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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn

@drdanielcm.bsky.social
477 followers 828 following 37 posts

Associate Professor at the University of Sussex researching and teaching about emotion and social motivations with psychology and neuroscience.

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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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
Figure showing 'inverted u' pattern of neural response to the number of lives affected, in eight brain regions.
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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
Figure showing where neural response to the number of lives affected drops with magnitude of potential loss, whereas response to the magnitude of financial loss goes up with magnitude.
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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
diagram of The Headlines Task
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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...
Headline image of neural response to home country deaths generating anterior insula response, but this effect is absent for abroad country deaths.
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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Dr Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn @drdanielcm.bsky.social · 06/06/2024
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
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