David V. Smith

Is social media to blame for teens’ mental health decline?

Intuition says yes—but RCTs find only small short-term effects when users quit.

This new preprint argues these studies don’t prove social media isn’t to blame.

Here’s why: 3 reasons.

Really delighted to share our new article in Current Biology showing that the cingulate-to-dorsolateral prefrontal pathway is not involved in trial-to-trial short-term adaptation but rather in sustained motivational control.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

I am recruiting a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara for an NIH-funded project on the organization of lateral PFC function--across emotion and cognition--using representational fMRI & TMS. I’d love to find someone w/ a background in cognitive control & computational modeling to complement our team! 🏝️ 🧠 🧲

The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the @msnlab.bsky.social in the @thechbh.bsky.social. Deadline 27/11. More info: tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7

This article is quite good and balanced, but I find these numbers pretty insane.

Next Week: Don’t miss @angeladuckworth.bsky.social & @katymilkman.bsky.social in conversation with Nobel Laureate @rthaler.bsky.social and Professor @aleximas.bsky.social about their new book, The Winner’s Curse.

📅 Thurs Oct 23 | 4-5PM
📍 Huntsman Hall G06
📩RSVP: https://bit.ly/4nbI9EG

Out today at Neuron, our experiments show that frontal cortical representation of economic variables is jointly determined by spatial organization and downstream
connectivity of neurons, revealing a structured, multi-scale code for economic variables. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

“We propose a new model in which public communication and advocacy are considered as essential to our mission as rigor and reproducibility—critical not only for safeguarding science, but also for ensuring that its benefits reach all segments of the societies we serve”

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Clinical Science Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology offers graduate programs in cognitive, clinical, developmental, and quantitative psychology, joint doctoral programs in peace studies and in computer science / en...

I'm interviewing applicants for clinical psych for this next cycle! Come to South Bend to study how and why people use substances in their everyday lives

Learn more about the lab: spiel-lab.nd.edu

Learn more about our program: psychology.nd.edu/graduate/are...

Nature Reviews Psychology is encouraging authors to include a citation diversity statement to draw attention to citation imbalances and confirm that they made efforts to cite publications from a diverse group of researchers.

Read more in our editorial: go.nature.com/4mTIpr2

APS Mentor Award The APS Mentor Award honors the importance of mentoring in our field as well as the dedication and impact of individuals with a distinguished record of teaching, advising, and encouraging students and...

Congratulations to the 2026 APS Mentor Award recipients 🎉 John F. Dovidio, @kathyhirshpasek.bsky.social, Marci Lobel, Paul A.M. van Lange, John R. Weisz

We're a month further into the job market - how are things looking? The good news is that the market does seem to have been delayed: ~150 new listings have appeared since my last post. The bad news is that the total is still substantially lower than what it was during the covid dip.

Trait reward sensitivity and behavioral motivation are associated with connectivity between the default mode network and the striatum during reward anticipation Individuals vary substantially in their responses to rewarding events and their motivation to pursue rewards. While the ventral striatum (VS) plays a central role in reward anticipation, its functiona...

📊 Attending #SNE2025? Check out @jameswyngaarden.bsky.social 's poster this afternoon (Session 1):

P1.E.17 – Trait reward sensitivity and behavioral motivation shape DMN–striatal connectivity during reward anticipation

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@socforneuroecon.bsky.social

🚨 New from the lab! Excited to share work led by @jenyangyi.bsky.social, debuting today at #SNE2025 (Poster Session 1):
P1.F.38 – Emotion regulation and age shape trustee identity–related decision bias in the trust game
Come check it out this afternoon!
@socforneuroecon.bsky.social

Reward-reset interval timing drives patch foraging decisions through neural state transitions in dorsomedial striatum https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.29.679309v1

NIH will spend its full $48B budget — but multi-year funding means fewer projects, record-low grant success, and a warning for U.S. science.👉 lfdn.org/3KOs2hT
💜Learn how you can support NIH funding: www.lustgarten.org/forging-ahead
#ResearchMatters

A "JAMA" article titled "Elevating Service in Academic Medicine—The S-Index" by Rebekah Mannix and Michael J. Bell, published online October 1, 2025, discusses the need for a service index in academic medicine.

💬 Viewpoint: Academic medicine should adopt the "s-index" to recognize and reward nonresearch contributions like service, mentorship, and diversity initiatives, promoting equity and improving faculty retention.

ja.ma/4nRApYo

Here is NIDA

They were relatively effective in maintaining R01 numbers with little or no multi-year funding, but substantially increased UG1, UG3, and U24 cooperative agreements.

11/n

Here is NIA.

NIA made on 51% as many new R01 awards in FY25 compared with FY24.

7/n

New work led by @mattmattoni.bsky.social

“Overall, results suggest that BOLD activation to reward tasks, and likely other fMRI tasks, is more appropriate for within-person study than between-person study, highlighting a need for intensive longitudinal neuroimaging designs.”

🚨🚨New precision imaging study and open dataset 🚨🚨 Featuring almost 200 functional runs acquired in 3-4d intervals and behavioral manipulations focused on intraindividual study of the reward response - The Night Owls Scan Club (NOSC) With @dvsmith.bsky.social and @olinotom.bsky.social!

UCLA’s funds reinstated after yesterday’s court order! Thanks to the brave researchers and their amazing counsel, including Dean Chemerinsky, who brought suit. This is just another turn in the ongoing fight, but a great result for now.

This was such a fun project! Dozens of philosophers wrote philosophical arguments trying to get people to donate more to charity, and we ask: Do any of these work? Which ones work best? Why?

PELICAN: a Longitudinal Image Processing Pipeline for Analyzing Structural Magnetic Resonance Images in Aging and Neurodegenerative Disease Populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.20.677546v1

🚨We're hiring!🚨 The Dept of Psychology at Rutgers is hiring an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology. Review of applications begin on Oct 18. Details here: jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/259...

I'm chairing the search committee and am happy to field questions about the position. 🧵

Updating my analysis now that August data should be relatively complete.

Not great news...

The rate of investment of the appropriation is not increasing and it seems unlikely that the entire appropriation will be committed this year.

1/2

The Department of Psychology at Tufts University is conducting a search for an Assistant or Associate Professor of Computational Psychology with a focus on Artificial Intelligence, beginning September 1, 2026.

Details can be found here: apply.interfolio.com/172807.

If I’m understanding right, Aaron Clauset at Peer Review Congress showing that the strongest correlate of peer review outcomes at Science and Science Advances is the prestige of authors’ institutions. Also pretty big association with author geography, not much with author gender. #PRC10

Wow what a rich dataset! Amazing work @jungheejung.bsky.social !

Legal adviser warns NIH not to kill 900 grants a second time Advice follows Supreme Court ruling that threatened previously restored grants, but reprieve may be brief

Some "good for now" news reported by @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social in case you didn't catch it last week.

With some good advice from @scott-delaney.bsky.social.

www.science.org/content/arti...