Marco K Wittmann
@mkwittmann.bsky.social
Associate Professor @ UCL. Experimental Psychologist. Interested in neural computations underlying social cognition.
https://www.wittmann-lab.com
https://www.wittmann-lab.com
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
What happens when we can't use recursive belief to compete? We can use anomaly detection instead!
Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception
jair.org/index.php/ja...
Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception
jair.org/index.php/ja...
February 18, 2026 at 8:49 AM
What happens when we can't use recursive belief to compete? We can use anomaly detection instead!
Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception
jair.org/index.php/ja...
Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception
jair.org/index.php/ja...
Very much looking forward to this talk and interesting chats!
It's a pleasure for me to announce our next Social Computation and Representation Lab invited speaker @mkwittmann.bsky.social for a talk on dimensionality reduction and basis functions in social cognition
February 16, 2026 at 5:18 PM
Very much looking forward to this talk and interesting chats!
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
🧵 New paper in @NatureComms
Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences
Nasioulas, Potier, Cerrotti, Lebreton & me (2026)
Does feedback really improve risky decision-making? Short answer: no! it changes attitudes, not learning. 👇
rdcu.be/e0VcO
Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences
Nasioulas, Potier, Cerrotti, Lebreton & me (2026)
Does feedback really improve risky decision-making? Short answer: no! it changes attitudes, not learning. 👇
rdcu.be/e0VcO
Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences
Nature Communications - Normative theory predicts that feedback should not affect decisions under risk, but past findings disagree. Here, the authors show that feedback shifts risk-taking by...
rdcu.be
January 27, 2026 at 12:12 PM
🧵 New paper in @NatureComms
Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences
Nasioulas, Potier, Cerrotti, Lebreton & me (2026)
Does feedback really improve risky decision-making? Short answer: no! it changes attitudes, not learning. 👇
rdcu.be/e0VcO
Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences
Nasioulas, Potier, Cerrotti, Lebreton & me (2026)
Does feedback really improve risky decision-making? Short answer: no! it changes attitudes, not learning. 👇
rdcu.be/e0VcO
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Join us at the Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Summer School in picturesque Bad Bevensen for two weeks of intense exchange about Systems Neuroscience!
When: 26 July - 7 August
Where: Bad Bevensen, Germany
Application deadline: 28 February
More details here: www.dpz.eu/pcn2026
When: 26 July - 7 August
Where: Bad Bevensen, Germany
Application deadline: 28 February
More details here: www.dpz.eu/pcn2026
Summer School PCN 2026 | DPZ
Sie befinden sich hier:
www.dpz.eu
January 27, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Join us at the Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Summer School in picturesque Bad Bevensen for two weeks of intense exchange about Systems Neuroscience!
When: 26 July - 7 August
Where: Bad Bevensen, Germany
Application deadline: 28 February
More details here: www.dpz.eu/pcn2026
When: 26 July - 7 August
Where: Bad Bevensen, Germany
Application deadline: 28 February
More details here: www.dpz.eu/pcn2026
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺
This Friday, January 30th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Michael Browning giving a talk entitled "Mechanisms and actions of dopaminergic agonists in the treatment of depression"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
This Friday, January 30th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Michael Browning giving a talk entitled "Mechanisms and actions of dopaminergic agonists in the treatment of depression"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
January 26, 2026 at 9:17 AM
#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺
This Friday, January 30th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Michael Browning giving a talk entitled "Mechanisms and actions of dopaminergic agonists in the treatment of depression"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
This Friday, January 30th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Michael Browning giving a talk entitled "Mechanisms and actions of dopaminergic agonists in the treatment of depression"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
I’ve started posting on Medium, sharing pieces that sit between academic writing and a broader audience. Topics will likely include decision science, AI, and the history & philosophy of science. First article is up (link below).
medium.com/@stefano.pal...
medium.com/@stefano.pal...
Stefano Palminteri – Medium
Read writing from Stefano Palminteri on Medium. Behavioral and computational scientist interested in understanding how humans and machines make decisions and in the history and philosophy of science.
medium.com
January 26, 2026 at 11:18 AM
I’ve started posting on Medium, sharing pieces that sit between academic writing and a broader audience. Topics will likely include decision science, AI, and the history & philosophy of science. First article is up (link below).
medium.com/@stefano.pal...
medium.com/@stefano.pal...
