Haemy Lee Masson
Social cognitive neuroscientist studying social touch perception in autism and mental health, neuroimaging methods, and naturalistic social vision. Asst Prof. at Durham University, UK
- Led by master's student Macy, with collaboration from @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social and @mmellon.bsky.social. @durhampsych.bsky.social. 1. Autistic adults engage in social touch as frequently as non-autistic adults, with similar satisfaction. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- 2. Both groups find touch from partners or children most meaningful and comfortable. 3. Autistic adults generally enjoy social touch less overall, reporting more challenges, including in romantic relationships.
- 4. They rate touch as less appropriate and less pleasant in professional or friendly settings. 5. The unpredictability of touch, sensory responsivity, and anxiety affect the experiences of social touch among autistic people.
- 6. Understanding and respecting individual touch preferences can improve relationship quality and comfort for autistic people.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonSuper excited to share a new preprint! We asked a simple-but-big question: What changes in the brain when someone becomes an expert? Using chess ♟️ + fMRI 🧠 + representational geometry & dimensionality 📈, we ask: 1️⃣ WHAT information is encoded? 2️⃣ HOW is it structured? 3️⃣ WHERE is it expressed? 1/n
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonExcited to share new work with @hleemasson.bsky.social , Ericka Wodka, Stewart Mostofsky and @lisik.bsky.social! We investigated how simultaneous vision and language signals are combined in the brain using naturalistic+controlled fMRI. Read the paper here: osf.io/b5p4n 1/n
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonOur 2-day social cognition workshop "From Self-knowledge to knowing others" in Brussels on Dec1-2 now welcomes registration and abstracts for poster/talk ! Go www.self-knowing-others.org @selfknowingothers.bsky.social @escaneu.bsky.social @escop.bsky.social @scanunit.bsky.social
- I will be at CCN this week and present the poster (C82) on Friday. If you are interested in how humans and machines perceive naturalistic social scenes involving physical contact (e.g., hugging), please visit my poster. See the details below. 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=m...
- We found that valence may be the primary factor in social touch perception. The social context appears to be relevant, but to a lesser extent. Artificial neural network models trained on action perception and facial expression recognition do not capture human judgments of social touch scenes.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson📣 New preprint 📣 The brain attenuates self-touch, but how does this unfold at the neural level before the touch? We used MEG to find out 🧠 👉👈
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson👋 Hello, Bluesky! We're the M-WAY study team, based at UCL. We're researching mental health and wellbeing in autistic young people. Check out our intro blog post below to find our more about what we're doing 🙂 m-way24.blogspot.com/p/what-is-m-...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonPUBLIC LECTURE: My end of @leverhulme.ac.uk fellowship lecture is on the 24th of September! It will be in person at @durhampsych.bsky.social and also streamed online. Tickets are available on Eventbrite. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/centre-for...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson8/ In contrast to standard power calculations, our results suggest that jointly optimizing sample size and scan time can boost prediction accuracy while cutting costs. For more complex study design, you can check out our calculator: thomasyeolab.github.io/OptimalScanT...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNew article out at Science Advances! Three challenges, five questions, and multiple implications of tickle. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @dondersinst.bsky.social @ki.se @erc.europa.eu #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor #ERCResearch #ticklelab
- ‼️ Preprint alert ‼️ Led by master's student Macy, with collaboration from @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social and @mmellon.bsky.social. Link: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1. Autistic adults engage in social touch as frequently as non-autistic adults, with similar satisfaction.
- 2. Both groups find touch from partners or children most meaningful and comfortable. 3. Autistic adults enjoy social touch less overall, reporting more challenges, including in romantic relationships. 4. They rate touch as less appropriate and less pleasant in professional or friendly settings.
