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Sahib Khalsa

@skhalsa.bsky.social
1.1K followers 86 following 207 posts

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist studying the role of interoception in mental health. Director of Anxiety Disorders Research, UCLA Psychiatry. Opinions my own.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I’m excited to announce the launch of BPCCIR: Building the Future of Interoceptive Neuroscience —a new 5-year, $3.5M NIH Blueprint U24 Coordination Center focused on advancing the science of brain–body communication.1/3
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Here here! Scientific knowledge whether basic or applied can have so many unforeseen impacts, and sharing this widely clearly only increases this potential
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Postdoc job alert! I’m looking for someone with a PhD in neuroscience/psychology, psychiatry, computational modeling or a related field to join my NIH-funded team at UCLA studying the neural & computational mechanisms of #interoception in anorexia nervosa 1/2
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Nice paper from Wani Woo (@choongwanwoo.bsky.social) and colleagues articulating a role for interoception in AI. Very timely! www.nature.com/articles/s42...
nature.com
Life-inspired interoceptive artificial intelligence for autonomous and adaptive agents - Nature Machine Intelligence
Lee, Oh et al. propose interoception as a biologically inspired framework for building more autonomous and adaptive AI agents, learning from living organisms to build autonomous and adaptive intellige...
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NPP-Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience (DPN) @dpn-journal.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
How do we move AI from raw model performance to effective and impactful mental health care? Building on insights from a pivotal @acnporg.bsky.social study group, the authors set 5️⃣ priorities to embed AI into clinical workflows with safety and equity at the core. 🧠💻 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Responsible and innovative AI for mental health care: five priority themes - NPP—Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience
This paper synthesizes insights from a 2026 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) study group examining how to responsibly translate AI into clinical mental health care. Building on this ...
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Ruofan Ma @maruofan.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Very delightful to see on my hunt for better ways to model interoception. @rssmith.bsky.social #CPC2026
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Dafni Hadjieconomou @drosostalis.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Excited to announce "The Body in Dialogue" workshop @institutducerveau.bsky.social! 4 sessions on how the brain talks to the body across the animal kingdom: My session features Ana Domingos, @karalmarshall.bsky.social, Denis Burdakov & Michael Krashes. More announcements coming soon, stay tuned!
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A few recent noteworthy papers on human respiratory #interoception showing: 1) exhalation's impacts on risky decision making. Kudos to the team led by Soyoung Park! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
cell.com
Slow breathing impacts inter-organ dynamics modulating brain function and risk behavior
Huang et al. show that prolonged exhalation increases risky decisions by enhancing reward sensitivity and cardiac parasympathetic activity. Individuals with greater parasympathetic upregulation exhibi...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
AI is already entering psychiatric training. Our new Academic Psychiatry review argues that staged, supervised integration that protects clinical reasoning, formulation, privacy, equity, and the therapeutic relationship is key. AI should deepen (not replace) the human work of psychiatry. Link below
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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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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Your heartbeat quietly shapes how your brain processes information
Frequently ignored bodily rhythms may be skewing neuroscience experiments
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Some of the most intriguing findings in our recent JAMA Psychiatry study of anorexia nervosa were not the ones we originally set out to study.
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Charles Verdonk @ch-verdonk.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
🩺𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐠𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐬𝐚? 🧵(1/6) 🔗 Link to the article (open access): jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I'm excited to share our new paper published today in JAMA Psychiatry: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Major new work on respiratory #interoception from Brian Dlouhy and an all star team www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human forebrain neural synchronization and entrainment to breathing during wakefulness, sleep, and external mechanical ventilation - Nature Communications
The mechanisms underlying breathing interoception are unclear. Here authors show that distinct forebrain sites synchronize and entrain to breathing during wakefulness, sleep, and external mechanical v...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Looking forward to welcoming you back, and participating with you in this event! An advance thanks to Liron and Galia for leading this effort
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Pleased to announce the Embodied Tech Summit, happening in London June 10: embodied.tech
embodied.tech
The Embodied Tech Summit
The Qualified Self: An invitation-only working summit at the intersection of neuroscience and health technology. Part of the Embodied Series. June 10, 2026 | London
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
We've learned a lot about the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP), but as this recent meta-analysis suggests, we have a lot more to learn when it comes to clinical applications of it. Kudos to Erica, Carolyn et al. on a monumental effort. #interoception pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42092635/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A comprehensive meta-analytic review of the neurophysiological properties of the heartbeat evoked potential in health and disease - PubMed
Based on these results, no firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the utility of HEP amplitude as a clinical biomarker. Substantial heterogeneity and widespread methodological inconsistencies across ...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
This does a good job of explaining (in part) why this amazing yet strange creature of the lab’s mascot.
