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Leah Banellis

@leahbanellis.bsky.social
1.3K followers 824 following 150 posts

🏳️‍🌈 Lundbeck Postdoc Fellow at Yale (USA), KU & AU (Denmark). Interested in brain-body interactions, interoception, consciousness, & mental health

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Reposted by Leah Banellis
Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 29/07/2026
After a long break, I’m back to long-form blogging! The first population atlas of the human vagus gives us an extraordinary wiring map. But what do the wires actually do? I connect it to new mouse psychophysics, organ-targeted ultrasound and our human findings. www.the-ecg.org/2026/07/29/v...
the-ecg.org
The vagus has a map. Interoception still needs a model.
The first population-level atlas of the human vagus nerve has arrived. But a map of the wiring does not tell you what the wires are saying -- on va...
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Fascinating and important. Including the provocative finding “What we believe about our bodily sensing may have little to do with how we actually sense it.” A place where subject report diverges (read the thread). Congrats to this team!!
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
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...
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phoenix @phoenix-rights.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
really thinking about this tweet as i’ve been struggling to breathe through nausea for the last 5 hours
climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it
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Christoffer G. Alexandersen @cgalexandersen.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
🧠 New paper out in 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 Why does tau pathology often begin in the entorhinal cortex in Alzheimer’s disease? We show that brain-wide gradients of neuronal activity and amyloid-β may make this region particularly vulnerable to tau pathology. academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 07/04/2026
Appreciate this clear coverage of our “body-wandering” paper in Science News. www.sciencenews.org/article/mind...
sciencenews.org
Mind wandering to physical sensations could impact your mental health
People’s minds sometimes wander to their bodily sensations, which may reduce symptoms of depression and ADHD, a new study suggests.
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 26/03/2026
New paper in PNAS! When the mind wanders, it often drifts to the body. We call this "body-wandering". These thoughts are often negative, but are associated with reduced ADHD & depression symptoms, driven by a distinct interoceptive-allostatic brain signature. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123
Graphical abstract showing four panels. Panel 1: a person in an MRI scanner with blue cognitive thought bubbles drifting from their head and pink body thought bubbles from their torso, with organs glowing inside. Panel 2: blue bubbles for cognitive items (Self, Words, Focus, Images, Future, Past) are larger than pink bubbles for body items (Breathing, Movement, Stomach, Heart, Skin, Bladder), with arrows showing body thoughts link to more negative and less positive emotion. Panel 3: physiological traces (EGG, ECG, respiratory) show higher arousal with body-wandering; a bar chart shows cognitive items (Past, Future, Repetitive, Vivid) correlate with more ADHD and depression symptoms while body items (Breath, Stomach, Skin, Heart) correlate with fewer.    
Panel 4: medial brain with thalamus, somatomotor cortex, and interoceptive regions highlighted, plus a chord diagram showing connectivity between these three regions.
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
🎉 Excited to share our publication in PNAS! 🎉 What happens when our stream of consciousness turns towards the body? Our fMRI study of 536 individuals finds that 'body-wandering' is associated with patterns of brain connectivity, physiology, affect, and mental health: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 19/03/2026
Is there a single "interoceptive sense"? Our new study in @commspsychol.nature.com says: probably not. In 241 participants, cardiac and respiratory interoception were completely uncorrelated — only subjective confidence was shared across domains. www.nature.com/articles/s44... #psychscisky 🧪
  Graphical abstract showing three panels. Left panel, "Multiorgan Interoception Measures," depicts a translucent human body
   silhouette with anatomically rendered heart (red) and lungs (blue), accompanied by schematic icons for three
  psychophysical tasks: the Respiratory Resistance Sensitivity Task (RRST), Heart Rate Discrimination Task (HRDT), and an
  auditory control condition. N = 241 participants. Center panel, "Psychophysical Modelling and Individual Differences,"
  shows a fan of overlapping sigmoid psychometric curves in blue-to-red gradient representing individual variation in
  perceptual threshold (α) and precision (β), a hierarchical Bayesian model diagram, and icons for metacognitive bias and
  M-Ratio efficiency. Right panel, "Key Finding: No Cross-Modal Relationship," displays a scatterplot of cardiac versus
  respiratory sensitivity with a flat regression line (r ≈ 0, BF₀₁ > 6), a compact Bayes Factor heatmap with mostly blue
  null-supporting cells and one orange cell indicating that subjective confidence is shared across modalities (r = 0.51***).
