Lucy Stafford
PhD researcher. Interoception (mostly gastrointestinal), body image/representation, eating disorders, computational approaches (she/her). sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/lucy-sta…
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordHow the brain listens to the body matters. Our new preprint investigates interoceptive processing in schizophrenia spectrum disorders across phenomenology, behavior, and heartbeat-evoked brain responses. 🧠🫀DOI: doi.org/10.64898/202...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordDelighted to share my first paper of 2026 "Interoception and allostatic load after stroke: A scoping review". Available now, open access: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordIt took several late night/early morning meetings, but I’m very happy to see this perspective piece on #Autistic #interoception published. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordOur paper on interoceptive rhythms and perception now is published in NeuroImage 🚀📄 @alexgalvezpol.bsky.social already shared a fantastic breakdown of our main findings in the thread below👇🏽 🔗Full OA article: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #Interoception #Perception #Neuroscience #ActiveSensing
- 🧠 NEW REVIEW "Interoceptive Rhythms & Perceptual Experience Mechanisms, Contexts & Strategies for Real-World Research" How heart, lungs & gut shape what we see, feel & do—& how to study it in everyday life. 🔗 tinyurl.com/4ex7chdr #NeuroSky #Interoception #Perception 👇 Thread 🧵
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNew job alert 💫 We’re hiring a 3-year postdoc for the NEPTUNE project to study the causal mechanisms of paranoia and social learning. Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑🔬 Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...) Please RT :)
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordLast preprint 🎶(of the year). If vagus nerve stimulation alters motivation by amplifying internal signals, then bodily states should matter. Using milkshake vs. water loads, we show that tVNS-induced changes in Pavlovian bias are dependent on hunger. #neuroskyence 🩺 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordIt is hugely fun & we are very lucky to do science for the sake of science. But it is amazing to see work we and many others I admire have done turn into public awareness thanks to excellent science writing. (see also www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/s...)
- New writeup on interoception in Scientific American focusing on its role in mental health: www.scientificamerican.com/article/inte...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNew writeup on interoception in Scientific American focusing on its role in mental health: www.scientificamerican.com/article/inte...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordOut now in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social 🚨. Hunger often affects our mood, but is this a conscious or a subconscious process? Using continuous glucose monitoring, we show that differences in mood are driven by hunger ratings, not just glucose. #neuroskyence 🩺 www.thelancet.com/journals/EBI...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordOut now in Translational Psychiatry! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordVery excited to introduce InteroMap, a new bodily mapping tool designed to measure how we subjectively experience our bodily sensations, what we call interoceptive phenomenology 🧵👇
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordWhat is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma. It's *scientific publishing*. We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordIt's that time of year when many start thinking about applying for PhDs. If you're applying for a UK PhD position, here is a blog post I wrote a while back that might be helpful #cognition #psychscisky #neuroskyence #psychjobs
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordThank you to @psypost.bsky.social for featuring our @natmentalhealth.nature.com research on stomach–brain communication and worse mental health symptoms www.psypost.org/scientists-d... Was also shared on X but with weirdly more hair colour comments 🌈 than the science itself 😅: x.com/OwenGregoria...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordEven 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 Lucy Stafford🚨Do you want to join our online seminars? Next month we have this amazing seminar with Anna and Noa! Register to join, it’s free 🤓 #somatosensation #interoception #sensory #body #science #neuroscience docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNew qualitative paper! A foray into gastric interception. @lucysta02475610.bsky.social ran a LOT of focus groups, across groups with eating disorders, gastric disorders and neither, to understand how people experience the sensations from their GI system. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordIn this @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social Spotlight, I describe how a recent paper by @leahbanellis.bsky.social, @brainandstomach.bsky.social, et al. opens new avenues in interoception research, including those focussed on the subjective interpretation of internal signals: www.cell.com/trends/neuro...
