Sign in

Holly Sullivan-Toole

@hollysully.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1.2K following 217 posts

Dev Affective Neuro, Reward, Reinforcement Learning, Anhedonia, Dopaminergic Circuitry, Brain Iron she/her

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Suzanne Perkins, PhD @20thofmay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
UM writing up a recent paper of mine. news.umich.edu/abuse-and-di...
news.umich.edu
Abuse and disability trap: 90% of incarcerated Michigan youth suffered prior abuse
Nearly every incarcerated male youth in a new University of Michigan study experienced some form of prior physical abuse.
031
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
laserhedvig @laserhedvig.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Interdisciplinary research is great and necessary, and also has consistently lower funding success www.nature.com/articles/nat... #academiclabourmarket #academia #research
26133
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 22/09/2026
So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?
3212569
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Just plugging my husband's instruments again! Check out Patrick Toole's personal-model violin and mandolin family instruments at: - Instagram: @toolestudios - Facebook: Toole Studios This viola and the mandolins in the videos below have found homes, but more where they came from!!
171
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Just plugging my husband's instruments again! Check out Patrick Toole's personal-model violin and mandolin family instruments at: - Instagram: @toolestudios - Facebook: Toole Studios This viola and the mandolins in the videos below have found homes, but more where they came from!!
171
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Seconded! Congrats @mattmattoni.bsky.social on the Flux Dissertation Award and an excellent talk!!!
020
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Dr. Jennifer Pfeifer @jenndsn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
An outstanding Dissertation Award talk by Matt Mattoni @mattmattoni.bsky.social on heterogeneity and idiographic (vs. nomothetic) approaches in developmental cognitive neuroscience. He made his case very well - and bonus: increased everyone's vocabulary! 👏 See more @ 1/ doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
doi.org
Functional connectivity heterogeneity and consequences for clinical and cognitive prediction: Stage 2 registered report
Abstract. Functional connectivity is frequently used to assess dynamic brain functioning and predict individual differences in behavioral outcomes, such as psychopathology. Inferences from functional ...
2116
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
ICE has fallen out of the headlines but July marked the largest number of migrant detentions ever on record. Five migrants have died in ICE custody in the last two months. It's also currently impossible to legally migrate to this country, as 100% of visa applications have been paused.
4049192535
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
When I was little *both* my grandmothers *each* explained to me that Dolly was a queen. Her voice. Her style. Her heart. Lots of comments about her philanthropy (which was gold) but she was an artist first—so authentically herself. Loving this deep cut. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1TX...
youtube.com
Dolly Parton - The Bargain Store (Official Audio)
YouTube video by DollyPartonVEVO
292
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Robert Hermosillo @roberthermosillo.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Impressive network neuroscience work by Bene Ramirez @benediktramirez.bsky.social ! This allows the field to start discussing the nuances of discrete parcellation. It's gonna have big implications for precision interventions.
0102
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Bene Ramirez @benediktramirez.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Excited to share our new preprint introducing Precision Confidence Mapping (PCM), a framework for estimating how confident we should be in individualized functional network assignments from resting-state fMRI. Why does this matter for precision neuromodulation? 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
13815
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Daniel P. Moriarity @dpmoriarity.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Psychology has been riding the intensive longitudinal train for a bit, but what about immunology? Now live @brainbehavimm.bsky.social, our physiometric report on the stability of inflammatory proteins collected every 3 days for 22 days during a natural stressor 1/X
sciencedirect.com
Inflammatory Proteins are Highly Variable During a Natural Stressor: A Call for Intensive Longitudinal Blood Microsampling
Although research into how inflammation mediates the effects of stress on disorders such as heart disease and depression has grown rapidly, standard l…
33210
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Loving my husband’s new viola style. Modern, distinct, butterscotch-y. www.givensviolins.com/product/viol...
givensviolins.com
Viola: 15 1/2" Patrick Toole, Philadelphia, PA 2024 | Claire Givens Violins, Inc
The Makers: Patrick studied violin making at the Newark School of Violin Making in England, where he developed a deep appreciation for craftsmanship and the beauty of natural materials. After spendin...
