🎮 New study: Teen gaming addiction may stem more from pre-existing mental health issues (like anxiety & depression) than from video games themselves. It is not just about the joystick, but it’s about what’s going on in the mind. 🧠 Read more: news.ucsb.edu/2025/022004/... #commsky #psychsci #gaming

“Why is my teen addicted to video games?” Our new study in JAMA Network Open shows that psychopathology is a key driver--not an outcome of gaming disorder! Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and social challenges may underlie gaming disorder. Treat the root, not just the game. 🎮🧠 #commsky #psychsci #gaming

Very excited to share our latest article on Psychopathology and Gaming Disorder in Adolescents published in JAMA Network Open (ja.ma/4o9EM1N).

Did you meet the media neuroscience lab at #ica25 ? @b-wheeler.bsky.social @musamalik.bsky.social @kyliewoodman.bsky.social Drop a like or comment who you met and we will give you a follow! P.S. All three of these brilliant researchers are going on the job market this year!

🎉 Congratulations to former lab member Dr. Sungbin Youk on winning a Top Paper award at @icacsab.bsky.social! His research used multifaceted analytic approaches to explore how brain activity can help us understand and predict donation behaviors in response to Singapore PSA videos #ica25

Doing or planning digital platform research? We want to hear from you. Take our 5–8 min survey to help shape tools, infrastructure & training for researchers. 🔗 tiny.cc/aio-survey #AIO2025survey

🎉 Congratulations to @fhopp.bsky.social on winning @icacsab.bsky.social’s Rising Star Award! Dr. Hopp, PI of the Moral Computing Lab at ZPID and former MNL member, continues to shape the field through rigorous and high-quality science. We’re so proud!

ICYMI: 🏆 Congratulations to the winners of Saturday's #ICA25 posters! 🏆 Yoo Joo Lee (Washington State U) won the Top Poster award, and Brittany Wheeler (U of California, Santa Barbara) received the Top Student Poster award!

We hope you had the opportunity to swing by and see @b-wheeler.bsky.social 's TOP STUDENT POSTER! If you didn't get to see it check out the poster below ⬇️⬇️

Swing by @b-wheeler.bsky.social poster session at 1:30 to snag one of our exclusive MNL 3D printed brain keychain. 🧠 She is also on the job market this year 👀👀 #ica25

Excited to present at #ICA25 Today! 🗓 1:30pm | Poster #70 | Centennial Foyer (Regency) “Is Academic Online Bullying a Widespread Phenomenon? A Study of Scholarly Discourse on Twitter/X” If you're attending, stop by to discuss our findings...and pick up a fun brain keychain while you're there! 🧠

One final presentation to go at #ICA25! @b-wheeler.bsky.social will be sharing our emerging research on online hate and bullying!

We’re always amazed at the impact you can make in just 3 minutes. Thank you to CSAB for hosting an incredible showcase of groundbreaking work. All the presenters inspired us. A special shoutout to @musamalik.bsky.social for his standout paper on global morality! #ica25

Huge thanks to everyone who joined @musamalik.bsky.social’s presentation this morning! 🌟 Grateful for such an engaged audience! #ica25

Truly, is there anything @musamalik.bsky.social can’t do? If you haven’t had the chance to hear Musa share his research, you’re in for a treat. Catch him tomorrow at #ica25 , first at 9am in the Aspen Ballroom, then again at 12pm in the Mt. Blue Sky room. (He is also on the job market this year 👀)

We’re thrilled to see MNL represented at @hackingcommsci.bsky.social! Huge thanks to @jacobtfisher.online and @kyliewoodman.bsky.social for organizing another fantastic hackathon and sharing valuable comm sci insights such as using GitHub and running fMRI analyses. #hackica25 #ica25

We can't wait to kick off #ica25 in Denver! What are your most recommended talks? #commsky We will try to attend as many as we can!

Finally, it is published 😀 open access: The Extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD): A Crowd-Sourced Approach via the Moral Narrative Analyzer Platform www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....

Dr. Huskey is always making us proud as a MNL alum. Congratulations on another successful #CommHorizons2025 So many amazing scholars and presentations. We look forward to next year!

