Emily Towner

PhD Candidate @Cambridge_Uni & @Gates_Cambridge scholar | Studying #psychology #neuroscience #development #learning #brain #adolescence

[Communications Psychology @CommsPsychol]

Following social isolation, adolescents show increased sensitivity to rewards during effort-based decision making and reward learning.
@livia_tomova @emilyanntowner @lei_zhang_lz @KirstenThomas64 @sjblakemore @StePalminteri
https://t.co/55bOE12iup

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

25 days until I submit my PhD thesis—and I truly couldn’t have made it here without the unwavering support of my incredible, kind and brilliant supervisor.

@sjblakemore

Thank you so much, Sarah, for the lovely shoutout!

[Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore]

Highlighting the brilliant @emilyanntowner, Cambridge Gates Scholar, finishing PhD on social isolation in adolescence. Emily creates videos about learning, social brain, mental health and more.
Emily also has a Cambridge Blue 🤩

https://t.co/IUYi5FOSbl

https://t.co/ATgCPZhaKn

[Gates Cambridge @Gates_Cambridge]

Interesting and worrying study on teenagers and loneliness led by @emilyanntowner
- https://t.co/AfXUNXs9S8…
@CamPsych @stjohnscam @royalsociety

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

@estherina_t @sjblakemore @KirstenThomas64 @livia_tomova Thank you!

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

@aegriffcogneuro @RSocPublishing Thanks so much Alex! Hope all going great in your first year of the PhD!

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

Our latest paper, published today in Royal Society Open Science (@RSocPublishing), found that being alone heightens 'threat alert' in teenagers—even when they're connected on social media. 🧠📲 https://t.co/EypnTCUEUL

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

#adolescence #loneliness #isolation #socialmedia #mentalhealth

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

Check out the full press release here for more details 👉 https://t.co/wyCoughbnZ

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

Huge thanks to my incredible co-authors Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (@sjblakemore), Livia Tomova (@livia_tomova) and Kirsten Thomas (@kirstenthomas64). 🙌

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

We hope these findings will shed light on the link between loneliness and mental health and contribute to the expanding science of social media. 💡

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

Our findings? Average self-reported loneliness more than doubled after isolation where participants could interact virtually and nearly tripled after complete isolation. 😟

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

💬💻📱 While virtual interactions made teens feel less lonely than complete isolation, their heightened threat response remained. This suggests that online socializing might not fully meet teenagers’ social needs. 👥

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

Importantly, both types of isolation—even when teens could interact online—led to increased threat responses ❗⚡ (heightened sensing of potential dangers—typical in anxiety disorders).

[Emily Towner @emilyanntowner]

🌎 Loneliness is a global public health crisis, especially among adolescents. We conducted an experiment with 40 teens aged 16-19 to see how isolation affects them—with and without their smartphones.

[Georgia Turner @__GeorgiaTurner]

🚨New preprint 🚨

**A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media**

🧵

We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

[Shiba Esfand @ShibaEsfand]

🧠My first-first author paper of grad school is officially hot off the press! 🧠
We detail a novel approach for assessing the effects of caregiving-related #adversity (e.g., maltreatment) on the #brain #gut #immune axis and #internalzing symptoms in youth
https://t.co/ixOIYmEHlk

[Cam Neuroscience @CamNeuro]

📢Delighted to launch #CamNeuro2025 CNS programme 👏👏!

🎤All new speakers to CNS covering all themes of @camneuro

🏰Excited to be back @QueensCam on April 8th 2025

✒️Registration open in 2 weeks - watch this space!

🧪🔬Exciting sponsorship opportunities available🧠

[Emily G. Jacobs 🦋 @emilyjacobs.bsky.social @emilyjacobs]

💥New paper from the lab is out today in @NatureNeuro by phenom @laura_pritschet!! See LP's great summary below. This paper launches The Maternal Brain Project, an international effort to longitudinally map the brain & proteome across pregnancy, thanks to @bowers_wbhi @CZIscience

[Naomi Gancz @NGancz]

Excited to share new work from the @BABLab_UCLA and the Mind, Brain, Body team finding weakened links between cortisol and the oral microbiome, as well as altered bacterial abundance, in kids exposed to early caregiving-related adversity. (1/7)

https://t.co/dIa2WLlVKm

[Dr. Amanda Kay Montoya @AmandaKMontoya]

Many people DMed me this post, asking for my perspective. I disagree with the general take: mediation analyses from cross-sectional data should be blanket rejected. ALL mediation analyses require causal assumptions including experiments and longitudinal designs. So what to do?