Shenhav Lab

Shameless advertising here, but if you have been asking yourself this question and are attending @cogscisociety.bsky.social come check out Ziwei’s talk tomorrow on her paper that received Cog Sci’s Computational Modeling Prize for Higher-Level Cognition!! 🎉🎉
bsky.app/profile/shen...

Come and see our work at #cogsci2025!
Ziwei Cheng will be presenting a talk “Incentive Effects Capture Variability in Task-General Control Allocation” on Fri 8/1 (4-5:30 pm, Cognition 7)
🔗Paper link: escholarship.org/content/qt7b...

A Novel Approach-Avoidance Task to Study Decision Making Under Outcome Uncertainty To behave adaptively, people need to integrate information about probabilistic outcomes and balance drives to approach positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes. However, questions remain about ho...

Our newest preprint “A novel approach-avoidance task to study decision making under outcome uncertainty” investigates the dynamics of approach-avoid decisions!

Check out www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/..., led by Ziwei Cheng and @nadjagingjehli.bsky.social

Considering What We Know and What We Don’t Know: Expectations and Confidence Guide Value Integration in Value-Based Decision-Making Abstract. When making decisions, we often have more information about some options than others. Previous work has shown that people are more likely to choose options that they look at more and those t...

Our newest paper, led by Romy Froemer
and @fredcallaway.bsky.social‬, is now out in Open Mind: “Considering What We Know and What We Don’t Know: Expectations and Confidence Guide Value Integration in Value-Based Decision-Making”

direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

👉“Leveraging Continuous Psychophysics to Study Cognitive Control Allocation in Dynamic Environments” by Yihuan Dong (A117)

👉“The effect of acute stress on mental effort allocation across motivational contexts” by Tony El Nemer (A115)

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Attending #CNS2025? Check out the following posters!
(A98, A115, A117)

👉“Decoding Cognitive Control Dynamics: Neural Evidence of Inertia in Cognitive Control Adjustments Following Goal Changes” by Ivan Grahek (A98)

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Also at #AffectScience2025,

📣 Ivan Grahek will give the talk “Towards Emotion Regulation Dynamics: A View from Cognitive Control Optimization” for the New Perspectives on Effort in Emotion Regulation Symposium. See you there!

📅: Friday March 21st at 6pm

Currently at #AffectScience2025? 😁

👉Come visit Ziwei Cheng's poster “Dissociable Influences Of Positive And Negative Incentives On Challenge And Threat States During Mental Effort Allocation“ in Poster Session P1 (P1.T.141)

Federal budget cuts threaten the work of neuroscientist with Martin County roots | Opinion Sarah Heilbronner is a proud product of Martin County schools. However, federal budget cuts threaten important work she's doing in brain research.

Neuroscientist Sarah Heilbronner is a proud product of Martin County schools in Florida 🌴. However, federal budget cuts threaten important work she's doing in brain research. 🧪🏠
@srheilbronner.bsky.social
www.tcpalm.com/story/opinio...

Inside the Collapse at NIH Administration officials pressured NIH to avoid clear advice from the agency’s own lawyers to restart grant funding now.

By @katherinejwu.com

"The NIH... supported 99 percent of the drugs approved in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019. The agency has had a hand in “nearly all of our major medical breakthroughs over the past several decades,”

The NIH is in a struggle for its (and our) lives. This is existential to America:

Coming to a Zoom near you!
The affective gradient hypothesis: An affect-centered account of motivated behavior - Dr. Amitai Shenhav

NIH funding cuts could have ‘devastating impact’ on medical advancements, Chicago researchers say The National Institutes of Health under President Donald Trump announced this month that it was cutting payments covering overhead costs for research institutions that receive its grants.

Freezing out the NIH's funding means freezing out American innovation.

Research into curing cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's all delayed.

And ultimately it won't just cost us advancements in life-saving research, it will cost us lives.

Want to tell the public what US government workers actually do, vs. the propaganda spewed by DOGE? This incredible website, "We the Builders," is asking for first-person testimonials from government workers about their actual jobs, and how they make the government work. www.wethebuilders.org

Our newest chapter, “Breaking the tug-of-war,” reviews the lab’s latest NIH and NSF-funded research that has changed the way we think about decision-making (and we hope how you do also): osf.io/preprints/ps...

Led by @jasonleng.bsky.social along with @sheensu.bsky.social and Romy Froemer.

Were you fired by President Trump? | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology

democrats-science.house.gov/sciencefirings

Join us! Science Homecoming helps scientists reconnect with communities by writing about the importance of science funding in their hometown newspapers. We’ve mapped every small newspaper in the U.S. and provide resources to get you started. Help science get back home 🧪🔬🧬 🏠

sciencehomecoming.com

🎉Happy New Year! 🎉
We are excited to inaugurate Shenhav Lab's BlueSky account with a UC Berkeley News article featuring the newest paper from our lab by @jasonleng.bsky.social!

📰 News Article: ls.berkeley.edu/news/new-app...

🔗 Paper: t.co/l5C3g6IjCP