iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

Eliza Bliss-Moreau @eblissmoreau.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

1/ New paper out today from my group, in @natneuro.nature.com, in which we review the anatomical & functional data on insula structure across species. This was a "whole lab" project led by @joeycharbonneau.bsky.social. It's been a 5 year in the making (a full 3 years in review)! rdcu.be/fyd7T

rdcu.be

Comparative insights into insula structure and function

Nature Neuroscience - Charbonneau et al. compare how the insula is structured and functions in humans, monkeys and rodents, revealing similarities and differences across species that are likely to...

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Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 10/07/2026

How do the reward expectations influence choice? This #fMRI study by @phillip-witkowski.bsky.social &co links reward identity to goal-directed decision processes through coordination of the lOFC, NAc, and dACC brain regions. 🧪 #AcademicSky #neuroeconomics plos.io/3R9rIxZ

Cartoon illustrations related to the brain's processing of expectation information and action information. In the brain, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) relates reward expectations in lateral orbitofrontal cortes (lOFC) to action representations in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC).
Left: Schematic of the trial-by-trial information measurement of identity-specific reward expectations (top) and action (bottom). In each trial, we computed the relative distance of neural activity patterns to each of two “expectation” templates. This graphic was created using DALL·E assistance.
Right: Schematic showing the results of the information connectivity analysis conducted on the information metrics computed in A. We used a trial-by-trial regression framework to test whether the relationship between lOFC expectation strength and dACC action representations depended on NAc activity, effectively testing NAc’s moderating influence on information transfer between lOFC reward expectation and dACC action representations.

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Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 11/07/2026

#Neuroeconomics has long focused on reward values, ignoring their identity. @joeycharbonneau.bsky.social & @erinlrich.bsky.social explore a new @PLOSBiology.org fMRI study showing how identity-specific expectations steer choice selection. 🧪 Paper: plos.io/3R9rIxZ Primer: bit.ly/4vWIn6W

A cartoon schematic for the neural circuitry linking identity-specific expectations to action. When a reward-predictive cue is encountered (here, a billboard), the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC; red) generates an expectation about the specific identity of the anticipated reward. The strength of this identity-specific expectation predicts which reward a person will subsequently choose to pursue when two possible rewards have equal value. The nucleus accumbens (NAc; green) appears to act as a motivational amplifier, controlling how strongly the lOFC identity signal drives action selection in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC; blue), which encodes the action required to obtain the anticipated reward. When NAc activity is high, lOFC identity expectations are strongly coupled to dACC action representations, but when it is low, this coupling is absent.

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Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Cellular basis for cortical network aging in primates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

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Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

Eliza Bliss-Moreau @eblissmoreau.bsky.social · 22/04/2024

New paper from my group! Monkeys respond to affective touch like people do. This response changes with age and doesn't require consciousness. Evolutionarily conserved neural responses to affective touch in monkeys transcend consciousness and change with age www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Reposted by Joey Charbonneau

Eliza Bliss-Moreau @eblissmoreau.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

tap tap tap 🎙️... is this thing on? it's been a big year in the Bliss-Moreau Lab but we've been really quiet on the aps. time to change that... out today! the 1st paper from our long term fetal zika virus study a full lab effort, w/the paper led by Gilda Moadab & Florent Pittet!

science.org

Prenatal Zika virus infection has sex-specific effects on infant physical development and mother-inf...

Zika virus–infected pregnant macaques had smaller infants that spent more time in physical contact with them than non-infected mother-infant pairs.

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