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺
This Friday, January 23rd, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Ayelet Landau giving a talk entitled "Rhythmic attention negotiates competition along the visual hierarchy"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
This Friday, January 23rd, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Ayelet Landau giving a talk entitled "Rhythmic attention negotiates competition along the visual hierarchy"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
January 19, 2026 at 9:30 AM
#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺
This Friday, January 23rd, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Ayelet Landau giving a talk entitled "Rhythmic attention negotiates competition along the visual hierarchy"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
This Friday, January 23rd, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Ayelet Landau giving a talk entitled "Rhythmic attention negotiates competition along the visual hierarchy"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
We're running a 5th edition of the always-exciting UCL Summer School on Consciousness and Metacognition this year, 8th-10th July 2026 in London. Accommodation and travel expenses are covered.
For more information and how to apply, check out metacoglab.org/summer-schoo...
For more information and how to apply, check out metacoglab.org/summer-schoo...
Summer School - About — the MetaLab
metacoglab.org
January 20, 2026 at 5:07 PM
We're running a 5th edition of the always-exciting UCL Summer School on Consciousness and Metacognition this year, 8th-10th July 2026 in London. Accommodation and travel expenses are covered.
For more information and how to apply, check out metacoglab.org/summer-schoo...
For more information and how to apply, check out metacoglab.org/summer-schoo...
Exciting new work by @lspiering.bsky.social showing that people intentionally generate variability in their own behaviour to discern causal consequences in social interactions; because big variability makes cause-effect relationships detectable, while small variability gets lost in noise. 🅰️ ➡️ 🅱️
🎉 My PhD work has just been published in @natcomms.nature.com!
How do we learn who caused what - and how much control we had - when outcomes depend on multiple people? We studied how humans do so using a new social learning task, computational modelling and fMRI.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵👇
How do we learn who caused what - and how much control we had - when outcomes depend on multiple people? We studied how humans do so using a new social learning task, computational modelling and fMRI.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵👇
January 21, 2026 at 2:33 PM
Exciting new work by @lspiering.bsky.social showing that people intentionally generate variability in their own behaviour to discern causal consequences in social interactions; because big variability makes cause-effect relationships detectable, while small variability gets lost in noise. 🅰️ ➡️ 🅱️
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Really excited to share first published paper of the year! Thank you to @uclbrainscience.bsky.social for highlighting: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc.... We found different organisational changes in Lewy body disease patients with dementia versus those with intact cognition, using structural gradients.
UCL researchers uncover distinct brain changes in Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia
UCL researchers have used advanced brain imaging to uncover the distinct brain changes between people with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, opening the door to more targeted treatments
www.ucl.ac.uk
January 20, 2026 at 11:39 AM
Really excited to share first published paper of the year! Thank you to @uclbrainscience.bsky.social for highlighting: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc.... We found different organisational changes in Lewy body disease patients with dementia versus those with intact cognition, using structural gradients.
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
NEW: We show and replicate socioeconomic gradients in heuristics for decision-making under uncertainty, possibly reflecting adaptations varying levels of scarcity and competition for resources 🫰
Shoutout and thanks to @danielnettle.bsky.social & @coraliechevallier.bsky.social ❤️🔥
tinyurl.com/mu7rzz6k
Shoutout and thanks to @danielnettle.bsky.social & @coraliechevallier.bsky.social ❤️🔥
tinyurl.com/mu7rzz6k
Low socioeconomic status amplifies the perceived rarity of large rewards
Decision-making relies on heuristics derived from past experiences that likely vary with socioeconomic status. We investigate socioeconomic difference…
www.sciencedirect.com
December 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
NEW: We show and replicate socioeconomic gradients in heuristics for decision-making under uncertainty, possibly reflecting adaptations varying levels of scarcity and competition for resources 🫰
Shoutout and thanks to @danielnettle.bsky.social & @coraliechevallier.bsky.social ❤️🔥
tinyurl.com/mu7rzz6k
Shoutout and thanks to @danielnettle.bsky.social & @coraliechevallier.bsky.social ❤️🔥
tinyurl.com/mu7rzz6k
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
New preprint. We show that in addition to reward prediction errors (RPEs), dorsal striatal dopamine signals encode sensory prediction errors (SPEs), the difference between sensory prior & observed stimulus. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Dorsal striatal dopamine integrates sensory and reward prediction errors to guide perceptual decisions
Perceptual decisions are shaped by expectations about sensory stimuli and rewards, learned through sensory and reward prediction errors. Dopamine is known to convey reward prediction errors that shape...
