Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it. PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!

💯 This was something that @cjsewall9.bsky.social and I tried here: psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/... (preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...) to limited (?) success...

The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.

Best MRI demo I’ve ever seen. Accurate. (Sound on).

Sometimes you see a new paper and stop everything you are doing to read it. This is one of those papers. All-star work by an all-star team!

Very excited about this project introducing an integrative character-based network framework predicting success of novels and films. Idea and analysis credit to @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, with big thanks for including me, @fhopp.bsky.social @mattgrizz.bsky.social and Anna Wolfe. More info here:

🚨 Big reveal! New year, new logo, same event! 🚨 Join us for some fun at the 2026 ICA pre-conference hackathon in Stellenbosch, June 3-4. Stay tuned!

And that’s a wrap! Another great (#10!) SoTL Conference @ University of California, Davis ! I appreciated all the thoughtful research and conversations shared by participants. Thank you to everyone who helped make it such an inspiring day!

Tonight’s commute home was epically not bad

Who’s feeling it?

Out now in Scientific Reports! Despite high correlations, ChatGPT models failed to replicate human moral judgments. We propose tests beyond correlation to compare LLM data and human data. With @mattgrizz.bsky.social @andyluttrell.bsky.social @chasmonge.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Being Interdisciplinary feels like practicing non-attachment. Different disciplines come in & out of focus in waves, each a whole world. Engaging with philosophy gives access to different ontologies than engaging in neuroscience or AI. This helps us evaluate each field from within & outside itself.

This is going to ruin the tour www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Beyond honored to speak as keynote for the Comm Horizons Conference at UC Davis!! Triple shout-outs to @richardhuskey.bsky.social, Jorge Peña, and @soojongkim.bsky.social Soojong Kim for organizing efforts. Please consider sending your work and attending the conference (+a short visit to Napa! 🍇🍷)

Excited to announce the third annual Comm Horizons @ucdavis.bsky.social Conference: Communication in the Age of AI and Algorithms Featuring cutting-edge research and keynotes from Jeff Hancock and @angelhwang.bsky.social Hope you'll submit and share! communication.ucdavis.edu/horizonconf2...

If you don’t have the means to donate, even a quick share would mean the world to my pup & I. ❤️‍🩹 Ninook lost her ability to walk this weekend, but a simple (yet expensive) surgery can restore it. I got her when I started this PhD program & she motivates me to finish it. Thank you for your help.

Hi everyone. A grad in my lab (@rachaelkee.bsky.social) could use your help. Her dog needs surgery. If you can, even a little help goes a long way gofund.me/0ebf78a49

The Trump administration demanded UCLA pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. n.pr/4hYa0pY

Woke up to half a dozen e-learning trainings that are either due or overdue and it makes me wonder what awful things I did in some past life to deserve this

We're disappointed to see Ben Barres's powerful book "The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist" among the ~400 titles removed from the Naval Academy Library. Needless to say, we're proud to have published his book and will keep it — and his memory — alive.

This whole thread owes me royalties for all the bad writing of mine they’re plagiarizing.

seeking contributors for an edited volume

🧵 What does it take to build a small, scrappy, and successful communication neuroscience lab? Our lab, @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, @rachaelkee.bsky.social, Allyson Snyder, Ziyu Zhao, and I put out heads together to answer this question. Here's what we came up with: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Fireworks in LA rn

This game is like I got caught smoking a baseball and now I have to smoke a whole pack of baseball

Twenty years of edits later, my lasagna barely resembles my mother-in-law’s original. Philosophically speaking, am I still making _her_ lasagna?

This is a great NPR piece for anyone looking for quick, science-based tips on how to build a healthier relationship with media. Fantastic work by @richardhuskey.bsky.social @aeden.bsky.social and Robin Nabi ! #psychsky #healthymedia

We say we want uplifting media, but our revealed preferences tell another story. We often pick darker, more intense content. This @npr.org piece covers our lab’s research on why, and includes great advice from @aeden.bsky.social on building intentional media habits.

🆕 New open neuroimaging dataset released! I’m happy to share that our Naturalistic Neuroimaging Database (NNDb3T+) is now publicly available! NNDb3T+ captures rich, multimodal brain activity in a naturalistic setting with 40 participants and over 160 hours of scanning!

You're telling me a DESK rejected this paper?

Tired: mindfulness Wired:

What’s it like inside your head?

Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/

How does motivation shape learning and memory? In a new review w @ralisonadcock.bsky.social, we propose that under different motivational ‘moods', neuromodulators set distinct neural contexts to determine information processing and memory formation. doi.org/10.1146/annu... #psychscisky #neuroskyence

Let this be a motto for all of us, when we peer review: “Review the manuscript in front of you, not the one you wish existed.” @earlkmiller.bsky.social

New post in @jocnforum.bsky.social by Early Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social: "Principles for proper peer review" doi.org/10.21428/8e6...

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

@science.org just dropped a story covering this preprint! Check it out below, and thanks to @cathleenogrady.bsky.social for the great write-up! www.science.org/content/arti...

1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.

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

Perfect email? Or perfectest email?

Thank you @jingjinghan.bsky.social for the wonderful invitation to visit. I learned so much talking with the faculty and students at Fudan University!

We’re excited to welcome our students for another year at UCSB! 🎉 An extra highlight this fall: 2 of our amazing grad students are on the job market 👇 🔹 Lindsay Miller: www.comm.ucsb.edu/people/linds... 🔹 Hannah Overbye-Thompson (@overbye.bsky.social): www.hannahoverbye.com #commsky #academicsky

Ask me how I know the school year started today.

Just got the unofficial news that a former lab member got tenure and alum wins are one of the best parts of my job.

📱One scroll can change your day. What guides your scrolling? I’m keynoting at the CityU Hong Kong International Conference on AI-Empowered Communication and Global Innovation. I’ll share our lab’s NeuroAI for sequential media selection. If you’re there, say hi! www.cityu.edu.hk/com/Page.asp...

::slowly stands while clapping::

Very excited to welcome our newest lab member, Jocelyn (Yachen) Xie! Jocelyn is broadly interested in cognition and media narratives, especially in how moral judgment and decision-making affect people’s preferences and evaluations of media content and characters cogcommscience.com/members/