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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)

@carrisacocuzza.bsky.social
970 followers 1.3K following 77 posts

Postdoc computational, clinical, network neuroscience and all things cognitive control || holmeslab.rutgers.edu/ sites.rutgers.edu/cahbir/ formerly Yale Psychology || PhD: colelab.org/ || carrisacocuzza.wixsite.com/neuro

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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Ahmad Beyh @ahmadbeyh.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
⚠️ Preprint alert ⚠️ How does the brain's fixed anatomy support flexible function? We explore this using recurrent neural networks with increasing levels of brain-like constraints, comparing them to empirical fMRI activity. (1/8) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Geometric constraints and cognitive inputs jointly shape emergent brain dynamics and topology
How the brain's physical geometry gives rise to its flexible functional repertoire remains a central question in neuroscience. Here, we trained three classes of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) on a w...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Thank you to Racheal Ede at @medcentral.bsky.social for the nuanced write up on our recent publication! We're happy to see that you share our enthusiasm for the potential translational impact of research into human brain networks! 🧠 🙌 www.medcentral.com/psychiatry/s...
medcentral.com
Reduced Brain Network Flexibility Linked to Psychiatric Illness
Study reveals individuals with psychiatric disorders exhibit less flexible brain network dynamics, impacting cognitive state shifts.
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
We're so pleased that @rutgersbhi.bsky.social shared our enthusiasm about these findings! See their fantastic write up here: www.rutgers.edu/news/why-bra...
rutgers.edu
Why Brains Lose Their Flexibility in Psychiatric Conditions
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
...and (3) cognitive control processes contributed significantly to these findings. Altogether this work underscores the importance of brain network dynamics to the instantiation of mental illness.
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
...and importantly, (2) network dynamics could discriminate dimensional and individualized symptom profiles with higher accuracy than DSM-based diagnosis categories
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Our team used the Transdiagnostic Connectome Project dataset - which has a rich set of rest- & task-state fMRI & >100 behavioral, cognitive, & clinical variables of psychiatric patients w/ 11 diagnoses We found: (1) brain network dynamics were flattened across all patients relative to controls..
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
So excited to share that our study is out now in @natcomms.nature.com! 🧠🚨 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big shout out to coauthors @sidchop.bsky.social @ashleasegal.bsky.social @loiclabache.bsky.social Rowena Chin Kaley Joss & @avramholmes.bsky.social
nature.com
Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease - Nature Communications
Cocuzza et al. show that brain network dynamics are less flexible in psychiatric illness, and these patterns predict individual symptom profiles better than diagnoses, highlighting brain dynamics as a...
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Rutgers Brain Health Institute @rutgersbhi.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Led by Dr. Avram Holmes and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Carrisa Cocuzza, the research shows dynamic brain function better explains individual mental health experiences than conventional diagnostic labels. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @avramholmes.bsky.social @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social
nature.com
Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease - Nature Communications
Cocuzza et al. show that brain network dynamics are less flexible in psychiatric illness, and these patterns predict individual symptom profiles better than diagnoses, highlighting brain dynamics as a...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Thank you so much @rutgersbhi.bsky.social for the thoughtful write up of our study that's out now in @natcomms.nature.com!! 🧠
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Avram Holmes @avramholmes.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Nice write up of @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social's latest work using brain dynamics to study transdiagnostic symptom profiles. @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social, @rutgersbhi.bsky.social, and @rutgersu.bsky.social. Likely of interest to @hitop-system.bsky.social oriented folks.
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Michael W. Cole @mwcole.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Thanks to first author Alexandros Tzalavras (@alextzalav.bsky.social) and coauthors! @osherlab.bsky.social @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social Lakshman Chakravarthula, @ravimill.bsky.social and Kirsten Peterson The paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 15/n
biorxiv.org
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Working with this group of talented, kind, and inspiring folks has been truly amazing! Highly recommend applying and/or sharing this posting! 🧠🥼🤘🏽
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Holmes Lab @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Great write up of the @nature.com study on MRI economics by @bttyeo.bsky.social's research group! With @avramholmes.bsky.social @sidchop.bsky.social @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Thanks!! 🙌🏽 No but HCP derivatives are on NDA and a more select set of cleaned data on OpenNeuro (what I used for FC) - I’ll talk to our group about sharing FC!
