Ronald Sladky

as well as the role of dopamine in social learning www.nature.com/articles/s41... & www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This @scanunit.bsky.social study was conducted by Federica Riva and supervised by @clauslamm.bsky.social . My role was the neuroimaging data analyses and computational modeling and contributing my amygdala expertise. Thanks to @fwf-at.bsky.social and @univie.ac.at for their support!

Check out our paper, talk to us, and let‘s see how our idea will be useful for future empirical research.  [8/8]

4. Actions: some sensations feel better than others. Approach and avoidance actions can make more preferred expected sensations become reality. It’s like magic. If it hurts in a bad way and you avoid it before it hurts, it does not hurt. [7/8]

3. Fear conditioning: results from predictive processing and anticipating the future. Using exteroception the amygdala helps to predict deviations from optimal regulation (e.g., pain) before they happen. I call this a pro gamer move if you want to survive. [6/8]

2. Danger detection: how do we distinguish a snake from a rope? The context matters: if you are afraid of encountering snakes (e.g., because you’re in the jungle) you are more likely to (mis)identify a snaky object as a snake. Not so much on a relaxing sailing cruise. [5/8]

1. Fear/anxeity: we see the amygdala as a mediator between interoception and exteroception. The central amygdala acts as a Bayesian regulator to inform affective states. It sends predictions to the basolateral amygdala, which allows efficient perception. [4/8]

We want to inspire amygdala research by suggesting a unified narrative grounded in biological fundamentals (self-regulation) and a computational framework (Bayes). By proposing an active inference perspective, we reframe previously fragmented amygdala research topics: [3/8]

More than 10 years I’ve been wondering how to link my amygdala research with predictive processing. With the invaluable help from my interdisciplinary colleagues and friends it worked out: a bit inspiration, hard work, and letting go of unnecessary clutter. [2/8]