@kyliewoodman.bsky.social did a phenomenal job of representing our lab's research on media and well-being at #CommHorizons2025

Already looking forward to next year #SANS2026

Come to sunny San Diego, April 14-20, 2026, for #SANS2026!

If you have questions about media addictions, @kyliewoodman.bsky.social is our in-house expert. See her present 2 posters at #SANS2025: examining the neural mediator between psychopathology and Gaming Disorder, and another on gender differences in the neural development of general media addictions.

@kyliewoodman.bsky.social from @medianeuro.bsky.social holding down the court at @sansmeeting.bsky.social 🎉

Last day of #SANS2025! Come check out our poster on the neural markers of media addiction in adolescents, using data from the ABCD study. Presented during the poster session at 1:50 PM by PhD candidate @kyliewoodman.bsky.social!

A collection of modules, datasets, and other resources for learning to program in R, geared toward students in psychology and neuroscience: ritcheym.github.io/ppn/

Incredibly thoughtful research coming out of the CCSL lab, featuring innovative affective clustering of news headlines, drift diffusion modeling, and fMRI news valence contrasts. @richardhuskey.bsky.social always knows how to captivate an audience. #SANS2025

MNL alum @richardhuskey.bsky.social delivered a great Blitz talk on new media selection and the representation of negative news headline bias. Check out his poster tonight at #SANS2025!

My neural plasticity was in overdrive while listening to Dr. Beatrice Luna present her lab’s extensive research on adolescent 'Critical Period Plasticity.' Using techniques such as fMRI and magnetic spectroscopy, her work supports the Driven Dual Systems Model. #SANS2025

Just attended the Best Practices in Methods session at #SANS2025 so many practical takeaways! From Dr. Clelland and Dr. Cosme's push for SCA (links below), to Dr. Chen’s approach to voxel activation reporting, and Dr. Burns guidance on motion exclusion for hyperscanning—super useful insights!

Comic Sans (c) at #SANS2025! Our own unique stand up comedy show!

@earlkmiller.bsky.social delivers the #SANS2025 presidential address: "Cognition emerges from neural dynamics"

Last night, @kanupandey.bsky.social from UCSB truly livened up #SANS2025 with his upbeat amd witty humor at Comic SANS

Find the MNL lineage at #SANS2025. You can find us nerding out about media and morality or neuroscience of interactive media @aeden.bsky.social @richardhuskey.bsky.social @kyliewoodman.bsky.social

Finding the balance between large consortium v. small bespoke research studies. A very cordial debate between @drdamienfair.bsky.social and @thaliawheatley.bsky.social . Which side are you on? #sans2025

MNL has officially landed in Chicago! ✈️ Ready to dive into scientific collaboration and advance the conversation on the current state of Social and Affective Neuroscience. #SANS2025

Alex Lover from the @jacobtfisher.online group presents new computational approaches to parse subtitles and film scripts for extracting moral conflict patterns. Excellent presentation, way to go Alex! What a nice memory of some MNL work with @fhopp.bsky.social and @jacobtfisher.online. Nostalgia!

MNL Alumni @fhopp.bsky.social explains neural dissociable representations of morality and their use in decoding (predicting) graded perceived moral wrongness and ultimately moral narratives. Stay tuned, more to come soon ..

Kudos to @musamalik.bsky.social who presented our work on the global representation of morality and its ecological determinants at the Media and Morality conference in Buffalo. It is a terrific conference with many new and in part provocative ideas.

Congratulations to lab member Kylie Woodman for her presentation of Breaking the Media Panic Cycle (A Brain Based Approach to Media Addiction) focusing on a better understanding of how social media and video games are addictive through affordance, content, and personal predisposing risk factors!

We are hosting a special issue with NeuroImage dedicated to exploring the intricate relationship between media use, technology dependence, and brain development, with a particular focus on the risks and benefits associated with these modern behaviors.

We are the Media Neuroscience Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We research topics at the intersection of communication, technology, and neuroscience. Visit our lab website here: www.medianeuroscience.org See a recent publication of ours here: www.nature.com/nathumbehav/...