Jan R. Wessel

Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR)

2 Sept

Couldn't be prouder of Darcy or happier to have her return to the Midwest! Great news for UWM.

Darcy Waller@darcywaller.bsky.social

I’m so happy to share that I’ll be starting as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Fall 2027! I'm incredibly excited to head back to the Midwest, get to work with an incredible group of colleagues, and live in beautiful Madison, WI. 🦡🎊

Jan R. Wessel reposted

SfN Journals

@sfnjournals.bsky.social

12 Aug

#JNeurosci: Findings from Leach et al. provide evidence that the frontoparietal cortex influences behaviors, dynamically adjusting communication between brain networks as decisions progress. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0594-26.2026

Jan R. Wessel reposted

@therealspr.bsky.social

15 Aug

🌟SPR Science Spotlight Saturday🌟 Learn how Bruce Bartholow studies brain mechanisms that predict risk of alcohol use disorder. Be sure to register for the 2026 annual meeting in Halifax! spr.joynmeeting.com/conference/

biorxiv.orgTwo types of response inhibition failures in humansResponse inhibition is a key control function that allows humans to perform safe, goal-directed behaviors. The dominant behavioral-computational model holds that response inhibition fails when the inh...

New preprint from the lab. We think we have a solution (two, actually) to a long-standing problem in the field of response inhibition. Using two different mathematical approaches, we think we can identify long-hypothesized inhibitory 'trigger failure' trials. More in🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We also tested the long-standing hypothesis that stop-signal TF result from attentional failure, but find little evidence to support this claim. Prestimulus alpha power and stimulus-related visual N1 ERPs were identical between TF and successful stop trials. If anything, non-TF trials were abnormal.

This shows 3 things: - Trigger failures are a real, distinct category of response inhibition failure - They show distcint behavioral & EEG patterns predicted by existing TF theories - They reflect a genuine failure to initiate cognitive control. I hope this approach can be useful for years to come!

So we then split the failed stop-trials into "likely TF" and "likely non-TF" trials. We first compared behavior. Strikingly, unlike non-TF trials, TF trials are not faster than typical go-trials. That makes sense, since go-speed shouldn't matter if you don't ever initiate inhibition!

Then, we dug deeper into EEG signatures. In line with the single-trial correlation analysis, the binary split shows that stop-signal trigger failures do not have a stop-signal P3! To us, that is the strongest evidence that there are indeed trials in which no inhibition ever takes place.

So then we went and checked whether these single-trial probabilities actually reflected something that's "real". And indeed, trial-wise p(TF) was highly correlated with spatiotemporal clusters of trial-wise EEG after the stop-signal. Fronto-central activity was particularly anticorrelated with p(TF)

Then, we used Gaussian mixture modeling to test whether p(TF) is unimodally distributed, or results from two generative processes. If trigger failures and 'speed failures' are distinct, binary outcomes, then one would expect a highly bimodal mixture distribution. That's exactly the case.

So I suggested Stein try jackknifing: run the model once with each failed stop-trial held out. If mean TF rate goes down, the trial is likely a trigger failure (and vice versa). Stein first developed are more efficient implementation of BEESTS to enable this computationally intensive approach.

But Stein didn't stop there. He also derived an analytical solution to single-trial TF probability using the BEESTS model parameters and likelihood ratio testing. Despite being fundamentally different approaches (numerical v analytic), jackknifing and LR return highly correlated parameter estimates.

In the aughts, Dora Matzke (and later Andrew Heathcote) developed a computational model ("BEESTS") that can capture the mean rate of these trigger failure trials in behavior. This model has been superbly productive in studies that correlate per-subject TF rates with brain activity and other factors.

However, the big limitation of the BEESTS model is that it cannot identify which individual trials are trigger failures. Therefore, TF are essentially hypothetical entities. To test whether they are real, qualitatively distinct trials from other inhibitory failures, we need a trial-wise method.