- 5. The unpredictability of touch, sensory responsivity, and anxiety affect the experiences of social touch among autistic people. 6. Understanding and respecting individual touch preferences can improve relationship quality and comfort for autistic people.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Massongearing up to recruit / prepare children to do a movie-viewing fMRI experiment? share this article with them! kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonLast chance to apply for a fully-funded 2-year #PostDoc in my @soneatlab.bsky.social @universityofessex.bsky.social using #fNIRS #hyperscanning & behavioural assessment in #children. 👉🏻 SWITCH: pvrticka.com/switch-proje... Deadline: 01.06.25 Start: 01.10.25 vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonI’m happy to be at #VSS2025 and share what our lab has been up to this year! I’m also honored to receive this year’s young investigator award and will give a short talk at the awards ceremony Monday
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonPlease help: Do you know a baby, less than 12 months old, who can walk? We are trying to complete a project, 7 years in the works. And all we need are 3 infants who are less than a year old and can walk, to do a short online looking-time study. 🆘
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNew paper out at @naturehumbehav.bsky.social! This is the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted into how people think about relationships: a true tour de force! We identify 5 dimensions and 3 categories that organize relationship concepts. Proud to have made a (small) contribution to it!
- It’s out! Our article in Nature Human Behavior led by Yin Wang on the conceptual structure of human relationships across cultures and time. This work is breathtaking nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNaomi Booth’s stunning new novel - raw content - is among many other things an extraordinary insight into maternal OCD. It was such a privilege to talk with her tonight about risk, writing, Yorkshire, rapture & the shock of birth at a Collected Books event www.hachette.co.uk/titles/naomi...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonOur paper in Nature (@mkwittmann.bsky.social et al.): the brain does not only process the *identity* of a person but primarily our *relationship* to them. Even on a neural level, who someone is *in relation to others* is key. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #neuroskyence
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNew paper out 🤩⬇️🧠🫀👋
- Gentle, slow stroke touch significantly moves the heart by lowering rate and increasing rhythmicity. This effect is much stronger when someone else touches us, compared to self-touch. Out now in IEEE Trans Affective Comp @rebeccaboehme.bsky.social, @paulasalamone.bsky.social doi.org/10.1109/TAFF...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonMario Weick will present the results of a metareview (a review of 149 reviews) of the relation between social class and mental health at this free in-person workshop at Durham University UK on Wednesday 12th March. Sign up to attend here 👇
- Published in Molecular Autism. This work examined how autistic adults process social touch at the brain network level. The connectivity strength is linked to a greater preference for social touch and social responsiveness—suggesting neural compensatory mechanisms. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Happy to share my latest work on dynamic functional connectivity changes during social vs. non-social touch in autism. This study reveals atypical context-dependent modulation of connectivity associated with autism during touch observation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNaturalizing psychopathology—towards a quantitative real-world psychiatry www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonWe're looking for a PhD student for a project on how to make theme parks more inclusive for neurodivergent people, in partnership with Katapult and Drayton Manor. www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/cen... Deadline 5th March. Get in touch for more info and please share!
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson📣 First three years of my PhD have culminated in this work now published at PLoS Computational Biology! 🥳 We take a deep dive into all the many ways we can slice n dice fMRI dynamics to quantify biologically relevant properties 🧠🧮 doi.org/10.1371/jour...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonThe biological classification of mental disorders (BeCOME) study: a protocol for an observational deep-phenotyping study for the identification of biological subtypes bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonThe limiting factor for MRI based prediction of behavioral traits may be neither the imaging nor the pipeline or learning algorith but rather the reliability of the target phenotypes Thought provoking work my Martin Gell et al: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonI think this paper explains the concept of Computational Psychiatry really well: doi.org/10.1038/nn.4...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonJust published🔈 "Structurally informed models of directed brain connectivity" Read: rdcu.be/d3dC4 We review how structural connectivity constrains directed connectivity models 🧠 Lead by @matthewdgreaves.bsky.social w/ @novelli-leo.bsky.social, @sinamansourl.bsky.social and Andrew Zalesky
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonThis paper sets up a bit of a straw man in that I don't think most people who use movies and stories as fMRI stimuli assume that all movies will (or should) evoke the same response. In a naturalistic neuroimaging expt, the movie *is* the task...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonVery excited by our first benchmarking results on BMD by the talented @sargechris.bsky.social! By including control models trained on Kinetics that deal trivially with time (i.e. treating videos as image sequences), we find better brain alignment scores for actual video models in early visual areas!
- 📢 New preprint! We benchmark 99 image and video models 🤖 on brain representational alignment to fMRI data of 10 humans 🧠 watching videos! Here’s a quick breakdown:🧵⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNow published in Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. This is a review of what we know, and what we don't yet know. In it, I argue that the origins of our self-awareness must lie in interoception, and offer some thoughts on how social interactions might provide a mechanistic link in infancy.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonA cross-cultural examination of bi-directional mentalising in autistic and non-autistic adults osf.io/preprints/ps...