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordOn Prolific, "we estimate that about 34% of online study participants use LLMs to answer open-ended questions atleast some of the time..." Seems like a very timely paper for behavioural scientists using online samples: osf.io/preprints/so... ; We really need more papers on this issue
- A roller coaster of a thread for any interoceptive researchers ⬇️
- Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordThe latest from our lab @the-ecg.bsky.social: interoceptive sensing at rest is *not* related to mental health symptoms 🤔 Read our study here 👇
- Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordAre interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordAcademia may not give you job security, flexibility, or wealth, but it will let you unexpectedly connect to eduroam in foreign cities
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordCould the diversity of findings in heartbeat-evoked response (HER) research be due to variability in methods? In our new preprint my co-first authors, Maria Azanova and @willenjoy.bsky.social, and me systematically reviewed 132 M/EEG HER studies and found:
- Heartbeat-evoked responses in M/EEG: A systematic review of methods with suggestions for analysis and reporting biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordThese are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers. My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers. We found 437 of them. Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
- Reposted by Lucy Stafford🧠 New study at KCL looking for volunteers with both #FND and #Autism to take part in an interview sharing your experiences! - 15 minute survey followed by a 1 hour interview Interested? ✉️ Please message me: lily.smythe@kcl.ac.uk Thanks for sharing!
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordThe final paper from my PhD has been published! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... Interested in illusory resizing and neural responses? Take a look at the abstract below!
- Reposted by Lucy Staffordjust out in Molecular Psychiatry 😍: spinal & cortical alterations in processing of self-produced sensations in psychosis including: touch, interoception, fMRI, SEP, HEP, behavior🧠🫀 #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky @paulasalamone.bsky.social @adamenmalm.bsky.social @rkaldewaij.bsky.social rdcu.be/exN0e
- I'm looking for ~25 more people with a gastrointestinal disorder to complete an online survey on interoception. You can find this survey here: sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/l... 🙏
- And on a related note, I'm excited to read this pre-print paper on the new Rumble Recognition task of gastric interoception- looking forward to using this in the future! 🩺 sciety-labs.elifesciences.org/articles/by?...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordToday is the last day of our early bird rates! We have talks on body perception, body image intervention, critical perspectives on beauty, LGBTQ+ experience of appearance pressures, male body image, stigma, indigenous body ideals... Come join us! lgboothroyd.webspace.durham.ac.uk/perspectives...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNew paper on body image during pregnancy! Free to download for 50 days kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordGot Butterflies in your Stomach? I am super excited to share the first major study of my postdoc @the-ecg.bsky.social - Now out in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! We report a multidimensional mental health signature of stomach-brain coupling in the largest sample to date www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordMaking Sense of Sensation: A model of Interoceptive Attribution and Appraisal with Clinical applications New preprint from @drhannahsavage.bsky.social & @sarahgarf.bsky.social #interoception #neuroskyence 🧠🫀🫁 osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordRelative to a comparator, our interoception intervention led to improvements in PTSD symptoms among service members. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1002/jts....
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNew preprint! People vary in healthy food preferences, with some veering towards obsessive. We found #orthorexia associated with disgust-like facial responses to unhealthy foods. BUT: also with appetitive stomach responses! Is it an interoceptive self-control mechanism? doi.org/10.1101/2025... (1/7)
- Reposted by Lucy StaffordNow heading home from Utrecht, Netherlands after presenting with @ruthknight.bsky.social and @ercaldwell.bsky.social at #BRNet2025! A proud moment showcasing our inclusive methods, hopefully encouraging others to reflect. It's bad science if the computational models are based off inaccurate data!
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- Reposted by Lucy StaffordInteroception vs. Exteroception: Cardiac interoception competes with tactile perception, yet also facilitates self-relevance encoding biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- We are so close to validating a scale we've developed to measure this negative affect- we're seeking people with gastric disorders and eating disorders to take part: sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/l...
- Exciting to read this paper on the role of negative affect induced by gastric interoceptive sensations in disordered eating: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Exciting to read this paper on the role of negative affect induced by gastric interoceptive sensations in disordered eating: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Trying to wrap these up before September- so close now! 😮💨Looking for people based in York to take part in an interoceptive lab experiment and/or an MEG experiment. Reimbursement for both. See details: sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/l... @cejpreston.bsky.social @alexandrapike.bsky.social
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