Senne Braem
@sebraem.bsky.social
1.5K followers 510 following 24 posts
Professor of cognitive science, Ghent University. Cognitive control, reinforcement learning, fear conditioning, autism. https://users.ugent.be/~sbraem/
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Senne Braem
frabraendle.bsky.social
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
Reposted by Senne Braem
irenecogliatidezza.bsky.social
Very happy to have presented our work on the computational basis of doomscrolling at the CocoFlex seminar (organized by @sebraem.bsky.social) in Ghent today!!!
More information about our work on the lab website sites.google.com/site/ireneco...
Reposted by Senne Braem
shenhavlab.bsky.social
After scrolling Twitter, it will take you a while to get back into “work mode”. Why is this the case? Our new work (out now in Psych Review), led by Ivan Grahek and Xiamin Leng, explores the costs of adjusting cognitive control to meet different goals:
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

🧵 A thread:
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
Reposted by Senne Braem
caterinagratton.bsky.social
The lateral prefrontal cortex 🧠— which we think of as critical for goal driven behavior + is a target for psychiatric treatments— is fundamentally different in individuals relative to the group averages we’ve often studied.

👇see preprint and thread, led by Zach Ladwig
#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
Image of brain networks in a group average and individual LPFC. Individuals show:
1) smaller FP network
2) more interdigitation
3) conserved motifs
4) idiosyncratic features
This was validated with task and rest fMRI
Reposted by Senne Braem
Reposted by Senne Braem
lakens.bsky.social
An abbreviation (ABB) in a journal article (JA) or Grant Application (GA) is rarely worth the words it saves. Every ABB requires cognitive resources (CR) and at my age by the time I'm halfway through a JA or GA I no longer have the CR to remember what your ABB stood for.
Reposted by Senne Braem
lampinen.bsky.social
In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:
What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns
Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices
Reposted by Senne Braem
lucylai.bsky.social
🚨📊ɴᴇᴡ ᴘᴀᴘᴇʀ!! When we learn a new skill—like tying shoelaces or making pasta—we often start with a series of deliberate steps. But eventually, those steps blend into a smooth, single unit: an action chunk. But why and when do we chunk? 👇
📰https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMMD2Hx2-9B8
Reposted by Senne Braem
gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social
🚨 We’re hiring a postdoc!
Join the FLARE project @cimcyc.bsky.social to study sudden perceptual learning using fMRI, RSA, and DNNs.
🧠 2 years, fully funded, flexible start
More info 👉 gonzalezgarcia.github.io/postdoc/

DMs or emails welcome! Please share!
Postdoc Position – FLARE Project
gonzalezgarcia.github.io
Reposted by Senne Braem
seongminpark.bsky.social
🚨 We’re hiring! The Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Virginia Tech is looking for a postdoc to join our team studying the neural + computational mechanisms of structure learning and flexible cognition: ccnvt.github.io#positions
CCN Lab
ccnvt.github.io
sebraem.bsky.social
We moved our symposium to a bigger room so we have a few more extra seats available now! Join us September 10th for our symosium on "Flexible Definitions of Cognitive Flexibility"
shengjiexu.ugent.be/CoCoFlex_Sem.... Poster or talk submission deadline is in two weeks: July 31st!
Reposted by Senne Braem
gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social
🧠💻 We (a bunch of colleagues at @cimcyc.bsky.social) just released a programming guide for psych & cog neuro students. Instead of a tutorial, this is a starting point: a collection of reflections, examples, and recommendations.

👉 Still growing, but ready to explore: wobc.github.io/programming_book/
Programming in psychological science
A practical introduction
wobc.github.io
Reposted by Senne Braem
annaschapiro.bsky.social
Super excited to share this one!! Meta-learning sparsity and learning rate gives rise to brain-like gradients of complementary learning systems. So complementary learning systems emerge organically through behavior optimization, and it's not just two of them!!
neurozz.bsky.social
Excited to share a new preprint w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social! Why are there gradients of plasticity and sparsity along the neocortex–hippocampus hierarchy? We show that brain-like organization of these properties emerges in ANNs that meta-learn layer-wise plasticity and sparsity. bit.ly/4kB1yg5
A gradient of complementary learning systems emerges through meta-learning
Long-term learning and memory in the primate brain rely on a series of hierarchically organized subsystems extending from early sensory neocortical areas to the hippocampus. The components differ in t...
bit.ly
Reposted by Senne Braem
Reposted by Senne Braem
anne-urai.bsky.social
My latest: a short review on latent variable models to help uncover trial-to-trial structure in perceptual decision-making strategies

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMiv4sIRv...
Reposted by Senne Braem
marcelomattar.bsky.social
Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature
Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...
doi.org
Reposted by Senne Braem
ghentccn.bsky.social
The Learning and Cognitive Control Laboratory at Ghent University (Belgium), led by Clay Holroyd, is recruiting two highly motivated postdoctoral fellows to apply a control-theoretic approach to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms of cognitive effort ( doi.org/10.1037/rev0... )
APA PsycNet
doi.org
Reposted by Senne Braem
francescopoli.bsky.social
Out now in Science Advances! We find that infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament. This has be so much fun to work on and ended up being my favourite personal paper! So excited it's out!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Volatility-driven learning in human infants
Infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament.
www.science.org
Reposted by Senne Braem
thecharleywu.bsky.social
🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀
I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales
👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....
Reposted by Senne Braem
janw.bsky.social
I will be looking to hire 2-3 post-docs over the course of the next few months to work on questions related to cognitive control in humans, using EEG, TMS, DBS, sEEG, fMRI, or related methods.

If you know anybody, please tell them to email me.

Formal ad to follow. Lab website: wessellab.org
Wessel Cognitive Neurology Lab | The University of Iowa
Thanks for visiting the Cognitive Neurology Lab at the University of Iowa. The lab is directed by Dr. Jan R. Wessel. We are affiliated with the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the Depa...
wessel.lab.uiowa.edu