Alessandra N. C. Yu

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize meta- physical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

The Human Affectome (2024). >170 authors!

It took me awhile to wrap my head around the what this paper is about - it's about organizing the "phenomena of interest" in emotion research. If anyone is game to share backstory, we'd love to hear it.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How mood-related physiological states bias economic decisions - Communications Psychology Brief inductions of happiness versus sadness bias unrelated economic choices towards more rewarded but more costly options. This choice bias is predicted by a mood proxy reconstructed from physiologic...

I don’t dare to tell you how many years this took, but the project that I started as a MSc intern and kept working on throughout my PhD is now finally published: www.nature.com/articles/s44... [1/9]

Hi! Amazing article. Not only is my personal PhD work on this (adjusting implicit sense of agency based on cause-effect using linguistic manipulation), but we take up this perspective in the Human Affectome! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... Haven’t gotten around to transferring the thread to 🦋 but very soon!

Causal understanding is not a point of view, it’s a point of do | Aeon Essays Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect

No other animal thinks about cause-and-effect in the hyper-objective, hyper-general way that we do, and this is a superpower @marielgoddu.bsky.social

What a wonderful article! Let's get doing 🤸

Beyond brain fog: Urgent need to address the unmet cognitive needs of women going through menopause Researchers at the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences find that measures used to assess cognition during menopause are often inadequate and highlight the need for an outcome measure of…

#ICYMI New review from @uclpals.bsky.social finds that measures of cognition during menopause are often inadequate.

📣 Excited to announce our workshop "Agent-Based Models in Neuroscience: Complex Planning, Embodiment, and Beyond" at the upcoming @cosynemeeting.bsky.social #CoSyNe2025! 🧠🤖 🪱🪰🐟🐝🐭💪

Schedule: neuro-agent-models.github.io
🗓️ Join us in Mont-Tremblant, Canada, on March 31!

Unpacking the complexities of consciousness: Theories and reflections As the field of consciousness science matures, the research agenda has expanded from an initial focus on the neural correlates of consciousness, to de…

2.5 years after ‘the great debate’ at ASSC Amsterdam, we revisit it: Lamme, @standehaene.bsky.social , @smfleming.bsky.social , Boly and @anilseth.bsky.social present their theories, and Melloni and myself try to extract some insights and criticisms. >>>
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great piece: Firsthand testimonies of how the flux in diversity-based funding is impacting trainees.

Gratitude to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for amplifying these voices.

Gratitude to all the trainees who bravely spoke up with these diverse perspectives so we can all better understand.

‘A gut punch:’ How U.S. neuroscience trainees are grappling with diversity-based funding flux Ten trainees spoke with The Transmitter about how the precarious state of U.S. federal funding is affecting their research and career plans.

Please read this and hear their stories! Then do what you can to help stop this.

www.thetransmitter.org/funding/a-gu...

Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain 2025 The Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain is an intensive, project-based residential course with a focus on the neurobiology of sensory processing, coding, and neural population dynamics.

Less than a week to apply for the Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain! 🐋🧠🌊

Apply by Feb. 1 to join us for this intensive, project-based residential course in the beautiful San Juan Islands.

🔗 alleninstitute.org/events/summe...

🧠📈

informal announcement: we'll be doing a *cluster* hire of faculty in theoretical/computational neuroscience in the coming year(s). a senior/mid-career person could be selected to bring in 2-3 more ppl of their choosing (subject to committee approval), or we could otherwise hire together a group 1/

📣 New Paper Announcement! 🎉🥳

The perceptual primacy of feeling: Affectless visual machines explain a majority of variance in human visually evoked affect | PNAS
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#neuroaesthetics #empiricalaesthetics #neuroskyence #compneurosky

The Dimensions of dimensionality Cognitive scientists often infer multidimensional representations from data. Whether the data involve text, neuroimaging, neural networks, or human judgments, researchers frequently infer and analyze latent representational spaces (i.e., embeddings). However, the properties of a latent representation (e.g., prediction performance, interpretability, compactness) depend on the inference procedure, which can vary widely across endeavors. For example, dimensions are not always globally interpretable and the dimensionality of different embeddings may not be readily comparable. Moreover, the dichotomy between multidimensional spaces and purportedly richer representational formats, such as graph representations, is misleading. We review what the different notions of dimension in cognitive science imply for how these latent representations should be used and interpreted.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

The Dimensions of dimensionality
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

A guide to science communication training for doctoral students - Nature Neuroscience Effective science communication is necessary for engaging the public in scientific discourse and ensuring equitable access to knowledge. Training doctoral students in science communication will instil...

Daniela Schiller, @ericjnestler.bsky.social, and their excellent TAs have been running an elective the last few years—and wrote a fantastic paper on it! As a student one of the rounds, I can attest to the efficacy of the training 🙌🏼 #EffectiveSciComm
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How to explore your scientific values and develop a vision for your field As a new professor, I was caught off guard by one part of the job: my role as an evaluator.

How to explore your scientific values and develop a vision for your field.

By @neurograce.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...

Paranoid and teleological thinking give rise to distinct social hallucinations in vision - Communications Psychology When asked to judge if a chase was present in a visual display of moving discs, people with higher paranoia and teleological thinking were more likely to perceive a chase in its absence. They were als...

Out today: we discovered a new class of social hallucination - perception of chasing with high confidence. It is elevated in people who are paranoid and people who perceive meaning in the universe www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The Human Affectome Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due t…

It could be that valence and arousal may merely be (informative) features of otherwise more “interesting”content—that is, what we’re actually concerned with in that affective experience 🤷🏻‍♀️

Future considerations for the Human Affectome: Reply to commentaries

@drmathildetahar.bsky.social has started a wonderful international discussion group on agency!
Relatedly, a conversation on intrinsic teleology might be helpful here…

There are now nearly 5000 papers on #interoception. And the output over the last 4 years is more than the previous 59. 🤯

Research Specialist University Overview The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school co...

I'm searching for a research assistant to help with our new "models of mood" effort. Great fit for someone pre-PhD. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass this job ad along - thanks!

wd1.myworkdaysite.com/en-US/recrui...

What effort? This:
www.nicolerust.com/thepivot

Currently, the DM option isn’t there!

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

JOB ALERT: We are recruiting a research assistant in the Imagine Reality Lab to work on a project using MEG decoding to distinguish between different theories of consciousness 🧠 Get in touch if you have any questions about the role's scientific details. Please share!

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Would you like to stop by the Center for Computational Psychiatry to give a talk—if you’ll be staying in/near NYC? Would love have a fellow active inference/affect researcher over

This is the one I'm most proud of, will be updating my CV and highlighting it!!

go.bsky.app/GVMZMcB

‘Huge influx’ of neuroscientists migrates to Bluesky Daily neuroscience-related posts on the social-media platform this week have increased more than 400 percent, on average, compared with October.

Huge influx of neuroscientists migrates to Bluesky
www.thetransmitter.org/community/hu...
#Neuroscience

NYU Social Psychology is hiring!

This is an OPEN RANK search for 2 positions. We seek candidates from all areas of social psychology and are particularly interested in folks who take unique methodological approaches in their work.

apply.interfolio.com/154805

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