020
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Tallie Z Baram @talliezee.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Study in 30,000 kids shows that unpredictable early-life experience is a potent Adverse Childhood Event www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Just dropped in Nature MH, with an amazing team. 🧪🧠 And unpredictability is actionable! would love your thoughts. @cate-cholamine.bsky.social @drkoraly.bsky.social
nature.com
Unpredictability is a childhood adversity that contributes to mental health problems - Nature Mental Health
In this population-based cohort study, Glynn et al. tested the contribution of childhood unpredictability to mental health outcomes in ~30,000 participants, examining the relative and additive roles o...
24521
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Brunch of champions
140
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Malena-PRO-CHOICE 🌊 🟦🟧Fighting Tyranny! @malena.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚🚨 Prisciliano Trejo, aged 29 becomes the 50th person to die in #ICE custody. He was denied medical care until it was too late. His family was denied the ability to see him when he was finally sent to the hospital. This thread is one you must spend time on. We cannot ignore the atrocities!
7714081065
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Had the pleasure of joining ACAMH @acamh.bsky.social to discuss my research on how reinforcement learning changes across adolescence — and how it is altered by risk factors for psychopathology
151
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
the Cranberries EEiDI,SWCW is prob my #1 but this is on the list too!
110
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Bita Moghaddam @bita137.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Our new study ⬇️inspired by the question: does psilocybin influence meta-learning and cortical processing of unexpected uncertainty? Why is this important? Meta-learning may be critical for therapeutic effects of psychedelics and how the trip creates a window that facilitates clinical intervention
24517
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Come see this work and more at the Computational Psychiatry Conference tuesday morning poster session!!
0103
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
🚨 preprint alert !!! Emotional and physical abuse have dissociable impacts on punishment learning and task engagement during adolescence osf.io/preprints/ps...
Plots showing that (A) emotional abuse blunts the development of punishment learning rate and (B) physical abuse blunts the development of task engagement
1103
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Ashley Watts @ashleylwatts.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Excited to share a paper recently accepted at Nature Mental Health! 😄 For decades, we've assumed that covariance among psychopathology informs comorbidity. What if we’ve been wrong?
913461
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Covariation among higher-order psychopathology dimensions is driven by nomorbidity, not comorbidity: osf.io/3t2cm
0124
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Karolina Lempert @klempert.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Hi all! I’m looking for a full-time RA / lab manager (start date: late Aug or Sept, 1 year of funding guaranteed). Ideal candidate is a recent grad w/ relevant research experience. App review has begun, so if you’re interested, please apply here ASAP, by 7/12! Thx! phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf02/ats/ca...
phf.tbe.taleo.net
Hiring Research Assistant, - Garden City, N.Y.
View job details and apply now
02727
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Andreas Strube @astrube.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Very happy to see this Review with @diegopizzagalli.bsky.social out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/neuro... This piece brings together a lot of what we’ve been thinking on depression, predictive processing and EEG. Many thanks for the support from @sfb-trr-289.bsky.social
cell.com
Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective
Depression is marked by anhedonia, social withdrawal, and a diminished capacity to learn from positive experiences—features that can be framed within predictive processing. Here, we review findings fr...
03913
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Biological Psychiatry @biologicalpsych.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
People with depression and anxiety symptoms are surprisingly better at overriding gut-instinct motivational biases, while those with compulsions and intrusive thoughts showed the opposite pattern, suggesting distinct motivational disruptions across psychiatric dimensions.
biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org
Adaptive suppression of motivational biases increases with mood/anxiety traits
Changes in motivational biases appear central to many psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Motivational biases, theorized to embody default response strategies…
0137
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Cam Hostinar, Ph.D. @camhostinar.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
“Every dollar invested in NIH-funded research returned about $2.50 to the broader economy — a 250% return on investment.” “…sustained NIH funding has generated more than $822 billion in economic activity, supported more than 3.7 million jobs” academicmedicine.aamc.org/stories/how-...
academicmedicine.aamc.org
Client Challenge
12715
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Jonas Dora @jonasdora.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
I'm really excited to share a new preprint! Lab studies have consistently shown that stress and negative emotions make people drink alcohol, but studies of daily life (EMA) keep failing to find it. What does that mean for the shared theoretical prediction both designs test? osf.io/preprints/ps...
