This looks like an excellent opportunity to advance the neurophysiologic understanding of cardiac interoception during threat processing. And working with Karin would be the icing on the cake!
We are hiring! www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Thanks for the heads up!
Deadline today! Submit and abstract and join us to discuss science in the exciting brain body interaction field!
Our recent paper on potential risks and conceptual pitfalls of GLP-1 therapies is cited in the article and explores these issues in more depth: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38320760/
In such cases, conceptualizing treatment as an allostatic reset rather than an indefinite push toward maximal weight reduction may be more clinically appropriate.
As GLP-1–based agents continue to advance, we need to think carefully about biological homeostasis. When obesity is driven or maintained allostatic dysfunction in regulatory systems, pharmacologic correction can sometimes overshoot.
It describes a clinical trial in which some participants stopped Rx b/c they thought the drug was too effective at reducing their body weight. This raises an important societal & clinical Q: what happens when weight-loss pharmacotherapy becomes more powerful than our frameworks for defining health?
Honored to see our work cited in today’s New York Times in coverage of emerging data on next-generation GLP-1–based therapies. What does it all mean? Some brief thoughts below.. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/w...
I couldn’t agree more. Olu Ajijola & I are attempting to bridge this divide in interoception via conceptual frameworks (see below) but also via integrated multidisciplinary lab group activities. It’s simultaneously invigorating and daunting, but needs to happen. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
📍 Register here (event dates: March 20-21, 2026):
teams.semel.ucla.edu/longevity/ev...
We hope to see you there.
If you are interested in the future of neuroscience, public health, mental health, aging, prevention, or policy, I encourage you to learn more and join this conversation.
Background reading on how Brain Health shapes resilience and lifespan trajectories:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The ultimate goal is ambitious, but essential:
Moving from treating brain disease toward building and sustaining Brain Health at the population level.
We'll explore how to:
Define & measure Brain Health across the lifespan
Understand how social & environmental factors shape Brain Health & resilience
Translate Brain Health science into prevention, policy, & real-world interventions
Build a roadmap for Brain Health in California
This summit will bring together:
• Leading scientists and clinicians
• Policymakers and public health leaders
• Community partners and lived-experience stakeholders
• Innovators in technology and AI
• Artists and thought leaders exploring creativity and the brain
To address this gap, next month we are convening the UCLA Brain Health Summit, a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary gathering in California.
Yet our current systems remain fragmented. Healthcare and research related to brain health are often divided across neurology, psychiatry, pediatrics, geriatrics, rehabilitation, and public health, limiting our ability to translate scientific insight into real-world impact.
Sleep, stress, trauma, community, culture, cardiometabolic health, the microbiome, and lived experience all play fundamental roles in determining whether the nervous system thrives or declines.
Brain health is shaped across the lifespan by an interconnected web of factors—biological, psychological, social, environmental, and physiological.
But we increasingly recognize that the brain does not exist in isolation.
How do we build and sustain healthy brains across the lifespan?
For decades, neuroscience has advanced through powerful reductionist approaches, identifying molecular pathways, neural circuits, and disease mechanisms. These discoveries have transformed medicine.
Kudos to Paul for bringing this important perspective to light. This is the kind of insight that needed across many more areas of science and medicine, today.
With that in mind, I encourage interested readers to consider the response by Steven Porges (author of the PVT) before forming your opinion. www.clinicalneuropsychiatry.org/download/whe...
The arguments are factually grounded, and, having participated in this process, I can verify that they were thoroughly vetted by all.
However, in science and medicine there can be varying perspectives.
Led by Paul Grossman and a multidisciplinary panel of 39 experts, this paper provides a point-by-point evaluation of the theory's physiological and evolutionary arguments about the role of the vagus nerve in various aspects of physical and mental health.
Pleased to share this newly co-authored expert opinion on the Polyvagal Theory (PVT): www.clinicalneuropsychiatry.org/download/why...
For cardiac electrophysiology practice, the message is simple: Mental health is no longer peripheral. Its systematic inclusion in cardiac care may meaningfully alter survival trajectories.
If yes, prevention becomes possible: brief, scalable psych interventions, digital mental health tools, automated risk stratification in ICD clinics & early collaborative care
Key unknowns: Do vulnerability traits (anxiety sensitivity, trauma history, interoceptive threat amplification) identify who is most at risk after ICD implantation?
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