- For the ESM study on mental health, what would be the best short questionnaire to administer multiple times a day? I usually use the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 to measure anxiety and depression in standard lab-based studies, but I'm unsure if there are better tools for ESM.
- Naturalistic neuroscience is growing. Work from Jane Han, @samnastase.bsky.social et al., Sociality and transitivity capture unique variance in AON. "Behavioral judgments of similarity better reflect neural representational geometry than semantic or visual models". www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonCurrently reading Desperate Remedies by Andrew Scull, which I would highly recommend. I sort of knew that there was a graveyard of failed psychiatric treatments that had been hailed as miracle cures by their proponents, but I had no idea how widely that graveyard extended.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNaturalistic encoding of concepts in the brain @viktorkewenig.bsky.social shows that, while concepts generally encode habitual experiences, the underlying neurobiological organisation is not fixed but depends dynamically on available contextual information. 👏🍾🐐 elifesciences.org/articles/91522
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson📖 Excited to share our new article, out now in @elife.bsky.social: elifesciences.org/articles/102... Our annotated readling list on neurodiversity is a result of the collaborative efforts of a fantastic, multidisciplinary & neurodiverse team
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonThe consequences of this burnout are also showing up beyond teaching and service in other essential parts of the system like a rapidly deteriorating peer review system and increasing reluctance to make multi-year commitments to admit+advise graduate students.
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonNew paper story time (now out in PNAS)! We developed a method that caused people to learn new categories of visual objects, not by teaching them what the categories were, but by changing how their brains worked when they looked at individual objects in those categories. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson🚨New paper alert: Exploring experiences of autistic burnout in motherhood, led by the fantastic Ashton Ferguson for her undergraduate (!!) dissertation. (Short thread)... www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/...
- A large-scale, multi-lab replication study on infants' perception of social interactions.
- The relevance of self in understanding others.
- Very excited to share our brand new paper "Self-esteem modulates the similarity of the representation of the self in the brains of others." We show brain patterns for self are reflected brain-to-brain in those of our peers & are influenced by self-evaluative attitudes www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonWomen are under-represented at senior levels in #academia globally, & across all #science 🧪 disciplines, as shown by these "scissor-shaped curves" ✂️ So how can we ever achieve #gender #equality? We discuss various strategies in this #Cell Commentary #WomeninSTEM www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... 🧵 1/
- I am planning to apply for the MRC New Investigator grant in the neuroscience and mental health section. This is my first time applying for a UKRI grant, as I am new to the UK. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could share examples of successful applications. Please send me a DM. Thank you!
- Interested in social interaction? Here is the starter pack made by @markthornton.bsky.social. My work focuses on neural underpinnings of social touch interaction 🤗🤝
- I've started working on a (very incomplete!) starter pack for social interaction researchers! If you're working in this space, please asked to be added (or suggest others)! Meant to be inclusive of many disciplines, methods, interaction types, and types of interacting agents: go.bsky.app/44VAEhUat://did:plc:5teacbkgrgyiydupyz5e7npy/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lauzh2cvr22a
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson"Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex" with @susanwardle.bsky.social Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam, Dwight Kravitz @cibaker.bsky.social 1/3
- Reposted by Haemy Lee Masson
After a great conference in Boston, CCN is going to take place in Amsterdam in 2025! To help the exchange of ideas between #neuroscience, cognitive science, and #AI, CCN will for the first time have full length paper submissions (alongside the established 2 pagers)! Info below👇 #NeuroAI #CompNeuro - go.bsky.app/BXWSBo Starter pack made by @rebeccaboehme.bsky.social Many of us study social touch from a multidisciplinary perspective, such as physiology, psychology, neurobiology, mental health, etc. I study neural underpinnings of our ability to interpret and experience (observed) social touch.at://did:plc:anfooxvqygzoblss2uv2tv5k/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lay6vessf22t
- Reposted by Haemy Lee MassonGood discussion on brain decoding, modularity and lots more. #neuroscience
- Everything is everywhere all at once. direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