Figure summarizing new EMA data from our lab
38226
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Nico Dosenbach @ndosenbach.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇
6230100
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Kate Nussenbaum @katenuss.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
How do we predict what’s going to happen next? In a new paper, we @arikahn.bsky.social @licezhang.bsky.social @nathanieldaw.bsky.social @catehartley.bsky.social ask how kids, teens, and adults solve this problem. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Developmental Change in Structure Learning Reflects a Shift From Recency‐Based to Relational Prediction
Children are adept statistical learners, capable of parsing streams of structured input into meaningful units, but the cognitive processes they engage during learning may differ from those of adults...
15414
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Nathaniel Haines @natehaines.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
some big news! hBayesDM has now been fully ported to cmdstan/cmdstanr/cmdstanpy check out the PR below, or the changelog for an overview: PR: github.com/CCS-Lab/hBay... Changelog: ccs-lab.github.io/hBayesDM/new... stay tuned for some additional features coming soon, including covariate support 🤓
github.com
feature: hBayesDM version 2.0 by Nathaniel-Haines · Pull Request #182 · CCS-Lab/hBayesDM
hBayesDM 2.0 — modernize stack & toolchain Top-to-bottom refactor of both the R and Python packages onto current Stan tooling, plus the supporting work to keep behavior, docs, and CI in sync. H...
2154
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
What a stimulus predicts, not what it depicts, determines striatal reward signals www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... This is interesting. nAcc responds most strongly to stimuli that predict reward, but vmPFC responds more to inherently pleasant (erotic 😳) stimuli.
082
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Reproducible Human Reward Imaging Phenotypes Exhibit Differential Sensitivity to Dopamine D2 Receptor Antagonism www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
031
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Amrita Lamba @amritalamba.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Recent preprint with Oriel FeldmanHall and Matt Nassar, showing clear neural evidence that adolescent (13-15 yrs) social media and smartphones use are associated with blunted reward signaling in the ventral striatum, the brain's reward processing hub, and worse mental health. osf.io/preprints/ps...
16727
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Selecting an effect size for power analysis is hard. Many researchers fall back on Cohen's thresholds, but they have no empirical basis and vary wildly by field. Our new paper offers a better option: field-specific effect size distributions built from meta-analytic data doi.org/10.3758/s134...
Abstract
Effect sizes are useful for understanding the magnitude of study results and for planning new studies via power analysis.
However, despite their wide usage, effect sizes are often misinterpreted. This is mostly due to an over-reliance on general
effect size benchmarks that were not intended for broad application across diverse research fields. Inaccurate effect size
interpretations can lead to incorrect conclusions about the magnitude of study results and incorrect sample size estimates,
thereby increasing the likelihood of false-positive results. This article introduces the ESDist R package, which is designed
to calculate empirically derived effect-size benchmarks or a range of reliably detectable empirical effect sizes for a specific
research question or field of interest by computing effect size distributions (ESDs). This package can be used on data that
can be easily extracted from pre-existing meta-analyses to help researchers more accurately plan new studies or to better
understand how an individual study might relate to other studies in their field. ESDist includes a set of features that make it
easy to use in a priori power analysis. Moreover, the package includes a feature for estimating effect size benchmarks that
account for publication bias and are weighted by effect sizes' variances, which addresses existing limitations of using ESDs
for study planning or interpretation.
316175
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Carina Heller, Ph.D. @carinaheller.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
🚨Preprint Alert 🧠 Our new preprint „Menarche onset is an inflection point for mental health and brain development“ is now online! 👉 Preprint available here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
14825
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Bart Larsen @bart-larsen.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Very excited to announce our new preprint, led by @hollysully.bsky.social, that presents, benchmarks, and validates a method to estimate brain iron content from routine fMRI scans! It comes complete with a BIDS app! Check out the preprint and thread below! doi.org/10.64898/202...
biorxiv.org
072
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Ido Ben-Artzi @idoba.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Our new paper asks whether autism is linked to the way people learn from rewards. We’ve previously shown that people not only learn to value the features that predict reward, but also assign credit to features of their actions that they know are irrelevant (in this case, the card's location).
