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Nicole Petersen

@npetersen.bsky.social
536 followers 254 following 52 posts

assistant professor @UCLA - neuromodulation, neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology :)

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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
also, controversial opinion but voting on an app you haven't read is irresponsible. it's too high-stakes. I'd like to see more, SEP-like, smaller groups of experts having real discussions and less of grants getting the score that reflects R1's gut reaction + presentation style.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
I think there are things NIH can do better. when there is too much to discuss in the given time, no one is going to go to the mats to defend a grant against a lazy or hostile reviewer. and there has to be a better, program-level mechanism for discarding low quality reviews (eg factually wrong).
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
1. research institutions that want to remain research institutions are going to need to pay for research 2. research institutions that want to remain research institutions are going to need to become friendlier to industry partners
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
can we do brain regions too? "visual cortex" like it only has one job!
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
"Taking this literature as a whole, there may be a sense that where there’s smoke, there must be fire,' but experience from other fields ... has shown that actually there can sometimes just be lots of smoke."
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
"The figure also shows US research funding associated with these keywords extracted from NIH Reporter, settling at around 20 to 25 billion dollars per annum since 2018." this is millions, not billions, no?
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
grant proposals are fighting an uphill battle against reviewers' visceral concept of an acceptable sample size. at least twice I've had reviewers ignore the power analysis and say it just seemed too small.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
seems like this should be a bigger deal than it currently is: "Currently, industry-led experiments are publishable without [IRB] approval [39]. There is little reason to exempt industry from standard journal policies..."
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
sure, but if you rely on that grant to keep a roof over your head, I think you're entitled to some concern when reviews are delayed
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
I don't, but it's also not hard to game pre-registration
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
46% of preadolescent girls had "misaligned" biological sex and gender?
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Nature Neuroscience @natneuro.nature.com · 02/10/2025
Hormonal milieu influences whole-brain structural dynamics across the menstrual cycle using dense sampling in multiple individuals @carinaheller.bsky.social, @uni-jena.de, @umn-midb.bsky.social, @icsantabarbara.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Hormonal milieu influences whole-brain structural dynamics across the menstrual cycle using dense sampling in multiple individuals - Nature Neuroscience
Heller et al. showed dense longitudinal imaging in four females, including one with endometriosis and one using oral contraceptives, and the finding that different hormonal milieus influence widespread brain volume changes linked to progesterone or estradiol.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
"no garbage" I guess this is a different conversation but we are assuming here that score is tightly related to quality. I am less confident of this each time I sit on study section
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
kind of a bold claim
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Factor 3: Expertise and Resources
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
I just got an "Additional expertise needed" because one consultant is off-site. in the year of our lord 2025. no other comments. :)
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
the link takes me to the wrong place! do you have another?
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Carina Heller, Ph.D. @carinaheller.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
We wrote a piece for @naturemedicine.bsky.social 🧠 Menstrual cycle irregularities can be both cause and consequence of wide-ranging health issues. Embracing this complexity could reveal novel brain–body interactions and advance neuroscience. Check out our commentary www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Why menstrual cycle irregularities belong in brain research - Nature Medicine
The menstrual cycle requires tight orchestration between the brain and body, and irregularities can be both the cause and the consequence of wide-ranging health issues. Embracing this complexity, inst...
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Nature Methods @natmethods.nature.com · 06/06/2025
An Analysis of 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure-function coupling and behavior prediction highlights their effectiveness for neurophysiological applications. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain - Nature Methods
In this Analysis, Liu et al. benchmark more than 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure–function coupling and behavio...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
we are entering a whole new era of brain imaging analytics 🤩🧠
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
really cool!!! love to see the convergence across PET / genes / fMRI. please please consider making the .niis / statistical maps from figs 3-5 downloadable!! curious to see how closely the activation pattern you report overlaps with other CUD studies 😁
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
high-dose stimulants lead to psychosis -- basically, if you keep turning up the "salience" volume eventually everything seems salient and the brain scrambles to explain it?
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
this paper was such a joy to read. in addition to the very thorough treatment of the data I love how densely-referenced the intro is; I think I learned something from every sentence! one passing thought about the salience boost -- I wonder if that's the mechanism by which (cont)
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Benjamin Kay @benjaminkay.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
My med school textbook says stimulants like Ritalin treat hyperactivity by “stimulating” the brain’s attention and cognitive control systems. We studied children taking stimulants in the ABCD Study, and the largest differences were actually in arousal and reward networks! Check out our preprint!
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
I'm curious if some journals are already implementing this. I have 1 paper under re-review and got 3 reviews. R3 was clearly written by AI, but I assumed someone got invited to review and used AI. I checked the researchsquare timeline and only 2 reviewers ever agreed.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
thank you, I just dipped my toe in (louvain) and will be taking it back out. sbm = stochastic block model?
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Thomas Yeo @bttyeo.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
It's finally here! Use the Network Correspondence Toolbox to help contextualize your neuroimaging findings 🧠
nature.com
A network correspondence toolbox for quantitative evaluation of novel neuroimaging results - Nature Communications
