🧵 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...

🆕 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!

Our tenured positions in Journalism and Communication Science are still open. Please share widely!

We’re hiring! 🎓

Join us at Texas A&M Communication & Journalism as a tenured Associate Professor in communication interventions. Join us in building a vibrant Communication & Media Science Division!
🔗 apply.interfolio.com/173348

After 22 years of school, I am now the kind of doctor that isn't particularly handy in a medical emergency - but will talk your ear off about kids and tech.

But really, a huge thank you to the family, friends, and teachers who nurtured and supported me along the way.

Next stop is Columbus Ohio!

Headed to #ica25? So are we! The CCS Lab is sharing 3 projects—including a Top Paper—on how we choose what to watch, read & click

We use computational modeling & neuroimaging to study how curiosity, value & emotion influence media choice

Talks by @rachaelkee.bsky.social & @gongxuanjun.bsky.social

@gongxuanjun.bsky.social giving a wonderful talk on narrative impact & success (w @richardhuskey.bsky.social & @aeden.bsky.social) by using narrative structural models of networked characters & events to model popularity of a novel at #CommHorizons2025

"I think a good curiosity is a balanced curiosity," says @gongxuanjun.bsky.social.

I really appreciated that curiosity philosophy in our conversation about curiosity and media selection. (You're going to love his cats....)

Listen here: lynnborton.com/2025/04/17/p...

"This #evaluation system based on #curiosity is different from how people evaluate normal things,” says @gongxuanjun.bsky.social.

How we choose media to manage our moods, why sequence matters, & what draws us to that next book. Conundrum: explore or exploit?

lynnborton.com/2025/04/17/p...

Were it not for #academicsky #academicchatter, I might not have found @gongxuanjun.bsky.social.

Hurrah for facilitating the research-to-realworld pipeline & linking audio producers with people who expand our understanding of ourselves. Thanks, @bsky.app!

#curiosity #choosetobecurious

Books fans! 📖 What is your next book to read❓
Our study shows that two mechanisms drives people reading choices - enjoyment driven and information driven. We also found curiosity fosters people reading enjoyment and encourages exploratory readings. Read our new preprints doi.org/10.21203/rs....

That’s a wrap! Our latest fMRI data collection is done thanks to heroic efforts from @gongxuanjun.bsky.social, @rachaelkee.bsky.social, Allyson Snyder, Ziyu Zhao, and some awesome undergrad RAs! Stay tuned for some forthcoming computational modeling of the negativity bias!

Now that it seems that 🦋 is picking up steam, I wanted to share a bit of what @dougaparry.bsky.social and I have been working on recently. This manuscript is aimed at answering a question that’s been bugging both of us for a long time: Is it time to abandon the Media Multitasking Index? [🧵 1/9]

🚨New preprint 🚨

**A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media**

🧵

We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

🥳🥳🥳 Super excited to announce that our new publication: Media selection is highly predictable, in principle is out
@computationalcommunication.org URL: doi.org/10.5117/CCR2...

🥳🥳🥳 Excited to announce that our new publication: Consider the time dimension: theorizing and formalizing sequential media selection is out at Human Communication Research!!! URL: doi.org/10.1093/hcr/...

Excited that our new paper @ABSjournal titled "Moving Behavioral Experimentation Online: A Tutorial and Some Recommendations for Drift Diffusion Modeling" is out! Open access link: doi.org/10.1177/0002...