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
We have less than 1 week until the Embodied Minds Summit, and the agenda is finalized! embodiedminds.ai If you are still waiting for an invitation, the final wave for this small invite-only meeting will be going out later today, so stay tuned.
embodiedminds.ai
Embodied Minds
Partnering to Accelerate the Science of the Embodied Mind. Interoception, Consciousness, and the Future of Self-Understanding in the Age of AI. May 2–3, 2026 | Los Angeles
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Looking forward to visiting your institute at Mt. Sinai focused on the Brain and Body!
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
In case anyone not attending the meeting is interested in reading along, we’re putting together a reading list from speakers and will post that. For a good entry book on the topic of consciousness, I’ve been enjoying Michael Pollan’s new book:
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Very cool paper showing inhalation on increases visual perception and neural network activity. The evidence for moment-by-moment regulatory influences of peripheral signals on the brain’s perceptual processing keeps mounting
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
I am pleased to announce the Embodied Minds Summit, a two-day gathering on interoception, consciousness, and the future of self-understanding in the age of artificial intelligence. May 2–3, 2026 | Los Angeles embodiedminds.ai
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Eleanor Palser @eleanorpalser.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
We are still recruiting #Autistic adults to participate in our interview study on #interoception. Take the eligibility screener here: paloaltou.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... Please share with your networks! #ActuallyAutistic #AutismAcceptance
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Leonardo Dalla Porta @ldallap.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
For more than a century, the study of brain lesions has been central to understanding cognitive processes and normal brain function (e.g., Broca’s studies). However, what electrophysiological signatures emerge following a brain lesion?
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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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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
The updated YouTube livestream link for Day 2 of the UCLA Health Brain Health Summit (which is happening now) can be found here: youtube.com/live/0Quufvj...
youtube.com
UCLA BRAIN HEALTH SUMMIT Day 2: 8:15 am Saturday March 21, 2026
YouTube video by BRI UCLA
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
If you can't make the UCLA Brain Health Summit in person, the meeting will be live-streamed on Youtube here: teams.semel.ucla.edu/longevity/ev... (click on the hyperlink in the top right corner of the program).
teams.semel.ucla.edu
UCLA Health Brain Health Summit | Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Looking forward to kicking off tomorrow's UCLA Brain Health Summit. To get things ready, Indira Subramanian and I recorded this podcast hosted by Genein Letford: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCdd...
youtube.com
UCLA Brain Health Summit Speakers on the Create and Grow Your Brain Capital
YouTube video by Genein Letford
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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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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
What are the new and emerging treatments for anxiety disorders? We summarize these in a new review: www.bmj.com/content/392/...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Remarkable study from Christoph Thaiss and colleagues demonstrating a lifespan impact of a microbiome-vagal-CNS pathway dysfunction of gut interoception www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Intestinal interoceptive dysfunction drives age-associated cognitive decline - Nature
Age-related microbiome changes increase medium-chain fatty acid-producing bacteria, driving GPR84-mediated myeloid inflammation, impaired vagal signalling and hippocampal dysfunction; targeting this g...
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Karin Roelofs @epanlab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
We are hiring! www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
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Kara Marshall @karalmarshall.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Please consider joining us for a wonderful meeting on Brain Body Physiology at Cold Spring harbor this summer, organized with @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social and Asya Rolls. In CSHL tradition most talks are chosen from submitted abstracts. Abstracts due this Friday! meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...
meetings.cshl.edu
Brain Body Physiology
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.
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Carlos Ribeiro @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Deadline today! Submit and abstract and join us to discuss science in the exciting brain body interaction field!
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Honored to see our work cited in today’s New York Times in coverage of emerging data on next-generation GLP-1–based therapies. What does it all mean? Some brief thoughts below.. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/w...
nytimes.com
A New Concern About Weight Loss Drugs: What if They Work Too Well?
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
I couldn’t agree more. Olu Ajijola & I are attempting to bridge this divide in interoception via conceptual frameworks (see below) but also via integrated multidisciplinary lab group activities. It’s simultaneously invigorating and daunting, but needs to happen. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Toward a multidisciplinary neurobiology of interoception and mental health
Interoception, the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets and integrates internal physiological signals, is fundamental to health, pla…
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
How do we build and sustain healthy brains across the lifespan? For decades, neuroscience has advanced through powerful reductionist approaches, identifying molecular pathways, neural circuits, and disease mechanisms. These discoveries have transformed medicine.