For four decades, the dominant behavioral-computational model in the field of response inhibition has been the horse-race model. This model holds that response inhibition fails for only one reason: because the inhibition process was too slow to intercept the response.

However, people have long speculated that there may be a 2nd type of inhibitory failure: trigger failure trials, on which no inhibition process is ever initiated. This can be inferred from inhibition functions with >0 intercepts - i.e., inhibition fails even if a stop-signal is presented right away.

psychology.uiowa.eduJob OpeningsLearn more about the job opportunities available at University of Iowa in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

31 July

Come be our colleague. DM me in case of questions!

Mark Blumberg@marksblumberg.bsky.social

We are also conducting an open-area search for a tenure-track assistant professor in neuroscience. Please consider applying or forward to others who may be interested. psychology.uiowa.edu/about/job-op...

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Caterina Gratton

@caterinagratton.bsky.social

23 July

A special highlight of our work on precision fMRI of the prefrontal cortex

WCIA 3 News@wcia3news.bsky.social

Out of the 30 million MRIs performed in the United States every year, data shows about 22% of those are on the brain. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois are mapping out ways to see the results at a more detailed level.

wcia.comU of I researchers use precision fMRI to map prefrontal cortexCHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — Out of the 30 million MRIs performed in the United States every year, data shows about 22% of those are on the brain. Now, researchers at the University of Ill…

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience

@ghentccn.bsky.social

23 July

Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

doi.orgTwo time scales of adaptation in human learning ratesHumans adapt learning rates on both a fast and a slow time scale, and the central orbitofrontal cortex may represent the slow time scale.

youtube.comMagnolia Electric Co. - The Last 3 Human WordsYouTube video by stealingjuly

23 July

To maintain proper aural hygiene, try once-daily JASON MOLINA®

@irenetxeberria.bsky.social

22 July

We're excited to welcome three new post-docs to the lab this month: Dr. Chenye Bao (University of Missouri) Dr. Gizem Filiz (Washington University in St. Louis) Dr. Veronica Zarr (University of Utah) Exciting times ahead!

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Irene Echeverria-Altuna

16 July

Interested in timing, motor control, attention, working memory and/or stuttering? ⌛️ Curious to see how we try to bring these together in one study? 🧐 Check out our most recent, hot-off-the-press manuscript, born out of fun cross-field and cross-lab discussions ✨ Very excited to see this out ☀️🍾

Brain and Cognition Lab@brognition.bsky.social

🧵 New paper led by @irenetxeberria.bsky.social in press at Current Biology! A collaborative effort between the Brain and Cognition Lab and the Brain, Speech & Language Lab ⭐ Does the temporal organisation of action selection differ in stuttering? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A thread 👇

sciencedirect.comDifferences in dynamic motor selection in stutteringStuttering involves interruptions to the smooth flow of speech occurring mostly at syllable onset.1 Speech fluency is enhanced in people who stutter (…

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Atsushi Kikumoto

@kikumotoatsushi.bsky.social

9 July

We're hiring a full-time Lab Manager for the Cognitive Flexibility Dynamics Lab at the University of Maryland, studying cognitive control via brain recording, stimulation, and computational modeling. Ideal for research experience before grad school: cfd-lab.com/join

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Christian Schnell

@neuroschnell.bsky.social

5 July

On my way to Barcelona to attend the #Fens forum. Let me know if you are there and would like to meet. Very happy to chat about @plosbiology.org and learn about your research.

sciencedirect.comsciencedirect.com

3 July

The final version of this is now out at Cortex: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Thanks much to @russpoldrack.org and two other reviewers for highly constructive feedback on the earlier version, and especially to @annemscheel.bsky.social, who suggested Cortex and edited the paper.

