@hvansteenbergen.bsky.social
More tips and tricks in this blog post: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/five-gg...
Five ggplot2 functions I wish I’d known about earlier – Nicola Rennie
There are a few small tweaks you can make to your ggplot2 code to improve your charts. However, they’re not often mentioned. So here’s a few functions and arguments I wish I’d known about earlier.
nrennie.rbind.io
Our paper on effort-performance (de)coupling is now out at Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 🎉 Really interested? Read it open access here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Just a little bit interested? TL;DR in the thread below 👇
When effort fails: Instances and reasons for effort-performance decoupling
Across domains, effort is often assumed to support performance, and performance is frequently used to infer effort. However, observed effort-performan…
sciencedirect.com
Wanja Wolff@wanjawolff.bsky.social · last yr.#preprint 📢 Effort usually boosts performance - but not always. We discuss 4 domain-general factors that modulate effort-performance (de)coupling: osf.io/preprints/ps... TL;DR: A framework on when and why effort-performance links appear to change across domains, timescales & measures. 🧵
1/11 How does the brain make the heart skip a beat? New preprint: a prefrontal→hypothalamus circuit that controls heart rate. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?
We're in the first week of term and several of our @psyteachr.bsky.social books have had a little refresh. Matthew Checketts leads first year undergraduate psychology. Around 600 students develop wrangling and visualisation skills using the Data Skills book: psyteachr.github.io/data-skills-...
PsyTeachR
Psychologists from @UofGPsychNeuro advocating open, reproducible methods teaching.
psyteachr.github.io
🚨 New paper from our group: Across 164 participants, we find that virtual nature is retrospectively perceived as helpful in dealing with an acute stressor, but does not change immediate psychological, autonomic, or hormonal responses to it, suggesting a disconnect in recalled and immediate reactions
Max Steininger@maxsteininger.bsky.social · 2mo agoWe ran a registered randomized controlled study with 164 participants to test whether virtual nature before or after an acute stress task affects stress reactivity and subsequent recovery. Participants retrospectively said that nature helped them prepare for and recover from the stressor BUT… (1/4)
This is so great! If you’re also a white man, you can copy this response exactly 👌
Jonathan Peelle@jpeelle.bsky.social · 2mo agoMy standard reply when receiving a request to give a talk. I've been doing this for a decade now and only ever had to pull out twice. 👍 (And I was re-invited for one of those a following year.)
We ran a registered randomized controlled study with 164 participants to test whether virtual nature before or after an acute stress task affects stress reactivity and subsequent recovery. Participants retrospectively said that nature helped them prepare for and recover from the stressor BUT… (1/4)
sciencedirect.com
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 · 4mo 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
*They used genome *language models* to generate the viruses?! Like with William Burroughs, "language is a virus from outer space"? *Obviously "They" are gonna cull the human population with this, but death by AI-virus would be a cool William Burroughs way to die www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Generative design of bacteriophages with genome language models
Many important biological functions arise not from single genes but from complex interactions encoded by entire genomes. We report the first generative design of complete bacteriophage genomes using g...
science.org
Major paper out: A heroic* demonstration that even acute stress increases drug intake in healthy people *4-session 2x2 RCT with ~4 oxycodone injections in 66 volunteers - with repeated blinded 2-panel stress/control inductions (ReSST) 1/🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Effects of psychosocial stress on opioid self-administration in healthy participants: a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial - Nature Mental Health
In this triple-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial, Eikemo et al. tested whether acute psychosocial stress increases opioid self-administration using controlled stress induction, oxy...
nature.com
1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science
As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...
arxiv.org
Developmental psychopathology friends: I'm taking over and totally revamping our course for Spring – help me build a kick-ass reading list - what are your favorite recent review/perspectives articles? Self-promotions welcome! 🙏
Postdocs die nu al vervangen worden door Claude, wetenschap die afhankelijk wordt van dure tokens en universiteiten die leunen op commerciële AI-modellen buiten Europa. In het STOA-panel van het Europees Parlement werd duidelijk hoe snel generatieve AI de wetenschap binnendringt.
