What have you read? What will you read next? Why? In a new paper in @pnasnexus.org, led by the brilliant @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, we show that people forage for books using the same mechanisms they forage for food. What will you read next? Start with this 🧵

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

How does the brain orchestrate flow states? Two new publications in the journal NeuroImage, one in our upcoming special issue on the Neural Correlates of Risks and Benefits of Media Use (#1), and one in the regular issue (#2) dive into flow experiences using a complexity science lens ...

🚨1/7 New paper(s) alert! What is our brain doing when we feel flow? I've been trying to understand this question for more than 15 years now. I wish I had the answer, but in many ways, much of my research has clarified what the brain *isn't* doing during flow.

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

✨New paper out @nature.com ✨ For 8 weeks around the 2024 US election, we randomly assigned 2,000 people to use social media algos we built ourselves. Do engagement-based algorithms amplify intergroup, moral & emotional (IME) content—and does that distort how we see political norms? 🧵🔗 👇

At one point, a stu­dent joked that if I kept “editing” so much, I might as well submit the article under my own name and save us both time.

I GET LOGGED OUT. BUT I LOG IN AGAIN

Excellent explainer of the recent BOLD x metabolism controversy... worth a read! “Does the evidence presented by Epp et al. warrant a wholesale dismissal of BOLD-fMRI? The answer is: certainly not.”

Too provocative a title, but the take home message is spot on: “Our brains are equipped with a suite of decision making algorithms. Different contexts call for different algorithms. Tech companies are adept at hijacking those algorithms for their benefit, not ours” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/o...

now that canvas is up again (but who knows for how long) we keep receiving emails from the uni telling us to back everything up on our computers are you f*#king kidding me various organizations/institutions fail so they can hold us responsible for making up for their errors i just can't

Fascinating deep dive into the characteristics of papers and peer reviews at a journal, with a lookback pre-COVID and pre-chatGPT. Papers and reviews showing more signs of AI over time, but also lower writing quality. orgsci.substack.com/p/more-versu... orgsci.substack.com/p/more-versu...

Fascinating. Important. The stunning thing I’ve seen as an editor, reviewer, & educator, is the use of generative AI to accelerate low quality work. Rather than use these tools to do more ambitious scholarship, there is a race to the bottom. This post, the first in its series, documents exactly that

Good news everyone 🥳 Our (w @vincentab.bsky.social) primer on models as prediction machines (with the marginaleffects package) is finally officially published!> journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

People in the AI world seem to adore the System 1/2 dichotomy. I love this quote from Gerd Gigerenzer about the concept:

Interested in intensive longitudinal studies (ESM, EMA, ...)? We will host a GESIS seminar in September that will teach you how to conduct and analyze these studies. Check it out here ⬇️

🚨 Tom Griffiths has a podcast where he interviews cognitive scientists podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t... This just went to the top of my list.

Deeply honored that our paper was recognized with the #SANS2026 Award! SANS was an important part of this paper's journey! @jadynpark.bsky.social first presented this work at SANS2023, and again in SANS2025, and we benefited greatly from the feedback and discussion!

And that's a wrap! We hope you had a great conference! Join us for #SANS2027 in Montreal! With program co-chairs @p1sh.bsky.social and Nina Lauharatanahirun

Can’t wait to see some of you at my poster today! #SANS2026

Last day of #SANS2026! Today, @rachaelkee.bsky.social will present her poster introducing Inoxity. It’s an open source iOS app that allows for high-throughput collection of EMA and bio-behavioral data. What can you do with high-throughput data? Check her preprint! doi.org/10.33767/osf...

Get your media neuro dose at #SANS26! We will have a poster session everyday at SANS presenting on both topics of morality and media addiction. See our poster details below 👇👇👇

Today, Dr. Weber was recognized for his pioneering work using naturalistic paradigms in fMRI research. We’re proud to see the Media Neuroscience Lab’s work honored through his recognition as a SANS Founding Fellow. #SANS2026

Congratulations, Rene! Remarkable to see a career-long focus on content and naturalistic approaches in media neuroscience. And exciting to see the new things coming from your lab!

Brilliant work, @elisabaek.bsky.social !! Congratulations on this well deserved recognition of your scholarship!

Are you a trainee at #SANS2026 or a trainee in social or affective neuroscience. Fill out this quick survey to help with a game at COMICSANS. More data = better games. forms.gle/b5B8y3m6LEFu...

