Lina Skora

We are hiring! Passionate about affective neuroscience, computational modelling and transcranial ultrasound stimulation? Come and join our PhD project funded by @erc.europa.eu and work with a dynamic team with @lennartverhagen.bsky.social @dondersinst.bsky.social ! Apply: www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

Very happy to share our new results: cardiac activity around feedback dynamically reflects expectations. Led by Maria Azanova, with Alina @studenova.bsky.social , Esra Al, Vadim Nikulin and Arno Villringer www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

New registered report out in #Cortex, after exceptional handling from @pci-regreports.bsky.social! We introduce an instrumental conditioning (IC) task based on artificial grammars, and find nonconscious contributions to IC @andrei-preda.bsky.social @linaskora.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

Excited to be at #ESCAN2026! I'll be presenting our new data on cardiac deceleration at varying anticipatory intervals predicting visual detection in the📍O2-7: Phychophysiology session on Friday (14:00). Come chat!

New Registered report (preprint)!📜 Showing that unconscious structures support instrumental conditioning, but only when enabling conscious judgments osf.io/preprints/ps... W/ Andrei Preda, Andrei Costea, and Lina Skora @linaskora.bsky.social W/ support from @cos.io, @templetonworld.bsky.social

Fossil fuels push the world towards autocracy. Were we less dependent on them, there might have been no President Trump, no President Putin, no ayatollahs, no Netanyahu, no perpetual Middle East wars. Democracy depends on unhooking ourselves. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Is interoceptive sensing unified across internal organs? 🫀🫁 Our high-powered psychophysical study (N=241) suggests not. Bayesian evidence indicates interoceptive processes are largely modality-specific—challenging the idea of a unitary interoceptive sense. 🔗 Read here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Really impressive work led by @martager.bsky.social - everybody use BBSIG! #MindBrainBody #MBBS2026 #neuroskyence

Reporting today as a freshly-minted #MSCA fellow - I will be joining the @epanlab.bsky.social at the @dondersinst.bsky.social 🤩 Over the moon, but also thinking about all the excellent proposals who were not awarded funding in this brutal round - feels more like a lottery than ever.

The EU’s “Digital Omnibus” is being sold as simplification. Analysis shows something else: major changes that tilt the rules toward Big Tech-weakening privacy, AI safeguards, and accountability. corporateeurope.org/en/2026/01/a...

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Out now in Communications Biology 🧠 🫀We show that cardiac oscillations associated with vagal tone influence the strength of the heartbeat as sensed at brain level. We hypothesize that the heart may send information to the brain, encoded by the heartbeat strength doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Excellent theme issue - a much needed spotlight on the functions of consciousness!

So happy this paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! We investigated whether fluctuations in MEPs can be explained by phasic influences from internal bodily rhythms, and whether this might happen independently per organ system. #interoception #neuroskyence

Complete this sentence, "The brain is ...". What's your favorite answer? I'm team cluster 17/18. Taken from this delightful paper by Taylor Bolt and @lucinauddin.bsky.social; results of text in >4 million peer-reviewed articles + text analytic tools. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39798046/

Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇

Could the diversity of findings in heartbeat-evoked response (HER) research be due to variability in methods? In our new preprint my co-first authors, Maria Azanova and @willenjoy.bsky.social, and me systematically reviewed 132 M/EEG HER studies and found:

The first step to publishing null results is to learn about equivalence testing, so that you can design studies that statistically support the conclusion that there is no meaningful effect. lakens.github.io/statistical_.... If you are a statistics teacher, include this into 2nd year courses.

Undoubtedly the most massive group effort I was ever lucky to be involved in. Led by the ever-unwavering @annekeitel.bsky.social, this preprint synthesizes the status quo of what we (don't) know about neural oscillations. Grateful to be part of the @scone-neuro.bsky.social network. #neuroskyence

New preprint with amazing work from @nchalas.bsky.social: How does respiration influence (un-)predictable near-threshold perception? MEG, arousal modulation, excitability states, respiration phase-resolved connectivity changes - it's all there :) #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

'Mental health diagnoses are not just misapplied, but invented.' Camilla Nord on the mental illness epidemic

Out in Cognitive Psychology, led by @maxmaier.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A new lottery task with choices that matter across trials; the risky option has a chance of going extinct, which ends the study. We derive optimal policies and develop a strategy-classification model.

