Uma Karmarkar

🤣

I did not know all my life needed was a Bosch-based piñata, but well, HERE WE ARE.

Really interesting work by Bakhurin and colleagues challenging the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I love this figure which both echoes and undermines the famous figure from Schultz et al. (1997).

There is now strong, converging evidence that OFC neurons signal expected uncertainty. We manipulated probabilistic outcomes, and Zhang & Zhou changed reward delay and magnitude, finding OFC neurons dynamically modulate outcome-coding sensitivity based on variance www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congrats, Jess, this is so elegant!

For those interested in methods for analyzing a specific frequency of neural activity as a series of discrete events, the CBASS code is posted here with an excellent wiki by @q-perrenoud.bsky.social: github.com/cardin-higle...

Important to celebrate the wins!

LAPD raid goes from bad to farce after gun allegedly sucked onto MRI machine Police apparently didn't remember basic safety around an MRI machine.

No. No no no no no.

Cop takes a LOADED RIFLE into an MRI room.

Yeah, you know what happened to the gun. I'm glad no one was killed, but I do mourn the scanner. They had to quench, and it's reported as "damaged"

www.sfgate.com/cannabis/art...

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 appreciate the authenticity of having not just raccoons, but a possum as well.

Sometimes we CAN have nice things.

We just have to remember that the things are nice 🥰

Stanley Milgram leaning against the machine that shocks people

why does Stanley Milgram look like he's about to release the best industrial noise 7" of 1981

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...

I will never not repost this

(Sound on for maximum effect)

I see my beloved secret breakfast. JEALOUS.

I did two PhDs (yeah, I *know*) and had my tenure clock reset after moving universities. So despite my age in years, I'm used to being on a low step of the academic hierarchy.

In the last week, multiple people have referred to me as "senior faculty" and it is *messing with my head*

His Off-the-Grid Vacation Was Interrupted by Winning a Nobel Prize

This dude is absolutely living his best life and I hope they are happy forever

We just spent 6 months to add 1 figure to this paper. Some people said, "Couples aren't prioritizing men's careers. Men just have better earnings opportunities when moving."

Earnings effects of moves for couples on the left, singles on the right. Negligible gap between single men and women.

The dependence of children’s generalization on episodic memory varies with age and level of abstraction - Nature Communications Children’s ability to generalize from episodic memories varies by both age and the level of abstraction. Here, the authors show that lower level generalization increasingly depends on episodic memory with age, whereas higher level generalization shows no such relationship.

Thrilled to see this paper out! It's the culmination of a project begun in the depths of the pandemic with Sabrina Karjack and @zoengo.bsky.social . We continue our exploration of how children generalize when their episodic memory is not yet mature.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Academic book authors- she’s talking to you too!

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)!

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! 🙏

Photo of Christian Ruff, with the text Mid Career Award

This is only the second year that the Society for Neuroeconomics has offered a Mid Career Award, and we are delighted to announce @ccruff.bsky.social as the 2025 winner!

photos of Nikki Sullivan and Kiyohito Iigaya with the text "early career awards"

A huge congratulations to @drnikkisullivan.bsky.social and Kiyohito Iigaya, the 2025 winners of the Society for Neuroeconomics Early Career Award!

Haoxue Fan receiving the best dissertation award at SNE

Congrats to the brilliant @haoxuefan.bsky.social on her best dissertation award at #SNE2025! 💫 @socforneuroecon.bsky.social

All set! Lovely to meet you at the conference.

Added! 😊

At #SNE2025? Check out our lab's presentations!

➡️O.03.02: "Competitors or Opportunities? Mutual exclusivity alters neural and attentional processing of choice alternatives" by @jasonleng.bsky.social at 9:00 on 10/4.

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At #SNE2025 in Boston! Presenting poster P2.H.23: “Dopamine influences risk preference through learning, not policy.” Excited to chat about dopamine & NAcc, and how risk preference can be decomposed into policy, learning, etc in different forms of uncertainty. (poster in QR code below).