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Check out my newest preprint to see the TCP dataset in action! 🤘🧠 Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease
The network organization of the human brain dynamically reconfigures in response to changing environmental demands, an adaptive process that may be disrupted in a symptom-relevant manner across psychi...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
We rec. you cite the Sci. Data manuscript when using the TCP: Chopra, S., Cocuzza, C.V., Lawhead, C. et al. The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry. Sci Data 12, 923 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415... Happy sciencing all!! 🎉🧠⚛️
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
The TCP dataset is openly available on: OpenNeuro: openneuro.org/datasets/ds0... NDA: nda.nih.gov/study.html?i... 🧵9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
...And validated the use of the TCP for discoverability of large-scale functional network properties and task activation effects 🧵8🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
We did extensive QC analyses showing that motion was well-controlled by HCP processing... 🧵7🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
MRI data includes high-resolution anatomicals, 4 rest fMRI, & 2 task fMRI (Stroop & Emotional Faces). We used HCP processing pipelines w/ ICA-FIX denoising & encourage the use of TCP for clinical network neuro research questions! 🧵6🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
The TCP dataset has 50+ self-report & clinician-assisted behavioral, cognitive, and & clinical measures. We are enthusiastic about the use of TCP toward empirically-driven, dimensional, & hierarchically-informed phenotyping 🧵5🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
The TCP dataset includes MRI, fMRI, & richly-sampled behavioral data from participants with and without psychiatric diagnoses, sampled transdiagnostically 🧵4🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
And those of the team not (yet) on bsky! 🎉 Connor Lawhead, Poornima Kumar, Arielle Rubenstein, Julia Moses, Lia Chen, Crystal Blankenbaker, Bryce Gillis, & Justin Baker 🧵3🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
HUGE congrats and thank you to the team & collaborators!! 🎉@sidchop.bsky.social @jocelynricard.bsky.social @loiclabache.bsky.social labache.bsky.social @neurlo.bsky.social @lauragermine.bsky.social @harpaz-rotem.bsky.social @bttyeo.bsky.social @avramholmes.bsky.social @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social 🧵2🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
🚨 Dataset & Manuscript alert! 🚨 The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project (TCP) manuscript is now available @natureportfolio.nature.com Scientific Data! 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵1👇
nature.com
The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
I’m so pleased to share and discuss this work with our community! A massive thank you to coauthors who supported and guided me in this project!! @avramholmes.bsky.social @sidchop.bsky.social @ashleasegal.bsky.social @loiclabache.bsky.social @rowenaechin.bsky.social & Kaley Joss 🧵9/9🧠
media.tenor.com
a man with a mustache is holding a piece of paper with the word science written on it .
ALT: a man with a mustache is holding a piece of paper with the word science written on it .
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
🚨Conclusions🚨 Brain network dynamics link w/ dimensions of functioning across health & psychiatric disease & flatten w/ cognitive demand in patients, suggesting failure to recruit processing resources. Prominence of cognitive control suggests executive dysfunction cuts across psychopathology 8/9
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Further emphasizing the importance of cognitive control processing to transdiagnostic symptomatology: rest-to-Stroop-task shifts in connectivity discriminated symptom fingerprints better than all other models 🧵7/9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
3. Network dynamics discriminated symptom fingerprints w/ high accuracy; more robustly than the presence of disease or primary diagnosis. Simulating lesions to each functional system: this link was established by info. processing along frontoparietal, somato/motor, visual, & thalamic networks 🧵6/9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
2. Whole-brain functional connectomes from resting- & task-state fMRI were decomposed to reveal dynamic constraints on across-state shifts in connectivity. Relative to healthy participants, patients had *flattened* dynamics, suggesting “de-differentiated” network structure in psychopathology 🧵5/9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
1. We used hierarchical methods on 110 behavioral, cognitive, & clinical measures & profiled 4 core dimensions of functioning: internalizing, externalizing, cognitive, & social/reward. We then developed *symptom fingerprints* – individualized expression patterns across these 4 dimensions 🧵4/9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Using the 11 diagnoses in the Transdiagnostic Connectome Project we tackled 3 Qs: 1. What dimensions of functioning pattern psychiatric symptoms? 2. How are dynamics impaired in patients? 3. Do dynamics classify symptom dimensions > diagnoses? 3/9 in-press Sci. Data: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Brain network dynamics – the nonstationary flow of information across brain systems – map individual diffs. in cognition/behavior better than activity or temporally-fixed connectivity alone. This has been shown in depression and schizophrenia; we asked if this extends transdiagnostically… 🧵2/9🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
🚨Preprint!🚨 So excited to share my 1st major study as a postdoc at @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social!🤘 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Using a transdiagnostic framework, we found that brain network dynamics were able to discriminate individualized psychiatric symptom profiles with high accuracy 🧵1/9👇
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Loïc Labache @loiclabache.cpesr.fr · 12/04/2025
🚨 New #preprint: The molecular and cellular underpinnings of human brain lateralization 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧠 We identify an acetylcholine-norepinephrine axis underlying functional lateralization, along with mitochondrial and cellular correlates. 🧵1/9👇 #neuroskyence
doi.org
The molecular and cellular underpinnings of human brain lateralization
Hemispheric specialization is a fundamental characteristic of human brain organization, where most individuals exhibit left-hemisphere dominance for language and right-hemisphere dominance for visuosp...
