About

Jordan Theriault is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology and Psychology at Northeastern University. His work focuses on the brain as a self-regulating system, with particular interest in the brain-based metabolic costs of information encoding and their implications for mental health and the interpretation of functional neuroimaging research. Dr. Theriault employs neuroimaging technologies, including high-resolution 7 Tesla imaging and innovations in simultaneous PET/MR imaging, to quantify brain metabolism and image functional changes in brainstem regions critical for interoceptive control. These technologies allow for single-session measures of cerebral blood flow, BOLD signal intensity, absolute glucose metabolism, and absolute oxygen metabolism during both task and rest conditions. His theoretical work centers on the brain’s role in predicting sensory input and regulating the body. One of the key implications of his research is that a more predictable environment tends to be more metabolically efficient, which has significant relevance to mental and physical health. His research also offers insights into social dynamics, such as conformity and social pressure, by exploring how the brain's predictive and regulatory functions operate in social contexts.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Cognitive science
• Neuroscience
• Chemistry
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• A dynamic model of social learning and control

  Underline Science Inc. · 2025-08-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• It’s not the thought that counts: Allostasis at the core of brain function

  Neuron · 2025-10-15 · 17 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Theory of Constructed Emotion: More Than a Feeling

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2025-05-01 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access

  A recently published article by van Heijst et al. attempted to reconcile two research approaches in the science of emotion—basic emotion theory and the theory of constructed emotion—by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the body whereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotion into objective physical states and subjective feelings involves three misleading simplifications that fundamentally misrepresent the theory of constructed emotion and prevent progress in the science of emotion. In this article we identify these misleading simplifications and the resulting factual errors, empirical oversights, and evolutionary oversimplifications. We then discuss why such errors will continue to arise until scientists realize that the two theories are intrinsically irreconcilable. They rest on incommensurate assumptions and require different methods of evaluation. Only by directly considering these differences will these research silos in the science of emotion finally dissolve, speeding the accumulation of trustworthy scientific knowledge about emotion that is usable in the real world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Sample and Setting

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2025-03-12

  otherOpen access

  We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance to examine variation in effect magnitudes across sample and setting. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples and 15,305 total participants from 36 countries and territories. Using conventional statistical significance (p < .05), fifteen (54%) of the replications provided evidence in the same direction and statistically significant as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion (p < .0001), fourteen (50%) provide such evidence reflecting the extremely high powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications had effect sizes larger than the original finding and 21 (75%) had effect sizes smaller than the original finding. The median comparable Cohen’s d effect sizes for original findings was 0.60 and for replications was 0.15. Sixteen replications (57%) had small effect sizes (< .20) and 9 (32%) were in the opposite direction from the original finding. Across settings, 11 (39%) showed significant heterogeneity using the Q statistic and most of those were among the findings eliciting the largest overall effect sizes; only one effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity. Only one effect showed a Tau > 0.20 indicating moderate heterogeneity. Nine others had a Tau near or slightly above 0.10 indicating slight heterogeneity. In moderation tests, very little heterogeneity was attributable to task order, administration in lab versus online, and exploratory WEIRD versus less WEIRD culture comparisons. Cumulatively, variability in observed effect sizes was more attributable to the effect being studied than the sample or setting in which it was studied.

  Publisher

• Cortical and subcortical mapping of the human allostatic–interoceptive system using 7 Tesla fMRI

  Nature Neuroscience · 2025-10-23 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  The brain continuously anticipates the body's energetic needs and prepares to meet them before they arise-a process called allostasis. To support allostasis, the brain continually models the body's sensory state, a process known as interoception. Here we replicate and extend a large-scale system that supports allostasis and interoception in the human brain using ultrahigh precision 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (n = 90), improving precision in subgenual and pregenual anterior cingulate topography and expanding brainstem nuclei mapping. Our functional connectivity analyses provide corroborating evidence for more than 96% of the anatomical connections documented in nonhuman animal tract-tracing studies. This system also includes regions of dense intrinsic connectivity throughout the system, some of which were identified previously as part of the backbone of neural communication across the brain. These results reinforce the existing evidence for a whole-brain system that supports the modeling and regulation of the body's internal milieu.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What’s Real? A Philosophy of Science for Social Psychology

  2025-05-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  All scientists are philosophers. That is, they hold fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality and how best to develop “true” (i.e., justified) knowledge about it. The way a scientist goes about building justified knowledge reveals what they take reality to be.

  PublisherDOI

• Seven Tesla Evidence for Columnar and Rostral–Caudal Organization of the Human Periaqueductal Gray Response in the Absence of Threat: A Working Memory Study

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2024-04-25 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The periaqueductal gray (PAG) is a small midbrain structure that surrounds the cerebral aqueduct, regulates brain–body communication, and is often studied for its role in “fight-or-flight” and “freezing” responses to threat. We used ultra-high-field 7 T fMRI to resolve the PAG in humans and distinguish it from the cerebral aqueduct, examining its in vivo function during a working memory task ( N = 87). Both mild and moderate cognitive demands elicited spatially similar patterns of whole-brain blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response, and moderate cognitive demand elicited widespread BOLD increases above baseline in the brainstem. Notably, these brainstem increases were not significantly greater than those in the mild demand condition, suggesting that a subthreshold brainstem BOLD increase occurred for mild cognitive demand as well. Subject-specific masks were group aligned to examine PAG response. In PAG, both mild and moderate demands elicited a well-defined response in ventrolateral PAG, a region thought to be functionally related to anticipated painful threat in humans and nonhuman animals—yet, the present task posed only the most minimal (if any) “threat,” with the cognitive tasks used being approximately as challenging as remembering a phone number. These findings suggest that the PAG may play a more general role in visceromotor regulation, even in the absence of threat.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• In search of animal normativity: a framework for studying social norms in non‐human animals

  Biological reviews/Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2024-01-24 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Social norms - rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community - are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of 'culture' to become organised around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Deriving Time-Averaged Active Inference from Control Principles

  Communications in computer and information science · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Morality and model coherence: A constructivist and biologically tractable account of moral motivation.

  American Psychological Association eBooks · 2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Morality and model-coherence: A constructivist and biologically tractable account of moral motivation

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lisa Feldman Barrett

  116 shared

• Marta Bianciardi

  61 shared

• Lawrence L. Wald

  45 shared

• Karen S. Quigley

  Northeastern University

  40 shared

• Ajay B. Satpute

  38 shared

• Tor D. Wager

  Dartmouth College

  27 shared

• Philip A. Kragel

  27 shared

• Liane Young

  20 shared