New lab preprint! Computational psychiatry assumes anxiety arises from domain-general biases. We argue this is mistargeted: trait anxiety is generated by person-specific world models, which requires a fundamentally different approach to task design. 🧵 https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/98ktg_v3
Toby Wise
@tobywise.bsky.social
Welcome Trust research fellow at KCL IoPPN, working on computational psychiatry of mood and anxiety https://thewiselab.org
We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher who wants to innovate at the intersection of cognitive science, neuroscience, and machine learning. 📍Munich 📅Flexible start: 10/2026–03/2027 ⏳Full consideration by 14/08/2026 💼Funded for 2 years, extension possible Discover, grow, collaborate, eat cake.
Can't wait for #cogsci2026 in Rio 🇧🇷! Check out some of the exciting new work this year by the hmc-lab.com and collaborators. Sadly, @davidnagy.bsky.social won't be attending due to illness, so I'll be subbing in to help out with the framing-the-problem.github.io/cogsci2026.h... workshop.
Very grateful to be able to travel to an academic conference in the US by train! A smooth 5-hr "high-speed" ride from DC to New Haven non-stop, lots of work done, and very excited to catch up with friends and colleagues at #cpconf #cpconf2026 🚨 My lab will be presenting 4 posters, details below 🔽
We're excited to share the lab's findings at #Cpconf See 🧵 below & come by! C71 + poster spotlight! @adipizanti.bsky.social finds overthinking (using MB planning more effortfully without any benefit) is related to worry in 2 large datasets, and explains it with a new DYNA + internal checking model:
📣Going to #cpconf? Come see @luiantaverra.bsky.social A2 Tue 9am, Bidirectional relationship between aversive beliefs + avoidance & its association with transdiagnostic symptoms @alexnitsch.bsky.social B43 Wed 3:15pm, The role of aversive replay in avoidance behaviors in psychiatric disorders
Excited to be heading to #cpconf in New Haven and looking forward to what looks like a really brilliant programme! We have some exciting new work being presented by our brilliant students and postdocs 👇👇👇
🌟 Research Assistant opportunity 🌟 I'm looking for an RA to support research at The Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH) on social information seeking and decision making, including fMRI and MEG 🧠 tinyurl.com/uob-chbh-ra Deadline: 19th July, 23:59 UK time ⏳ Start: 7th September 🗓️ Please share 🔁
Research Associate - School of Psychology - 104433 - Grade 6
We welcome applications for a Research Associate / Lab Manager in the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH). The CHBH is a friendly, productive, and supportive environment where all colleagues can thri...
tinyurl.com
🎉 Now published in Nature Communications! 🧠 We develop a novel computational reinforcement learning & habit model of Twitter data, and show that younger people & women are more behaviourally sensitive to 'Likes'. Read the paper: bit.ly/4f1vsKS
A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media - Nature Communications
The cognitive processes driving social media use could be key to understanding social media’s impact. Here, the authors develop a computational model of real-world social media behaviour, identifying ...
bit.ly
🚨New preprint 🚨 **A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media** 🧵 We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...
🚨This preprint is now out in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... We combine a dyadic foraging paradigm w/ computational modeling + ABM to study how people navigate differing preferences, share responsibility for shared outcomes & what that means for the group! more in 🧵⬇️ @fearbrain.bsky.social
🚨 Excited to end the year with a new preprint w/ Wenning Deng (not on bsky) and Dean Mobbs @fearbrain.bsky.social 🎉 🎉 "Blame and Compromise During Risky Dyadic Foraging" osf.io/preprints/ps... Feedback is very welcome! Thread: 🧵 1/n
📝 New preprint (co-led with Hannah Hamling as her NYU honors thesis!) 📝 🧠 Do adolescents learn differently in volatile versus stable environments? 🧠 Yes, and they seem to adapt their learning computations to a greater extent than adults! 😮 🤔 Preprint for deets (+ 👁️ data) osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Interested in human replay and solid methods? Jointly with @skjerns.de we're releasing a benchmark dataset with known ground-truth neural sequences in MEG & fMRI, for developing & validating replay methods. First test: existing methods show similar effect sizes, but room to improve shorturl.at/6TgIr
FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging using a combined MEG and fMRI dataset
Studies in rodents and humans using invasive electrophysiology have established that neural replay is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the brain that is associated with a wide range of cognitive functions, ...
shorturl.at
🌵🏜️🌵 Out now in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @rbhui.bsky.social! If your advisor sends you an unclear email, do you interpret it as good or bad? 😏😱 In a new paper, we show how people make inferences about this type of ambiguous feedback during learning. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Ambiguity and confirmatory reward learning
We tend to interpret feedback in ways that confirm our pre-existing beliefs. Such confirmatory tendencies are often viewed as cognitive flaws, but mig…
sciencedirect.com
🎉New positions!🎉 Postdoc and Research technician openings in our lab @yale for computational psychiatry research. Technician position a great stepping stone to grad school. More info: rutledgelab.org/positions Work w/big data from our smartphone apps and large clinical samples happinessquest.app
Postdoc and Research Technician Positions — Rutledge Lab
Now hiring a postdoc and a research technician with an interest in neuroeconomics or computational psychiatry.
rutledgelab.org
New preprint from the work of my placement and final year of undergrad! 🚨 We investigated the applicability of normative modelling to large-scale, gamified cognitive data, and explored how corresponding extreme deviations from the norm relate to transdiagnostic compulsivity. osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Some really brilliant work in this preprint from @luiantaverra.bsky.social - featuring potentially the most aversive task I've ever worked with
New preprint! How do threat beliefs drive avoidance & what happens when avoidance prevents us from verifying them? New work showing a bidirectional link between beliefs and avoidance! Lucky to work w @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @tobywise.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...