Pulsed taVNS elicits pupil dilation. However, if sham feels as intense, there is not much left. Based on our comparatively large sample (94 participants, single-blind crossover), we show that a highly variable sham response explains this. #neuroskyence 🩺 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks I hate it. This "let's settle things in the ring once and for all" approach to science is weird as hell. There are no easy formulas, no promised answers, and science isn't to be determined by an agreement between two parties.

Mind-wandering is associated with late modulation of the heartbeat-evoked potential; mind-blanking is associated with greater decoupling of heart-brain phase coupling. New findings from our radically-revised study of spontaneous cognitive & physiological dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People. A couple of years old now, from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social A long read so get yourself a cuppa. TLDR = 8 billion+ people need an efficient food system not a rural fantasy. #food #sustainability #doughnuteconomics www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/t...

1. One of capitalism’s greatest successes is to shut down our imaginations. With the help of its favoured tools - neoliberalism and fascism - it persuades us that “there is no alternative”. Our first task is to re-ignite our moral imaginations and name our alternatives. 🧵

Can we enhance interoception by controlling the heart? Thrilled to share our new study, led by @ashleytyrer.bsky.social , where we use computational modeling to show that blockading peripheral noradrenaline uniquely alters awareness of heart rate & breathing! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵👇

An important thread on a straggeringly irresponsible Nature(?!) piece ⬇️

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Almost no papers using the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) report cardiovascular features, like blood pressure or stroke volume. When done, clear correlations appear. Another one here: doi.org/10.1016/j.bb... If not properly processed or controlled, HEPs are not measures of brain-heart interaction

Published now in Psychophysiology: We show that taVNS decreases HRV independent of a caloric load. This suggests that acute taVNS does not increase cardiovagal activity ("vagal tone"). #neuroskyence 🩺 Led by @kristinkaduk.bsky.social w/ @koeniglab.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Department of Government Efficiency isn't interested in efficiency. Or transparency, or cutting costs. It's real goal is to destroy the federal civil service. In other words, regime change. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Does tVNS elicit replicable effects beyond BOLD responses in the brainstem? Yes, pulsed, but not conventional tVNS leads to robust pupil dilation in our new meta-analysis. Published in Brain Stim w/ @cecivez.bsky.social @akuehnel.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Would you like to see @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social add a share to blue sky button?! I know I would! Share this post to let @richardsever.bsky.social @erictopol.bsky.social and others at bioarxiv know!

OK If we are moving to Bluesky I am rescuing my favourite ever twitter thread (Jan 2019). The renamed: Bluesky-sized history of neuroscience (biased by my interests)

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Refocusing neuroscience: moving away from mental categories and towards complex behaviours royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

For Science Magazine, I wrote about "The Metaphors of Artificial Intelligence". The way you conceptualize AI systems affects how you interact with them, do science on them, and create policy and apply laws to them. Hope you will check it out! www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Welcome all ye new and bedraggled accounts from the bad place! I've made a science comics and cartoonists starter pack to get you going! #sciart go.bsky.app/KJ7rerJ

We're so fucked. "Our analysis of a selection of questionable GPT-fabricated scientific papers found in Google Scholar shows that many are about applied, often controversial topics susceptible to disinformation: the environment, health, and computing."

Preprint time: "Measures and Models of Brain-Heart Interaction". We made a comprehensive overview on the signal processing methodologies to estimate brain-heart interactions 🧠🫀 with Luca Faes, Fabrizio de Vico Fallani and Mario Chavez #neuroskyence #compneurosky doi.org/10.48550/arX... 🧵

I thought it could be nice to connect the community of researchers exploring body-brain interactions on bsky, so here is the Body-Brain Interactions Starter Pack! 🫀🫁👀🧠 #neuroskyence #academicsky Let me know if you would like to be added or know someone to add. Enjoy and share! go.bsky.app/Fwqeu32

alarm bells!

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...

New blog! I describe the many reasons to be disheartened in academia, incl. bad papers, broken peer-review, the publishing industry, & precarious contracts. I argue that it's so important not to become cynical, and provide my personal antidotes to cynicism creep. 🧪⚒️ #stats #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky

My paper "When and How to Deviate from a Preregistration" is now in press at Collabra Psychology. I sincerely hope it will help people to 1) transparently report deviations from their preregistration, and 2) carefully evaluate the consequences of each deviation. osf.io/preprints/ps... #metascience

Our latest result is out now: phasic and tonic taVNS at rest, under standard params, might both modulate the noradrenergic system in phasic mode only (by proxy of pupil dilation). With the great team @marzecova.bsky.social and Gerhard Jocham at @hhu.bsky.social 🙌 #neuroskyence