Also today at #SANS2026, Ziyu Zhao investigates the “brain rot” hypothesis. When studied rigorously, in large multi-national samples, we find a whole lot of nothing. Conclusion: previously observed alarming results might be driven by sampling bias and/or measurement error (P1-C-20)

We’re at #SANS2026! Today, Valerie Klein will share her undergraduate capstone project using drift diffusion models to understand how mental health status influences affective media selection. Find her at P1-F-32, and check out the preprint, here doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Grad school: to be successful in a future career you're going to need to focus on THIS ONE THING for the next 5 years. The actual career in question: you can't focus on one thing for more than 30 minutes at a time and you have to keep switching between 1000 things endlessly

A waste of grant proposals

1/n New preprint with Ziyu Zhao, @dougaparry.bsky.social, & @jacobtfisher.online Can an AI bot complete a live online reaction-time task & produce data that passes as human? We built an autonomous bot to take the Attention Network Test (ANT) in real time Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Oh!!!! I can’t wait for this!

We recently warned of bots in online behavioral research. @achetverikov.bsky.social showed there is no evidence for that in our @joinprolific.bsky.social data - but that doesn't mean we're safe. Agentic AI can do behavioral tasks through prompting alone. Reply & videos: osf.io/3cztr/overview

What are YOU doing May 15-17? Join us at Comm Horizons for a deep dive into Communication in the Age of AI & Algorithms! Keynotes by Jeff Hancock & @angelhwang.bsky.social 74 presentations, 44 posters, & wine tasting in Napa! Registration closes April 5 communication.ucdavis.edu/horizonconf2...

Working hypothesis: If you're doing research and don't occasionally have a small existential crisis, either you've been blessed to work in an exceptional field (do tell which one it is!), or maybe you're being a bit naive.

🧠 Resting-state fMRI is often treated as the gold standard for studying the brain’s intrinsic organization. But is it actually the best way to estimate functional architecture? We tested this directly. 🧵1/8

How do we deal with rich, multilevel, and multimodal data? In a new preprint, @rachaelkee.bsky.social and I sketch an answer! For all the details, and the preprint link, see Rachael’s thread. Be sure to give her a follow, especially if you’re interested in neuroscience, sleep, and media!

Important work, and worth a read

Congratulations @judithfan.bsky.social on winning the Lila R. Gleitman Prize for early-career contributions to Cognitive Science 🥳 Amazing!! cognitivesciencesociety.org/gleitman-pri...

About nine months ago, we asked ourselves "what does it mean to be Global in the 21st Century?" We pondered this with @icahdq.bsky.social and @academic.oup.com and the end result? Volume 1, Issue 1 of Global Perspectives in Communication.

📣Call for Papers: CCR Special Issue on Media Use and Effects in the Computational Era Guest-edited by Frank Mangold, Christina Viehmann, Chung-hong Chan, Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, Lukas Otto, Mareike Wieland, Julia Niemann-Lenz, and Pablo Jost. Abstract deadline: 16-Oct-2026 See announcement -

Leibniz, looking at the universe: "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Me, looking at my Outlook calendar: same

Of all the analogies, this one about horses is the dumbest.

Recently, van der Stigchel and colleagues posted a provocative commentary suggesting that we should be wary of bots in online behavioral data collection (🧵by @cstrauch.bsky.social here: bsky.app/profile/cstr...). But should we? Here is my response letter osf.io/preprints/ps.... 1/5

Ha! The original Lancet article on the dangers of reading in bed is here: doi.org/10.1016/S014...

Very excited to see the first issue of @gpccomm.bsky.social is nearly ready! Some good work is cooking very soon!

Maybe of interest: The submission guidelines of Psychological Science now demand an explicit statement on measures taken to reduce the risk of AI-generated responses for all online studies! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

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!

This one feels good 😊 Humbled and honored to be in the company of Spence Award winners, past and present. All credit goes to mentors, colleagues, and especially members of my lab -- thank you!!!

Researching communication, AI, or algorithms? Join us at Comm Horizons 2026! Keynotes from Jeff Hancock & @angelhwang.bsky.social, high-quality competitive programming, great feedback, & Napa wine tasting. Abstract deadline approaching fast: March 1 (AOE) communication.ucdavis.edu/horizonconf2...