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Reposted by Sahib Khalsa

Rui Costa @ruimcosta.bsky.social · 3d

This World Mental Health Day, I’m reflecting on the science, people, and shared responsibility to build a future where mental health is supported and prioritized.

Understanding the brain and the physiological mechanisms behind mental health is important to confront mental health challenges.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 11d

Thank you!

Reposted by Sahib Khalsa

Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 17d

Save the date 📆. On Oct 22/23, @nationalacademies.org will hold a stellar virtual workshop on brain/body interations (open to all).

www.nationalacademies.org/en/our-work/...

Title: Understanding Brain-Body Interactions to Advance Brain Health: A Workshop. Photo: picture of a transparent person with brain and nervous system illuminated.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

This project was funded by the NIH/NIMH 🙏 The manuscript was led by the outstanding @ch-verdonk.bsky.social and supported by a stellar team of collaborators including @mpwpaulus.bsky.social , @rssmith.bsky.social, Jenny Stewart, Scott Moseman, Ahmad Mayeli, Emily Choquette & Keller Mink.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

These findings show how gut-brain science could transform #eatingdisorder care—offering scalable biomarkers for relapse and paving the way for personalized treatments.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

Most striking: altered gut perception patterns predicted six-month relapse risk and eating disorder symptom severity. This is the first evidence that gut interoception can forecast relapse in AN. Full details in our new preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

What we found:
AN individuals missed more gut signals despite intact brain/body responses. ❌
Computational models showed biased expectations & reduced precision 🧠
Capsule stimulation also triggered greater hunger increases in AN 🍽

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

We tested whether gastrointestinal #interoception, the brain’s ability to sense gut signals, might reveal hidden vulnerabilities. Using an ingestible vibrating capsule, we measured behavior, brain activity (EEG), and physiology as participants detected gut sensations.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is one of the deadliest psychiatric disorders. Despite treatment, relapse rates remain high—and clinicians have no objective tools to track recovery.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 21d

Even after recovery, relapse is heartbreakingly common in anorexia nervosa. Could the answer lie in the gut’s hidden signals? 🧵

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Reposted by Sahib Khalsa

alpowers7.bsky.social @alpowers7.bsky.social · 26d

How do perceptual processes contribute to the development of psychiatric illness? @skhalsa.bsky.social and I have compiled this volume with experts from across the world to begin to answer this question.

Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

What if many psychiatric disorders share the same hidden glitch in how the brain infers reality? In a new volume, Al Powers and I gather experts to examine how disrupted sensory inference across #vision, #touch, #proprioception and #interoception might unify our understanding.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

In doing so, these efforts may help lay the groundwork for a revised nosology—one rooted not in symptom checklists or clusters, but in empirically grounded models of sensory inference, brain-body interaction, and bodily regulation.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

This volume grew from a #ACNP study group convened in 2022. These perspectives offer both novel treatment targets and a path to link latent computational processes with observable symptoms.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Finally, Jungilligens and Perez show how functional neurological disorder may stem from erroneous brain-body integration, highlighting predictive processing as a framework for understanding motor and sensory symptoms, expectation, self-agency, & illness beliefs. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38755514/

Predictive Processing and the Pathophysiology of Functional Neurological Disorder - PubMed

The contemporary neuroscience understanding of the brain as an active inference organ supports that our conscious experiences, including sensorimotor perceptions, depend on the integration of probabil...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Woelk and Garfinkel explore ways that dissociation may reflect a breakdown in interoceptive precision, disrupting body integration by uncoupling body signals from the sense of self and agency. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38755513/

Dissociative Symptoms and Interoceptive Integration - PubMed

Dissociative symptoms and disorders of dissociation are characterised by disturbances in the experience of the self and the surrounding world, manifesting as a breakdown in the normal integration of c...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Fani, Fulton & Botzanowski show how trauma can blunt or amplify body signal sensing, highlighting interoception as a target for fostering resilience. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38678141/

