New lab paper in Nature Comms!

Thrilled to share our new paper in Nature Communications, led by the brilliant Dr. Nazia Jassim: Computational signatures of uncertainty are reflected in motor cortex excitatory neurochemistry.

In this study, Nazia combined a beautifully designed learning task with hierarchical Bayesian modelling and 7T magnetic resonance spectroscopy to ask how individual differences in neurochemistry shape how we update our beliefs when the world changes.

She found that higher excitatory metabolite levels (Glx) in motor cortex were linked to stronger prediction-error signals and lower estimates of volatility, suggesting that motor cortex glutamatergic tone might shape how flexibly we learn under uncertainty.

It’s a clever, elegant piece of work that bridges computational psychiatry and neurochemistry, and it represents years of thoughtful, careful science. Huge congratulations to Nazia!