New preprint out! We show that the exposome and attention-related brain networks jointly predict attention problems in early adolescence—highlighting how environment and brain function have shared and unique associations with reported attention problems. medrxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Now out in Psychological Medicine! We identified lifetime exposures to humiliation and entrapment, as well as frontoparietal-left cerebellar RSFC, as correlates of adolescent anxiety and depression symptoms across three time points. Link: doi.org/10.1017/S003...

New preprint! ✨ Do you and your partner have made-up words ("eggy" to mean awkward)? Do you and your bestie have an anecdote you love to tell together (that time one of you tripped over an acorn)? Do you and your closest colleague have a cherished ritual (weekly lunch at "the usual spot")? 🧵

Attention fluctuates over time and across contexts—how is this reflected in the brain?🧠 Fitting a dynamical systems model to fMRI data, we show that the geometry of neural dynamics along the attractor landscape reflects changes in attention. Out in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣 New paper out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in which we investigated whether conversational alignment — the tendency to reuse each other's words, syntactic constructions, topics, sounds and gestures — can be used as a reliable individual trait. It cannot! 🧵 1/4 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

A multibrain advantage for cooperative human behaviour https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.708977v1

mPFC pyramidal neuron synchrony during social competition to form social rankings is disrupted in male Mecp2 knockout mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.709145v1

Psycholinguistic perspectives on face-to-face conversation Review by Judith Holler & Anna K. Kuhlen Web: go.nature.com/4c1QRmq PDF: rdcu.be/e4zP6 #psychscisky

had such a lovely and generative time at SPSP this year! thanks to everyone who stopped by my poster & for all the lovely conversations - feeling very grateful to be living this little life 🤓

📢New paper out today in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social! Does the value of an unchosen option — inferred through counterfactual reasoning — spread to related items in memory, similar to how the value of a chosen option — acquired through direct experience — does? In short, yes!

Psycholinguistic perspectives on face-to-face conversation. New paper by @judithholler.bsky.social & Anna K. Kuhlen doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00538-1 rdcu.be/e4rlV

I will be chairing a symposium looking at how social hierarchy impacts people across a variety of social environments. There, you can see me talk about popularity as a form of social status and how this may impact children's peer groups. @merrickosborne.bsky.social

Deeply honored by this recognition from @psychscience.bsky.social, and to be in the company of scientists whose work I greatly admire! A big thank you to lab members, collaborators and mentors, past and present for the work we do together!

Big paper release! ConversationAlign - methods for computing lexical and affective alignment between interlocutors in dyadic conversation transcripts. Open Access in Behavior Research Methods. link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...

Excited to be teaching a new undergraduate course on Models of Language and Conversation this term! Check it out here: context-lab.com/llm-course/ I've added lots of fun interactive demos of chatbots and NLP techniques that let students dig into the approaches.

If anyone's looking for ideas for wintertime lab activities, my lab did a soup exchange over the weekend. We had a great time on a day that was cold even by Chicago standards! Credit to @mystiesaturday.bsky.social for suggesting it and to @jadynpark.bsky.social for the photo.

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

netneurotools: a trainee-oriented approach to network neuroscience | doi.org/10.1101/2025... Our lab’s internal toolkit for accomplishing everyday tasks in brain imaging ⤵️

Officially out! In this review, Aaron Chuey and I discuss how existing work on ToM mostly focused on a single individual’s mental states (e.g., what Sally thinks). Extending ToM, we argue for ToMS—an understanding of how multiple individuals communicate and influence each others’ minds. t.ly/u4rtb

This study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these strategies to interaction dynamics, payoffs, and cost of cooperation. @violapriesemann.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Thrilled to see this reviewed preprint by grad student extraordinaire (but bsky-less) Euan Prentis posted on @elife.bsky.social! doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Thank you to the reviewers and editors for encouraging, insightful and helpful comments. We will be revising the paper, stay tuned!

Interested in how the brain prepares for upcoming tasks? We trained a monkey on “6” different cognitive tasks and recorded prefrontal cortical activity. We examined the neural geometry and dynamics during task preparation. Come check out our poster on SUNDAY(Nov 16) from 1-5 PM!

I'm going to present our latest memory model that learns causal inference during narrative comprehension! Stop by the poster on Monday to chat about causality, memory, brain🧠, and AI🤖! #sfn2025 #sfn25

Our latest hyperscanning study tracks how neural coupling unfolds during genuine conversation and how it differs from simply reading scripted dialogue: osf.io/preprints/ps...

