Gonzalo Urcelay

Looking for a free day out over Summer? We give you free car parking, and a fun half day of science. Rember the park and the ice-cream van are only a stones throw away.

We still have a few spaces left for this years Summer Scientist Week, so make sure to get booked on at www.summerscientist.org

As staff, it’s our great honour to witness this moment of celebration. We’ve loved teaching & supporting you throughout your journey, watching you cross the stage, meeting your families & friends is a privilege. Wishing you all the best. Go make your mark, Class of 2025! 💫

New preprint from the lab on habit learning in compulsivity from the fantastic @kellydonegan.bsky.social! ✅ N=1000, ✅ pre-registered, ✅ within-person crossover design...we study individual differences in habit learning using the Neureka App

The first day of the joint EPS and CSBBCS meeting in Dundee ends, fittingly, with a joint poster session!

@kellydonegan.bsky.social showing our latest smartphone habit research this morning at @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social 📲

Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions - npj Science of Learning npj Science of Learning - Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions

Many variables determine whether instrumental behaviour is goal-directed or habitual. We have documented in rats that delays between response and outcome attenuate sensitivity to outcome devaluation (a canonical test of goal directedness). In this study we replicated that observation in humans.

Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions - npj Science of Learning npj Science of Learning - Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions

indeed, a good example of the kind of phenomenon we looked at with @omadav.bsky.social and reported in our recent paper (sorry for the plug!). As suggested, we did observe that delayed outcomes impaired contingency knowledge (in addition to sensitivity to devaluation)

A nice collaboration with @omadav.bsky.social and his first appearance on this platform!

Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions - npj Science of Learning npj Science of Learning - Delayed rewards weaken human goal directed actions

Many variables determine whether instrumental behaviour is goal-directed or habitual. We have documented in rats that delays between response and outcome attenuate sensitivity to outcome devaluation (a canonical test of goal directedness). In this study we replicated that observation in humans.

Maybe the future of education is that only students who care about learning will go to college and everybody else can spend all day at networking events. I just don't see any point spending time in the liminal space where students pretend that they're learning while having LLMs do their work.

Fantastic Mackintosh lecture at the Gregynog Associative Learning meeting given by Eva Jablonka

Abstract portal is open for submissions for the joint meeting of EPS and CSBBCS in Dundee (July 2025).

Delighted to be at the Lancaster meeting of the @exppsychsoc.bsky.social. Great talks from members of @notts-psych.bsky.social, Lauren Marsh and Sandra Lagator.

Take a look, there are great talks of EPS prize winners!

They said that they could smell it by looking at the photo

Here they are

Universities: Death by Bullshit Just time for a quick post to pass on an Editorial by Masud Husain with the title On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullshit jobs in universities which appeared in BRAIN maga…

When something is written with the clarity that we crave and deserve and openly articulates what we silently shout, there is no need to rephrase it, just to spread it.

"I don’t think the problem so much that the universities as a whole are underfunded, ...
1/n

Next Meeting EPS Meeting: Lancaster University. 2nd – 4th April 2025. This meeting will include the joint 23rd EPS Mid-Career Prize Lecture by Jennifer Rodd (with an accompanying symposium organised by Jo …

The meeting programme for EPS Lancaster in April is now live!

eps.ac.uk/next-meeting/

One more contribution from the lab to finalise the year. This one on spatial learning!

Announcing the 2025 "Engram and Ensembles in Learning and Memory" meeting, at @tcddublin.bsky.social

Half of speakers will be selected from abstracts submitted by trainees. Registration is open below, with discounted rates available until January 31st.

event.fourwaves.com/engramsensem...

congratulations, Simon!!!

I happily closed my twitter account. Now I got to wait 30 days for that to take effect. It will be nice to start 2025 without it, and I'm looking forward to it.

Can you add me?

Leveraging cognitive neuroscience for making and breaking real-world habits Habits are the behavioral output of two brain systems. A stimulus–response (S–R) system that encourages us to efficiently repeat well-practiced actions in familiar settings, and a goal-directed system...

Hey new followers! 👋 We are excitedly working away on lots of new habit research - days of training with electrophysiology 🧠 with neural decoding, causal work on making and breaking 🙅‍♀️, and 📱 assessments. As a preview - check out our latest in TiCS www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Research Assistant (fixed term) We seek a predoctoral research assistant to join the Humphries’ group at the University of Nottingham on the Innovate UK-funded project “GEMINI: Platform Informatics For Data-driven Neuromodulation”. ...

We’re seeking a research assistant to work on predicting which Parkinson’s patients would most benefit from deep brain stimulation. In collaboration with Machine Medicine and St George’s Hospital, London

Closes December 4th

Pls share!
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Kuppuraj Bishop Study Visit Grants This scheme was set up in 2020 by Professor Dorothy Bishop, in memory of Kuppuraj, a postdoc from India who worked with her on a study visit. It aims to help finance postgraduate and postdoctoral r…

eps.ac.uk/kuppuraj-bis...
Grant helps finance postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers from the ‘Global South’ working in experimental psychology to complete a study visit in a lab hosted by an EPS member
Deadline is 1st December.

Averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience But neurons don’t take averages. This ubiquitous practice hides from us how the brain really works.

We’re excited to welcome @markdhumphries.bsky.social, author of “The Spike,” as our new columnist. Check out his first piece, in which he explores how averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience.

www.thetransmitter.org/neural-codin...

Finally, we need to understand how to extinguish avoidance behaviour, and a first step is to understand its recovery. We documented – within-subjects – ABA renewal of avoidance behaviour in human participants
doi.org/10.1037/xan0...

What drives avoidance behaviour? Safety signals are an obvious candidate, but there was no evidence of this in humans. Courteney Fisher (PhD student) documented that safety signals do indeed reinforce avoidance behaviour in humans
learnmem.cshlp.org/content/31/8...

There is empirical evidence that Avoidance Increases Beliefs of Threat (AIBoT) and this is anticipated by associative learning theory (i.e., Rescorla-Wagner). I reviewed the available literature, described how R-W explains this, and provided a few predictions.
doi.org/10.1037/bne0...