Jan R. Wessel@janw.bsky.social

I reviewed 5+ fMRI papers on response inhibition within roughly the last year, and the same points come up over and over again. So I wrote a short note last week entitled "The unique limitations of BOLD-fMRI in the study of response inhibition". You can read it here. osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.ioOSF

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Ross Otto

@arossotto.bsky.social

29 June

New work by former undergraduate student Ziqi Fu, in collaboration with @annaweinberg.bsky.social , finds that impulsive people don't make riskier choices, but they sure make risky choices faster! Just out in Affective Science link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.comOff the Cuff: Self-Reported Positive Urgency Predicts Rapid Choices During Risky Decision-Making - Affective ScienceImpulsivity is a multifaceted personality trait reflecting a tendency to act on immediate urges, often linked to maladaptive real-world behaviors. One facet of impulsivity, Positive Urgency—the tenden...

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Debbie Yee

@debyee.bsky.social

23 June

Thrilled to be featured in the @thetransmitter.bsky.social Liftoff Series! Grateful for the opportunity to share more about our launching lab's ethos and the big questions surrounding mechanisms of affect and mental health we aim to tackle in the coming years! 🧠

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social

In this month’s “Liftoff,” @marisosa.bsky.social discusses the challenges and excitement of task-switching as a new PI, and @debyee.bsky.social shares how she plans to foster a culture of reproducibility in her lab. #neuroskyence By @franciscorr25.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/liftoff-new-...

thetransmitter.orgLiftoff: New lab alertsLearn about early-career scientists starting their own labs.

cognitivecontrol.netCognitive Control Collaborative

18 June

We have a new Cognitive Control Collaborative website: www.cognitivecontrol.net Six labs, more than 20 trainees, six years of collaboration (and counting). Consider joining us, many of us are looking for new grad students in the fall!

biologicalpsychiatrycnni.orgPupil dilation indexes – but does not causally influence – conscious error detection: a double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of performance-monitoring using atomoxetine.Conscious error detection is accompanied by error-related changes in phasic autonomic activity. This autonomic response is diminished in older age – accompanied by impairments in the conscious detecti...

12 June

Here's a bit of unusual work on error processing and error awareness from our lab, which we've been working on off and on for around eight years: www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245... Details in thread

First, we found that the pupil response once again tracked conscious error awareness. Moreover, atomoxetine indeed significantly changed this phasic pupil dilation response to errors. So the causal manipulation of phasic autonomic reactivity to errors worked.

12 June

However, crucially, conscious error detection rates did not differ at all between placebo and atx. As such, we can safely conclude that autonomic nervous system activity indexes – but does not causally contribute to – conscious error detection. The End.

Years ago, we found that healthy older adults show impairments in subjective error awareness: they don't commit more errors, but fail to notice more of them. This deficit was significantly correlated with changes in pupil dilation response to errors across the life-span. tinyurl.com/3y5e942z

tinyurl.comtinyurl.com

12 June

Here, we tested whether this blunted orienting response to errors causally contributes to conscious error detection (as predicted by some theories) or not. 30 healthy older adults performed an error awareness on 80mg atomoxetine (an sNRI to modulate autonomic responsivity) and on placebo.

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Melinda Sabo

@sabomelinda.bsky.social

4 June

#PuG crowd: interested in cognitive control? Come to our symposium “Cognitive Control: Domain-General, Domain-Specific, or Neither?” happening on Friday at 2 pm (room: HS07). We have a fantastic line-up: @annalschubert.bsky.social, Linda Bräutigam, @sarahdepue.bsky.social, Daxun Zhu, and myself. 👇

25 May

Does anybody have a favorite book recommendation to get an incoming college Biology student excited about (cognitive/clinical) neuroscience?

eBioMedicine – The Lancet Discovery Science

24 May

As a child, I always thought scientists learned by thinking hard until they have a great idea or insight. As a scientist, I mostly learn by realizing exactly how every great idea or insight I think I have is actually dumb and trivial. Anyway I just spend Saturday night in the lab for no reason.

