Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social
PhD candidate at Princeton Psych. Studying mental health, technology, reinforcement learning, language. He/they 🏳️🌈🇷🇴
Congrats to @danmirea.bsky.social who led a new paper published in @jamapsychiatry.com! "The Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in Depression". jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
The Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in Depression
This study investigates individual differences in the effect of social media likes on posting behavior and their association with and specificity to depressive psychopathology.
jamanetwork.com
Had a lot of fun discussing our recent paper on the @jamapsychiatry.com podcast! 🎧 Listen on the podcast website here: jamanetwork.com/learning/audio-player/19077115 🟢 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5iGB... 🍎 Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
We also applied a transdiagnostic approach on dataset 3, and found a double dissociation: 👍 reinforcement tendency was specifically linked to anxious-depression 🤳 behavioral persistence (a measure of posting habits) was specifically linked to compulsivity
🚨 Now out in @jamapsychiatry.com 🚨 Are people with depression less responsive to rewards on social media, just like in the lab? Actually…quite the opposite! 🧵 📄 Read the paper here: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
The Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in Depression
This study investigates individual differences in the effect of social media likes on posting behavior and their association with and specificity to depressive psychopathology.
jamanetwork.com
Huge congratulations to Dr. Dan Mirea (@danmirea.bsky.social) on his dissertation and defense!!! We are so proud of you and can’t wait for all the big things you continue to do! 🥳 Read more about Dr. Mirea's amazing work in this thread:
🚀Introducing 𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄-𝐋𝐋𝐌: A reporting checklist for using LLMs in behavioral & social science ✅GUIDE-LLM is a reporting checklist designed by 80+ experts to improve transparency, reproducibility & ethical accountability of LLM-based research 📄 llm-checklist.com
GUIDE-LLM
Reporting Checklist for Studies with Large Language Models in the Behavioral and Social Sciences
llm-checklist.com
I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit! Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...
Laboratory Coordinator - 138788
Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 | Careers at UC San Diego
employment.ucsd.edu
The Rutgers-Princeton Center for Computational Cognitive NeuroPsychiatry (ccnp.princeton.edu) is looking for a new clinical research coordinator! This is a long-term (at least 2 years, more is preferred) position for someone with a BA or MA who is interested in... /1
Rutgers-Princeton Center for Computational Cognitive Neuropsychiatry
Visit the post for more.
ccnp.princeton.edu
Very happy to see our ice-fishing paper on the cover of @science.org this week! 🎣🎉 We tracked large groups of Finnish competitive ice-fishers to study how social foragers use social information when searching for resources. 🐟 Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (contact me for open access)
science.org
🚨 New preprint 🚨 We present the decisions-from-experience database (DfE-DB), including data from 168 studies. The data are currently shared with the original authors and made public upon publication. 🔗 Database: github.com/dwulff/dfe-db 🔗 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Congrats to PNI + affiliated trainees named 2025 Honorific Fellows by the @princeton.edu Graduate School! 👏 Victor Geadah 👏 Isaac Christian 👏 @danmirea.bsky.social gradschool.princeton.edu/news/2025/ho...
Honorific Fellows celebrated by Princeton Graduate School amidst 125th Anniversary
Thirty-two exceptional graduate students who received named or endowed fellowships for this academic year were recently feted by the Princeton Graduate School. The honorific fellowships support advanc...
gradschool.princeton.edu
1/n Out today in @jamapsychiatry.com: Interpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire Instructions. We find troubling variability in whether people think they should respond based on the frequency of the Sx or the frequency of being bothered by the Sx. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Interpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire Instructions
This survey study assesses whether responses to the Patient Health Questionnaire reflect symptom frequency and severity.
jamanetwork.com
Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇
Cognition varies across the calendar year in multiple large-scale datasets | PNAS
Children’s cognitive abilities vary across short and long timescales, from circadian fluctuations to year-by-year developmental changes. “Summer sl...
pnas.org
Arielle Keller@ariellekeller.bsky.social · 2y ago☀️ New preprint! ☀️ Cognitive tests from 23,000+ participants in 4 datasets show cyclical fluctuations across the calendar year, including a small but replicable “summer slide” where youth show worst performance after school vacation. t.ly/OMzgl #PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #CogDev #devpsy #CogSci Thread /1
We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so... What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?
Super happy to see this review out! We ask why people are so reluctant to abandon goals and how this commitment could be understood computationally. Work with Jill O'Reilly & @yaelniv.bsky.social
Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 9mo agoOnline Now: The adaptive value of stubborn goals
I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com
Interactive Cognition Lab | USC
Interactive Cognition Lab at USC, led by principal investigator, Dr. Nina Rouhani.
rouhanilab.com
📢 Thrilled to share our paper is out now in @natcomms.nature.com Shared computations underlie how we acquire actions that are mutually beneficial, instrumentally harmful (benefits self at the expense of others), altruistic (benefit others at the expense of self), or mutually costly 🧵 rdcu.be/eL8mZ
Neurocomputational basis of learning when choices simultaneously affect both oneself and others
Nature Communications - When learning to make choices that simultaneously affect the self and others, asymmetric encoding of information guides future social behaviors across mutually beneficial,...
rdcu.be
1/ To explore or to exploit? I’m excited to share my new preprint with @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social and @micahgallen.com, correlating variations in cortical microstructures with individual differences in exploration-exploitation behaviours, using a gamified task! 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
What influences whether people have fun with a task? Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports! rdcu.be/eI069 Paper summary below 1/4
Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games
Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games
rdcu.be
🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵
I strongly believe modeling behavior will be critical for understanding mental health well enough to develop new interventions, but the gap between task-based and naturalistic behavior is MASSIVE. Some great ideas here for bridging that gap!
Dan Mirea@danmirea.bsky.social · 10mo ago🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️
Such an important topic: computational psychiatry at the nexus of lab-based understanding (eg of reinforcement learning and mood) and measures of real-world behavior and mental health conditions. (Scroll to the bottom for a link open to all).
Dan Mirea@danmirea.bsky.social · 10mo ago🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️
📢 My lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is considering graduate student applications this fall We welcome applicants interested in using computational modeling & fMRI to study social connection 🗓️ Deadline: December 1, 2025 🔗 Learn more: sinclaboratory.com/apply #comppsychiatry #socialneuro
🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️
🚨 New Preprint 🚨 Prolonged Isolation is associated with an increased behavioural sensitivity to ‘Likes’ on social media. 🧵 Social media rewards are inherently social—but does posting change during social isolation, when in-person social rewards are limited? It turns out, yes!
This is an exquisite demonstration of using intracranial recordings in humans to validate our findings that amygdala neurons encode the value of exploring in NHPs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning - Nature
Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.
nature.com
🚨 New paper alert! Do time constraints reveal habitual behaviour? 🤔 We directly compared two major paradigms in the habit research field (Outcome Devaluation vs Response Remapping) under identical training and forced-response conditions 🧠 ⏲️ ⌨️ preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
