Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn

How does the brain respond to news of human lives at risk? For money, the brain responds more with the amount that could be lost. For human lives, the response collapses, and a life lost abroad doesn't hit like one at home. The wiring behind compassion fade: doi.org/10.1093/scan...

But there is an upside. With humanitarian science, we start by understanding the problem, and then design better ways to make life better for more people. We can measure bias, understand it, and then measure success. 7/8

I am looking to take this work forward with future bids and research partners in media, policy and charity sectors. If you are a journalist, policy maker, NGO or researcher please get in touch if you want to be a part of where we go from here - and please share!

We also told participants if the people lived or died, focussing on areas associated with social emotions when harm comes to others, followed by a whole brain analysis. Home country deaths activate these regions more than survival. No such differentiation happens for lives lost abroad. 5/8

This matters. Foreign aid budgets are falling while conflict, pandemics and climate change make the need greater. Nationalist politics encourage us to value lives beyond our borders less. Our biases are probably feeding this and that's part of what humanitarian campaigns are quietly up against. 6/8

When it came to money at risk, the brain scaled up its response with the amount that could be lost. Not so, for human lives at risk. For the largest numbers it actually goes down -- across the board. This supports a 'collapse of compassion' account of disengagement. 3/8

For lives in the UK, it is highest for the lowest numbers. For foreign country lives, it has and 'inverted U' pattern, due to single lives at risk abroad generating far less engagement than home country counterparts. One theory is that this reflects our experiences and expectations with media. 4/8

jneurosci.orgAcute Anxiety Selectively Enhances Value-Free Random Exploration Through Frontoparietal EngagementMotivational decision-making is most adaptive when exploitation of known rewards is effectively balanced against exploration of uncertain alternatives. Trait anxiety influences this balance across ind...

Over decade ago, I was concerned about why news engagement and global inequalities don't reflect that all lives have equal value. So @drjocutler.bsky.social and I designed a task to see what happens in the brain as we learn of different numbers of real lives at risk at home or 56 other countries.2/8

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn reposted

George Tertikas

@gtertikas.bsky.social

2 June

1/10 Happy to share that our paper, "Acute Anxiety Selectively Enhances Value-Free Random Exploration Through Frontoparietal Engagement", has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Neuroscience. 🧠 www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Paper PDF available upon request.

acplab.orgRELMED Workshop 20th Nov 2024 – Applied Computational Psychiatry Lab

27 Nov 2024

100 of 140 unis in the UK will be deciding who will lose their job in 2025. It's the small/mid-range Unis. Sussex will lose 12%. If you review a grant for these faculty, please be kind. This is not the time to be competitive or clever. If it is great, just say so. It could be their last shot.

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn reposted

Quentin Huys

@docqhuys.bsky.social

15 Nov 2024

How do DA and 5HT drugs alter reinforcement learning? Join us next Wednesday for talks by @anahitm.bsky.social, Diego Pizzagalli, Michael Browning, Roshan Cools, Emma Robinson, Yael Niv, Cath Harmer, Isabel Berwian, @nathanieldaw.bsky.social and Anne Collins. Links etc: acplab.org/2024/11/15/r...

@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social

13 Nov 2024

Over the MOON with class feedback this term for Social Neuroscience 🌙. I've revamped the material and tried some new things that have worked. Feels good.

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn reposted

Tobias Wilson-Bates

25 Oct 2024

Academics in their forties

17 Oct 2024

I just realised I need to be more specific! Papers of processing other people's faces and OTHER people's bodies 😂

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn@drdanielcm.bsky.social

What's your favourite face or body processing paper? I am trying to think of a paper about face or body processing for teaching my Social Neuroscience Masters class. Something in the last 10 years, not too complicated but interesting and cool. Any suggestions, hive mind?

tinyurl.comResearch Associate - College of Life and Environmental Sciences - 104433 - Grade 6The role is to provide Research Assistant services to Dr Jo Cutler for her projects on social decision-making and information seeking. Tasks include helping with participant recruitment and testing, c...