Jan R. Wessel reposted

@ebiomedicine.bsky.social

7 May

New research from @neuroecologylab.bsky.social @oxcin.bsky.social helps address the large between-species gap that currently exists in #TranslationalNeuroscience by building a mouse-to-human brain translational model from gene expression. Read #openaccess now 👇

thelancet.comTranslating brain anatomy and disease from mouse to human in latent gene expression spaceOur work provides i) a quantitative bridge across evolutionary divergence between the human and the predominant preclinical species, ii) a predictive framework to help design and evaluate disease mode...

6 May

Here's a list of things I'd rather do than try to open NWB data: - Chew on a ball of tinfoil - Drive an icepick into my eye socket - Take a full gainer into a cesspool - Watch James Harden play basketball List to be continued...

@imagingneurosci.bsky.social

6 May

You know what's nice? Downloading a .mat file from the OSF and then loading it into MATLAB. What ever happened to that?

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Elliot H Smith, PhD

@neurosmith.bsky.social

5 May

New preprint alert! This one led by @neurozarr.bsky.social. Veronica wanted to know how neural traveling waves change during general anesthesia, so we dug back into some of the Utah array data that my PhD advisor collected back in the mid aughts. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Imaging Neuroscience

1 May

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Lindsey Power, Sylvain Baillet, et al: A neuroscientist’s guide to neural burst detection doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Debbie Yee

@debyee.bsky.social

29 Apr

Headed to #SOBP2026? Come visit our posters on stress and mental effort! F325: Investigating the Role of Serotonin in Stressor Controllability and Mental Effort Allocation (me!) S297: Learning and Generalization of Stressor Controllability for Mental Effort allocation (Tony El Nemer)

Jan R. Wessel reposted

PLOS Biology

@plosbiology.org

27 Apr

How does the human #brain stop movements under realistic conditions? @janw.bsky.social &co show that a fronto-basal ganglia circuit featuring the #SubthalamicNucleus rapidly engages & releases inhibition of specific movements, depending on environmental context @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/41UKLxR

Jan R. Wessel reposted

Sara J Hussain

@sarahussain.bsky.social

26 Apr

📣 Postdoc in Human Neurophysiology & Neurorehab 📣 The Real-Time NeuroRehabilitation Lab at the U of Iowa is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar! Motor control, EEG/TMS, neurorehabilitation, and real-time multimodal methods. 📅 Summer/Fall 2026 📧 sara-hussain@uiowa.edu Please share!

journals.plos.orgA cortico-subthalamic circuit rapidly engages and releases inhibition of specific movements depending on the environmental contextHow does the human brain stop movements under realistic conditions? Using intracranial recordings and multi-variate EEG decoding, this study shows that a fronto-basal ganglia circuit featuring the sub...

24 Apr

New work, now out in PLoS Biology. Using intracranial recordings & EEG, we find that the human STN rapidly engages / releases motor inhibition depending on task context, does so in tight accord w/ frontal cortex, and shows little to no lateralization while doing so. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Jan R. Wessel@janw.bsky.social

New preprint from the lab, led by post-doc @cheolsoh.bsky.social and former post-doc Mario Hervault (now Asst Prof at UGrenoble). The boys used synchronous intracranial recordings from the human subthalamic nucleus & EEG to study β bursts during global & selective response inhibition. Details in 🧵

15 Apr

Sightseeing in Urbana, Illinois / Sightseeing in Bloomington, Indiana

yeelabneuro.comCAMP Lab | aboutThe CAMP Lab at the University of Iowa uses computational, neuroimaging, pharmacological, and neuromodulation approaches to understand motivation, affect, and decision-making — and how these processes...

7 Apr

We are EXTREMELY stoked that the Cognitive Control Collaborative is adding a sixth lab this year, as Debbie Yee will join us as a new Asst Prof in the UI Psych department! Great times ahead, can't wait!!!

Debbie Yee@debyee.bsky.social

I'm SO pleased to announce that I'll be starting as an Asst Prof at @psychiowa.bsky.social this August. The lab will focus on neural & computational mechanisms of motivation, affect, & decision-making, with the aspirational goal of translation to neuropsychiatric disorders. 🧠 yeelabneuro.com