   Takeaway: interoceptive ability is modality-specific.
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Teresa Berther @teresaberther.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Incredibly excited to finally share this project! Most heartfelt thanks to everyone involved for their support 🫶🏻 Looking forward to much more gut-brain research to come!
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Daniel S. Kluger @danlikesbrains.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
New @bodybrainbehaviour.bsky.social preprint, and this is a big one for the lab: @teresaberther.bsky.social did the deepest of dives into #gut-brain coupling with MEG and HD gastrography. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A brief 🧵on our first trip into this corner of #brain-body #neuroskyence:
biorxiv.org
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Excited to share that our work on organ-specific interoception is now published in Communications Psychology! www.nature.com/articles/s44... @micahgallen.com @the-ecg.org
nature.com
Interoceptive ability is uncorrelated across respiratory and cardiac axes in a large scale psychophysical study - Communications Psychology
Bayesian psychophysical modelling of cardiac and respiratory interoception (N=241) showed no cross-domain associations in sensitivity, precision, or metacognition, indicating that interoceptive perfor...
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
So happy to see our work on organ-specific interoception is out! 🫀🫁 Here is the thread detailing the results when preprinted 🧵: bsky.app/profile/leah...
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Marie Loescher @marieloescher.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Happy to share our new Opinion now out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social, with Catherine Tallon-Baudry and Anthony Clément! A dual-function framework of interoception: the information and coordination modes of interoceptive signaling Full access: authors.elsevier.com/a/1miOLbotqB... #neuroskyence
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 27/02/2026
Today I am excited to introduce respyra - an open-source Python toolbox for respiratory tracking experiments in interoception research! Now on PyPI (pip install respyra) with a preprint on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps... GitHub: github.com/embodied-com...
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 23/02/2026
Happy to see this collaboration out - fun project led by Lorena Desdentado, Olga Pollatos, and colleagues using our heart rate discrimination task. "Cardiac interoception in action: Modulation after a stress induction with a speech task" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #neuroskyence
A figure shwoing boxplots.
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Embodied Computation Group @the-ecg.org · 06/01/2026
New website is up! Code for it can be found here: github.com/embodied-com...
github.com
GitHub - embodied-computation-group/embodied-computation-group.github.io
Contribute to embodied-computation-group/embodied-computation-group.github.io development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Thomas Andrillon @thomasandrillon.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Out now in @commsbio.nature.com! We studied brain-heart interactions during mind wandering and mind blanking. Mind blanking is associated with a greater heart/brain decoupling, complicating the idea of an attentional switch between external & internal environments! 🧠🔄🫀🧪
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Tahnée Engelen @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
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
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
The hard problem is solved - Thanks @naddenmark.bsky.social !
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Even after recovery, relapse is heartbreakingly common in anorexia nervosa. Could the answer lie in the gut’s hidden signals? 🧵
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Martina Saltafossi @martinasaltafossi.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
I'm thrilled to share that our new paper is now published in Psychophysiology (Open Access): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @zacndr.bsky.social @teamlabuda.bsky.social @fraferri.bsky.social @danlikesbrains.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
<em>Psychophysiology</em> | SPR Journal | Wiley Online Library
Our findings deepen growing interest in how exteroception and interoception interact. We show that respiration modulates speeded responses and multisensory integration, with peak effects during trans....
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Thank you to @psypost.bsky.social for featuring our @natmentalhealth.nature.com research on stomach–brain communication and worse mental health symptoms www.psypost.org/scientists-d... Was also shared on X but with weirdly more hair colour comments 🌈 than the science itself 😅: x.com/OwenGregoria...
psypost.org
Scientists discover surprising link between gut-brain interactions and mental health
Every emotion has a physical side, but one organ has been curiously overlooked in brain-body research. Now, scientists are turning their attention to the stomach—and discovering signals that may chang...
