Sahib Khalsa
@skhalsa.bsky.social
990 followers 72 following 110 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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Reposted by Sahib Khalsa
kathaschmack.bsky.social
📢 Join us at the Crick to start your lab!

💸 Generous core funding to give your ideas wings
🔬 Outstanding facilities to realise your nerdiest dreams
🙌 Supportive colleagues who lift you and your science up

Happy to answer questions! Please repost!
crick.ac.uk
We're now recruiting early career group leaders at the Crick to lead ambitious research programmes and explore bold scientific questions.

Hear our Director, Edith Heard, explain why the Crick is a unique place for curiosity-driven research.

Apply now ➡️ www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
Reposted by Sahib Khalsa
ardemp.bskyverified.social
During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost!

apply.interfolio.com/174756
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Reposted by Sahib Khalsa
ruimcosta.bsky.social
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.
Reposted by Sahib Khalsa
nicolecrust.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
These findings show how gut-brain science could transform #eatingdisorder care—offering scalable biomarkers for relapse and paving the way for personalized treatments.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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...
skhalsa.bsky.social
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 🍽
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
Even after recovery, relapse is heartbreakingly common in anorexia nervosa. Could the answer lie in the gut’s hidden signals? 🧵
Reposted by Sahib Khalsa
alpowers7.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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.
skhalsa.bsky.social
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