🚨🚨 The Social Learning and Decisions Lab is hiring! 🚨🚨 We're looking for a postbacc project coordinator/research assistant to join our team this summer. More details about the position and how to apply here: drive.google.com/file/d/1ySeA... Please share widely and reach out with any questions!
RA_ad_2026-2027_Charpentier.pdf
drive.google.com
🚨 Our lab's first paper is published! The claim: anxiety distorts not just what looks threatening, but the task models people use to plan. 🧵 This tiny study provides preliminary support that world model variation is critical to explaining anxiety. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Anxiety is Associated With Biases in Task Generalization
Anxiety is known to distort threat perception, but can it also distort the task representations we use to plan? This study shows that individuals high in trait worry systematically undergeneralize ac...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
I’m excited to share our new preprint: A Multi-Level Examination of How Hostility Unfolds During Online Argumentation. osf.io/preprints/ps... This is the first paper to examine how toxicity manifests from belief differences and how they are represented in the human brain.
New Annual Review with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social: “Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is.” We argue that the brain's 'planning' machinery is mostly used for learning from simulated experience, and that thinking prospectively at decision time is just one special case of this process.
Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is
The neuroscience of planning has long been analogized to search algorithms in artificial intelligence (AI), which simulate future actions to guide immediate choices. We argue that advances in both neu...
annualreviews.org
Can we really measure replay in humans using MEG with current methods? In our most recent paper we simulated replay under realistic conditions via a novel hybrid approach with astonishing results. we're delighted that it has now been published @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/articles/108...
TDLM-Resting-State Simulation
How sensitive is TDLM really? Can we actually find replay when we know it is present?
cimh-clinical-psychology.github.io
📣🔥 Early bird registration now open for 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference cpconf.org at Yale July 14-16. Late-breaking abstracts now open (deadline: May 8) Trainee pre-conference (July 13) registration open (free!) See you in New Haven! #CPConf2026
Computational Psychiatry Conference
New Haven, USA (July 14-16, 2026)
cpconf.org
📣 So happy to share with you the results of my main PhD study, where two human predators worked together to hunt a human prey in Minecraft, and had their brains scanned simultaneously using fNIRS 🎮🧠 We find that the brains of the predators are synchronised in the prefrontal cortex during hunting! 💡
🧠 Focused ultrasound changes emotional processing 🔊 In a new study published in Neuron today, we stimulated the human amygdala using transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) and show it plays a causal role in detecting and resolving emotional ambiguity.
Very happy our first paper using ultrasound stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the human amygdala (BLA) got out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social today! 🎉🥳🔊Great FUN with co-first authors @mirunmigyu.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social in @mkflugge.bsky.social 's lab! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Congrats to Navid on his new paper in Molecular Psychiatry! Computational modeling found that learning rates and uncertainty sensitivity could distinguish between affective disorders and substance use disorders. Forgetting rate was instead affected transdiagnostically. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Computational mechanisms of learning and forgetting differentiate affective and substance use disorders - Molecular Psychiatry
Molecular Psychiatry - Computational mechanisms of learning and forgetting differentiate affective and substance use disorders
nature.com
🚨Last week to apply for a 3 year postdoc with me and @dominikdeffner.bsky.social, embedded in theadaptivemind-excellencecluster.de Focus is on developing innovative experiments and computational models to understand social & cultural learning. Deadline is March 30th 👉 hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni...
Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution
Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution posted on March 2, 2026 We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual...
hmc-lab.com
🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share 🙏
How do we know that things we do will have the outcomes we expect? We chat to @tobywise.bsky.social about his research into the relationship between compulsivity and uncertainty. Go give it a listen! #BrainAwarenessWeek open.spotify.com/episode/2hyj...
How is compulsivity related to uncertainty?
Inside Neuroscience · Episode
open.spotify.com
💥New paper out! Why do some people generalise threat more than others? We show that anxious people generalise more strongly, even after accounting for perceptual mistakes. A huge (!) thanks to @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social and @bernhardspitzer.bsky.social
Anxiety is associated with increased generalisation of threat to similar stimuli. This paper dissociates perceptual mistakes from value generalisation and links stronger value-transfer to trait anxiety. @nicoschuck.bsky.social @ondrejzika.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Thrilled that this first empirical paper out of the lab is posted, led by Sandarsh Pandey, asking: Depression (and other internalizing disorders) involve profound changes to sense of self. How can we study these differences using rigorous decision-making methods? (alt link: tinyurl.com/2kk59dje)
Inferring latent self-schemas to advance understanding of mental health problems: https://osf.io/3bamh
Last week to apply for a 3yr postdoc with @tsawallis.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and myself. Deadline is March 15th hmc-lab.com/TAMPostdoc.h...
Postdoc position -- Center for Cognitive Science
Postdoc position -- Center for Cognitive Science posted on February 20, 2026 We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual to fi...
hmc-lab.com
Come work with @tsawallis.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and myself! 3 yr Postdoc on category learning w/ structured, program-like representations. Funded by the www.theadaptivemind.de Excellence Cluster! Deadline is Mar 15th, details 👇 Please share widely 🙏