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Jonas Haslbeck @jmbh.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Two new preprints on multilevel HMMs! Time series data is now pervasive in psychology and new methods are needed to model the dynamics in such data. Hidden Markov Models (HHMs) are powerful models for dynamics in which a system is switching between a number of discrete states.
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Tahnée Engelen @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
That’s a wrap! Thanks to the speakers @leahbanellis.bsky.social @tschreiner.bsky.social and Anke Karabanov and co-organiser @danlikesbrains.bsky.social for a great symposium 💪
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Daniel S. Kluger @danlikesbrains.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Finally, we'll have the Brain-Body States Symposium on Friday morning, featuring @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social @leahbanellis.bsky.social @tschreiner.bsky.social and Anke Karabanov. Friday's poster session will also feature the lab's recent work on respiration and active sampling.
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Incredibly impressed with the calibre of research by Ye Ella Tian showing the importance of multi-organ bodily health including immunometabolics (at Adriatica Summer School 🏖️) #teamlab #mambolab #psychologywellbeing_ch #fraferri_78 #erasmus_uda
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
So thrilled to see this Spotlight. Thank you @dalmaijer.bsky.social! Homes in on the complexity of the role of interoceptive signals with mental health, a 'one size fits all' is clearly not appropriate for interoception (sometimes showing that ‘being in touch with your body’ is not always preferred)
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 02/09/2025
New preprint! We are pleased to share our Hierarchical Bayesian framework for Interoceptive Psychophysics! Implemented in rstan, we provide a complete suite of tools spanning model comparison, parameter recovery, multifactor designs, power analysis, and more! 🎯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Nils Kroemer @nbkroemer.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
New preprint...and this one is truly EPIC 🚨. Using a large group of patients with depression and healthy controls (N>800), we show differences in the functional segregation of insular subnetworks. And we can use it to classify! Led by @glassybrain.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺 osf.io/preprints/ps...
Graphical summary of the analysis pipelineDecreased similarity within the anterior insula cortex drives group differences between patients with MDD and healthy control participants. This difference is illustrated by shift functions and compared to control regions in the temporal cortex.Patients with depression can be robustly classified based on functional connectivity profiles, and the accuracy improves with increasing symptom severity.
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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
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Fluffy Cyborg, IInd of the name @avel.kairos-research.org · 27/08/2025
Excellent thread - explaining a (highly surprising) negative result, but also going into the ecological validity of the experiments performed and possible strategies to address those validity issues. This is what we need in experimental cog sci !
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Edwin Dalmaijer @dalmaijer.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Very interesting set of null findings! TL;DR: no direct link between rigorously tested interoception across various domains and mental health. Read the whole thread (and/or preprint!) for nuance behind why there might be a null effect here.
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Nils Kroemer @nbkroemer.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Wow, this is the kind of evidence we need to move ahead in the field. I'll go out on a limb here: I guess it is more about the gut than cardiac and respiratory domains. Huge effort by @leahbanellis.bsky.social @micahgallen.com and the entire team 👏
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 27/08/2025
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 👇
medrxiv.org
Interoceptive Ability is Unrelated to Mental Health Symptoms: Evidence From a Large Scale Multi-Domain Psychophysical Investigation
Interoception-the sensing and perception of the internal viscera-is widely cast as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking brain-body interaction to mental illness. Prevailing models propose that altered ...
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
I am ridiculously excited about this! We made the cover!! (online-only... but still 😂). Love the philosophical twist to this Editorial at Nature Mental Health featuring our research.
