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torwager.bsky.social
tor
@torwager.bsky.social
770 followers 440 following 44 posts
On a sojourn in the Wild West, in passage from this frame to the next. (Also, Prof. of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth)
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torwager.bsky.social
❤️ Bluesky fMRI people! 3-day #fMRI course live online Jan 7-9, 2026.

#SPM, #ICA, GLM, connectivity, mediation, MRI physics, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl.

We love talking methods & connecting with colleagues! Come join us!

Register here:
sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...
fMRI Course
Instructors
sites.google.com
November 14, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by tor
nicolecrust.bsky.social
My new essay for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is understanding emotion so challenging? The debates around what counts as an "emotion" shed insight.

These disputes are multidimensional, principled and fascinating. Here, I unpack them.

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...
Emotion research has a communication conundrum
In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…
www.thetransmitter.org
September 5, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by tor
markthornton.bsky.social
The psych job market may not be dead... but it is gravely injured 😬 So far it's looking like the Trump administration's attacks on higher ed/research are going to have more than 2x the impact on the job market as the covid-19 pandemic. #psychjobs #neurojobs #academicjobs
Bar plot showing the number of psychology jobs posted each year by area. There are major dips in 2020 due to covid, and in 2025 (now).
September 3, 2025 at 6:27 PM
torwager.bsky.social
Burnout in health care providers is a big issue. It reduces wellbeing and the ability to be effective. (Be kind to your provider!) Encouraging news: In a study of >2,000 providers, the Healthy Minds Program app reduced distress and improved wellbeing 9 mos later. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Digital Well-Being Training With Health Care Professionals
This randomized clinical trial examines whether a 13- week digital well-being training could improve well-being and reduce stress among health care professionals in Mexico.
jamanetwork.com
September 16, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by tor
jungheejung.bsky.social
New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!

N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!

🧵below
September 4, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by tor
choongwanwoo.bsky.social
The final version (after proof) is now finally out. It provides a detailed spatio-temporal profile of brain mediation of the cue-stimulus integration in the pain context. We interpreted the results in terms of cortical hierarchy. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Spatiotemporal integration of contextual and sensory information within the cortical hierarchy in human pain experience
When we experience pain, the sensory input is modulated by contextual information. This neuroimaging study shows how expectation and sensory input are integrated in the human brain during pain percept...
journals.plos.org
November 28, 2024 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by tor
markhisted.org
"Brown CS faculty members Ellie Pavlick and Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social have just received a $20M NSF grant to found ARIA, a national institute to develop intuitive, trustworthy AI assistants."

Great news and congrats!
🧠📈 🧪
Brown CS @BrownCSDept @BrownCSDept faculty members Ellie Pavlick and Suresh Venkatasubramanian ( @geomblog ) have just received a $20M @NSF grant to found ARIA, a national institute to develop intuitive, trustworthy AI assistants. Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2025/07/2
August 5, 2025 at 10:38 PM
torwager.bsky.social
A fascinating new #fmri study from Jo He with Kevin Ochsner and co. on social reappraisal. Giving advice to a friend changes our brain responses and helps regulate emotion. Fictive processes (imagination!) can have real consequences in the brain & life.

academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...
Comparing the neural bases of self- and social-reappraisal
Abstract. To manage life’s stressors, we can self-regulate our emotions or seek social regulatory support. One such strategy is reappraisal, where individu
academic.oup.com
August 5, 2025 at 11:05 PM
torwager.bsky.social
Health is more than the absence of disease, and depends on harmony across multiple brain-body systems. We need more research on whole-person health! The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) @thenccih.bsky.social funds vital whole-person research. RP and #KEEP_NCCIH!
July 30, 2025 at 2:37 AM
torwager.bsky.social
This dashboard on U.S. research spending is one to watch for researchers applying for #NIH, #NSF, #DOD grants and other research grants. Thanks to @alesszimm.bsky.social and @aaas.org
www.aaas.org/news/fy-2026...
FY 2026 R&D Appropriations Dashboard | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
www.aaas.org
July 24, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by tor
torwager.bsky.social
Online #fMRI course coming up August 6-8!
3-day intensive with lectures and hands-on analysis for all skill levels. #SPM, #ICA, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl. We love teaching this course and meeting students from all areas! Info+Reg here:
sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...
fMRI Course
Instructors
sites.google.com
July 23, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by tor
amiyake.bsky.social
A month ago, I shared a draft of the teaching resources list for cog psych (& related) courses. Now that the fall semester is only 4 wks away 😱, I thought I'd ask you to share your favorite books, videos, demos, syllabi, etc., to make this list more complete & more useful for interested folks.
Teaching Resources for Cognitive Psychology
CURRENTLY UNDER DEVELOPMENT (Last updated: June 27, 2025, 10) PLEASE SHARE YOUR FAVORITE TEACHING RESOURCES! Teaching Resources for Cognitive Psychology Assembled by: Akira Miyake University of Colo...
docs.google.com
July 22, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by tor
lauradugue.bsky.social
Happy to have contributed together with @lgrabot.bsky.social to discuss #traveling_waves and cognition!
July 23, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Reposted by tor
peterkok.bsky.social
Our study using layer fMRI to study the direction of communication between the hippocampus and cortex during perceptual predictions is finally out in Science Advances! Predicted-but-omitted shapes are represented in CA2/3 and correlate specifically with deep layers of PHC, suggesting feedback. 🧠🟦
Communication of perceptual predictions from the hippocampus to the deep layers of the parahippocampal cortex
High-resolution neuroimaging reveals stimulus-specific predictions sent from hippocampus to the neocortex during perception.
www.science.org
May 22, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by tor
sylvainbaillet.bsky.social
🚨New paper in PAIN w/ R. Gopalakrishnan, @torwager.bsky.social, @mcgill.ca Mathieu Roy, et al.

Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors.

journals.lww.com/pain/fulltex...

@theneuro.bsky.social
Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors : PAIN
odeling and magnetoencephalography to detect time-resolved activations underlying pain expectations and aversive PE signals in the human brain. The task entailed learning probabilistically changing cu...
journals.lww.com
July 17, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by tor
ajdneuro.bsky.social
Highly recommend!
torwager.bsky.social tor @torwager.bsky.social · Jul 23
Online #fMRI course coming up August 6-8!
3-day intensive with lectures and hands-on analysis for all skill levels. #SPM, #ICA, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl. We love teaching this course and meeting students from all areas! Info+Reg here:
sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...
fMRI Course
Instructors
sites.google.com
July 23, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by tor
olegolt.bsky.social
Serious concerns about a new cortical biomarker for pain sensitivity

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

We (with @tspisak.bsky.social, @christianbuchel.bsky.social) published a commentary on Chowdhury, Bi et al. (2025, JAMA Neurology) raising serious concerns about their reported results.

👇 1/13
Concern About Predictive Performance of a Pain Sensitivity Biomarker
To the Editor Chowdhury et al1 evaluated a biomarker for pain sensitivity, combining peak alpha frequency and corticomotor excitability. The authors report outstanding performance (validation set area...
jamanetwork.com
July 22, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by tor
jayvanbavel.bsky.social
I have a new paper on "The Psychology of Virality" with @steverathje.bsky.social

We explain how similar psychological processes (eg preferential attention to negativity, social motives, etc.) drive the spread of information across online and offline contexts: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
July 23, 2025 at 8:22 PM
torwager.bsky.social
Online #fMRI course coming up August 6-8!
3-day intensive with lectures and hands-on analysis for all skill levels. #SPM, #ICA, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl. We love teaching this course and meeting students from all areas! Info+Reg here:
sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...
fMRI Course
Instructors
sites.google.com
July 23, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by tor
nicolecrust.bsky.social
“This suggests that expectations don’t change early perceptual processing, but rather how we interpret and react to those sensations.” (Generally) true for seeing. But what about pain? Huge open question (and much debate). Here’s some data.
July 2, 2025 at 5:38 PM
torwager.bsky.social
This is a beautiful poem. It makes me think of my dad and the times I’ve felt him with me since he passed away.

www.facebook.com/share/v/19G1...
Redirecting...
www.facebook.com
July 18, 2025 at 11:37 AM
torwager.bsky.social
Predictive processing models posit top-down influences of internal models on brain processing at multiple levels...but how deeply does predictive info penetrate into perception? What are the limits? New paper with @rotembot.bsky.social and @fmristats.bsky.social
link.growkudos.com/1mmf28pbmkg
How our expectations change what we feel and see
This study explores how our expectations influence what we feel and see. We asked participants to predict how painful or visually intense an upcoming stimulus would be based on cues that they believed...
link.growkudos.com
July 2, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by tor
bencollins.bsky.social
I got permission to share this, and I'm extremely grateful for that.

The Onion got this letter from one of our subscribers in Alaska. She works with dementia patients and decided to leave a copy in the car for each one.

This email made my year. Read it and you'll see what I mean. People are good.
I work as an elder and hospice caregiver, which I am oddly passionate about. I can love on them shamelessly and no one complains about my codependence. It's a win-win situation. Many of my caregiving colleagues complain about the repetitive questions and, sometimes reactions, of the elderly, especially when those patients happen to read the newspaper, especially with the current downward spiral of our country — as if these people haven't lived through enough horror... I love my dementia peeps, but sometimes wonder if there's a Guinness Book World Record for how many times an hour a dementia patient can repeat the same question — it's got to be in the hundreds. At least with small children, they ask different questions. Dementia patients will get stuck on one short question and ask it until you can interrupt their train(carousel) of thought and successfully redirect their attention. That carousel is pretty manic sometimes. A couple days ago, I picked up my mail from the post office and drove over to the nursing home to take (let's call her "Miss Daisy") Miss Daisy out for a drive. Before we took off on our road trip, to the end of The Road and back, in our landlocked little town (Juneau, Alaska), I set my copy of The Onion down in front of her. Over our two-hour excursion, tiny Miss Daisy read that front page at least a dozen times and each time she would snicker, giggle, and guffaw, then put it down on the dash board and, a minute later, discover it anew. I think it was the best afternoon of my life. We don't often hear them laugh and when they do, it's the sweetest thing you've ever heard. ... Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the really important work all of you do. You make the world a better place.
July 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by tor
jtheriault.bsky.social
Also, @torwager.bsky.social has been building a nice collection of subcortical atlases, which are being updated here:
github.com/canlab/Neuro...

This includes Marta's atlas above, but also many more!
Neuroimaging_Pattern_Masks/Atlases_and_parcellations at master · canlab/Neuroimaging_Pattern_Masks
Brain signature patterns, atlases of regions, and meta-analysis masks for neuroimaging data analysis. - canlab/Neuroimaging_Pattern_Masks
github.com
May 19, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by tor
boke2024.bsky.social
Excited to share co–first-authored paper with
Jinxiao Zhang and teamwork with
@torwager.bsky.social er.bsky.social and @JamesGross @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social ! Emerging findings and a potential framework of neural overlap between emotion generation and regulation at www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
The brain bases of emotion generation and emotion regulation
Emotion generation and emotion regulation are widely seen as functionally distinct. This distinction has inspired efforts to define separable brain bases of each, with emotion generation thought to in...
www.cell.com
May 30, 2025 at 5:43 PM