Matthew Apps

We are hiring a new Ph. D. student on neuroimaging and/or computational modeling on motivation and emotion. Tübingen is a great place to pursue work on these topics!!

uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/...

*PhD funding through the @mrcaimdtp.bsky.social* interested in doing a PhD aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms underlying how sleep impacts on motivation in health and Parkinsons Disease? Want to learn computational modelling & brain imaging? Get in touch. more.bham.ac.uk/mrc-aim/phd-...

PhD co-supervised by Clare Anderson @bagshaap.bsky.social & @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social.

*PhD funding through the @mrcaimdtp.bsky.social* interested in doing a PhD aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms underlying how sleep impacts on motivation in health and Parkinsons Disease? Want to learn computational modelling & brain imaging? Get in touch. more.bham.ac.uk/mrc-aim/phd-...

Interoception vs. Exteroception: Cardiac interoception competes with tactile perception, yet also facilitates self-relevance encoding | PNAS Internal bodily signals, notably the heartbeat, influence our perception of the external world—but the nature of this influence remains unclear. Di...

My very first paper is finally out in @pnas.org, with Catherine Tallon-Baudry and Patrick Haggard! Interoception, exteroception, the self and more, it's got it all.

Also it should go open access at some point
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Images show effortful pro-environmental behaviours of recycling and cycling and alternatives of an overflowing bin or driving

🌎 New paper in @commspsychol.nature.com 🌍

doi.org/10.1038/s442...

There is an urgent need to choose behaviours that mitigate climate change, but these are often more effortful. Can we increase pro-environmental motivation?

Joint w/ Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta & amazing international team 👇🧵

How can we encourage people to put in effort to benefit the climate? Our new task can help tell us how...

Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience The study of foraging is central to a renewed interest in naturalistic behavior in neuroscience. Applying a foraging framework grounded in behavioral …

Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience

From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this!

#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition

Super pleased with this one, led by the amazing PhD student and foraging expert @emmavscholey.bsky.social!

I’m thrilled to share that our paper is now published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General!🧵👇 psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others New research shows patients with Parkinson's disease were more willing to help others after taking their dopamine-boosting medication.

Does dopamine modulate the willingness to help?

New Psychology Today post, "How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others", written by me, with special thanks to @drjocutler.bsky.social and @thepsychologist.bsky.social

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-...

And David Robbe

Now @dlbarack.bsky.social in this next session with his more theoretical perspective on foraging from food to inquiry.

Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change - Communications Psychology Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climat...

🎉 New paper alert!

In this collaboration across 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 (n = 3,055), we developed a new pro-environmental behavior task and tested which psychological interventions actually make people more willing to put in real effort for mitigating climate change.

Fully OA: tinyurl.com/2s46fppb

Boosting climate motivation with psychological interventions Actions that protect the environment are crucial but often require effort, which people avoid. In a large international collaboration, we identified psychological interventions that can effectively bo...

Read more about the story behind the project here - communities.springernature.com/posts/boosti...

Thanks to all the co-authors across @sdnl.bsky.social, @msnlab.bsky.social, @thechbh.bsky.social, @uob-sop.bsky.social, @scanunit.bsky.social & others

Figure showing plots for the correlations described in the post text

Finally, we found that people who believe climate change is man-made and support policies to protect the planet had higher pro-environmental motivation specifically.

People lower in trait apathy and who rated the task as less effortful were more likely to help both causes.

Using computational modelling, we showed that these effective interventions changed how rewards 💰 for the climate 🌍 (vs. food charity) were devalued by effort 💪.

This was independent of how noisy participants' choices were 🤔

Two interventions robustly decreased the preference to help food over climate, across measures and analyses.

These interventions:
- decreased psychological distance to the negative effects of climate change
- used system justification theory to promote pro-environmental action

The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries - Scientific Data Scientific Data - The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries

We tested the 11 expert-sourced interventions from the International Climate Psychology Collaboration led by
@madalina.bsky.social,
@kimdoell.bsky.social, @jbakcoleman.bsky.social & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

See doi.org/10.1126/scia... & doi.org/10.1038/s415... (all the data are freely available!)

Effort, reward, and cause determine choices to exert effort for the climate and food charities | a Participants in the control group, who did not experience a pro-environmental intervention, chose to exert physical effort for rewards more when the level of effort required was lower. b Choices to work were also higher when the reward available was larger. c Control participants were more willing to choose work to help the food charity compared to the climate charity.

People were more willing to exert effort when:

💪 the effort required was 🔽
💰 the reward available was 🔼

In the control group without intervention, motivation was higher to provide food than mitigate climate change 🌍

➡️ Interventions that promote climate motivation are key

Task diagram of the PEET with choices between work and rest for the climate and food charities

3,055 ppts from 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 did our new online Pro-Environmental Effort Task ✨ the PEET ✨

On each trial, they choose between rest or work: exerting effort by clicking boxes to earn more credits 💪

Credits were donations to a climate charity 🌍 or a matched control food charity

How can we encourage people to put in effort to benefit the climate? Our new task can help tell us how...

Day 2 starts with a keynote from Susan Healy on learning from mistakes!

Had a brilliant day at the Mechanistic Basis of Foraging conference in Birmingham so far - presenting @johalgermissen.bsky.social’s work and listening to many great speakers 🥳🧠🐠

Our second keynote now from @benhayden.bsky.social

Last in this session @tobywise.bsky.social talking about computational ethology in humans.

Now Dario Campagner on the Aeon project.

The afternoon begins with Jennifer Li from the Max Plank on brain-wide dynamics of foraging.

Next up @alexschakowski.bsky.social talking about social foraging.