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/

My latest piece, on apprenticeship, artificial intelligence, and intrinsic motivation. Handcrafted from the heart. Please, share and enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/robchave...

I made a calendar reminder a while back for next week titled "Deadline to submit". I do not remember what this is for.

Brilliant work addressing a critical issue

The next step is to examine the overlap of existing psychopathology and gaming disorder in the brain 🧠

New Open dataset alert: 🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience! N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks! 🧵below

We’re hiring @ucdavis.bsky.social Comm! TT Asst Prof in Mediated Interpersonal Communication. Our dept blends behavioral, biological & computational strengths at one of the most interdisciplinary campuses anywhere. Apps due Oct 15. Glad to chat recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07289

Looking for a reminder that good things happen? Meet OLAUG (Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage), women in their 60s to 80s who dive Cape Cod ponds to pull up trash. Along the way they find community, purpose, and even flow www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/20...

Tour de force review on “Economics of Attention” by Loewenstein just published in J Econ Lit @aeajournals.bsky.social #behavioraleconomics

2 years ago today

I’m honored to share that I’ve been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure @ucsb. To mark this, our lab, the Yu Emotion Science (YES) lab releases its official logo (credit: @avamadesousa.bsky.social )

So excited to share that my first first-author paper is out in @commspsychol.nature.com 🎉 In a mini-meta analysis of seven studies, we looked at whether loneliness is related to altered expectations of one’s own and others' emotion transitions. www.nature.com/articles/s44... (1/4)

Excited to share this work led by @avamadesousa.bsky.social! This paper is so significant to me, not only because it reveals important insights into the disruptions in emotion representations that characterize loneliness, but also because it is a clear example of the power of team science 🌟

Big news, Spartans! 💚🤍 The Moral Minds Lab has officially opened its doors @michiganstateu.bsky.social! We can’t wait to kick off our very first semester of research on how we become moral beings. Here’s to new beginnings! @msupsychology.bsky.social

“You are here to learn to ride a bicycle, not to invent a bicycle.” "Now, I’m about to establish my own research group. I feel ready to design and invent my own bicycle. I’ll remind my trainees that their job, first and foremost, is to learn how to ride." www.science.org/content/arti...

How I wish I wrote abstracts vs how I write abstracts…

What happens when digital media, algorithms, and misinformation collide? A new Journal of Media Psychology special issue, co-edited by me, @hjhether.bsky.social, and @soojongkim.bsky.social, features seven articles on information integrity in today’s media ecosystem econtent.hogrefe.com/toc/zmp/37/5

My co-authors, Jana Diesner, @tedunderwood.me, @zoeleblanc.bsky.social, @gworthey.bsky.social and @profdownie.bsky.social, and I are excited to share our paper in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social "Who decides what is read on Goodreads?" on book review sponsorship, open access at doi.org/10.1177/2053....

If someone you know buys into claims about "genetic optimization" of embryos using polygenic scores of cognition, just send them our 2024 paper on Beethoven & musicality. We wrote it to help communicate limits of individual-level genetic predictions & complexity of links between DNA & behaviour. 🧪👇

From the world's first email to saving millions of premature newborns to CRISPR gene editing, history-making innovation is happening across the UC system every day. www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/7-world...

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social Highlights ⬇

Really just had something like this feeling this afternoon. It’s the high that keeps you coming back for more