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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard
@iancballard.bsky.social
1.2K followers 480 following 30 posts
Assistant Professor at UC Riverside studying learning and goal-directed behavior. Director of the Computational Cognitive and Neural Sciences Lab (https://www.ballardlab.org). He/him
www.ballardlab.org).
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
srndna.bsky.social
Decision & Aging @srndna.bsky.social · Jul 2
🎧 New Decision & Aging Insights🎙️ episode
‪@vpmurty.bsky.social describes his research for an SRNDNA Pilot Grant and finding inspiration at a haunted house. He also talks about moving his lab across country and the impact of a single line in his presentations.
Listen now: srndna.utdallas.edu/podcast/
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Jul 2
🧠👀 Do goals & desires shape what we see—or just what we say we see?

In our review, we outline a neurocomputational framework where motivation biases perception and action via distinct neural systems:

👉 Amygdala & LC-NE boost what we want to see.
👉 Striatal dopamine biases what we choose to report.
ycleong.bsky.social
Yuan Chang Leong @ycleong.bsky.social · Jul 2
Excited to share our new review on how neuroimaging and computational models can help uncover how people see what they want to see, now out at @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! It was a blast writing this with Haena Kim and @iancballard.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A neurocomputational account of motivated seeing
Do goals, beliefs, and desires affect visual experience? This question has long been controversial in cognitive science. There exists extensive litera…
www.sciencedirect.com
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
rldmdublin2025.bsky.social
RLDM @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social · Jun 10
#RLDM2025 officially starts tomorrow! 🚀 Have you checked out our program? See details below, full program is available at rldm.org 👀

New to RLDM? Join our first-timers gathering tonight, 6-7pm, at Kennedy's Pub (30-32 Westland Row) 😊
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
rldmdublin2025.bsky.social
RLDM @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social · Jun 4
Only ONE WEEK until #RLDM2025 ☘️ We can’t wait to welcome brilliant minds from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond for cutting-edge talks on reinforcement learning & decision making. Spaces are disappearing quickly so grab your spot before it’s gone! Register now 👉 rldm.org
RLDM | The Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making
rldm.org
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · May 29
@alanajaskir.bsky.social @marcelomattar.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @actlab.bsky.social
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · May 29
Excited to share our upcoming workshop on neuroscience, reinforcement learning, and decision making at RLDM 2025 in Dublin, Ireland — June 11–14!

Check out the terrific speaker lineup:

🔗 sites.google.com/view/neurorl...

Co-organized with @angelaradulescu.bsky.social

@rldmdublin2025.bsky.social
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
rldmdublin2025.bsky.social
RLDM @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social · May 26
📢 #RLDM2025 is nearly here – 11–14 June at Trinity College Dublin ☘️

Join researchers from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond to explore the latest in reinforcement learning & decision making.

🎟️ Register now to secure your spot: rldm.org #ReinforcementLearning #AI #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
davidclewett.bsky.social
David Clewett @davidclewett.bsky.social · May 19
New from our lab: your brain doesn’t just remember time - it bends it.

We show that the dopamine system responds to natural breakpoints in experience, and this relates to more stretched memories of time. Blinking also increases, signaling encoding of new memories.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Dopaminergic processes predict temporal distortions in event memory
Our memories do not simply keep time - they warp it, bending the past to fit the structure of our experiences. For example, people tend to remember items as occurring farther apart in time if they spa...
www.biorxiv.org
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
martinwiener.bsky.social
Martin Wiener @martinwiener.bsky.social · Apr 22
Excited and thrilled and humbled that our work is now out at Nature Human Behaviour linking Memorability with Time Perception! I hope you all find it of interest 🙂

Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa)

#academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science
Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) - Nature Human Behaviour
In this Article, Ma et al. show, across a series of experiments, that time and memorability (the probability of recalling a visual stimulus) mutually influence one another, suggesting that time is a f...
www.nature.com
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · May 13
Big milestone for the Ballard Lab—we scanned our very first neuroimaging participant today! Grateful to be collaborating with my UCR colleagues @halledz.bsky.social and @brenthughes.bsky.social. I love the excitement of new data rolling in...
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Apr 9
So excited to see this come out!
lapate.bsky.social
Regina Lapate @lapate.bsky.social · Apr 9
In keeping with the theme of time travel… now into the future: 🕰️ Another recent paper from the lab—a preregistered study with Isabel Schuman, Jingyi Wang & Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social —is now published. Here, we looked at future orientation, decision making & anorexia nervosa risk.
Willing to wait: Anorexia nervosa symptomatology is associated with higher future orientation and reduced intertemporal discounting - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Willing to wait: Anorexia nervosa symptomatology is associated with higher future orientation and reduced intertemporal discounting
www.nature.com
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 31
Thanks! Our technique is indirect (as, unlike PET, fMRI cannot directly assess dopamine), but it does seem to provide useful information linked to dopaminergic function.
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
vpmurty.bsky.social
Deepu Murty @vpmurty.bsky.social · Mar 28
Are you at CNS: hot* symposia alert featuring myself, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social, @chelseahelion.bsky.social, and @iancballard.bsky.social talking about uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, social cognition, and decision-making. See you Monday at 10:00 AM.
*I sweat a lot giving talks
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 28
Excited for my lab’s first CNS!

Catch us at:

Saturday 10:30–12:00: Datablitz Session 3 (Xinxu Shen)

Monday 10:00 AM: Symposium – Uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, and decision-making

Posters: Saturday 3:00–5:00 (A133), Monday 8:00–10:00 (D156), Tuesday 8:00–10:00 (F145)
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 28
thanks for sharing this!
iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 27
Have you run your estimation on striatal subregions? I'd be very curious to see what the HRFs look like!
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 27
I’m curious to hear what you find! In the preprint, we don’t model the HRF directly, but we have a project looking into trial-by-trial variability in the NAcc HRF time-to-peak
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
Our TR was 2s. Would love to experiment with faster TRs in the future.
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
Check out our preprint to learn more about how hemodynamic latencies map regional, individual, and pathological differences linked to dopamine. We'd love to hear your questions, ideas, or feedback! @anneberry.bsky.social @blaisefrederick.bsky.social
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
In individuals with cocaine use disorder, we found a spatial gradient of altered hemodynamic latencies in the striatum. This pattern independently correlated with nicotine use, revealing a conserved physiological profile associated with addictive substance use. 5/n
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
Using PET, genetics, and pharmacology, we found that hemodynamic latency is tightly coupled to dopamine physiology. Broadly speaking, higher latency in the NAcc was associated with lower dopamine function and more perseverative behavior—linking BOLD signal timing to cognition. 4/n
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
Hemodynamic latencies are markedly increased in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc)—a key dopaminergic region linked to addiction. This effect is strikingly precise: the anatomical NAcc boundary (green) aligns closely with the shift in hemodynamic latency. 3/n
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
fMRI doesn’t directly measure dopamine, but could dopamine influence BOLD signal timing? Dopamine axons wrap around microvessels, and dopamine triggers vasoconstriction. We hypothesized that higher extracellular dopamine increases the latency of the hemodynamic response. 2/n
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iancballard.bsky.social
Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · Mar 26
Interested in dopamine? Have fMRI data? We’ve identified a temporal BOLD feature that carries rich information about dopamine physiology. This measure, obtainable from resting-state and task fMRI, opens new ways to indirectly probe dopamine’s role in cognition and disease. 1/n tinyurl.com/bddyz67b
Temporal fMRI Dynamics Map Dopamine Physiology
Spatial variations in dopamine function are linked to cognition and substance use disorders but are challenging to characterize with current methods. Because dopamine influences blood vessel dilation,...
www.biorxiv.org
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Reposted by Ian Ballard
dobyrahnev.bsky.social
Doby Rahnev @dobyrahnev.bsky.social · Feb 20
New paper alert! Have you ever looked at single-trial fMRI activation maps? If so, you know that they are super variable. Here we show that the variability is not just noise. In fact, the same task can consistently elicit different activation patterns. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Multiple brain activation patterns for the same perceptual decision-making task - Nature Communications
Here, the authors show the brain uses multiple activation patterns to perform the same task. Even the default mode network, which is often inactive during focus, plays a role.
www.nature.com
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