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Linden Parkes @lindenmp.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Excited to share the first major piece of work and preprint from my lab! Led by Jason Kim! 🥳🎉🤘 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
media.tenor.com
a man applauds with the words so proud of my team above him
ALT: a man applauds with the words so proud of my team above him
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Avram Holmes @avramholmes.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Concerned about the neurobiological impacts of long COVID? Interested in brain dynamics? Please do join us for @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social's talk on the 31st (see below).
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
It’s 11:30 pm and I just completed and submitted a grant due at midnight - this is the closest I get to an adrenaline rush as an academic 😅 … 🤘🏽
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 12/02/2025
Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025! Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide! #scienceforall #sciencenotsilence
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Yueyue Lydia Qu @lydiaquq.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
I'm thrilled to share that my graduate school project was just published in Nature Mental Health! We found that resting-state functional network predictors are more similar within vs between categories of internalizing and externalizing behavior in children (ABCD), adolescents (HBN) and adults (HCP)
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Avram Holmes @avramholmes.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
New @holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social paper by Lydia Qu. Here, we map shared and unique brain features for individual variation in internalizing and externalizing across development. w/@bttyeo.bsky.social, @elvisha.bsky.social, @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social, and many others. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Distinct brain network features predict internalizing and externalizing traits in children, adolescents and adults - Nature Mental Health
In this study, the authors present work showing shared and distinct predictive network features associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children, adolescents and adults.
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Brian P. Keane @briankeanelab.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
This journalistic piece nicely summarizes some advantages of our functional connectivity biomarker for psychosis. Special thanks to my co-authors in making this work possible (Yonatan Abrham, @mwcole.bsky.social @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social, Boyang Hu, Brent Johnson).
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Michael W. Cole @mwcole.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
“Cognitive flexibility as the shifting of brain network flows by flexible neural representations”, a solo paper by yours truly, making the case that brain activity flow shifts are essential to mental flexibility (and quite interesting too!) Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Hah! Or future grad students/postdocs looking for for mentors maybe! 🤔
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Ha yes! Curiosity is prob the most valued trait for a scientist, it’s v difficult to constrain that! But yes in my experience it can be gratuitous, depending on context of course! As a reviewer I write it down initially then remove or refine - also, that idea could always be YOUR next project 😉
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Exciting! In addition to everyone else’s excellent advice (esp. about kindness) try to avoid gratuitous “out of curiosity…” requests for new analyses (unless they contribute toward clarity, rigor, etc.)
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Reposted by Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her)
Elvisha Dhamala @elvisha.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Latest work led by Xihan Zhang looking at the cell-type underpinnings of the human functional cortical connectome is out now in Nature Neuro! 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The cell-type underpinnings of the human functional cortical connectome - Nature Neuroscience
Here Zhang et al. establish multiscale relationships that link postmortem cell-type distributions with the in vivo functional organization of the human cerebral cortex, as assessed through functional ...
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Of course! Added! 🧠
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Carrisa V. Cocuzza, PhD (she/her) @carrisacocuzza.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
done! 🧠
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