Debbie Yee
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debyee.bsky.social
Debbie Yee
@debyee.bsky.social
computational affective motivational (neuro)psychiatry. interested in serotonin, stress, & decision-making. K99 Fellow at Brown. https://debyeeneuro.com she/her.
Pinned
Thrilled to share our new preprint highlighting distinct neurocomputational mechanisms underlying how reward and punishment determine adaptive cognitive control - a massive fMRI study and collaborative team effort with the @shenhavlab.bsky.social 🧠

Link here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control
Human motivation is fundamentally shaped by one's expectations of the reward they could earn for good performance or the punishment they would avoid for poor performance. However, the extent to which ...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Debbie Yee
New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵

rdcu.be/eVZ1A
Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization
Nature Neuroscience - Parcellation of the cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to neuroscience. Here, Hayden, Heilbronner and Yoo question the central status of brain areas...
rdcu.be
December 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
🚀 Excited to announce that I'm looking for people (PhD/Postdoc) to join my Cognitive Modelling group @uniosnabrueck.bsky.social.

If you want to join a genuinely curious, welcoming and inclusive community of Coxis, apply here:
tinyurl.com/coxijobs

Please RT - deadline is Jan 4‼️
December 18, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
I am so excited to share our newest preprint, inspired by @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social, “A multiverse approach to heat-evoked skin conductance analysis: Evaluating the influence of analytic pipeline on associations between skin conductance and pain osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
December 15, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
lab preprint! Interopceptive predictions are central to many brain-body interactions theories, but it's unclear if/how they affect bodily physiology. We (fearless Einav Litvak et al) show that insular cortex predictions are essential for glucose homeostasis-THREAD.. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Insular cortex predictions regulate glucose homeostasis
Brain-body interactions are essential for physical and emotional homeostasis. The brain uses information from the external world to predict upcoming bodily changes. This process involves interoceptive...
www.biorxiv.org
December 12, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Lindsay Lab - Postdoc Position
Artificial neural networks applied to psychology, neuroscience, and climate change
lindsay-lab.github.io
December 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Out now in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social 🚨.
Hunger often affects our mood, but is this a conscious or a subconscious process? Using continuous glucose monitoring, we show that differences in mood are driven by hunger ratings, not just glucose. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.thelancet.com/journals/EBI...
December 8, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Thrilled to start 2026 as faculty in Psych & CS
@ualberta.bsky.social + Amii.ca Fellow! 🥳 Recruiting students to develop theories of cognition in natural & artificial systems 🤖💭🧠. Find me at #NeurIPS2025 workshops (speaking coginterp.github.io/neurips2025 & organising @dataonbrainmind.bsky.social)
December 6, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Interested in a PhD looking at trajectories of repetitive negative thought using machine learning and computational modelling?

Take a look at our project in the @drivehealth.bsky.social portfolio and get in touch with any questions!

showcase.drive-health.org.uk/project/quan...
December 2, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
We are excited to announce that the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting (CCN 2026) will be held at New York University from August 3–6, 2026.
2026.ccneuro.org
December 3, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Just a quick reminder that applications for our new cross-lab PhD training model in cognitive science at Dartmouth are due Dec. 1. We're quite excited about this new approach, so please reach out if you have any questions!!
We're excited to announce that Cognitive Science at Dartmouth is recruiting PhD students to work collaboratively with me, Steven Frankland, and Fred Callaway. Come study the principles and mechanisms that enable us to understand, plan, and act in the world! Info: sites.dartmouth.edu/cogscigrad/
Cognitive Science Graduate Admissions – Information about graduate admissions from the cognitive science faculty
sites.dartmouth.edu
November 25, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
New pontification piece with @awestbrook.bsky.social and Jean Daunizeau, just out in TICS:
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
(or why does it hurt to think)

never written a review paper before in my life, that was a new and unusual experience
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
A widespread observation is that people avoid mentally effortful courses of action, and much recent work examining cognitive effort has explained subjective effort evaluation – and, consequently, pref...
www.cell.com
November 19, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
My paper is out!
Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets.
rdcu.be/eQjLN
A habit and working memory model as an alternative account of human reward-based learning
Nature Human Behaviour - In this study, Collins proposes an alternative dual-process (working memory and habit) model of reinforcement learning in humans.
rdcu.be
November 17, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Job Alert! 🚨

