Nina Rouhani
ninarouhani.bsky.social
Nina Rouhani
@ninarouhani.bsky.social
🧛🏻‍♀️ assist prof in brain & cognitive science @USC
(postdoc @caltech, phd @princeton)

🔎 computational approaches to reinforcement learning, memory & decision-making at individual & collective level; comp psychiatry

http://www.rouhanilab.com
Pinned
I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com
Interactive Cognition Lab | USC
Interactive Cognition Lab at USC, led by principal investigator, Dr. Nina Rouhani.
rouhanilab.com
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Very proud that this is finally out!

Come for the new auditory illusion, stay for the brain imaging and speech analysis…..
February 9, 2026 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Excited to announce that my last project from grad school is finally out in JoCN! Accepted last fall, but if you’re a fan of formatted PDFs now is your time to strike.

Neural Reinstatement of Encoding Context Mediates the Switch between Fear and Extinction Recall

direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...
Neural Reinstatement of Encoding Context Mediates the Switch between Fear and Extinction Recall
Abstract. Fear conditioning and extinction generate conflicting memory representations for a conditioned stimulus (CS). Retrieval of either memory is largely determined by the context where the CS is ...
direct.mit.edu
February 9, 2026 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
We are hiring a research specialist, to start this summer! This position would be a great fit for individuals looking to get more experience in computational and cognitive neuroscience research before applying to graduate school. #neurojobs Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21503/r...
Careers | Human Resources
research-princeton.icims.com
February 4, 2026 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Final paper of my PhD 🤗

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.

However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
Misspecified models create the appearance of adaptive control during value-based choice - Communications Psychology
In a new computational analysis of previous work, this study shows that a control-free mechanism better accounts for value-based decisions than an account that assumes top-down control invigorating th...
www.nature.com
February 3, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
❗New Paper❗Is children's attention more like a spotlight that darts across time, or one that diffuses across many things at once? How might children's immature attention help their learning? Our Dev Sci Paper has answers! 🧵🎯

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41549519/
a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights
ALT: a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights
media.tenor.com
January 23, 2026 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter.

How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need?

Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.
Episodic memory facilitates flexible decision-making via access to detailed events - Nature Human Behaviour
Nicholas and Mattar found that people use episodic memory to make decisions when it is unclear what will be needed in the future. These findings reveal how the rich representational capacity of episod...
www.nature.com
January 23, 2026 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
How do we achieve few-shot generalization? New work led by @fabianrenz.bsky.social dives into the role of replay in learning and using structure to generalize reward. Dream team effort with Shany Grossman @nathanieldaw.bsky.social Peter Dayan & @doellerlab.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org
January 18, 2026 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
New report from doctors shows the Iranian regime slaughtered 16,500 protesters during the communications shutdown.
Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’ — The Times and The Sunday Times
‘You have ten minutes to cry,” came the officer’s curt command to the couple as he revealed the corpse of their twentysomething daughter, gunned down in the historic streets of Isfahan. After searchin...
apple.news
January 18, 2026 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Really thrilled that this paper led by @neurozz.bsky.social is now published in its final version in @elife.bsky.social!!

This is a memory-focused (as opposed to RL-focused) account of the detailed characteristics of forward and backward awake and sleep replay!

elifesciences.org/articles/99931
A unifying account of replay as context-driven memory reactivation
A context-driven memory model simulates a wide range of characteristics of waking and sleeping hippocampal replay, providing a new account of how and why replay occurs.
elifesciences.org
January 15, 2026 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Recently posted: A video of this talk, intended to trigger conversations.

Please consider watching as a group, followed by a discussion of next steps for psychiatry-related research with your community. Discussions like these are crucial for progress.

mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/Nicole...
Nicole Rust
Nicole RustDirector of Visual Memory LabDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of Pennsylvania A New-New Intellectual Framework for PsychiatryIn 1998, Eric Kandel published the brilliant essay&n...
mediacentral.princeton.edu
January 13, 2026 at 7:40 AM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
📣 Our lab is hiring a full-time RA/lab manager! Join us in beautiful Santa Barbara to study the neural bases of affect-cognition interactions using fMRI and brain stimulation. Great stepping stone to a PhD in cognitive/affective neuro 🧠🐬🏖️ Apply by Jan 22: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF03048
Junior Specialist - Lapate Laboratory, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
University of California Santa Barbara is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ap.ucsb.edu
January 13, 2026 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time

We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school.

deckerlab.com
How We Learn Lab
deckerlab.com
January 12, 2026 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Excited to be teaching a new undergraduate course on Models of Language and Conversation this term!