1168
Holly Sullivan-Toole @hollysully.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
🚨Preprint Alert🚨 Our new preprint 'A Scalable fMRI Estimate of Basal Ganglia Brain Tissue Iron for Use in Developmental and Translational Neuroscience' is live!! lnkd.in/gpG9naba
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
12214
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Matt Mattoni @mattmattoni.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Precision reward/affect fMRI study out now in HBM! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @dvsmith.bsky.social @olinotom.bsky.social @coopersharp.bsky.social and @shenghanwang.bsky.social Intensively sampled task + rest fMRI data with behavioral manipulation openly available on OpenNeuro! (1/2)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Precision Imaging for Intraindividual Investigation of the Reward Response
We present open data for an intensively sampled precision imaging study including multiple reward-related tasks and a behavioral mood manipulation. Our initial analysis found low test–retest reliabil....
16025
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Bruce Little @brucedlittle.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
USPS announced that it would no longer postmark mail automatically on the date it is received. Voting rights advocates fear that this may end up disenfranchising voters who rely on postmark dates, and they’re urging people to get ahead of election deadlines.
boltsmag.org
In an Intense Election Year, New Post Office Rules Could Trip Up Voter Registration - Bolts
A change in how mail is postmarked could lead some voters to miss key deadlines, including voter registration. Advocates worry the people most affected will be those already facing voting barriers.
24186117
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Martin Gell @martingell.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 Transdiagnostic latent factor models of psychopathology are widely assumed to improve brain-behaviour associations. So we decided to test this directly and found that they don't. A short 🧵 Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/10
13417
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Brenden Tervo-Clemmens @tervoclemmensb.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
New preprint from the lab! Led by @martingell.bsky.social . There is something for everyone: brain-behavior prediction, latent variable modeling, test-retest reliability. 🧠📈📊 "Disentangling Brain-Psychopathology Associations: A Systematic Evaluation of Transdiagnostic Latent Factor Models"
03115
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Sarah Yip @yiplab.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Excited to share our latest paper in which we discuss merging theory-and data- driven computational psychiatry in a large transdiagnostic cohort study (N=2400) www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245... Christopher Pittenger, Godfrey Pearlson @annierhcheng.bsky.social @sobp-org.bsky.social
biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org
Threading the needle: Practical considerations for merging theory-driven computational psychiatry with data-driven analytics to enhance precision health at scale
The rapidly evolving field of computational psychiatry enables quantification of specific cognitive processes, and their underlying mechanisms, in a translational and potentially scalable manner, usin...
15220
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Matt Wall @mattwall.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
🚨🚨New paper day!🚨🚨 Wonderful work from the longitudinal arm of our cannabis-users study showing how brain reward-system function changes over 12 months in regular users. 🧵⬇️ #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The association between cannabis use and brain reward anticipation: a 12-month longitudinal study of adults and adolescents who use cannabis and age-matched controls - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - The association between cannabis use and brain reward anticipation: a 12-month longitudinal study of adults and adolescents who use cannabis and age-matched controls
1184
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Kate Wassum @katewassum.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper 📃🚨 Out today, Melissa Malvaez, Nick Griffin, Andrea Suarez & team discovered that dopamine can enable reward predictions to shape how we pursue reward. Surprisingly, we find that dopamine can constrain instrumental reward seeking. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/8... 🧵👇🏻
jneurosci.org
Dopamine Supports Reward Prediction to Shape Reward-Pursuit Strategy
Reward predictions not only promote reward pursuit, they also shape how reward is pursed. Such predictions are supported by environmental cues that signal reward availability and probability. Such cue...
66425
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
#eNeuro: Findings in rats from Boven et al. reveal that the cerebellum doesn't just fine-tune our movements but can also actively compute our internal sense of time, helping link between what we perceive and how we act. doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0198-25.2025
082
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
#eNeuro: Findings from Soma et al. reveal how reward-related information is hierarchically distributed across the rat's brain. doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0256-25.2026
052
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
OK I swear a saw a cartoon about a mediation analysis being 3 correlations in a trench coat but I can't find it and searching online just gives me a lot of trench coats 😂 does anyone have this? @dingdingpeng.the100.ci in my mind you were involved but I might have made it up
4135
Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Rent assistance is a HUGE need right now. People have drained their savings in hiding for months and now they’re losing their homes too. If you need ideas about where to send your money:
standwithminnesota.com
Stand With Minnesota
Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.
02424