Katharina V. Wellstein

@richaphogat.bsky.social

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).

New #job alert! Clinical research fellow / postdoc in #computationalpsychiatry at the @mpc-comppsych.bsky.social / @uclqsion.bsky.social and UCL psychiatry. We will aim to understand the computations engaged by serotonin in the treatment of depression. Please re-sky. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Who is planning to go to the @ohbmofficial.bsky.social Australia chapter meeting? I'm leaving Australia soon so want to meet as many lovely Aussies as possible on my conference tour 😀

No idea, especially in research. I am not participating in using it and normalizing it. I support anyone using it if they do so with open eyes. I am also not perfect by any means.
My efforts wont be enough and I know I am priviledged because I have a plan B in case academia doesnt work out.

Yeah, I hope this will all crash at some point so that we can finally put quality over quantity in all aspects of society.
When I say that I don't use chatGPT a lot of people tell me that I will have to because I will be expected to get things done faster as it becomes normal. And I'm like...

a group of people standing in front of a screen with a picture of a man on it . ALT: a group of people standing in front of a screen with a picture of a man on it .

I fear the wide-spread adoption of generative AI tools will work against us all finally slowing down and degrowing. Instead people will be expected to be inhumanely "productive" since it is now possible with these tools.

does someone good at coding & analysis want to work remotely w/ us in the coming few months (before end of 2025), as a paid consultant? project will be on neurofeedback (fMRI, ECoG, calcium imaging). we'll work towards developing the experiments & analysis pipelines together. if so pls DM me ur CV🧠📈

We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.

It was a great pleasure presenting preliminary results from my ongoing study on social-affective inference and constricted affect at the @newybrains.bsky.social lunch symposium series.
We found some interesting first effects of positive affective surprise and bodily responses. 🙂

OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years Shortly before publishing this newsletter, I spoke with analyst Gil Luria, Managing Director and Analyst at D.A. Davidson, and asked him whether the capital was there to build the 17 Gigawatts of capa...

Premium newsletter: Based on my estimates and analysis, OpenAI needs one trillion dollars in the next four years to build 17GW of data centers and other commitments, with at least $500 billion needed for company operations. There is not enough capital to do this.

www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

I have been so exhausted lately that I feel like I stopped parenting and just have a kid tag along... The guilt doesn't help.

Great work by @richaphogat.bsky.social. Follow her for more 🙂

Interested in hippocampal dynamics and their interactions with cortical rhythms?

Our physically constrained model of cortico-hippocampal interactions - complete with fast geometrically informed numerical simulation (available at embedded github repo)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

HARKing 😅

I hope we can all try not to be hateful and not to speak the way we condemn others for speaking.

Somehow the Nazi salute by Elon Musk and the killing of Charlie Kirk feel like the types of things that feel dark and signal a turning point.

He is the thought leader of a far right organisation that is responsible for crimes against humanity. He is a human being and I can't cheer for anyone's death, this will be politicised and may incite further violence... Its a mess...

Charlie Kirk was shot and I don't know what to think except feeling a sense of inevitable doom... .

a man with his eyes closed is wearing a plaid shirt and a blue jacket . ALT: a man with his eyes closed is wearing a plaid shirt and a blue jacket .

So... I did some analysis of grants that did receive noncompetitive renewals.

In particular, I looked a those award where the title of the grant changed.

Warning: The results are just what I expected, but oooph...

1/4

part of the reason I got into academia was to not get emails like "Alignment and Growth Begin with Effective Goals"

Ugh if it was just oooone year later... 😅😬🙃

Computational postdoc ad for KCL funded by the Wellcome Trust on the NEPTUNE project

🧠 We're hiring a computational postdoc!

3+ years with me & @mitulamehta.bsky.social on @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded social cognition/paranoia research at the IoPPN.

Lead & develop computational work, collaborate with experimentalists on psychosis/THC data.

DM for details! lnkd.in/eCMy9Jf5

Big congrats!! Best news ever 🌟

Yeah that does actually sound like a great use for it!

I really like one of my office mate's approach who always took problems as an interesting challenge. I'm doing my very best to get into that mindset whenever I encounter a (science-related) problem.

I’ll be reviewing applications for the clinical psychology PhD program at Suffolk University for the 2026/2027 academic year. Those with research interests in #eatingdisorders, especially in #LGBTQ+ and other minoritized communities, are encouraged to apply!

Andrew Kadel @DrewKadel@social.coop My daughter, who's had a degree in computer science for 25 years, posted this about ChatGPT on Facebook. It's the best description I've seen. Something that seems fundamental to me about ChatGPT, which gets lost over and over again: When you enter text into it, you're asking "What would a response to this sound like?" If you put in a scientific question, and it comes back with a response citing a non-existent paper with a plausible title, using a real journal name and an author name who's written things related to your question, it's not being tricky or telling lies or doing anything at all surprising! This is what a response to that question would sound like! It did the thing! But people keep wanting the "say something that sounds like an answer" machine to be doing something else, and believing it *is* doing something else. It's good at generating things that sound like responses to being told it was wrong, so people think that it's engaging in introspection or looking up more information or something, but it's not, it's only, ever, saying something that sounds like the next bit of the conversation.

The only thing ChatGPT ever does.

One of many...

While masked agents were violently attacking a delivery worker this morning, bystanders repeatedly asked to see their badge numbers but they refused.

Bystander: You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?

Agent: Liberals already ruined it.

I had the same thought, also with regards to other non-US citizens.

On the bright side, non-US citizens who reside in the US and are uneasy about leaving the US and could not go to @cogcompneuro.bsky.social this year and now get to go the #CCN2026.