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.
To accompany my textbook (Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience) and the class I taught this semester, I'm open-sourcing my lectures slides:
gershmanlab.com/lectures.html
I'll continue to update these as I improve them.
New this year: free trainee pre-conference on July 13 organized by @cehaeffner.bsky.social @adanyajohnson.bsky.social
Pre-conference tickets are free for main conference attendees but space is limited to 75 people so register early!
www.cpconf.org/faq-cpconf20...
Keynotes: @danisbassett.bsky.social Anne Collins, Eyiyemisi Damisah, Guillermo Horga, Frederike Petzschner
@adredish.bsky.social Don Robinaugh @aidangcw.bsky.social
Organizers: @xiaosigu.bsky.social @shirleybwang.bsky.social Al Powers @yiplab.bsky.social Katie Myerscough @francesghart.bsky.social
📣🔥 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
Keynotes: @danisbassett.bsky.social Anne Collins, Eyiyemisi Damisah, Guillermo Horga, Frederike Petzschner @adredish.bsky.social Don Robinaugh @aidangcw.bsky.social
Organizers: @xiaosigu.bsky.social @shirleybwang.bsky.social Al Powers @yiplab.bsky.social Katie Myerscough @francesghart.bsky.social
Want a dataset to test ideas on neural basis of decision making or how areas interact as we make choices? Check out our data published today @rudebecklab.bsky.social. >16,000 single neurons from 22 anatomically confirmed areas in macaques performing a decision task. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵 I gave Claude two things: a short paper (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) and a raw behavioural dataset with 3 lines of variable descriptions.
Then I asked it to fit three computational RL models described only by equations in the manuscript. No code, no toolbox, no guidance on the fitting procedure. 1/3
🧠 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.
Graphical abstract showing that NMDAR immunisation drives psychosis-like behaviour in mice, while clozapine reverses this. Upper panel: arrows show NMDAR immunisation producing a mouse exhibiting psychosis-like behaviour, with clozapine reversing this effect. Lower panels: anti-NMDAR antibodies bind neuronal NMDA receptors, which are then eliminated by microglia via phagocytosis, leading to psychosis. Clozapine restores NMDA receptor levels by reducing anti-NMDAR antibody levels, consistent with an immunomodulatory mechanism of action.
🥁🎉The Psychosis Collective proudly presents our first preprint
𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐳𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬-𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐞
𝘈 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴
starring Le He & Harriet Feldman
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We wanted to understand how antipsychotics work. Thread🧵
Excited to share our new paper proposing a new computational model accounting for the dynamic interaction btw drug #craving and #decision-making, led by Kaustubh Kulkarni, MD/PhD
rdcu.be/fab6B
#AddictionScience #Neuroscience #ComputationalPsychiatry #BehavioralScience
Thrilled to share our new paper, which shows that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release dynamically gates whether dopamine acts as an RPE for in vivo plasticity and reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
cOMPaRatiVe cOGNitiONHumans share acousticpreferences with other animalsLogan S. James1,2,3,4* Sarah C. Woolley 1,2, Jon T. Sakata1,2,Courtney B. Hilton5,6, Michael J. Ryan3,4, Samuel A. Mehr5,7,8Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefersome sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergentevolution may generate similarities in preference across speciesand underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “havenearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.” In this study,we show that humans share acoustic preferences with a rangeof animals, that the strength of human preferences correlateswith that in other animals, and that humans respond fasterwhen in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we foundgreatest agreement in preference for adorned, ancestral, andlower-frequency sounds. humans’ music listening experiencewas associated with preferences. These results are consistentwith theories arguing that biases in processing sculpt acousticpreferences, and they confirm Darwin’s century-old hunchabout the conservation of aesthetics in nature
out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species)
he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals
doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202
Hey friends, my new paper was just published in JAMA Psychiatry. I draw on biological species classification to sketch a new framework for psychiatric nosology.
Brief summary follows below.
Full text link: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
🧪 #PsychSciSky #MentalHealth
WTI's research facility, BrainWorks, has launched two social media channels to take a closer look at its welcoming environment, state-of-the-art tools, and community outreach.
Follow along on:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/brainworksyale
Facebook: www.facebook.com/brainworksyale
#KnowTogether
Excited to share our latest paper in which we discuss merging theory-and data- driven computational psychiatry in a large transdiagnostic cohort study (N=2400)
www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245...
Christopher Pittenger, Godfrey Pearlson @annierhcheng.bsky.social @sobp-org.bsky.social
The biggest problem holding neuroscience back right now isn’t data or tools, thanks in large part to the BRAIN Initiative.
It’s fragmentation across species. I wrote this to hopefully spark discussion around an issue that can only be solved as a community👇
www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...
Prediction: In 10 years, “hardest problem” articles like this will shift from the challenge of ”C and perception“ to “C and emotions/mood“. The first is fascinating. The second is required to understand psychiatric functions & conditions.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
🌟 Job alert! We are looking for a postdoc to join a multidisciplinary research team working on the Individually Measured Phenotypes to Advance Computational Translation at Yale (IMPACT-Y) study.
postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2026-0...
My perspective in @thetransmitter.bsky.social on why emotion research feels stuck and how we might move forward—by focusing on how the brain uses internal brain models to shape emotional processing across species. www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/why-...
Looking for a postdoc in #computationalpsychiatry? Apply here to join an interdisciplinary team and work with a large longitudinal transdiagnostic dataset
postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2026-0...
@RobbRutledge @xiaosigu @DrChrisPitt @PearlsonGodfrey @ACNPorg @YaleMed
Very happy to see this out now in @nathumbehav.nature.com - kudos to @magdadelrio.bsky.social who has led this work and nicely brought together data from two very different studies!
article is here: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
and PDF is here: rdcu.be/eZ27x
🎓 PhD Position (Paris) – Computational Cognitive Science, AI & Mental Health
For Master’s students outside France
Project on the computational bases of narrative pleasure 🧠📚🎮
Subtract the emotional element from religion, literature, and art and there would be left the merest dross, an utterly meaningless mass of symbols and responses. Emotionless, man could not produce poetry, music, the graphic arts, or any of the splendid products of a refined culture. The generous sweeps of the imagination that have brought forth romantic movements in the world^s history, the noble aspirations of the intellect that have led whole peoples to seek a higher life, the tremendous activities of organized groups which have spread the best tokens of their civilizations to other lands, the splendid achievements of individual pioneers, adventurers, craftsmen, artisans, composers, inventors, scientists, and spiritual leaders, would never have come to pass in an emotionless world.
There's much talk these days about what's required for "real" intelligence, such as world models and the like. One thing we know about the human evolution of it: it required/requires emotion. That may have been better appreciated in 1938 than today.
archive.org/details/in.e...
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.
If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.
eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike.
The 10th of these, would you believe?
This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more
Enjoy!
medium.com/the-spike/20...
Postdoctoral research position in #ComputationalPsychiatry and #EEG as part of relmed.ac.uk trial testing reinforcement learning as biomarker for antidepressant treatment response. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @mikebrowning.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social
📣🔥Submit your symposium (30 Jan) and poster (12 Feb) abstracts to the 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference www.cpconf.org
Excited to announce new keynotes: @danisbassett.bsky.social Eyiyemisi Damisah @adredish.bsky.social Guillermo Horga, Frederike Petzschner. See you in New Haven! #CPConf2026
I’m happy to report that the Grand Plan for brain/mind research is in good hands at Yale with
@wutsaiyale.bsky.social & co. They offered up many inspired thoughts about the impactful next steps for brain research and I left optimistic about the next steps for the field.