Check it out here: context-lab.com/llm-course/

I've added lots of fun interactive demos of chatbots and NLP techniques that let students dig into the approaches.
Models of Language and Communication - PSYC 51.17
Course materials for PSYC 51.17: Language Models from Scratch - Dartmouth College
context-lab.com
January 7, 2026 at 1:10 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Agency reorganizes memory around relevant decisions. This was collaboration the deeply missed Sarah DuBrow and steer-headed by our grad students @lindsayrait.bsky.social and Elizabeth Horwath.

p.s. the task design involves curating gift baskets.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41436249/
Agency alters memory organization during free recall - PubMed
This study examined how agentic decisions in the absence of explicit rewards influence memory organization. Participants studied lists of items to assign as gifts to two characters-either choosing freely (Choice group) or following instructions (Fixed group). During free recall, participants in the …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
January 7, 2026 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Fresh off the press from all-star post-doc Blake Elliott: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We show that the HPC supports coincidence detection across VTA and lPFC in service of novelty-evoked invigoration. Stay-tuned for how these circuits are altered in psychosis risk.
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
January 7, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
What if we could tell you how well you’ll remember your next visit to your local coffee shop? ☕️

In our new Nature Human Behaviour paper, we show that the 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 can be measured with neuroimaging – and 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸.
January 5, 2026 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
What has my research lab been up to in 2025?
Time for a wrap up of our research!

This image is a gathering of key figures from our 2025 publications:

Links to publications in the replies:
#spierslab #research #neuroskyence
December 18, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
Had a great time talking to Maggie Penman about new research on lifespan brain development led by @alexamousley.bsky.social in @duncanastle.bsky.social's group.

This is a great summary of the study and a broader discussion of what brain research can teach us about important developmental phases.
A new study shows brain development isn’t as linear as expected.

After analyzing nearly 4,000 scans from ages 0–90, researchers found major structural shifts at ages 9, 32, 66, and 83 — dividing life into five distinct phases.
New study shows how your brain changes at four key ages: 9, 32, 66 and 83
New research finds that brain development is not linear. There are distinct phases with unique characteristics.
wapo.st
December 11, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
How does cortisol tune brain networks to form strong emotional memories? Excited to share new work led by amazing former RA Flory Huang w collabs Rajita Sinha and @toddc.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Dynamic brain mechanisms supporting salient memories under cortisol
The stress-related hormone cortisol alters dynamic brain networks predicting memory and arousal to promote emotional memories.
www.science.org
December 11, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
starting fall 2026 i'll be an assistant professor at @upenn.edu 🥳

my lab will develop scalable models/theories of human behavior, focused on memory and perception

currently recruiting PhD students in psychology, neuroscience, & computer science!

reach out if you're interested 😊
November 25, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
How do changes in context influence how we organize our memories in time?

Faster contextual changes are associated with faster drift in hippocampal activity and reduced temporal clustering in recalled memories.

Elegant work led by @lindsayrait.bsky.social!

www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Hippocampal Drift Rate Reflects the Temporal Organization of Memories
When freely recalling past events, individuals tend to successively remember stimuli that were studied close together in time—a phenomenon known as temporal clustering. Temporal clustering is thought ...
www.jneurosci.org
November 20, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
A new preprint "Anxiety Modulates Event Segmentation" with @yaelniv.bsky.social and colleagues!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
November 20, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
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 Nina Rouhani
Happy to share my new paper published in @nathumbehav.nature.com: A critical look at statistical power in computational modeling studies, particularly those based on model selection.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 17, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Nina Rouhani
I will be recruiting PhD students to join the Kim Attention and Neurodevelopment Lab at UC Riverside! Check out the flyer to learn about our program (use the link below) and apply by Dec 1! drive.google.com/file/d/19m8i...
November 7, 2025 at 6:20 AM