The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1! tinyurl.com/yjubmvvb

2 yrs ago, I briefly laid out a new theory of how motivation works (AGH). Here, I expand on the problems AGH was trying to solve, why they are hard to solve, what my solution looks like, and how this should change our understanding of thoughts & actions. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵A few highlights:

I'm excited to share that our paper "Default Feature Representations of the Cognitive Map" has been accepted to #NeurIPS2026! 🧵

Thrilled to announce that I will be joining the University of Miami as an Assistant Professor of Psychology next year! I am recruiting a PhD student to start in Fall 2027 — please reach out if you are interested in joining the lab! For more info check out my website: dan-mirea.com

how does memory support perceptual decisions made under uncertainty? this question has scaffolded my entire PhD, and I'm so excited to share part of it in this ✨new preprint ✨ w/ @meganakpeters.bsky.social and @aaronbornstein.bsky.social! link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Memory retrieval explains dynamic effects of expectations on perceptual decisions

Expectations—prior knowledge of environmental statistics—support adaptive behavior by reducing uncertainty during inference. However, the questions of where expectations come from and how that ought t...

biorxiv.org

How do keep a narrative active in our mind despite interruptions? The default mode network can maintain a representation of an interrupted story over a delay, even when the delay is filled with a demanding task. This representation is strikingly transformed from the initial experience!

Cortical and Hippocampal Pathways to Mental Continuity

How do people preserve mental continuity when tasks are interrupted? One established pathway runs through the hippocampus, which stores snapshots of our mental context for later reinstatement. We prop...

biorxiv.org

The CATS Lab is moving to Columbia next year, and I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle to start Fall 2027 in the Department of Psychology. Learn more about how to apply here: psychology.columbia.edu/content/prep... I am also recruiting a postdoc and staff for 2027. More info coming soon!

Another preprint! This one from my postdoc with @ignaciosaezphd.bsky.social and @xiaosigu.bsky.social. Here we asked how the reward outcomes driving trial-by-error learning leave a lasting imprint on memory strength in the human brain. We used iEEG/computational models of cognition to find:

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hippocampal-cingulate dynamics in the human brain link reinforcement-learning and memory https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.10.750374v1

This is a real photo from 1913. It hasn’t been colorized. It was made using a technique called the Autochrome Lumière which captured true color using microscopic dyed starch grains as color filters, decades before color film existed. Pretty incredible, no? More below 👇

I wrote down my thoughts about the last several weeks of AI hell. aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...

Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks

What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency

aiguide.substack.com

Excited to share this new preprint from @lindseytepfer.bsky.social, @chujunlin.bsky.social, and me, in which we investigate the different ways our brains allow us to change our minds about people! "The neurocomputational mechanisms of naturalistic trait impression updating" osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our paper is now published in @natcomms.nature.com! We identified reproducible human reward-processing phenotypes analogous to sign- and goal-trackers and tested their sensitivity to dopamine D₂ modulation. 🧵 1/4 #neuroskyence #Neuroimaging #RewardSignals doi.org/10.1038/s414...

How do we prevent memories from competing to guide attention? More distinct hippocampal representations for competing memories are linked to precise preparatory coding in visual cortex & more accurate eye movements to target locations. Thrilled to share this work by the incomparable Serra Favila!

I am happy to share some good news: my lab has received an NSF CAREER award and an NIH R01 this summer, supporting our work on how the brain handles uncertainty during learning. We will be hiring postdocs and PhD students in the coming year, so please get by email in touch if you are interested.

We’re recruiting a full-time lab manager to join the Shared Minds Lab at USC! This will be a great opportunity for someone who wants to get hands-on experience with research before starting a PhD program in psychology or neuroscience. More below:

New perspective piece out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social with Zaid Zada, @adelegoldberg.bsky.social, and Uri Hasson! We try to articulate some of our excitement about LLMs and discuss what kinds of insights they might provide into the neural computations supporting natural language in the human brain.

