Holly Sullivan-Toole
Dev Affective Neuro, Reward, Reinforcement Learning, Anhedonia, Dopaminergic Circuitry, Brain Iron
she/her
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleSo excited that this textbook, edited by @dfareri.bsky.social @dvsmith.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social is out now! And so happy to have been invited to contribute. Here’s my chapter on the role of memory, esp. semantic memory, in temporal discounting: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleNew paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Nina Raduner, Silvia Brem, et al: Neural and behavioural differences in multisensory statistical and reinforcement learning across development and task variants doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toolewww.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... Watch MADDOW "IF THEY BUILD THEM THEY WILL FILL THEM" This detention center is at Fort Bliss near El Paso TX. Houses roughly 3K human beings They're in TENTS Horrendous conditions 3 PEOPLE DIED THERE, ONE DEATH now a homicide Call Your Reps PLS 202 224-3121
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThe extended version of my thesis procrastination project/subcortex visualization package is out now in both Python and R, now that I’ve graduated 🤠 This figure shows the 9 atlases included (and counting)! Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Website: anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toolein an ideal world the trauma this couple went through *shouldnt* resonate stronger than a latino family terrorized by ice. but we dont live in that world. we live in the real world. so i applaud it when the most minnesota people possible link arms with us and FIGHT like this.
- A retired Minneapolis couple who had guns pointed at them by ICE in a church parking lot. "They were obviously not trained at all. I've known many police officers in my life. These people were right off the streets." "They had the professional demeanor of criminals." ht: @paulgraham.bsky.social
- Love to see leaders using their platforms for good. Check out the links in this thread for ways to help in Minneapolis!
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleIf you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleLet’s do better. Links to other victims of ICE/CBP God Fund Me sites are provided in the comments. Please R/T.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleHow many versions of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) exist? And how much does this affect research using the IGT? More than you might think. 🧵
- Methodological Flexibility in the Iowa Gambling Task Undermines Interpretability: A Meta-method Review: osf.io/4g3vr
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThe Iowa Gambling Task is an extreme example of Jingle Fallacy and schmeasurement. In 100 articles we found 244 different ways of scoring it, 177 were never reused. Correlations between them range -.99 to .99. At the same time, we show meta-analyses combine these results as if they’re equivalent.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThird world shit right here.
- A friend here in Minneapolis who knew Alex Pretti just texted our group that Alex was "super cool laid back and a great guy"
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleDo you honestly think people in the civil rights movement and other nonviolent movements faced no violence themselves? They practiced nonviolence because it works, because the oppressor wants a shooting war, which is the war it will win
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleAlex Pretti was a scientist.
- Alex Pretti, the man shot by ICE in Minneapolis, appears to have previously worked with the federal government at the VA. There is a photo of him on the VA website, where he’s cited as part of a medical research team. www.vacsp.research.va.gov/CSP_2004/CSP...
- ICE agents beat and executed a man in public in Minneapolis this morning
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole🚨"Theyr're dumping people in the woods" - Medical workers are flagging potential cases of federal agents releasing injured detainees in the most inhumane method possible. LIVE NOW⬇️
- NIH grant writing people, do you have thoughts on the use of "I statements" in F fellowships and K training grant apps? I thought someone told me once to use "I will", "I propose" in training-focused apps to emphasize independence, but maybe it sounds arrogant?
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleAnother friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter."
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThis is how internment camps become death camps.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleWhy in the world are we not screening all pregnant people for iron deficiency when we know it’s associated w/ bad outcomes for mom & baby, affects the vast majority of pregnancies & is easily diagnosed & treated?! Oh I forgot. We don’t care about women or children. tinyurl.com/Ironpreg
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-ToolePeople in Minnesota are now using their key fobs to trigger their car alarms from the safety of their homes when they see ICE walking around.
