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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Franziska Brändle @frabraendle.bsky.social · 6d

What influences whether people have fun with a task?

Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports!

rdcu.be/eI069

Paper summary below 1/4

Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

rdcu.be

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · 8d

Also happy to announce that our Automated scientific minimization of regret paper got accepted to the AI4Science workshop at #NeurIPS - arxiv.org/abs/2505.17661 with @marcelbinz.bsky.social, @akjagadish.bsky.social & @ericschulz.bsky.social

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

New in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We study how humans explore a 61-state environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.”

Results: Participants keep exploring the stochastic part even when it’s unhelpful, and novelty-seeking best explains this behavior.

#cogsci #neuroskyence

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · 12d

I don't know much about those fields specifically, but there are some examples www.nature.com/articles/s42..., arxiv.org/abs/2504.096..., www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Quantum many-body physics calculations with large language models - Communications Physics

Large language models (LLM) can tackle complex mathematical and scientific reasoning tasks. The authors show that, guided by carefully designed prompts, LLM can achieve high accuracy in carrying out analytical calculations in theoretical physics - the derivation of Hartree-Fock equations - with an average score of 87.5 in GPT-4 across calculation steps from recent research papers.

www.nature.com

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · 16d

Happy to announce our paper got accepted to #NeurIPS!
@akjagadish.bsky.social @marvinmathony.bsky.social @ericschulz.bsky.social & Tobi Ludwig

arxiv.org/abs/2502.00879

Generating Computational Cognitive Models using Large Language Models

Computational cognitive models, which formalize theories of cognition, enable researchers to quantify cognitive processes and arbitrate between competing theories by fitting models to behavioral data....

arxiv.org

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Aug 29

congratulations dude!!!!! 🐣🐣🐣

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Marcel Binz @marcelbinz.bsky.social · Jul 2

Excited to see our Centaur project out in @nature.com.
TL;DR: Centaur is a computational model that predicts and simulates human behavior for any experiment described in natural language.

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Samuel Liebana @samuel-liebana.bsky.social · Jun 15

Does the brain learn by gradient descent?

It's a pleasure to share our paper at @cp-cell.bsky.social, showing how mice learning over long timescales display key hallmarks of gradient descent (GD).

The culmination of my PhD supervised by @laklab.bsky.social, @saxelab.bsky.social and Rafal Bogacz!

Dopamine encodes deep network teaching signals for individual learning trajectories

Longitudinal tracking of long-term learning behavior and striatal dopamine reveals that dopamine teaching signals shape individually diverse yet systematic learning trajectories, captured mathematical...

www.cell.com

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · May 26

Preprint update, co-led with @akjagadish.bsky.social, with @marvinmathony.bsky.social, Tobias Ludwig and @ericschulz.bsky.social!

Generating Computational Cognitive Models using Large Language Models

Computational cognitive models, which formalize theories of cognition, enable researchers to quantify cognitive processes and arbitrate between competing theories by fitting models to behavioral data....

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Rachit Dubey @rachitdubey.bsky.social · Apr 17

🚨 New in Nature Human Behavior! 🚨

Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change.

Both graphs in this image reflect equivalent climate change trends over time, yet people consistently perceive climate change as having a greater impact in the right plot than the left.

👇1/n

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Marcel Binz @marcelbinz.bsky.social · Apr 9

We are looking for two PhD students at our institute in Munich.

Both postions are open-topic, so anything between cognitive science and machine learning is possible.

More information: hcai-munich.com/PhDHCAI.pdf

Feel free to share broadly!

hcai-munich.com

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

The Onion @theonion.com · Apr 8

Nestlé Buys E.Coli For $2.3 Billion

VEVEY, SWITZERLAND—With the food conglomerate saying the acquisition made sense given its longstanding strategic partnership with the pathogen, Nestlé released a statement Friday confirming it had pur...

theonion.com

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

John Chen @johnchen.com.au · Mar 29

hear hear

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Marvin Mathony @marvinmathony.bsky.social · Mar 23

very happy to be presenting this at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social

Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Feb 26

About a month late posting this, but here's a new project with @ericschulz.bsky.social, @akjagadish.bsky.social, @marvinmathony.bsky.social and Tobias Ludwig

We are using LLMs to propose cognitive models in learning and decision making data. Presenting this work at RLDM!

arxiv.org/abs/2502.00879

Towards Automation of Cognitive Modeling using Large Language Models

Computational cognitive models, which formalize theories of cognition, enable researchers to quantify cognitive processes and arbitrate between competing theories by fitting models to behavioral data....

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

The Onion @theonion.com · Mar 1

Son-Of-A-Bitch Mouse Solves Maze Researchers Spent Months Building
theonion.com/son-of-...

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Mirko Thalmann @mirkothm.bsky.social · Feb 28

Every experience is unique 🌟 light shifts, angles change, yet we recognize objects effortlessly. How do our minds do this? And (how) do they differ from machines? In our new preprint with @ericschulz.bsky.social, we review human generalization and compare it to machine generalization: osf.io/k6ect

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Feb 26

About a month late posting this, but here's a new project with @ericschulz.bsky.social, @akjagadish.bsky.social, @marvinmathony.bsky.social and Tobias Ludwig

We are using LLMs to propose cognitive models in learning and decision making data. Presenting this work at RLDM!

arxiv.org/abs/2502.00879

Towards Automation of Cognitive Modeling using Large Language Models

Computational cognitive models, which formalize theories of cognition, enable researchers to quantify cognitive processes and arbitrate between competing theories by fitting models to behavioral data....

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · Feb 20

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.”
• The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives.
• The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000.

Each point represents a federal agency:
• Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs.
• Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs.

Key Observations:
• Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates.
• Notable targeted agencies include:
• HHS (Health & Human Services)
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
• NIH (National Institutes of Health)
• CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
• Dept. of Education
• USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development)
• The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies.
• A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size.

Takeaway:

The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology.

Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

annecollins.bsky.social @annecollins.bsky.social · Feb 19

Check out our new work from Jennifer Senta, with Sonia Bishop, looking at how physiological anxiety relates to impairments in both working memory and reinforcement learning processes

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

Dual process impairments in reinforcement learning and working memory systems underlie learning deficits in physiological anxiety

Anxiety has been robustly linked to deficits in frontal executive function including working memory (WM) and attentional control processes. However, although anxiety has also been associated with impa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Feb 19

Apologies for the lack of tags for folks w Bluesky accounts, I still don’t know how this thing works, I fear my inner boomer is showing

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Feb 17

Second preprint (with Anne Collins and Sonia Bishop) explores different anxiety-related deficits in RL and working memory:

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

Dual process impairments in reinforcement learning and working memory systems underlie learning deficits in physiological anxiety

Anxiety has been robustly linked to deficits in frontal executive function including working memory (WM) and attentional control processes. However, although anxiety has also been associated with impa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Feb 17

Not one, but TWO cool preprints by Jennifer Senta!

First preprint (with Anne Collins, Peter Dayan and Sonia Bishop) has a really cool use of modeling aimed at dissociating mechanisms underlying depression and anxiety-related phenotypes:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Eric Schulz @ericschulz.bsky.social · Jan 29

In our latest article, published in @pnas.org and led by @marcelbinz.bsky.social and Stephan Alaniz, we got together four diverse groups of scientists to reflect on how LLMs should affect science. From treating them like co-authors to using other tools instead, many interesting arguments emerged.

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Reposted by Milena Rmus

Nature is Amazing @amazingnatural.bsky.social · Dec 19

What do you suppose they are talking about?

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Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · Dec 11

👏👏👏👏👏

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