Blair Shevlin

Published now (after long last & 10 citations). Although tVNS does not alter food reward ratings in healthy people, it acutely improved liking ratings in patients with MDD (also correlated with anhedonia). #neuroskyence 🩺

Work w/ @akuehnel.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

That’s a wrap for #SNE2025! Grateful for the chance to share some of our recent work as a spotlight this year and thankful to the society for supporting me as one of this year’s travel award winners along with @gloriawfeng.bsky.social, @jaehyungwoo.bsky.social, Laura Globig, and Minho Hwang)!

Neural coding of choice and outcome are modulated by uncertainty in orbitofrontal but not secondary motor cortex - Nature Communications Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.

🎇 Excited to finally share JL Romero Sosa’s publication! Results are from single-cell imaging in different subregions of rat frontal cortex during ✨de novo learning. Spoiler: everything is not everywhere all at once www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Shoutout to @bshev.bsky.social for presenting his amazing research titled "Distinct food attribute representations emerge across binge-type eating disorders" at the 2025 Society for Neuroeconomics meeting this past weekend! 🧠💡 #SNE2025
@lauraaberner.bsky.social @kiante.bsky.social

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

Abstract and results summary

🚨 New preprint 🚨

Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions.

Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Thread 🧵

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

Post doc job alert 📢! Announcing a v exciting job on a Wellcome-funded project in my group at UCL, looking at auditory hallucinations... Advert here 👀: rb.gy/230w8l - deadline is end of Oct. Please apply! 1/5

Internal uncertainty impacts social information use in risky choice across adolescence - Communications Psychology Adolescents’ choices are influenced by others. A social risky choice experiment and Bayesian modelling reveal that age differences in internal uncertainty, being unsure how to choose, relate to differences in susceptibility to social influence.

😍 Our latest is out now in @commspsychol.nature.com. 🤩 We show with Bayesian modelling and experimental manipulation of uncertainty that developmental differences in social influence depend on differences in the internal uncertainty people have about their choice
doi.org/10.1038/s442...

A multisensory, bidirectional, valence encoder guides behavioral decisions A key function of the brain is to categorize sensory cues as repulsive or attractive and respond accordingly. While we have some understanding of how sensory information is processed in the sensory pe...

How is valence computed in the brain? Check out our new preprint about a single cell that integrates excitatory and inhibitory input across modalities according to valence and impacts behavioral decisions. An exciting collaboration across many labs. Enjoy reading!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Looking for a PhD next year? Want to come and work on the next generation of OPM-MEG/EEG biomarkers in computational psychiatry?

Apply for our MRC iCase studentship with @mkflugge.bsky.social, collabs with @lilweb.bsky.social + industrial placement at P1Vital:
www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/gradua...

paper is up~

This study examines performance evaluation in perceptual detection tasks using response-time-based signal detection theory (SDT) analysis. A defining feature of detection tasks is the asymmetry between trials with stimulus presence and absence, often reflected in ....

Interested in building computational models of anxiety? See below for a potential PhD opportunity with me

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to know more!

@kingsioppn.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social

kcl-mrcdtp.com/project/unde...

How does self control, either too much or too little, effect people w/ an eating disorder? In this episode of @pbs.org's "Healthy Minds", host Dr Jeffrey Borenstein has fascinating discussion w/ Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Dr Laura Berner! NOT TO MISS✨ www.thirteen.org/programs/hea...

For all who use Bayesian hierarchical models, have a look at our new preprint, out now together with @linushof.bsky.social @nunobusch.bsky.social and @thorstenpachur.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

📢 My lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is considering graduate student applications this fall

We welcome applicants interested in using computational modeling & fMRI to study social connection

🗓️ Deadline: December 1, 2025
🔗 Learn more: sinclaboratory.com/apply

#comppsychiatry #socialneuro

📣 Interested in applying computational methods to advance understanding of mental health? Join us for the New York Computational Psychiatry Workshop (Nov 10-12)!

Apply by Oct 13: form.jotform.com/252448781112...
More info: bit.ly/nycpw2025

Please share & RT!

Tenure -Track Position (Open Rank), Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...

are you a clinical researcher? join our warm and supportive department (open rank!) mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/mcgill...