www.biorxiv.org
January 5, 2026 at 10:49 AM
New preprint. We show that in addition to reward prediction errors (RPEs), dorsal striatal dopamine signals encode sensory prediction errors (SPEs), the difference between sensory prior & observed stimulus. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
🚀 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‼️
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
🚀 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‼️
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‼️
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
New job alert 💫 We’re hiring a 3-year postdoc for the NEPTUNE project to study the causal mechanisms of paranoia and social learning.
Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑🔬
Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...)
Please RT :)
Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑🔬
Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...)
Please RT :)
December 18, 2025 at 8:27 AM
New job alert 💫 We’re hiring a 3-year postdoc for the NEPTUNE project to study the causal mechanisms of paranoia and social learning.
Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑🔬
Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...)
Please RT :)
Work with us on experimental psychopharmacology (THC), social cognition, and psychosis 🧑🔬
Apply here: lnkd.in/gQqnNvjR](my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...)
Please RT :)
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
I've got a fully-funded PhD studentship open at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social, investigating social learning about metacognition & awareness, w/ behavioural studies & neuroimaging (fMRI) - thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk
More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p...
#cogsci #neuroskyence
More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p...
#cogsci #neuroskyence
PhD Studentship: Social Learning of Metacognition and Awareness at Birkbeck, University of London
jobs.ac.uk now advertising a PhD Studentship: Social Learning of Metacognition and Awareness Visit jobs.ac.uk to apply and to browse more PhD opportunities.
www.jobs.ac.uk
December 16, 2025 at 7:08 PM
I've got a fully-funded PhD studentship open at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social, investigating social learning about metacognition & awareness, w/ behavioural studies & neuroimaging (fMRI) - thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk
More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p...
#cogsci #neuroskyence
More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p...
#cogsci #neuroskyence
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
New preprint from the lab!
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions
Flexible behaviour requires transforming abstract cognitive representations, such as value preferences, into concrete motor actions. During economic decision-making, individuals evaluate options to gu...
www.biorxiv.org
December 14, 2025 at 10:59 AM
New preprint from the lab!
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Children love animals. How do they turn into meat-eating adults? We investigate how children trade off their moral values with the importance of food for human traditions. The great Alex Carter's first PhD paper now out in SPPS: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #socialpsyc #devpsy #philsky
December 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Children love animals. How do they turn into meat-eating adults? We investigate how children trade off their moral values with the importance of food for human traditions. The great Alex Carter's first PhD paper now out in SPPS: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #socialpsyc #devpsy #philsky
Very cool brain meeting coming up this Friday with Andrew MacAskill presenting exciting work on the rodent hippocampus' role in latent state inference in the service of decision making. Obligatory for people who study reversal learning.
#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺
This Friday, December 5th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Andrew MacAskill giving a talk entitled "A role for ventral hippocampus in hidden state inference"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
This Friday, December 5th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Andrew MacAskill giving a talk entitled "A role for ventral hippocampus in hidden state inference"
In person or online. For more information:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event
December 1, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Very cool brain meeting coming up this Friday with Andrew MacAskill presenting exciting work on the rodent hippocampus' role in latent state inference in the service of decision making. Obligatory for people who study reversal learning.
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
👇 Few days left to apply to get to work with us ! Get in touch if you have any questions
🚀 We're hiring !
🕵️ Seeking a postdoc to study the development & individual-level organization of brain circuits supporting (in)flexible behavior in psychiatric populations.
