Lukas Van Oudenhove

Convergent and selective representations of pain, appetitive processes, aversive processes, and cognitive control in the insula

The paper identifies convergent and selective functional zones in the insula using fMRI data, revealing a hierarchical convergence architecture across pain, appetitive, aversive, and cognitive control domains.

Overnight fasting facilitates safety learning by changing the neurophysiological response to relief from threat omission

This study shows that overnight fasting reduces excessive avoidance and speeds fear extinction by decreasing brain activation in reward-related regions during threat omissions.

Omissions of Threat Trigger Subjective Relief and Prediction Error-Like Signaling in the Human Reward and Salience Systems

This study shows that the unexpected absence of threat activates human reward and salience systems similarly to reward prediction errors, with stronger responses to more probable and intense omissions.

The Brain Activation-based Sexual Image Classifier (BASIC): A sensitive and specific fMRI activity pattern for sexual image perception

The paper develops a classifier using fMRI data to distinguish sexual from non-sexual images with high accuracy and shows its generalizability across individuals.