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Pleased to share this newly co-authored expert opinion on the Polyvagal Theory (PVT): www.clinicalneuropsychiatry.org/download/why...
clinicalneuropsychiatry.org
WHY THE POLYVAGAL THEORY IS UNTENABLE. An international expert evaluation of the polyvagal theory and commentary upon Porges, S.W. (2025). Polyvagal theory: current status, clinical applications, and ...
by Paul Grossman, Gareth L. Ackland, Andrew M. Allen, Gary G. Berntson, Lindsea C. Booth, Gordon M. Burghardt, Julie Buron, Vladimir Dinets, J. Sean Doody, Mathias Dutschmann, David G.S. Farmer, James...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Mental health is shaping survival after heart disease—yet we rarely treat it that way. A new meta-analysis of 22 million people links PTSD, anxiety, depression & insomnia with higher risk of acute coronary syndrome. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
“Diagnostic and Scientific Manual” sounds like a much more appropriate DSM label. And emphasizing a focus on the underlying causes and spectrums of psychiatric disorders are both huge positives!
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Neuron @cp-neuron.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
dlvr.it
Intestinal interoception: A nexus of environment-body-brain interactions
Salvador, Golynker, et al. discuss anatomical and functional principles of intestinal interoception. They explore how environmental factors impact interoceptive signaling, how interoceptive dysfunction contributes to disease pathogenesis, and how molecular enhancement of interoceptive function may restore organismal homeostasis.
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Alex Shackman @ajshackman.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The nature of the relation between mental well-being and ill-being - Nature Human Behaviour
Tamnes et al. explore the complex relationship between ill-being—including mental and behavioural disorders—and mental well-being.
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Camilla Nord @camillanord.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
It is hugely fun & we are very lucky to do science for the sake of science. But it is amazing to see work we and many others I admire have done turn into public awareness thanks to excellent science writing. (see also www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/s...)
nytimes.com
Mapping the Sense of What’s Going On Inside
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Also hot off the press: new evidence of a potential role for float therapy in methamphetamine addiction recovery. While the Scientific American article briefly references this study, the full details can be found here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) in methamphetamine use disorder: a pilot study
Existing treatments for methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) are suboptimal in addressing withdrawal and preventing relapse. Models of addiction have pr…
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
New writeup on interoception in Scientific American focusing on its role in mental health: www.scientificamerican.com/article/inte...
scientificamerican.com
Disruptions in This Sixth Sense May Drive Mental Illness
Disruptions in interoception may underlie anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health ailments
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Jon Stone @jonstoneneuro.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
New @aanmember.bsky.social guidelines for the management of functional seizures led by Ben Tolchin. A landmark for people with FND worldwide. ✅Rigorous evidence-based process ✅Consensus practical recommendations ✅Endorsed by @fndsociety.bsky.social www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...
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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 28/11/2025
The role of the #SpinalCord in relaying brain-body signals has been hard to study noninvasively. @giuliog.bsky.social &co develop Electrical Spinal Imaging (ESI), enabling high-resolution, noninvasive recordings, revealing how #attention modulates spinal activity @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3MswZOf
Recording setup and data analysis. Top left panel: Schematic of the position of the electrodes to record EEG (white), ESI (black), ECG (red), somatosensory activity at Erb’s points (green), and the positions of Common Mode Sense (CMS) (blue) and DRL (orange) electrodes. Note that Erb and ECG electrodes were placed on the chest, while ESI electrodes were placed on the back. Top right and bottom panels: Flowchart describing the analysis procedure. (1 and 2) Raw ESI signals are first re-referenced to the most caudal dorsal electrode (S64). (3) The artifact caused by the electrical stimulation of the median nerve is removed by linear interpolation. (4) The ECG is used to identify ESI time windows contaminated by the QRS complex (orange). This allows subsequent selection of ESI time windows to retain. (5) These time windows are epoched around the somatosensory stimulus. (6) An amplitude-based threshold is used to identify and remove artifactual epochs (red). (7) Resulting artifact-free epochs are averaged across stimuli of each block. Subject-level average waveforms are subsequently averaged across participants. (8) Images of the spatial distribution of spinal cord activity are calculated by spline interpolation across ESI electrodes. The figurine depicts spinal cord activity at the latency of the N13 wave.
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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Perceptual Dysregulation in Psychiatric Nosology has been released! I'm pleased to see that the cover is pretty close to my initial mockup. You can find the entire collection here: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
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