📣Algorithmic Grammar of Flexible Cognition: A Walk through Latent Operations osf.io/preprints/ps... Flexible behavior moves adaptively btwn cognitive modes. But units of analysis remain representations & few operations. Proposal: formalize open-ended cognition as walk over latent operations 1/n

New paper linking mesolimbic-hippocampal circuits to childhood trauma and anhedonia with @laurenellman.bsky.social and led by Katey O’Brien. www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Functional integrity of mesolimbic-hippocampal circuits is associated with anhedonia in individuals with early life stress

Anhedonia reflects a transdiagnostic deficit in a range of processes that impact reward and motivation. While human neuroimaging has mainly focused on striatal-related alterations in anhedonia, animal...

jneurosci.org

Come work with me at Google! We have an open 6-month temp role on my team - it’s a great opportunity for someone with a cog neuro or psych background interested in exploring big tech. Looking for comp modeling experience (e.g. RL, DDMs) and Python/JS. Reach out to learn more or pass along any names!

Starting September 1, I will be working with a team to start a new research center at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. We currently have a couple of positions posted but there will be more so if you are interested stay tuned and feel free to get in touch.

Max Planck Institute for Human Development@mpib-berlin.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📣 New research center on the horizon! The Center will study how midlife autonomic changes may contribute to #neurodegenerative disease risk, focusing on the locus coeruleus, #Alzheimer’s biomarkers, and emotion–cognition interactions. Interested? CAAN-Job openings 👇 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/career

Excited to share that I'll be starting as a junior professor and Emmy Noether awardee at the University of Göttingen this October! 🥳 🚀 I'll be hiring #phd students and #postdoc across #machinelearning, #neuroscience and #cogsci: modirlab.github.io/open-positio... Please spread the word! 🙏

🧠🚨 How can we measure the latent cognitive processes that work together during complex behavior? In our new Perspective, we propose cross-domain transfer: learning a neural signature of a cognitive process in one task and using it to track that process in another. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

How do we make good decisions with little experience? Adults can rely on memories of past choices. In our new study in @pnas.org we show kids & teens do something similar–but what they remember turns out to be quite different! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Developmental changes in memory structure and precision alter the use of retrieved episodes during decisions for reward | PNAS

Most widely studied option evaluation strategies rely on knowledge accumulated across repeated experiences. But how should options be evaluated in ...

pnas.org

New lab paper! @noraharhen.bsky.social and @catehartley.bsky.social investigate how children and adolescents differ in their use of episodic context for decision-making. Thread below.

Nora Harhen@noraharhen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

How do we make good decisions with little experience? Adults can rely on memories of past choices. In our new study in @pnas.org we show kids & teens do something similar–but what they remember turns out to be quite different! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

✨New Preprint Alert✨ How does the brain integrate long-timescale tonal information during piano performance? 🧠 🎹 Our new preprint shows how default mode, motor, auditory, and visual regions track high-level musical structure during expert performance. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/10)

Hierarchical neural integration of musical structure during expert performance

Music, which is organized hierarchically (notes, phrases, sections), provides an ideal model for studying fine-grained motor sequence production. However, it is unknown how musicians’ brains integrate...

biorxiv.org

New preprint alert: "Mapping the abstraction of song representations from perception to autobiographical memory", led by @rcassanocoleman.bsky.social, with @kellyjakubowski.bsky.social. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Very excited to share this preprint from me, @emmatempleton.bsky.social, @lindseytepfer.bsky.social & @thaliawheatley.bsky.social! "Friends and strangers engage in distinct regimes of body motion synchrony during conversation" osf.io/preprints/ps...

So thrilled to be joining the Psychology Department at @columbiauniversity.bsky.social as an assistant prof next summer! I'll be recruiting for PhD/postdoc to start in Autumn 2027, so if you're interested in using computational approaches to studying human cognition please get in touch!

Please spread the word: We’re recruiting a postdoc! 📣 We study how shifting brain & attentional states shape memory and how people experience their worlds. fMRI/iEEG + a fun, supportive lab community + space to pursue your own ideas. 📅 Apply by Aug 15 tinyurl.com/fx5k7teb

🚨 new lab preprint! Research from @gordonfeld.bsky.social during his DFG personal fellowship to my lab many moons ago: Global structure of new relational knowledge networks is represented in retrosplenial complex, and node-distance in hippocampus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...