The Neurophysiology of Interoceptive Disruptions in Trauma-Exposed Populations - PubMed

In the aftermath of psychological trauma, many individuals experience perturbations in interoception, a term that broadly references the ability to accurately detect body signals and integrate these s...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Franco-O’ Byrne, Santamaría-García & Ibáñez argue that in frontotemporal dementia, disrupted interoceptive inference may drive autonomic chaos and social-emotional changes, pointing to the need to develop predictive coding–based therapies. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38637414/

Emerging Theories of Allostatic-Interoceptive Overload in Neurodegeneration - PubMed

Recent integrative multilevel models offer novel insights into the etiology and course of neurodegenerative conditions. The predictive coding of allostatic-interoception theory posits that the brain a...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Reilly, Brown & Frank link altered taste, touch, vision, and gut sensing to anorexia and bulimia nervosa, highlight knowledge gaps, and proposing neurobiologically-informed strategies for clinical translation. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38730196/

Perceptual Dysfunction in Eating Disorders - PubMed

Eating disorders (EDs) are characterized by abnormal responses to food and weight-related stimuli and are associated with significant distress, impairment, and poor outcomes. Because many of the cardi...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Mehta, Paulus & Smith consider how characterizing individuals using computational measures may facilitate diagnostic subgroup identification, symptoms due to pathway-specific abnormalities, or be helpful in predicting treatment responders. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39998811/

Computational Approaches for Uncovering Interoceptive Mechanisms in Psychiatric Disorders and Their Biological Basis - PubMed

Interoception, the process of detecting, perceiving, and interpreting signals from within the body, is essential for physiological regulation and adaptive behavior. A growing body of research undersco...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Diaz-Fong & Feusner show how in body dysmorphic disorder, distorted appearance perception may stem from overfocused detail processing—offering visual neuroscience insights for perceptual retraining. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38691313/

Visual Perceptual Processing Abnormalities in Body Dysmorphic Disorder - PubMed

Phenomenological observations of individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), coupled with evidence from neuropsychological, psychophysical, and neuroimaging studies, support a model of aberrant v...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Vassall & Wallace argue that multisensory integration differences have surprising overlaps between autism and schizophrenia, offering new clues for remediation. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40346436/

Sensory and Multisensory Processing Changes and Their Contributions to Autism and Schizophrenia - PubMed

Natural environments are typically multisensory, comprising information from multiple sensory modalities. It is in the integration of these incoming sensory signals that we form our perceptual gestalt...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Kok & Haarsma discuss how perceptual disturbances can arise from faulty integration of internal signals with sensory evidence, highlighting ways that layer-specific fMRI offers insights into these disrupted computations and their treatment targets. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40646425/

How Layer-Specific fMRI Can Contribute to Understanding Perceptual Disturbances Across Psychiatric Disorders - PubMed

Perceptual disturbances occur across various sensory domains and contribute to significant suffering in numerous psychiatric and neurological conditions. Despite decades of research into the neural me...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

Javitt shows how in schizophrenia, disruptions in auditory and visual perception (MMN, P1, dorsal stream) may reflect NMDA receptor dysfunction and spotlight new biomarkers and treatments. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40169504/

Disturbances in Auditory and Visual Perceptual Function in Schizophrenia: Patterns, Causes, and Consequences - PubMed

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder and a leading cause of global disability. Increasing evidence ties impairments in both auditory and visual perceptual processing to impaired functional outcom...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

If psychiatric symptoms arise from disruptions in perceptual inference, as a group we ask how dysfunction in a high-dimensional sensory space maps onto specific symptom profiles.

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Sahib Khalsa @skhalsa.bsky.social · 27d

We argue that disrupted balance between top-down priors and bottom-up sensory signals drives perceptual dysregulation across sensory systems (exteroceptive, proprioceptive, interoceptive) in psychiatric disorders.

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