We are seeking a clinical coordinator for the Rutgers-Princeton Center for Computational Cognitive Neuroscience. >>
October 31, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity

We are looking for excellent MD Psychiatrist applicants to work & train at the CPCR at Johns Hopkins
@jhpsychedelics.bsky.social, the largest and most comprehensive psychedelic research program in the world.

Email Dr. Sandeep Nayak smn@jhmi.edu
October 30, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
I am recruiting a postdoc for a new NIMH-funded R01 using neural and behavioral models to understand anxious avoidance. Please share with anyone who may be interested!

Link: faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/155929/...
October 30, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the @msnlab.bsky.social in the @thechbh.bsky.social. Deadline 27/11. More info: tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7
The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
October 23, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Thrilled to share our new preprint highlighting distinct neurocomputational mechanisms underlying how reward and punishment determine adaptive cognitive control - a massive fMRI study and collaborative team effort with the @shenhavlab.bsky.social 🧠

Link here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control
Human motivation is fundamentally shaped by one's expectations of the reward they could earn for good performance or the punishment they would avoid for poor performance. However, the extent to which ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 20, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
Today in Nature Machine Intelligence, Kazuki Irie & I discuss 4 classic challenges for neural nets — systematic generalization, catastrophic forgetting, few-shot learning, & reasoning. We argue there is a unifying fix: the right incentives & practice. rdcu.be/eLRmg
October 20, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
A new NYT as-told-to series, "Lost Science," documents the work of researchers who have lost their jobs or funding after cuts by the Trump administration. Share your story with us!

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...
Has Your Scientific Work Been Cut? We Want to Hear.
www.nytimes.com
October 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
I'm recruiting a PhD student to study how enkephalins affect cognitive processing in the rodent frontal cortex. The project uses pharmacology, multi-electrode recordings, and fiber photometry, and is funded by NIDA. Please share with trainees applying this cycle. Thanks!
October 3, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
In our new paper 📖🔥, we conducted a pooled analysis (n=443; 5 studies) to test if state affect (momentary mood) or trait dispositions (approach/avoidance) predict cortisol reactivity beyond biological & contextual factors. (1/4)

#neuroscience #Neuroskyence #cogpsyc #AffectSci #psychscisky
Unpacking cortisol stress reactivity: Associations with psychological state and trait data in a pooled data sample
Prior research suggests that cortisol responses to acute stress induction paradigms (i.e., “cortisol stress reactivity”) likely arise from complex int…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
I'm happy to now be able to share a talk I gave at TEDx New England last Fall! 

The talk is about our lab's work on what makes decisions costly, and how to make them less so.

I discuss lessons for all kinds of decisions, including getting people to vote.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeHg...
How to make a choice when the options suck | Amitai Shenhav | TEDxNewEngland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
www.youtube.com
September 8, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!)

To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com

Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
Sinclair Lab
The Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
September 8, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
🧠 We're hiring a computational postdoc!

3+ years with me & @mitulamehta.bsky.social on @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded social cognition/paranoia research at the IoPPN.

Lead & develop computational work, collaborate with experimentalists on psychosis/THC data.

DM for details! lnkd.in/eCMy9Jf5
September 3, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Reposted by Debbie Yee
📢 We're hiring a Research Assistant in cognitive neuroscience & computational psychiatry! 📢

Join us at UCL to conduct an MEG study of reward & memory, exploring how brain signals link to variability in apathy and anhedonia.

🔗 apply from next week: lmdlab.github.io

🚨closes September 12th!
August 28, 2025 at 8:05 AM