Niia Emilova Nikolova

This study links cortical microstructural features to individual differences in exploration-exploitation decision-making strategies using a gamified task and quantitative MRI.

The paper investigates body-wandering during rest, finding it linked to negative affect, autonomic arousal, and reduced social thoughts, while correlating with lower ADHD and depression symptoms.

This study identifies distinct microstructural brain correlates of learning rate and learning noise in reward-based decision-making using computational modeling and quantitative MRI.

The paper identifies brain microstructural correlates of individual differences in respiratory interoception using imaging and psychophysical models in a human sample.

The paper investigates gastric-brain coupling as a marker of mental health using machine learning in 243 participants, finding increased fronto-parietal coupling correlates with worse mental health outcomes.

The paper investigates how respiratory cycles influence perceptual and affective decision-making by showing inspiration accelerates responses and biases emotional categorization.

This study investigates how beta-blockers affect cardiac and respiratory interoception using computational modeling, finding differential impacts on perceptual sensitivity and metacognition.

This paper introduces a 2D-TGC protocol to assess individual thermal sensitivity to the thermal grill illusion, showing that TGI can be thresholded adaptively and varies in temperature combinations and perceived intensity.

This study shows that uncertainty in thermosensory expectations enhances the perception of pain in the thermal grill illusion through predictive coding mechanisms.

This paper introduces an automated method to measure respiratory interoception and metacognition using a computer-controlled apparatus.

The paper introduces a psychophysical task to measure cardiac interoceptive beliefs and finds they are biased, less precise, and linked to poorer metacognitive insight.

This study investigates how stimulus valence and arousal affect memory performance and metamemory, finding that negative valence reduces memory and confidence, and influences cardiac activity during recognition.

This paper introduces eigenvector alignment to analyze functional network changes in Alzheimer's disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment compared to healthy controls.