Here, the authors present the Network Correspondence Toolbox, which enables researchers to examine and report spatial correspondence between their neuroimaging results and widely used brain atlases.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
super cool -- thought this might be of interest if you hadn't seen it already: elifesciences.org/articles/71846
elifesciences.org
Mapping dopaminergic projections in the human brain with resting-state fMRI
A functional connectivity gradient in striatum is obtained that maps onto DaT SPECT-derived dopaminergic projections and thereby likely provides a new biomarker for investigating dopaminergic (dys)fun...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
thank you!! reassuring that this is business as usual!
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Congrats, very cool finding and wow, what an effort!! I bet we could use tms + fmri to test this circuit in humans 🧐
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Rick Betzel @richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Caio is having a good day. Another preprint on which he's first author -- this time, describing pathways through the connectome for indirectly stimulating subgenual cingulate cortex in the context of depression. Neuroanatomical pathways of TMS therapy for depression www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Andreas Horn @andreashorn.org · 27/12/2024
New landmark TMS trial dropped by Jonathan Downar's team, which will revolutionize care for depression even more than the SAINT trial did – extensive (10 hour!) sessions of TMS in a single day, enhanced by single dose of cycloserine. 90% response, 70% remission! www.researchgate.net/publication/...
researchgate.net
(PDF) Real-world effectiveness of a single-day regimen for transcranial magnetic stimulation using Optimized, Neuroplastogen-Enhanced techniques in Depression (ONE-D)
PDF | Background: Conventional transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) regimens are logistically burdensome, requiring days or weeks of clinic visits.... | Find, read and cite all the research you nee...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
I guess I'm a little surprised by the intransigence of journals. on social media, we are all! about! high! rigor! studies! null and "boring" results are welcome as long as the study was conducted well! but those same studies get desk rejected from "high impact" journals every day.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
this is the content I'm here for! when you're ~15ish applications into that streak it's hard to know if you should keep going or jump ship.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
media.tenor.com
a woman with a mustache and a crown on her head
ALT: a woman with a mustache and a crown on her head
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E. David Klonsky, PhD @klonskylab.bsky.social · 24/10/2024
2/2 The second is my solution for the replication crisis. It was recently accepted at Assessment. "How to Produce, Identify, and Motivate Robust Psychological Science: A Roadmap and a Response to Vize et al." doi.org/10.31234/osf...
doi.org
OSF
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William J. Brady @williambrady.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
New paper out in @ScienceMagazine! In 8 studies (multiple platforms, methods, time periods) we find: misinformation evokes more outrage than trustworthy news, when it does it's shared more + ppl are less likely to read before sharing. w/ @killianmcl1 @Klonick @mollycrockett 🧵👇
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
sure, everyone agrees on that. easier said than done! and blaming right wing mis/disinformation overlooks that scientists have -- without those bad actors -- burned a lot of credibility via genuine bad behavior. not all scientific mistrust is misplaced, and that's a different kind of problem
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
not just transparency. rigor + transparency
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
sure, but scientists do have control over the explicit fraud and less obvious questionable research practices that they engage in on a regular basis. this starts with editors, funders, etc incentivizing transparency over "wow cool"
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE STUDY SECTIONS IN THE BACK: ". . . classical functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) . . . can be reliable when averaged across tens of people, or even in an individual, given sufficient repetition."
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Arielle Keller @ariellekeller.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Love to see this conversation starting! "Study design features increase replicability in brain-wide association studies" Full article led by Kaidi Kang and Simon Vandekar + awesome News+Views by @roselynechauvin.bsky.social & @ndosenbach.bsky.social! 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
nature.com
Study design features increase replicability in brain-wide association studies - Nature
Optimizing study design is critical for increasing standardized effect sizes and replicability, and the features that increase replicability in cross-sectional and longitudinal brain-wide association ...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
+1 to all. also: quality of reviews needs attn. everyone has heard of / experienced an app scoring just out of payline, resubmitted, and ND. or the less anecdotal version: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... such low ICCs would be unacceptable for any research tool. not all reviews are bad. but too many.
pnas.org
Low agreement among reviewers evaluating the same NIH grant applications | PNAS
Obtaining grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is increasingly competitive, as funding success rates have declined over the p...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 19/02/2024
🧠 hello #neuroskyence! happy to share my early career commentary in neuropsychopharmacology, highlighting the importance of understanding sex hormones for understanding the brain: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
big thanks to the thoughtful reviewers, very helpful editorial team at Nature Mental Health, our wonderful collaborators, and each and every person who made this possible -- and huge congrats to first author Michael Apostol!
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
effects on affect (😵‍💫) more broadly. there are a few more really cool additional findings in the paper which I will not spoil for you! read on and if you can't access reach out to one of us.
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
he found through a careful mediation analysis that craving and withdrawal symptoms are strongly correlated with anxiety symptoms -- but dlPFC stimulation only relieves craving and withdrawal, and this is not mediated by reductions in anxiety, or
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
does neuromodulation to dlPFC only reduce craving and withdrawal because it's improving underlying mood problems (like anxiety, which often heightens during withdrawal)? or is it having a unique effect on craving (separate from well-known effects on mood)?
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Nicole Petersen @npetersen.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
I tried to get the study re-started on my own but a lab of 1 is not sustainable. so in April 2022 Michael started, and recruitment took off. after just a few months in the lab, Michael said he had a hypothesis he was interested in testing:
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