Phil Corlett

Sycophantic AI distorts reality by returning responses that are biased to reinforce existing beliefs.

"sycophantic AI distorts belief, manufacturing certainty where there should be doubt."

Unbiased sampling produces discovery rates 5X higher! arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14270

Check out our latest research drop! We show BLA dopamine signaling encodes the emotional weight of sensory transitions, but not the associative strength or value of stimuli. These signals dynamically rescale when the learning context changes: "this matters most!" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#JNeurosci: Carvalheiro et al performed 3 studies exploring the relationship between punishments & money-related reward learning in a gambling task, finding punishments may promote reward learning by targeting activity in a reward-related brain area https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1631-25.2026

I disagree ;-)

Integrating Causal Inference with Digital Twin Modeling for Individualized Mental Health Research: https://osf.io/m78jz

IMO there’s more theory in neuroscience than we give it credit for, but it doesn’t percolate through the field as much as you would hope/need for broader understanding.

I could really use a webinar about work-life balance right now - that would fix me

So sorry for your loss Mark

@nicolecrust.bsky.social 👇

Thrilled that this first empirical paper out of the lab is posted, led by Sandarsh Pandey, asking:

Depression (and other internalizing disorders) involve profound changes to sense of self. How can we study these differences using rigorous decision-making methods?

(alt link: tinyurl.com/2kk59dje)

How are neural manifolds and single-neuron response properties related to circuit structure?

How degenerate are these relationships?

Theory and a plethora of examples can be found in the following paper, out today in Neuron 🌟

It was a privilege to co-supervise first author @lpezon.bsky.social!

It actually looks like the Erowid site - or at least, that’s what it looked like last time I was there 20 years ago :-)

A screenshot of the article title: Reframing oxytocin as a behavioral flexibility hormone

Scientific claims in biobehavioral oxytocin research are dependent on a “derivation chain”. Theoretical models are the beginning of this chain, which are dependent on a theoretical core supported by auxiliary hypotheses. Efforts to improve biobehavioral oxytocin research have tended to focus on auxiliary hypotheses related to experimental models (e.g., improving oxytocin delivery to the brain, polygenic approaches for genetics studies), and statistical auxiliary hypothesis (e.g., appropriate sample sizes for research). However, even if these issues are addressed, a poorly specified theoretical core (and associated auxiliary hypothesis) can lead to unreliable scientific claims

Oxytocin is typically described as a "social" hormone. In our new article, we propose that it should instead be viewed a hormone that modulates behavioral flexibility

doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

it's out!

@hazimi.bsky.social and i explore how higher order representations of *one's own first-order representational uncertainty* -- not representations OF noisiness in the world -- can be studied, including how they are constructed in the first place.

philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...

A Reductress post features a photo of Kristi Noem with the headline, “Kristi Noem Put Down for Being Too Hard to Train”

Screaming

Right-wing authoritarianism is linked to belief in the paranormal, independent of cognitive style New research suggests that people who endorse right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance are more likely to believe in the paranormal. This connection persists even when accounting for a person'...

Well, well, well. Right-wing authoritarianism is linked to belief in the paranormal, independent of cognitive style www.psypost.org/right-wing-a...

Optical illusion of a woman bent over some papers. Her sunglasses are pushed up and she is wearing a hair band so the top of her head looks exactly like a Muppet face

Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now

Honey Monster

Threading the needle: Practical considerations for merging theory-driven computational psychiatry with data-driven analytics to enhance precision health at scale The rapidly evolving field of computational psychiatry enables quantification of specific cognitive processes, and their underlying mechanisms, in a translational and potentially scalable manner, usin...

Excited to share our latest paper in which we discuss merging theory-and data- driven computational psychiatry in a large transdiagnostic cohort study (N=2400)

www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245...

Christopher Pittenger, Godfrey Pearlson @annierhcheng.bsky.social @sobp-org.bsky.social

Regional cerebellar volumetrics in obsessive-compulsive disorder: An ENIGMA-OCD study Although subtle differences in cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CTSC) circuit structure and function are critical to the current understanding of the neurocircuitry in obsessive-compulsive disorder…

Adults with OCD exhibit significantly smaller volumes of the corpus medullare, left VIIb, and right VIIb compared to healthy controls, and these differences are mediated by medication status.

A drawing on the cover of the journal Neuron. Each section of the fan has a drawing of a mouse. Each mouse has a slightly different pose. The tassel of the fan resembles a neuron.

My first cover of 2026
"Spontaneous behavior is a succession of self-directed tasks"
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
#sciArt #Scicom #illustration #neuroskyence

Warm congratulations to The Brain Prize winners 2026, Professor David Ginty and Professor Patrik Ernfors, for their pioneering work on how the nervous system detects and processes touch and pain.

Karolinska Institutet
HHMI

#Neuroscience #BrainPrize2026

So cool to have @melaniemitchell.bsky.social with us as our @wutsaiyale.bsky.social Inspiring Speaker!

How does the brain generalize past experiences without confusing memories? 🧠

Our lab's newest preprint reveals a fundamental division of labor between the cortex and cerebellum that solves this problem. (Check out the cortex-cerebellum video below! 👇) 🧵

First preprint from the lab! Using intracellular recordings & analysis of 2-photon imaging data, we show that spiking & neuromodulatory input during experience drive a reorganization of visuomotor inputs in V1 layer 2/3 neurons, consistent with enhanced visuomotor cancellation - bioRxiv link below.

Topographically segregated mediodorsal-prefrontal loops exhibit distinct cue dynamics during learning and extinction https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.709125v1

🚨Preprint! “Bayesian surprise tracks the strength of perceptual insight” - Work with @lindedomingo.bsky.social & @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social

Ever wondered what factors influence the subjective experience of suddenly understanding a previously unclear input?

Click below:
doi.org/10.64898/202...

@jorge-morales.bsky.social giving our BSTP talk at Yale Psychiatry today. Perception is within and without. What a treat!

Orbitofrontal cortex drives predictive filtering of sensory responses - Nature Neuroscience Top-down projections from the orbitofrontal cortex carry predictive signals that grow with sound experience and suppress the auditory cortex via inhibitory circuits, revealing a predictive mechanism f...

Orbitofrontal cortex drives predictive filtering of sensory responses

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#neuroskyence

Do You Agree? Do You Strongly Agree? The Effect of the Number of Response Categories on Response Processes and Verification of Substantive Hypotheses Abstract. This study investigates how the number and labeling of response categories in survey scales affect respondent behavior, psychometric properties,

This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...