17 Oct 2024

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn reposted

Jo Cutler

@drjocutler.bsky.social

9 Sept 2024

I'll be @bacn.co.uk this week if you or anyone you know might be interested in this and want to chat

Jo Cutler@drjocutler.bsky.social

🌟 Research Assistant opportunity 🌟 I'm looking for an RA to support new projects @thechbh.bsky.social on social information seeking and decision making inc. fMRI and MEG 🧠 Details: tinyurl.com/ra-uob-chbh Deadline: 24th September ⏳ Get in touch w/ questions 👋 Please share 🔁

Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn reposted

Micah G. Allen

@micahgallen.com

10 June 2024

Got a bad gut feeling 😖? In a new study, led by the brilliant @leahbanellis.bsky.social and Ignacio Rebollo, we combined fMRI & electrogastrographic (EGG) imaging in more than 200 participants to uncover links between the gastric-brain axis and mental health. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵👇

nature.comGeneral and anxiety-linked influences of acute serotonin reuptake inhibition on neural responses associated with attended visceral sensation - Translational PsychiatryTranslational Psychiatry - General and anxiety-linked influences of acute serotonin reuptake inhibition on neural responses associated with attended visceral sensation

We are published!! An SSRI changes neural responses to #interoception and its links to anxious states. This changed how I think about #serotonin, internal sensation, and #anxiety. W/ James Livermore @sarahgarf.bsky.social @linaskora.bsky.social, Hugo Critchley + more www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The paper is #openaccess with Translational Psychiatry @Transl_Psych. Thanks to the reviewers and editors (you da best!) and everyone who contributed. Find loads more in the paper and supp materials. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Get in touch if you have any questions, comments or thoughts! I love to chat about this field. Otherwise, just share and enjoy the paper 😄

Exploratory post hoc analysis also showed that the effects of the SSRI on the stomach response in the amygdala predicted effects on anxiety (increases and decreases) across the sample. 7/10

Also preliminary is that the neural SSRI effect on cardiac interoception in the amygdala predicted our previously published effects metacognitive cardiac interoceptive insight (this is in the supplemental material). 8/10

This SSRI effect also happened during attention to the heart in the amygdala, possibly reflecting an effect on the integration of cardiac interoception in affective processes 5/10

Excitingly, we replicated the already-known interoception response that is proportional to anxiety in the anterior insula on a placebo. But the SSRI BREAKS that link, with a significant change in the interoception-anxiety relationship in the region. 6/10

21 healthy volunteers focused their attention on their stomach, heart or a pulsing visual stimulus. They did this on a single oral SSRI dose (20mg citalopram) and, at another time, did the same on a placebo. This design is WITHIN-subjects, people! 42 scan sessions. 3/10

The SSRI reduced viscerosensory (posterior insula and surrounding) and integrative (amygdala) interoceptive processing of attended stomach sensation on BOTH sides of the brain (relative to effects on exteroception). 4/10

Not much is known about how neurotransmitters regulate interoception, but there was a LOT of circumstantial evidence pointing to serotonin. Interoception shares associations with a lot of known serotonin effects. Turns out, this probably isn’t a coincidence. 2/10

tinyurl.comPsychology Doctoral Research Studentships (UK and International) : University of Sussex

18 Jan 2024

Miss the PhD deadline? There's a NEW round of PhD scholarships available at Uni of Sussex Psychology, 4 open to international students, 1 for a candidate from a UK BAME background. Loads of supervisors to choose from. Contact me for social cognition/neuroscience projects. tinyurl.com/dpvtzwtz

17 Jan 2024

Is there a consensus on the benefits and costs of task based multi-echo fmri (multi-band multi-echo, ME-ICA etc)? Is it still considered experimental? Does anyone use it routinely? I am thinking about it for a event-related paradigm.