🧠 Precision functional mapping, fMRI, normative modelling
Details 👉 tinyurl.com/3h8tcv2e
🗓️ Apply by Dec 10! Please RT 🙌
🕵️ Seeking a postdoc to study the development & individual-level organization of brain circuits supporting (in)flexible behavior in psychiatric populations.
🧠 Precision functional mapping, fMRI, normative modelling
Details 👉 tinyurl.com/3h8tcv2e
🗓️ Apply by Dec 10! Please RT 🙌
Postdoctoral Researcher (2288) - Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck
cis7.bbk.ac.uk
December 1, 2025 at 9:39 AM
👇 Few days left to apply to get to work with us ! Get in touch if you have any questions
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Really excited to see this preprint out! Fernanda did an amazing job at demonstrating how you can accurately predict retinotopy from T1w scans alone. This is important for several reasons: 1/4
Investigating individual-specific topographic organization has traditionally been a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. But what if we could map visual cortex organization in thousands of brains? Here we offer the community with a toolbox that can do just that! tinyurl.com/deepretinotopy
December 1, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Really excited to see this preprint out! Fernanda did an amazing job at demonstrating how you can accurately predict retinotopy from T1w scans alone. This is important for several reasons: 1/4
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
New study out today in Nature Comms: www.nature.com/articles/s41..., in which we set out to test whether ultrasound could influence the reward-related learning computations of the nucleus accumbens, building on decades of work on dopaminergic prediction error and reinforcement learning. And it did.
Non-invasive ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human nucleus accumbens impacts reward sensitivity - Nature Communications
This study shows that non-invasive ultrasound to the human nucleus accumbens can modulate deep brain activity and enhance reward-guided learning, offering a potential alternative to invasive neuromodu...
www.nature.com
November 28, 2025 at 12:26 PM
New study out today in Nature Comms: www.nature.com/articles/s41..., in which we set out to test whether ultrasound could influence the reward-related learning computations of the nucleus accumbens, building on decades of work on dopaminergic prediction error and reinforcement learning. And it did.
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Very proud to be part of this team! 🤓Our new preprint is out, where we examine how social basis functions develop during adolescence. 🥳🥳
🥳!!NEW PREPRINT!!🥳
We show that the tendency to compress complex social information into priors about social structures becomes more pronounced during adolescence.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I am soooooo excited to share this work, together with @mkwittmann.bsky.social and @yongling.bsky.social.
We show that the tendency to compress complex social information into priors about social structures becomes more pronounced during adolescence.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I am soooooo excited to share this work, together with @mkwittmann.bsky.social and @yongling.bsky.social.
November 27, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Very proud to be part of this team! 🤓Our new preprint is out, where we examine how social basis functions develop during adolescence. 🥳🥳
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
This study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these strategies to interaction dynamics, payoffs, and cost of cooperation.
@violapriesemann.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
@violapriesemann.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making - Communications Psychology
Using a continuous social foraging game, this study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these str...
www.nature.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:48 AM
This study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these strategies to interaction dynamics, payoffs, and cost of cooperation.
@violapriesemann.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
@violapriesemann.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Did cooperation evolve because of conflict? Or is conflict an (avoidable) ‘by-product’ of evolved capacities to cooperate. I think the latter—>
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com
November 27, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Did cooperation evolve because of conflict? Or is conflict an (avoidable) ‘by-product’ of evolved capacities to cooperate. I think the latter—>
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
Reposted by Marco K Wittmann
Check out this preprint by @simyciri.bsky.social on the role of basis functions in social decision-making across development 🚀!
🥳!!NEW PREPRINT!!🥳
We show that the tendency to compress complex social information into priors about social structures becomes more pronounced during adolescence.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I am soooooo excited to share this work, together with @mkwittmann.bsky.social and @yongling.bsky.social.
We show that the tendency to compress complex social information into priors about social structures becomes more pronounced during adolescence.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I am soooooo excited to share this work, together with @mkwittmann.bsky.social and @yongling.bsky.social.
November 26, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Check out this preprint by @simyciri.bsky.social on the role of basis functions in social decision-making across development 🚀!