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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Quentin Huys @docqhuys.bsky.social · 7d

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/...

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).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 28

Please share widely!

We are looking for someone excited about reward and decision-making research!

(And especially for candidates in the UK or with settled status in the UK, due unfortunately to uni rules.)

@mpc-comppsych.bsky.social
#Neuroscience #ComputationalPsychiatry #MEG #Reward #Memory

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 28

📢 We're hiring a Research Assistant in cognitive neuroscience & computational psychiatry! 📢

Join us at UCL to conduct an MEG study of reward & memory, exploring how brain signals link to variability in apathy and anhedonia.

🔗 apply from next week: lmdlab.github.io

🚨closes September 12th!

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Tobias Hauser @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social · Aug 19

📢 We are hiring! 📢
For our @wellcometrust.bsky.social grant on information gathering biases in #OCD and #Schizophrenia, we are looking for a Postdoc in Computational Modelling, supervised by Peter Dayan and myself.
Interested? See all the details in the job advert here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...

a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

ALT: a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · Aug 22

Delighted to share our work on replay and successor representations! We find replay during very short task pauses in human visual cortex that is linked to learning SRs & happens when learning is implicit. Study led by @lnnrtwttkhn.bsky.social

#compneuro #neuroskyence

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Replay in the human visual cortex during brief task pauses is linked to implicit learning of successor representations | PNAS

Humans can implicitly learn about multistep sequential relationships between events in the environment from their statistical co-occurrence. Theore...

www.pnas.org

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 21

Interesting connection! Thanks so much for sharing your new paper.

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 21

Thanks so much, Paul. That is a good point!

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

Thanks! And thank you, I’ve found your results there to be very intriguing, too.

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

📄 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

OSF preregistration: osf.io/x3z5f

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

Overall, the results challenge the idea that motivational symptoms universally impair decision-making.

In the paper, we discuss potential reasons for this surprising finding.

We are very happy to hear your thoughts, and please share!

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

…but in actual decision-making, they showed enhanced goal-directed performance:

Higher apathy-anhedonia scores were related to greater sensitivity to goal values – plus faster navigation to goals and higher earnings.

(n.b. this relationship was not found in other common tasks we also collected.)

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

We tested links to transdiagnostic psychiatric symptoms.

The relationships with an 'Apathy–Anhedonia' factor were very interesting: people with higher scores reported lower expectations of goal success...

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

The paradigm tries to capture features of real-world decision-making:
1) we often make choices in well-learned envirornments,
2) risk is learned from experience, and
3) plans with more steps are riskier, but can also be more rewarding

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

We designed a novel risky goal task: over two days, participants learned maze-like environments where each step carried a small risk of failure. As goals became more distant, risk compounded.

Participants then made choices between a certain reward vs. risky goals with variable distance & reward.

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Aug 20

🧵 New paper! We studied depression symptoms and goal-directed decisions under uncertainty

@shiyiliang.bsky.social, with @evanrussek.bsky.social & @robbrutledge.bsky.social

Surprisingly, we found that apathy–anhedonia was linked to enhanced goal-directed behavior. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Peter Kok @peterkok.bsky.social · Aug 8

We are recruiting a new PI at the FIL @imagingneuroucl.bsky.social, Associate or Full Professor. This is an amazing place to do cognitive neuroscience, in the heart of London. If you or someone you know might be interested, please pass it on. #neuroskyence

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

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).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Apr 11

Postdoc opening - highly recommended!

Matilde Vaghi @matildevaghi.bsky.social · Mar 28

📣 I'm hiring 📣
Join the Vaghi Lab @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social!
We're seeking a postdoctoral researcher with strong fMRI expertise to lead the development of neurocognitive paradigms and use dense-sampling fMRI in the general population and in OCD patients. 🧠 (1/3)
cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

Postdoctoral Researcher (2106) - Birkbeck, University of London

Birkbeck

cis7.bbk.ac.uk

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Mar 20

Epic dopamine / VTA neuron diversity paper

Emily Prevost @emilyprevost.bsky.social · Feb 27

New preprint! We untangle glutamatergic and dopaminergic subpopulations in the ventral tegmental area. Long thread incoming, buckle up friends. 1/n

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

Untangling dopamine and glutamate in the ventral tegmental area

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons are of great interest for their central roles in motivation, learning, and psychiatric disorders. While hypotheses of VTA dopamine neuron function posit a...

www.biorxiv.org

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Mar 19

Across 3 studies (1 preregistered), combined n>600, using 2 different RL tasks, we found that performance was positively correlated with anhedonia symptoms.

General depression effects were mixed, but no correlations were negative.

These results are unexpected so we look forward to feedback!

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Elliott Wimmer @elliottwimmer.bsky.social · Mar 19

We are excited to post a new preprint with Shiyi Liang @shiyiliang.bsky.social:

'Reinforcement learning is positively associated with anhedonia symptoms' osf.io/preprints/ps...
(a bit late here – a version was online back in December)

@mpc-comppsych.bsky.social

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · Mar 5

We're recruiting for new postdoc and RA positions on our @erc.europa.eu project "ConsciousComputation"

To apply and for more details, please see:

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

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

Very happy to chat to anyone interested! 🧠🧪

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).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Sucharit Katyal @sucharit.bsky.social · Feb 23

Our paper where we use computational modelling to study how some people continue to be underconfident in their abilities despite having intact performance out in Nature Communications
@naturecomms.bsky.social
with @smfleming.bsky.social @docqhuys.bsky.social Ray Dolan

Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · Feb 21

Excited to see this now out in the world!

We identify a computational basis for how persistent underconfidence is maintained in the face of intact performance, finding that it is grounded in impaired updating of global self-beliefs from local metacognition

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

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Distorted learning from local metacognition supports transdiagnostic underconfidence - Nature Communications

Individuals with symptoms of anxiety and depression exhibit persistent underconfidence. Here, the authors show that distortions in learning from local metacognition can explain how underconfidence is ...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Elliott Wimmer

Marco K Wittmann @mkwittmann.bsky.social · Mar 13

New paper from our lab now in @nature.com . We show that our brains use basis functions or "building blocks" to navigate social interactions. Rather than tracking every individual separately, social information is compressed into patterns that can be flexibly combined. www.nature.com/articles/s41...