‘Betrouwbaar onderzoek dreigt luxegoed te worden nu Claude al postdocs vervangt’ - ScienceGuide
Bij een discussie in het Europees Parlement werd duidelijk hoe snel generatieve AI de wetenschap binnendringt.
scienceguide.nl
I am looking for a theory/computational POSTDOC position in EU or east coast US. I am interested in how learning and plasticity shape population dynamics & representational geometries & how these changes are reflected in behavior. If you are at #COSYNE2026 & interested, hit me up in Whova, not here
Unsurprising but still big: MTurk is on its way out, killed by AI. Mechanical Turk was a mainstay of social & survey research through the 2010s, as it allowed you to quickly buy access to many representative humans. It was pretty good at it, until LLMs came along and everyone started using AI
We're so very proud of this! Not much of the journal metrics per se (they don't always reflect well what they're supposed to measure...), but of the fact that we offer a reputable outlet for strong cognitive science outside of commercial logics. Send us your best papers, folks!
Gidon Frischkorn@gidon-frischkorn.bsky.social · 4mo agoThis is great to see! Also that @jcgntn.bsky.social has gained a good spot among these outlets. Obviously, I am not impartial (being AE at JoC), but it is great to see that non-profit journals that are backed by scientific societies & focused on serving the scientific community are faring well!
New interactive blog! "Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look" rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...
Funny, but... also not.
Veep: Nervous Laughter Reaction
ALT: Veep: Nervous Laughter Reaction
static.klipy.com
Dr Michele V@micheleveldsman.bsky.social · 4mo ago“I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.” 🤣🤣🤣 brilliant 👌🏽 open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...
I talk about the research on when AI undermines, versus supporting, thinking and learning here: www.oneusefulthing.org/p/choosing-t...
Choosing to Stay Human
If you go to your favorite social media site, you will find it full of posts that start to look suspiciously similar to each other:
oneusefulthing.org
#PsychSciSky #AcademicSky Since there is no polling option here (👀 @bsky.app ) How many of u were aware that while PsyArXiv is (& always will be) free to end users, @improvingpsych.org incurs annual costs for the technology that hosts the service, including user technical support and DOI minting?
Open Mind, the free OA competitor to Cognition (El$evier) founded by Richard Aslin, has nearly caught up to it impact-factor-wise Submit your best work! It's a great journal with fast and constructive review, a great ed board, and lots of cool work Open Mind is the future of cogsci journals!
—— Open Mind is MIT Press’s Diamond Open Access Cognitive Science journal. We now have our first Impact Factor: 2.9 as of June 2026 Submit your papers to Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi
📢 Want to get involved in ESCAN? Applications are now open for the ESCAN Junior Committee. If you are an ESCAN Student/Junior Member (Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD student), consider applying to help organize activities and represent junior researchers within the society.
📢 ESCAN Full Members (postdocs and beyond),with diverse backgrounds and experiences, can also nominate themselves—or be nominated—for the ESCAN Board. 📅 Deadline: July 30, 2026 📧 escan@escaneurosci.eu #ESCAN2026 #SocialNeuroscience #AffectiveNeuroscience #CognitiveNeuroscience
✨ ESCAN 2026 in Rome welcomed an amazing 950 participants! And, of course, one global group photo for research, in front of the ESCAN 2026 venue at Sapienza University of Rome, Faculty of Economics. #ESCAN2026 #SocialNeuroscience #AffectiveNeuroscience #CognitiveNeuroscience
Jin Yan just presented cool preliminary fMRI findings of our new Leiden Stroop-like Stress Task #escan2026. Tomorrow Liwen Meng presents how exposure to virtual nature alters stress responses to this task Check out Poster 2-111
Have you thought of using unchained pupillometry to infer effort/arousal with _uncontrolled_ visual stimulation? Sounds crazy? @yuqingc.bsky.social shows that convolutional modeling of pupil responses with gaze-contingent luminance changes finally allows just that! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
🧠 ESCAN 2026 begins this week in Rome! June 3–6: almost 900 researchers gather at Sapienza University of Rome for the 8th ESCAN Meeting. Highlights: 🔹 Keynotes: Tallon-Baudry, Sandi & Knapska 🔹 Pre-conference events 🔹 General Assembly 🔹 750+ contributions escan2026.eu #ESCAN2026 #Neuroscience
Home - ESCAN 2026
ESCAN 2026 is the 9th ESCAN Conference, the biennial meeting of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
escan2026.eu
“MRI scans of the marathon runners’ brains showed that myelin content was reduced in several white-matter tracts immediately after the race; two months later, myelin levels had recovered to baseline levels.”
Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠@nataliepeluso.com · 5mo ago"Structure and metabolism should no longer sit in separate boxes. The brain’s wiring could also be part of its fuel strategy. Myelin may be more than insulation; it may also form part of the brain’s adaptive metabolic infrastructure." 🧠👇 #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/metabolism/b...