A new study in 'Nature Human Behavior' led by UChicago researchers combines fMRI data and natural language processing to understand how emotions lead to enhanced memory encoding, or "stickiness." Learn more: bit.ly/3Lec2Gf @jadynpark.bsky.social @ycleong.bsky.social

What happens in the brain as people become less lonely? Intergenerational community programs can reduce loneliness, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We collected and analysed 732 🧠-scans to find out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @introspection.bsky.social + @escross.bsky.social

Out now in @nathumbehav.nature.com! We applied graph theoretic analyses to fMRI data of participants watching movies/listening to stories. Integration across large-scale functional networks mediates arousal-dependent enhancement of narrative memories. Open access link: rdcu.be/eKKAw

Really excited to share a review I contributed to, out now in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. We explore how foraging can offer a framework for studying brain and behaviour in natural contexts. It’s been a pleasure working with colleagues across species and disciplines on this. Check it out! 👇

How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬? We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do! Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇

Quantifying memory recall is hard! Luckily, natural language processing (incl. #LLMs) offers new, automated, and scalable ways to do that! Great new review by Fenerci & @signysheldon.bsky.social in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory! We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🧵1/9

New preprint! 🧠 Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10). doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Preprint⭐ Our attention changes over time and differs across contexts—which is reflected in the brain🧠 Fitting a dynamical systems model to fMRI data, we find that the geometry of neural dynamics along the attractor landscape reflects such changes in attention! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

Seamless Interaction dataset with 4000+ hrs of face-to-face dyadic interactions! 🤯 Seems like it could be a game changer for studying embodied turn-taking & mutual adaptation complementary with CANDOR, etc... arxiv.org/abs/2506.22554

🗣️ New paper alert! Ever wonder how strangers navigate the messy world of casual conversation? We analyzed 200+ video calls to uncover the hidden structure behind "idle talk" – and found it's way more systematic than you'd think! Thread 👇

How do we make new connections? Ashley Binnquist, Agnieszka Pluta, Bear Goldstein, Rick Dale, @socialbrain.bsky.social and I just posted a new preprint on the neurocognitive processes that support meaningful social connection. 🧠🧠💬💬 [1/8] 🧵

Strangers chatted once a week for 6 weeks and as they became closer, their self-reported emotions were *less* aligned after conversations. Fits with recent work (by @sebospeer.bsky.social @dianatamir.bsky.social et al) suggesting friends are free to explore and diverge

Now out in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN)! academic.oup.com/scan/advance...

Feeling fortunate that #SANS2025 was in Chicago, and so much of the lab was able to be part of the meeting! It's crazy how much the lab has grown over the past 3y10m, and I'm so proud of the work we are doing together! Happy that we could host the lab, alums (and surprise guests)! #CASNL@SANS

CASNL member Jadyn Park @jadynpark.bsky.social presenting her work on arousal, functional network and memory during narrative perception at #SANS2025 Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Now out in Plos Computational Biology! We identified a generalizable neural signature of emotional arousal across contexts and individuals during movie watching. work with the best team: @hayoungsong.bsky.social @Zihan Bai @monicarosenb.bsky.social @ycleong.bsky.social dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Excited to share a new paper in Current Directions on the theme of merging in close relationships, with @emmamcgorray.bsky.social, @erinhughes.bsky.social , and @abdoe.bsky.social! In the paper, we discuss merging in the domains of selves, goals, processing, and reality. tinyurl.com/ynbedzys (1/4)

Calling all couples in the Chicago area! 💕 I'm launching a new study with @ycleong.bsky.social and @lydiaemery.bsky.social to explore brain responses during conversations between couples. If you're interested, please fill out our brief screener! ssd.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Remember what your partner said during a heated argument? Or the rush of getting your first job offer? Why do these emotionally arousing moments stick? Across 3 studies, and 3 arousal measures, we found that emotional arousal enhances memory encoding by promoting functional integration in the 🧠 1/🧵

Attention here! We found ind. diff. & fMRI evidence that sustained attention is more closely related to long term memory than to attentional control. With the best team @monicarosenb.bsky.social @edvogel.bsky.social @annacorriveau.bsky.social @jinke.bsky.social

If you are curious about the brain🧠 on causal inference, insight💡, memory retrieval, and narrative comprehension🎬, this will be the one. work by dream team @jinke.bsky.social Rhea Madhogarhia @ycleong.bsky.social @monicarosenb.bsky.social ⭐

Thinking about using fNIRS to study the brain when people chat, play, or explore the world, but can’t give up on fMRI’s whole brain coverage? We introduce a predictive model aiming to bring together portability and coverage in neuroimaging: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.17.623979 (1/x)