Ali Shiravand

🚨 New preprint 🚨

Are reinforcement learning models complete accounts of decisions from experience if they ignore explicit memory?

In this new preprint, we show that people indeed form robust explicit memory representations that flexibly guide later decisions.

🔗 Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🚨 New publication: How to improve conceptual clarity in psychological science?

Thrilled to see this article with @ruimata.bsky.social out. We discuss how LLMs can be leveraged to map, clarify, and generate psychological measures and constructs.

Open access article: doi.org/10.1177/0963...

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

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

🚨 New preprint: What does the research landscape of behavioral reinforcement learning look like 🌍?

We developed an LLM-powered bibliometric analysis to characterize article clusters, investigate their connections, and examine the distribution of topics across the landscape.

osf.io/6c2va_v1

Congrats Charley! 🎇

These 99 'lab hacks' will make your scientific work easier Nature asked contributors, editors and working researchers to share their best advice for scientists.

These 99 'lab hacks' will make your scientific work easier

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

Great initiative:
The Max Planck AI Network PhD Program
ai.mpg.de

Check out @bcdavidson.bsky.social's preprint (w/ @georgiaturner.bsky.social @orbenamy.bsky.social @livia-tomova.bsky.social and co.) about the (computational) consequences of social isolation in social media use during covid!

New paper our in @pnas.org, lead by @isabellehoxha.bsky.social with Léo Sperber. We use evolutionary simulation to assess and compare the adaptive value of positivity bias and gradual perseveration in reinforcement learning. Follow the thread below (and Isabelle!) for more details!

Evolving choice hysteresis in reinforcement learning: Comparing the adaptive value of positivity bias and gradual perseveration | PNAS The tendency to repeat past choices more often than expected from the history of outcomes has been repeatedly empirically observed in reinforcement...

Ever wondered why you keep going to that restaurant with stale fries? Is it because you went often in the past (perseveration) or because you remember past good experiences better (positivity bias)? Our study out in PNAS investigates the normative basis for these biases www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I'm feeling very glad & grateful these days to be part of neuroeconomics summer school in Fontainebleau! 👾

Hi, we will have three NeuroAI postdoc openings (3 years each, fully funded) to work with Sebastian Musslick (@musslick.bsky.social), Pascal Nieters and myself on task-switching, replay, and visual information routing.

Reach out if you are interested in any of the above, I'll be at CCN next week!

Excited about #CCN2025 and sharing our research in @cmc-lab.bsky.social!

\ generalizable truths about the real world. He cautions against treating elegant models as universally predictive, emphasizing that their insights are often context-dependent and lack external validity. He treats models as stylized narratives, not truth machines.

I've recently come across Ariel Rubinstein's argument that models are stories, mathematical ones, but stories nonetheless. Economic models should be viewed like fairytales: they illustrate specific ideas within narrowly defined settings but shouldn’t be assumed to offer \

Causal inference and cognitive-behavioral integration deficits drive stable variation in human punishment sensitivity - Communications Psychology Using a gamified punishment task, this study identifies specific learning and decision-making deficits that drive robust, consequential differences in choice within an international, general populatio...

Using a gamified punishment task, this study identifies specific learning and decision-making deficits that drive robust, consequential differences in choice within an international population sample across a 6-month interval.
@philjrdb.bsky.social @gavan.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I recently took part in an amazing experience at the “Solve for Healthcare & Life Sciences with Gemma” hackathon, organized by Google Paris!
Our team worked on triage in emergency rooms, improving communication, prioritization and decision-making in critical circumstances.

🚨 New preprint 🚨

Experimental Evidence for the Propagation and Preservation of Machine Discoveries in Human Populations

arxiv.org/abs/2506.17741

with team members @levinbrinkmann.bsky.social @thomasfmueller.bsky.social Ann-Marie Nussberger, @maximederex.bsky.social, Sara Bonati, Valerii Chirkov

CDS Summer School Program Registration Schedule Directions 8th – 12th September, 2025 The Center for Decision Sciences will be hosting a summer school during the second week of September, 2025 and taking place…

Registration is open for the Summer School on Computational Decision Sciences, 8–12 Sept

Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more!

(free, register by 11Aug)

center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s...
#PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪

New poster for the local pre- #cogsci2025 workshop I am organizing at @unituebingen.bsky.social with generous support from @ml4science.bsky.social Please share widely! Accepted Cogsci papers are not required to present a talk/poster! Also feel free to just come and checkout some cool research!

Distinguishing performance gains from learning when using generative AI

Comment by Lixiang Yan, Samuel Greiff, Jason M. Lodge & Dragan Gašević

go.nature.com/3FJqTq3

🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀
I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales
👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....

Thanks Marius!

Thanks to my wonderful collaborators and supervisors on these projects —
@stepalminteri.bsky.social @valentinwyart.bsky.social @georgiaturner.bsky.social, Ilaria, Martino, Vasilisa and Charles.

I'll be presenting two posters at #RLDM2025 in Dublin🇮🇪 – June 11, Poster Session 1:

🌀 Poster #19: How selective attention benefits and hinders learning in complex environments.

🏞️ Poster #18: NorMARL - a framework for sustaining shared resources through norm internalization.

Paris Magnolias
at the Jardin du Palais Royal ⛅

🌍 Excited to share that our paper has been accepted for an oral presentation at the International Conference on Complex Systems (FRCCS) 2025 in Bordeaux!

We demonstrate how norm internalization and learning rate influence sustainability, via a cognitively grounded multi-agent RL framework.

🧵 New preprint out!
📄 "Elucidating attentional mechanisms underlying value normalization in human reinforcement learning"
👁️ We show that visual attention during learning causally shapes how values are encoded
w/ @sgluth.bsky.social & @stepalminteri.bsky.social
🔗 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨Preprint update!🚨
with @thecharleywu.bsky.social
Are Large Language Models (LLMs) conscious? 🧠💻
Most say: only if they replicate the brain's computations.
But we propose a shift: consciousness should be inferred from their behavior.

osf.io/preprints/ps...