we have the same pen hehe

Reminder that this is happening later today 🙂

Amazing work! Looking forward to reading about the next steps :)

Please note the change of time (9.am East Coast), and as always, contact me or @joebarnby.com for a link to the talk :)

This Thursday, we’re delighted to welcome @carocharp.bsky.social, PI of the Social Learning and Decisions Lab at the University of Maryland. She will be delivering what promises to be an insightful talk: 'Seeking advice and seeking feedback: cognitive mechanisms and relevance for psychopathology.'

Congrats Joe, what a fun set of experiments

Gemini said This schematic outlines three experiments (Online, Lab, and VR) comparing individuals with Cerebral Cavernous Malformations (CCD) to Neurotypical (NT) controls using Random Dot Kinematograms (RDK). Panel A: Study Overview Experiment 1 (Online): 10 CCD vs. 85 NT participants using a computer mouse. Experiment 2 (Lab): 11 CCD vs. 7 NT participants using a button box. Experiment 3 (VR): 10 CCD vs. 13 NT participants using a VR headset. Brain Icon: A blue line divides the hemispheres with a crossed-out arrow, suggesting a focus on disrupted interhemispheric communication. Panel B: Classic RDK (Exp 1 & 2) A trial sequence on a grey background: Fixation (1600ms): A central cross. Motion (1500ms): A circular field of moving dots (red, blue, and white). Decision (Unlimited): Selection of "L" or "R" buttons. Confidence (Unlimited): A slider ranging from "Decrease" to "Increase" to rate certainty. Panel C: VR RDK (Exp 3) A faster trial sequence used in the VR environment: Fixation: Until central fixation is achieved. Motion (180ms): Dots appear within a narrow vertical rectangle. Decision (Unlimited): A prompt shows blue/orange bars for direction selection. Panel D: Visual Presentation (Exp 3) Diagrams showing how stimuli are mapped from the eyes to the brain hemispheres (L and R): Binocular: Stimuli presented to both eyes, traveling to both hemispheres. Lateralised: A 3° shift from center presented to one eye. Monocular: Stimuli presented to one eye, directed specifically toward the right or left hemifield to isolate hemispheric processing.

What connects difficulties in social cognition, self-awareness, and abstract reasoning in those with Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis (CCD)?

Here, across three experiments, we find that the corpus callosum is integral to metacognitive efficiency -
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I think Fodor & Pylyshyn's 1988 paper is possibly the most mischaracterized paper in the history of cognitive science. It's often cited as arguing that neural networks cannot achieve systematicity, compositionality, and productivity. But that's not what they actually argue...

A reminder that this is happening tomorrow!

🚨New pre-print🚨

osf.io/preprints/ps...

What if the relationship between smartphone use and mental health depends not just on specific harmful or beneficial activities, but also on how users transition between activities?

As always, message me for a link or, better yet, contact @joebarnby.com

In this talk Andreas will speak about the implementation of I-POMDPs, results obtained through practical studies and observations on challenges and further approaches to making behaviour in experiments tractable, starting from a well-known implementation of I-POMDPs for a multi-round trust task.

However, implementing them in a way that allows for acceptable computation times while having enough parameters to describe the nuances of human behaviour is difficult and an ongoing challenge in research.

These processes provide interpretable parametrizations of agent interactions, with factors like fairness mindedness/inequality aversion, irritability or risk aversion, whilst also having established procedures for learning, models of other actors/theory of mind and planning.

To gain insights into choice making in human social tasks, factors underlying (un)cooperative actions and the interpretation of others' actions and signals in social settings, Interactive Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes are an indispensable – yet intricate - model-building tool.

Very happy to announce next week's SoCR lab guest, Andreas Hula, who will be talking about the uses and misuses of I-POMDPs in model-building human social decision-making 🧵

This is happening tomorrow!

Very much looking forward to this talk and interesting chats!

Apparently Ramsey invented polymarket…. (in Resnik _Choices: An Introduction to Decision Theory_)

However, social behavior depends not only on who is involved, but on the possible interactions among individuals within a given situation! If, like me, you are curious to hear more, consider reaching out to me on here or @joebarnby.com on email or LinkedIn.

A dominant framework in social neuroscience is agent-centric representation: information about beliefs, abilities, or attitudes is tagged to individuals such as oneself or an interaction partner.

Navigating social environments is a fundamental computational challenge for the brain.

In this talk, Marco Wittmann examines how social information is represented to support flexible decision-making.

Talk Poster, Prof. Marco Wittmann, 19/02/2026 @ 9am GMT

It's a pleasure for me to announce our next Social Computation and Representation Lab invited speaker @mkwittmann.bsky.social for a talk on dimensionality reduction and basis functions in social cognition

Je me demande s’ils ont pris cette idée de la cuisine perse

This weekend, I'm going on a sponsored walk to help raise money for my friend's younger brother's cancer treatment. If able, I'd really appreciate if you could share or sponsor me here: sites.google.com/view/alex-wa...

Lucky students!! Looks promising

NEPTUNE project logo with affiliations & funders

New job alert 💫 We’re hiring a 3-year postdoc for the NEPTUNE project to study the causal mechanisms of paranoia and social learning.

Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑‍🔬

Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...)

Please RT :)

Curious why we sometimes see minds where there are none? 🧠 Join us to uncover the foundations of attributed agency.

Fully funded PhD for next year as part of DRIVE-Health, working with me, Adam Hampshire & @stefansarkadi.bsky.social

Deadline: 12/1/26
Reach out for an informal chat!

I’m a bit of a scientist myself (I did well in high school maths)

over here we’re slowly all getting replaced by new Tim Williamsons