Even after recovery, relapse is heartbreakingly common in anorexia nervosa. Could the answer lie in the gut’s hidden signals? 🧵

Neuronal Activity in Orbitofrontal Cortex during Trinary Choices under Risk Economic choice entails computing and comparing the subjective values of different goods. Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is thought to contribute to both operations. However, previous work focused almost ...

New ms on trinary choices! Somewhat surprisingly, our monkeys’ choices satisfied IIA (independence of irrelevant alternatives). In OFC, decision variables were represented in the same way under trinary and under binary choices. This property implies IIA.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

About 70 moms and dads gathered Tuesday at Alpha School in the Marina District to hear a sales pitch for why they should drop $75,000 a year per kid on an education that sounds like the plot line of a “Black Mirror” episode. Alpha School’s promise is bold and not backed by evidence: Just two hours of academic work per day, with the rest of the day spent developing “life skills,” from building a sailboat to managing an AirBnB to traveling internationally. The school’s founders, podcaster MacKenzie Price and her tech executive husband, Andrew, make incredible claims, such as that Alpha students learn 10 times faster than those in traditional education — with the use of AI only. One mother asked the K-8 school’s principal, the Trilogy Software founder, investor, and multibillionaire Joe Liemandt, how children can learn virtues and values from a computer.

Now *this* is how to do reporting on the latest for-profit edtech-AI snake oil outfit to promise hyperaccelerated learning through fully surveillant clasrooms and teacherless schooling all the way to big investor injections of capital and raids on families' incomes sfstandard.com/2025/09/19/a...

Is this messaging going to help them skirt accountability when investors realize massive investments in AI infrastructure have limited ROI?

Brilliant application of CS to labor economics: In hiring, adding an "exploration bonus" improves quality, and esp favors minority candidates (it's a remedy for statistical discrimination-- if you favor hiring a rare type of candidate you learn more about their group, to improve future hires)

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

Post Doctoral Scholar Screen reader users may encounter difficulty with this site. For assistance with applying, please contact hr-accessibleapplication@osu.edu. If you have questions while submitting an application, pleas...

Postdoc with us in Columbus! 🌰

I'm pumped to recruit a 1-2 year postdoc working on:
- mechanisms of change in treatment
- treatment personalization
- emotion reg

With a breakdown of:
50% research
30% treatment
20% mentorship/collaboration/conferences

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

Assistant, Associate or Full Professor (Tenure Track), Translational Neurosciences (Phoenix) - Phoenix, Arizona job with University of Arizona | 12842366 Assistant, Associate or Full Professor (Tenure Track), Translational Neurosciences (Phoenix) Posting Number req23491 Department COM Phx Translation...

The University of Arizona is holding an open-rank neuroscience faculty search, multiple tenure-track positions available! Positions will be in the new Department of Translational Neurosciences at the College of Medicine in Phoenix. tinyurl.com/42t8tcey

Simons Foundation Announces Recipients of 2025 Fellows-to-Faculty Awards The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce the 2025 class of Fellows-to-Faculty Fellows.

Announcing our 9 new Fellows-to-Faculty Fellows! These awards help senior postdoctoral researchers with fresh perspectives on autism & neuroscience transition to tenure-track faculty positions: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/simons-foundation-announces-recipients-of-2025-fellows-to-faculty-awards/

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

Transitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions - Nature Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neura...

How does the brain decide? 🧠

Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.

After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.

rdcu.be/eGUrv

📢 NEW PREPRINT 📢 We show a metacognitive paradox (not blanket deficit!) in OCD: confidence is persistently lower, but fluctuations track evidence more tightly and are nearer Bayes-optimal.

www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...
🧵👇

Probability weighting arises from boundary repulsions of cognitive noise In both risky choice and perception, people overweight small and underweight large probabilities. While prospect theory models this with a probability weighting function, and Bayesian noisy coding mod...

📢 Preprint out! biorxiv.org/content/10.1... What gives rise to probability weighting, a cornerstone of Prospect Theory?
We show it comes from the natural boundedness of probabilities + cognitive noise. Adding boundaries adds multiple distortions, across risky choice & perception.