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Absolutely loved discussing our recent @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper on IhmCurious YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTv...), thank you for having me! & to @micahgallen.com @brainandstomach.bsky.social & the @the-ecg.bsky.social team for all their hard work 🧠
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Vanessa Teckentrup @glassybrain.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
The way we feel affects the way we think. Can we find evidence for this in real-world mood and cognitive performance? For a few weeks, we followed people through their daily lives on their smartphones to answer this question! 📱🌍🧠 #neuroskyence osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 30/07/2025
I’m elated to share our latest publication - out now in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s44... - tour de force by @leahbanellis.bsky.social @brainandstomach.bsky.social and the rest of the VMP team!
nature.com
Stomach–brain coupling indexes a dimensional signature of mental health - Nature Mental Health
Using a relatively large and diverse sample of mostly young adults, this study by Banellis, Rebollo and colleagues examines associations between regional stomach–brain coupling and mental health and i...
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Got Butterflies in your Stomach? I am super excited to share the first major study of my postdoc @the-ecg.bsky.social - Now out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! We report a multidimensional mental health signature of stomach-brain coupling in the largest sample to date www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Loving that my #ASSC conferences keep aligning with pride 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (left #ASSC28 in Heraklion Crete, right ASSC in New York). Can we keep this up for Chile? @assc28.bsky.social
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Loved presenting our Brain-Body tutorial🫀🫁🧠 at #ASSC28, great initiative & brilliant talk from @brainandstomach.bsky.social & awesome talks as always from @danlikesbrains.bsky.social & @marieloescher.bsky.social. Looking forward to the rest of the conference!
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 20/06/2025
Check out this cool Psyche article by @leahbanellis.bsky.social - covering our recent research into the neural and psychiatric correlates of "body-wandering", i.e., mind-wandering about the interoceptive and somatic body.
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
I'm so grateful to write my first magazine article with Psyche Magazine! psyche.co/ideas/how-mu... It features our preprint on 🫁 'Body-Wandering' 🫀 with invaluable guidance from @micahgallen.com and @themindwanders.bsky.social : biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
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teamlabuda.bsky.social @teamlabuda.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Adriatica Summer School 2025 🧠 🌊 Discover the themes, meet our outstanding speakers, and prepare for a week of academic exchange and inspiration! 📅 September 8–12, 2025 Registration is open via the link below www.dnisc.unich.it/pagina-adria... We look forward to seeing you there! #Adriatica2025
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Lundbeckfonden @lundbeckfonden.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
🔬Unge talentfulde forskere modtager i alt 68 mio. kr. via LF Postdocs og Early-Career Clinician Scientists-programmerne. Målet er at styrke dansk neurovidenskab og tiltrække både nationale og internationale talenter. 🔗 Læs: ow.ly/OeuK50VJAjp #dkforsk #talent
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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
I can't actually believe this but I got a Lundbeck Postdoctoral Fellowship! 🤯 I'm so excited to work on multi-organ brain-body interaction models with @micahgallen.com, Anke Karabanov, @danisbassett.bsky.social, & Diego Vidaurre! I'm honestly in shock and can't wait! 🎉
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Thomas Schreiner @tschreiner.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Check out our TINS Forum article on the role of respiration in coordinating sleep oscillations and memory consolidation! Spearheaded by the great @fabian31415.bsky.social and @estebanbt.bsky.social A big thank you to our editor Moran Furman for making the whole journey very enjoyable #neuroskyence
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Marie K Holt @mkbholt.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
This is super interesting and so elegant! And perhaps aligns really well with the idea that the afferent vagus nerve is organised according to multiple modalities (target organ, tissue layer and stimulus type) as proposed by Zhao et al. 2022 www.nature.com/articles/s41...?
nature.com
A multidimensional coding architecture of the vagal interoceptive system - Nature
Single-cell profiling of vagal sensory neurons from seven organs in mice and calcium-imaging-guided spatial transcriptomics reveal that interoceptive signals are coded through three distinct dimension...
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zacndr.bsky.social @zacndr.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Exciting News for Adriatica2025 on Brain-Body Interactions and Wellbeing!🧠🌞 The preliminary confirmed lineup of speakers is out! Join us in beautiful Pescara, Italy. Save the date: 8-12 September Stay tuned for the registration link coming soon! #TEAMLab#MamboLab#Adriatica2025 @fraferri.bsky.social
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