Jordan Theriault

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

• The sense of should: A biologically-based framework for modeling social pressure

  Physics of Life Reviews · 2020 · 170 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• A human colliculus-pulvinar-amygdala pathway encodes negative emotion

  Neuron · 2021 · 82 citations

  DOI

• A functional account of stimulation-based aerobic glycolysis and its role in interpreting BOLD signal intensity increases in neuroimaging experiments

  Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2023-08-25 · 35 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…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 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 cin…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

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

Similar researchers at Northeastern University

• Jonathan Peelleh-47
• Susanne Jaeggih-47
• Aaron Seitzh-41