- something light
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleNew paper in @acamh.bsky.social's JCPP! We found that early adversity doesn't affect positive emotions uniformly-- youth follow 4 distinct developmental trajectories. & This heterogeneity matters for understanding depression/anxiety risk. 🧵 1/5 📊 Paper: acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleExcited for the 1st lab paper to be live @biologicalpsych.bsky.social ! @emilyrperkins.bsky.social @keananjoyner.bsky.social and I discuss testing biology as simultaneous + unique predictors of different levels of psychopathology hierarchies 1/7🧵 www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleWalz: "What's happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN"
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleNew Stage 2 RR published in Clinical Psych Science: doi.org/10.1177/2167... contrary to what some claim, urgency DOES NOT moderate associations between affect and alcohol/cannabis use in EMA data. Take a look for a comprehensive test of this idea and let us know what you think!
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleA video of ICE agents conducting door-to-door searches today in Minneapolis The homeowner requests a warrant repeatedly, is told they don't require one, then is told they're getting it, then the agents storm in anyway They also point a taser at her to try and disrupt filming
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleAmazing, not only the mPFC encoded categorical scales, but also it did it independently of linguistic similarity, suggesting construct-sensitive integration during self-report and a neural basis for psychological assessment. #cogpsyc #cognition #perpsy #socialpsyc
- Self-report questionnaires are vital in psychology, yet how the brain generates these responses is unknown. We found that items assessing the same trait produced similar activation patterns specifically in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleMillions of Americans watched a middle-aged US citizen get shot in the face and killed by an ICE officer today. That's a level of national trauma that deserves a more respectful response from this administration than falsely claiming she's a domestic terrorist. We have lost our moral compass.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThe woman killed by ICE was Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old who was the mother of a 4-year old child whose father already died a few years ago. The Star Tribune talked to her mother. www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...
- New paper & a thread on the results 👇 ‘Reward-specific learning parameters change across normative adolescent development and are blunted in youth with high risk for depression’ acamh-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/doi/full/10....
- To look at how learning parameters change across normative adolescent development (ages 9-17) and in youth at high-risk for depression, we used the 'Play or Pass Iowa Gambling Task' and 'PoP-ORL' model developed specifically for the task by Haynes, et al, doi-org.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/10.3758/s134...
- As expected, youth showed age-related performance improvements (increases in Net Play) Although the PoP-IGT is designed to disambiguate 'approaching rewards' and 'avoiding punishments' , summary scores for these behaviors did not show sig. change across development
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View full threadBig thanks to co-authors who made this work possible!!! Jeremy Haynes, @helen-schmidt.bsky.social, @bart-larsen.bsky.social, @natehaines.bsky.social, & @olinotom.bsky.social
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole🚨My trainee Victoria Murphy, data architect Gabriel Mongefranco, and I are pleased to share 🌟EMA-CleanR: R code to pre-process, clean, and visualize ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data! Documentation: teamdynamix.umich.edu/TDClient/210... Code: github.com/DepressionCe...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleIt’s 1990, I’m 1 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state It’s 2004, I’m 15 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state It’s 2026, I’m 37 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state
- Dorsal striatal dopamine integrates sensory and reward prediction errors to guide perceptual decisions biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Anxiety Selectively Impairs Reward Learning Under Uncertainty, While N3 Sleep Recalibrates It biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole½ New preprint shows cue-evoked phasic dopamine in the NAc tracks persistent incentive salience, not outcome value updates. In ST rats under omission, dopamine remained high for cues even as reward was cancelled, mirroring persistent attraction #RewardSignals #neuroskyence doi.org/10.64898/202...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleWay back in 1999, Kenji Doya sketched a big picture theory of the brain: 1️⃣The cerebellum is specialized for supervised learning 2️⃣The basal ganglia are for reinforcement learning 3️⃣The cerebral cortex is for unsupervised learning How does this hold up in 2026? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleDo people judge what is going to happen in unknown situations differently depending on their socioeconomic position? Yes, if you experience lower socioeconomic position, you think the big rewards are even more unlikely to come your way: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-ToolePreprint updated --> Key new results: we found a brain-behavior correlation between performance on an RL task (under short feedback delays) and short-delay RPE signals in the 'cognitive' cerebellum! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleVery happy to share our paper on the "summer slide" in kid's cognitive test scores is out now in @pnas.org! We find a replicable dip in performance across multiple domains of cognition in >23,000 kids across 4 datasets! Check out the 🧵 from @ariellekeller.bsky.social below! 👇
- Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleOur paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇
- ☀️ New preprint! ☀️ Cognitive tests from 23,000+ participants in 4 datasets show cyclical fluctuations across the calendar year, including a small but replicable “summer slide” where youth show worst performance after school vacation. t.ly/OMzgl #PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #CogDev #devpsy #CogSci Thread /1
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleThis is an important study but psilocybin potentially promoting brain tumor growth is consistent with human studies suggesting SSRIs may worsen survival outcomes in glioma
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleOne citizen said that federal agents in Idaho pointed guns at her children, ages 6 and 8, and dragged her 14-year-old daughter out of a truck and zip-tied her. The mother told investigators that an agent threatened to “fucking blow your head off.” By @nicolefoy.bsky.social
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleICE sprayed a one-year-old in the face with pepper spray. The child and parents are US citizens, but that doesn't even matter. These monsters pepper-sprayed a baby. We cannot allow ICE to continue this behavior, and they aren't going to reform themselves. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-ToolePatterns of brain-wide associations reflect socioeconomics biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Call for papers: Emotion special issue on Affect Dynamics Across Multiple Timescales (moments→days→years) and links to mental and physical health. Letters of intent due Jan 15, 2026. Details/submission: www.apa.org/pubs/journal... Please share with colleagues/trainees. @affectscience.bsky.social
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleCall for papers: Emotion special issue on Affect Dynamics Across Multiple Timescales (moments→days→years) and links to mental and physical health. Letters of intent due Jan 15, 2026. Details/submission: www.apa.org/pubs/journal... Please share with colleagues/trainees. @affectscience.bsky.social
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole“Gift brains turn on” is a clever example of Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT): Snow and holiday gifts is a Pavlovian mental association (Stimulus-Outcome) ”Transfer” is a triggering of an “instrumental” response, to generate the Response that yields the outcome (R-O) by buying gifts.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleHow Effortful Is Boredom? Studying Self-Control Demands Through Pupillometry, from Vanessa Radtke, @wanjawolff.bsky.social, and @corimartarelli.bsky.social #RegisteredReport doi.org/10.1525/coll...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleICYMI — “I identified myself as a U.S. citizen and a veteran, but that didn't matter. ICE Agents smashed my window, sprayed tear gas and pepper spray into my car, dragged me out… this experience violated the very principles I fought to defend.”
- NMDA receptor ablation in medial prefrontal cortex disrupts value updating and reward history integration biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleNMDA receptor ablation in medial prefrontal cortex disrupts value updating and reward history integration biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toolejournals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... - An Integrated Immuno-Reward Model of Adolescent Depression: Theory, Evidence, and Implications Lauren B. Alloy orcid.org/0000-0002-51... lalloy@temple.edu and Robin Nusslock
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleExcited to share our new GLP-1 receptor agonist study! Chronic semaglutide potentiates motivation for small food rewards and associated cues, but reduces intake when food is freely available—surprising twist! #GLP-1, #behavior #neuroscience #pharmacology 1/ 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
- Chronic semaglutide treatment shows differential effects on incentive motivation and consummatory responses to food #RewardSignals #neuroskyence
- Chronic semaglutide treatment enhances the incentive motivational value of a small food reward and associated cue in male and female rats biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole“She has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours.” Her crime: witnessing ICE, from a distance.
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Tooleanyone got any advice on the following situation? I wrote and did a big chunk of the admin for a large MRC grant which also also awarded. I am named in the Staff breakdown on the grant as "researcher co-lead" with 100%FTE, and I am mentioned by name as "postdoctoral researcher Maria Niedernhuber"
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-TooleFinal #neuroskyence preprint of the year! We updated our big neuroinflammation project, studying psoriasis-like inflammation in both humans and mice. Main take-home: we see impaired thalamostriatal signalling in humans and mice alongside depression / anhedonia. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Holly Sullivan-Toole“.. Last year, the percentage of H-1B-sponsored doctors in rural counties was nearly twice the share in urban ones ..” @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
