Haoyang Lu

A very important review.

Applications for 2026 entry to the Gatsby Bridging Programme (7-week maths summer school) will open on 19 Jan and close on 16 Feb. Designed for students who wish to pursue a postgrad research degree in theoretical neuroscience or foundational machine learning but whose degree programme lacks a strong maths focus. Applications from students in underrepresented groups in STEM strongly encouraged. A small number of bursaries available. Register for the information webinar on 23 Jan.

📢 Applications open on 19 Jan for the 7-week #Mathematics #SummerSchool in London. You will develop the maths skills and intuition necessary to enter the #TheoreticalNeuroscience / #MachineLearning field.

Find out more & register for the information webinar 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...

Seeking feedback from clinicians on AI as diagnostic decision support
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/01/19/s...

RA jobs in Oxford working on a Wellcome Trust funded grant. Neuroimaging, neurostimulation, computational modelling-- what's not to like!

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Come work with us! really great team and super exciting project.

✨New blog post✨

I break down the beautiful data visualizations from a New America report (cowritten by @oscarp.bsky.social) and try to recreate them in R using ggplot2.

danielroelfs.com/posts/new-am...

This paper completely nails an age old theory, leading to a clear law describing the strength of conditioned associations.

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Antidepressant treatment shouldn't be a guessing game. RELMED is working towards using advanced research to predict which medication is most likely to help each person along their individual path to recovery.

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

Simulating from and checking a model in Stan: It’s so easy in Stan Playground–it just runs on your browser!
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/15/s...

🎉 Our paper has been selected for a Neurips Spotlight:

“Scaling and Context Steer LLMs along the Same Computational Path as the Human Brain”

👥led by J Raugel, w/ S. Ascoli, Rapin & @valentinwyart.bsky.social

📄https://openreview.net/pdf?id=4YKlo58RcQ
📍 Hall C-E Poster #2006
🧵thread 👇

Seven-parameter drift-diffusion pdfs and cdfs now in Stan
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/11/s...

Empowerment Gain and Causal Model Construction: Children and adults are sensitive to controllability and variability in their causal interventions Learning about the causal structure of the world is a fundamental problem for human cognition. Causal models and especially causal learning have proved to be difficult for large pretrained models usin...

New preprint in advance of a Phil Trans paper. Outlining a theoretical argument bridging Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. And empirical data that kids do too!
arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230

ADHD diagnoses are growing. What’s going on? Nature - More children and adults are being diagnosed with ADHD in some countries. Science is helping to understand why — and how best to provide support.

People are being diagnosed with ADHD in record numbers

go.nature.com/4io9zFI

There are 3 Oxford-based post doc positions for this Wellcome Trust project that will be advertised soon!

If you have experinece in neurostimulation (tms/tus) and/or modelling of cogneuro data in humans do contact one of us (me, @mkflugge.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social, Jacinta OShea) to discuss!

1/4 I’m super excited to share our latest PNAS paper: a 7T-fMRI study shows that functional connectivity between habenula and VTA in humans is associated with individual differences in negative learning bias, which further associates with higher anxiety and depression scores. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

LLMs excel at programming—how can they be so bad at it? My explanation for the mystery of why LLMs can be both exceptionally good and quite terrible at programming.

I think I understand how it can be that LLMs are both exceptionally good and quite terrible at programming. It's because there are two entirely different skillsets that we both call "good at programming." LLMs have only one of them.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/llms-excel...

RELMED Introduction RELMED is a research study focused on improving how we treat depression. To participate, visit RELMED.AC.UK for more information. CREDITS Actor: Ben Willbond Script:…

vimeo.com/1125505169?f...
Are you:
✅ Aged 18 or over
✅ Experiencing depression or low mood
✅ Registered with a GP in England

You may be eligible to take part in the RELMED Study, exploring ways to improve treatment for depression.
🎥 Watch our short introductory video to learn more!

The associated online tool, however definitely nerdy, is addictive. Many kudos to @dirkwulff.bsky.social and co for setting this up and opening it to the community!

Very thought-provoking post by @prakhargodara.bsky.social. Is confirmation bias/positivity bias a statistical "ghost" of model specification? Specifically not including temporally decaying learning rates? The evidence suggests this is not the case and here is why (1/n)

🧠🌍 On World Mental Health Day, we’re reminded that mental health is a global priority. RELMED is committed to developing evidence-based practices to improve how we treat depression.
Thank you to all our participants and everyone who has contributed to research. Each voice truly makes a difference.

And today in the @nytimes.com...

I suggest that papers stop "suggesting a link" so that reporters stop suggesting that papers are suggesting to readers that there might be a causal relationship. They could alternatively suggest that correlations are sometimes caused by latent variables.

Curious about how scientists measure brain activity through EEG? Swipe to read more! ⚡️

Opinion | Autistic People Deserve Better Than This

Autistic people deserve much better, my latest www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

Autism is on the rise: what’s really behind the increase? RFK Jr has vowed to find out what’s responsible, but scientists say he is ignoring answers from decades of research.

Now might be a good time to repost this story about what scientists actually know about the complex causes of autism, and what's behind the increasing prevalence.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why kids need to take more risks: science reveals the benefits of wild, free play Studies reveal how risky play can benefit child development. But encouraging it can be a challenge for parents.

Studies reveal how risky play can benefit child development

go.nature.com/42622Ez

🧵 New paper! We studied depression symptoms and goal-directed decisions under uncertainty

@shiyiliang.bsky.social, with @evanrussek.bsky.social & @robbrutledge.bsky.social

Surprisingly, we found that apathy–anhedonia was linked to enhanced goal-directed behavior. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Depression can affect the mind, body and daily life in ways you might not expect.

🧠Swipe to learn the key signs and symptoms – and why recognising them matters.
#Depression #Mentalhealth #Research

A nice walkthrough on the limitations of generic slide titles and how assertive titles really help keep you on track and your audience following your desired narrative.

My group can attest that I agree 💯% that slides should have a concrete summary statement as the title, with very few exceptions.

A review of the costs of eye movements Nature Reviews Psychology - Eye movements are the most frequent movements that humans make. In this Review, Schütz and Stewart integrate evidence regarding the costs of eye movements and...

Eye movements are cheap, right? Not necessarily! 💰 In our review just out in @natrevpsychol.nature.com, Alex Schütz and I discuss the different costs associated with making an eye movement, how these costs affect behaviour, and the challenges of measuring this… rdcu.be/eAm69 #visionscience #vision

#neurojob #psychiatry @rcpsych.bsky.social @uclqsion.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social