/article/fdbc...
Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain
www.thetimes.com/article/fdbc...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
April 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
Excited to share this brief review where @katieinsel.bsky.social & I discuss studying adolescence to understand how brains work! We highlight avenues for future collaborative work at the intersection of cognitive, computational, & developmental neuroscience 🧠
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
March 10, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Excited to share this brief review where @katieinsel.bsky.social & I discuss studying adolescence to understand how brains work! We highlight avenues for future collaborative work at the intersection of cognitive, computational, & developmental neuroscience 🧠
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
🚨New Paper in Development and Psychopathology🚨
Can friendships protect the mental health of vulnerable young people during a global crisis? Our latest longitudinal study suggests yes - and offers an explanation why!
Read more: doi.org/10.1017/S095....
Can friendships protect the mental health of vulnerable young people during a global crisis? Our latest longitudinal study suggests yes - and offers an explanation why!
Read more: doi.org/10.1017/S095....
Friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A UK longitudinal study of young people with childhood adversity | Development and Psychopathology | Cam...
Friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A UK longitudinal study of young people with childhood adversity
doi.org
February 18, 2025 at 8:24 PM
🚨New Paper in Development and Psychopathology🚨
Can friendships protect the mental health of vulnerable young people during a global crisis? Our latest longitudinal study suggests yes - and offers an explanation why!
Read more: doi.org/10.1017/S095....
Can friendships protect the mental health of vulnerable young people during a global crisis? Our latest longitudinal study suggests yes - and offers an explanation why!
Read more: doi.org/10.1017/S095....
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
In a study of 100 policies & 250 policymakers, we find that a) there's no such thing as the "best" type of evidence, and b) the scale of evidence used in decisions can be a strong predictor of policy effectiveness.
Freely available to all @policysciences.bsky.social
Freely available to all @policysciences.bsky.social
Assessing evidence based on scale can be a useful predictor of policy outcomes - Policy Sciences
With growing interest in more formalized applications of scientific evidence to policy, there are concerns about what evidence is selected and applied, and for what purpose. We present an initial argu...
link.springer.com
February 9, 2025 at 4:07 PM
In a study of 100 policies & 250 policymakers, we find that a) there's no such thing as the "best" type of evidence, and b) the scale of evidence used in decisions can be a strong predictor of policy effectiveness.
Freely available to all @policysciences.bsky.social
Freely available to all @policysciences.bsky.social
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
🌵Out now! Using an RL task that manipulates people's beliefs about agency, we show that exposure to & severity of early-life adversity is associated with lower learning rates & agency beliefs. w/ the brillant @thephelpslab.bsky.social, Kate McLaughlin, & Bryan Dong learnmem.cshlp.org/content/32/1...
The influence of exposure to early-life adversity on agency-modulated reinforcement learning
Peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing basic neuroscience research in the areas of neuronal plasticity, learning and memory
learnmem.cshlp.org
February 5, 2025 at 4:44 PM
🌵Out now! Using an RL task that manipulates people's beliefs about agency, we show that exposure to & severity of early-life adversity is associated with lower learning rates & agency beliefs. w/ the brillant @thephelpslab.bsky.social, Kate McLaughlin, & Bryan Dong learnmem.cshlp.org/content/32/1...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
We talk a lot about why adolescent girls report more low mood and anxiety, and why this might be getting worse.
But what do girls themselves think might explain this? As you might have guessed, we don’t really know.
So, we asked them: doi.org/10.1186/s129...
1/8
But what do girls themselves think might explain this? As you might have guessed, we don’t really know.
So, we asked them: doi.org/10.1186/s129...
1/8
Adolescent girls’ explanations of high rates of low mood and anxiety in their population: a co-produced qualitative study - BMC Women's Health
Background From early adolescence, girls face greater risk of experiencing low mood and anxiety relative to boys, with recent evidence that this may be worsening. There is a paucity of mental health r...
doi.org
February 5, 2025 at 11:22 AM
We talk a lot about why adolescent girls report more low mood and anxiety, and why this might be getting worse.
But what do girls themselves think might explain this? As you might have guessed, we don’t really know.
So, we asked them: doi.org/10.1186/s129...
1/8
But what do girls themselves think might explain this? As you might have guessed, we don’t really know.
So, we asked them: doi.org/10.1186/s129...
1/8
New preprint: Friendship buffering and autobiographical memory specificity in young people with childhood adversity.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
January 7, 2025 at 2:15 PM
New preprint: Friendship buffering and autobiographical memory specificity in young people with childhood adversity.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
We have a new paper explaining all the ways you can use natural language processing to analyze text data in @natrevpsych.bsky.social
We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility
Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility
Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
January 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM
We have a new paper explaining all the ways you can use natural language processing to analyze text data in @natrevpsych.bsky.social
We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility
Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility
Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Reposted by Maximilian König, PhD
The Brain in the Operating Room: Understanding the Loss of Consciousness During General Anesthesia
www.greymattersjournalvc.org/issue-9-arti...
#neuroscience
www.greymattersjournalvc.org/issue-9-arti...
#neuroscience
The Brain in the Operating Room: Understanding the Loss of Consciousness During General Anesthesia — Grey Matters at Vassar College
Katerina Hristova Illustrations by Anna Bishop & Iris Li
www.greymattersjournalvc.org
January 2, 2025 at 12:39 PM
The Brain in the Operating Room: Understanding the Loss of Consciousness During General Anesthesia
www.greymattersjournalvc.org/issue-9-arti...
#neuroscience
www.greymattersjournalvc.org/issue-9-arti...
#neuroscience