Matthew Lieberman
@socialbrain.bsky.social
UCLA social neuroscientist, co-founder of Resonance Inc., Substack: https://bit.ly/3BdpdTb
Pinned
Is someone you love applying to college in the next 3 years? The lessons I learned in my new substack post including: the statistics you can find are mostly meaningless (Lesson 6) and early decision (ED) is mostly a scam (Lesson 12). Here is the link: open.substack.com/pub/matthewl...
Very excited to share this amazing work that @beargoldstein.bsky.social just published from our lab. He did amazing work including creating a new technique that does for time series what MVPA did for spatial detail in the brain.
Excited to share our new paper out in PNAS: “Neural predictors of hidden, persistent psychological states at work.” Full paper at bit.ly/47oaGRR
We brought portable fNIRS into the field to predict the subjective work-related “lenses” of business leaders. Check out the thread below for more! 1/8
We brought portable fNIRS into the field to predict the subjective work-related “lenses” of business leaders. Check out the thread below for more! 1/8
October 14, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Very excited to share this amazing work that @beargoldstein.bsky.social just published from our lab. He did amazing work including creating a new technique that does for time series what MVPA did for spatial detail in the brain.
Tomorrow I am teaching Searle's Chinese room in my consciousness class and to add a bit of irony, I have this AI teach it. In the first comment, I have the 2023 version. Pretty amazing how far AI video has come.
October 8, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Tomorrow I am teaching Searle's Chinese room in my consciousness class and to add a bit of irony, I have this AI teach it. In the first comment, I have the 2023 version. Pretty amazing how far AI video has come.
Scientists may have found the genetic mutation that led humans to have bigger brains. If it can be modulated that would have huge consequences for the future. www.science.org/doi/full/10....
An ancient enhancer rapidly evolving in the human lineage promotes neural development and cognitive flexibility
HAR123 is a conserved enhancer rapidly evolving in the human lineage that exerts neural functions.
www.science.org
August 17, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Scientists may have found the genetic mutation that led humans to have bigger brains. If it can be modulated that would have huge consequences for the future. www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Pretty awesome for all of UCLA's Jewish faculty to wake up today to find out all of our grants have been suspended because Trump is fighting anti-Semitism - an issue near and dear to his heart.
August 1, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Pretty awesome for all of UCLA's Jewish faculty to wake up today to find out all of our grants have been suspended because Trump is fighting anti-Semitism - an issue near and dear to his heart.
You get about 100 million breaths. So does every other animal big or small. Don't waste them. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com
July 22, 2025 at 2:29 AM
You get about 100 million breaths. So does every other animal big or small. Don't waste them. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Tell me you have no prefrontal cortex without telling me you have no prefrontal cortex
July 22, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Tell me you have no prefrontal cortex without telling me you have no prefrontal cortex
Favorite new TikTok channel. I could teach a whole class on this www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8hAY4d5/
Best memories start at BARBERCHOPS
TikTok video by Barberchops
www.tiktok.com
July 10, 2025 at 5:12 AM
Favorite new TikTok channel. I could teach a whole class on this www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8hAY4d5/
Smart piece on AI and college degrees: "students cheating with ChatGPT aren't lazy—they're rational actors in an irrational system They're using 21st-century tools to game 19th-century assessments for 11th-century credentials. The real scandal is that we're still pretending the old game matters."
What Good Is a College Degree When AI Knows Everything? Grab the Job Skills That Matter in an AI World
We live in a hyper-inflating knowledge economy, and everything we think we knew about jobs and college is eroding. So what do we do? This post lays out a path forward for an AI future...
natesnewsletter.substack.com
June 27, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Smart piece on AI and college degrees: "students cheating with ChatGPT aren't lazy—they're rational actors in an irrational system They're using 21st-century tools to game 19th-century assessments for 11th-century credentials. The real scandal is that we're still pretending the old game matters."
This is where all the social psych folks are these days, right? Does anyone know if Zimbardo got the idea for the Stanford Prison Experiment from the Third Wave Experiment that took place in Palo Alto (where Stanford is) 4 years before. Never seen a connection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thi...
The Third Wave (experiment) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
June 20, 2025 at 11:44 PM
This is where all the social psych folks are these days, right? Does anyone know if Zimbardo got the idea for the Stanford Prison Experiment from the Third Wave Experiment that took place in Palo Alto (where Stanford is) 4 years before. Never seen a connection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thi...
Is someone you love applying to college in the next 3 years? The lessons I learned in my new substack post including: the statistics you can find are mostly meaningless (Lesson 6) and early decision (ED) is mostly a scam (Lesson 12). Here is the link: open.substack.com/pub/matthewl...
June 3, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Is someone you love applying to college in the next 3 years? The lessons I learned in my new substack post including: the statistics you can find are mostly meaningless (Lesson 6) and early decision (ED) is mostly a scam (Lesson 12). Here is the link: open.substack.com/pub/matthewl...
This is pretty brilliant on multiple levels
May 28, 2025 at 9:26 PM
This is pretty brilliant on multiple levels
Wisdom of the crowd takes 5 time world chess champion to a draw www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/s...
Magnus Carlsen held to draw by 143,000 opponents in largest ever online chess game after 46 days of competing | CNN
Magnus Carlsen is vastly successful against just one opponent. And even when he came up against many more, the Norwegian showed he can hold his own.
www.cnn.com
May 21, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Wisdom of the crowd takes 5 time world chess champion to a draw www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/s...
Mental health interventions in the classroom do not help and sometimes makes things worse www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work | Lucy Foulkes
All-class therapy sessions don’t help, and may even make matters worse. The evidence shows we need different solutions, says Dr Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at Oxford University
www.theguardian.com
May 21, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Mental health interventions in the classroom do not help and sometimes makes things worse www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Excited to share my new TiCS paper, currently free to download. After 40 years since I was first obsessed with consciousness, I finally wrote a paper directly about it. A thread on the paper's plot line below. 1/8
May 19, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Excited to share my new TiCS paper, currently free to download. After 40 years since I was first obsessed with consciousness, I finally wrote a paper directly about it. A thread on the paper's plot line below. 1/8
Cool new "marshmallow" self-control study. It's about interpersonal emotion regulation. gizmodo.com/new-twist-on...
New Twist on Famous Marshmallow Test: What Happens When You Add a Second Kid?
New research gives the famous marshmallow test a makeover, showing that having support from a buddy makes children more likely to resist temptation and wait for a bigger reward.
gizmodo.com
May 13, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Cool new "marshmallow" self-control study. It's about interpersonal emotion regulation. gizmodo.com/new-twist-on...
Maybe we shouldn’t be so doom and gloom about students using ChatGPT for learning. This is consistent with my own experience. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis
www.nature.com
May 12, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Maybe we shouldn’t be so doom and gloom about students using ChatGPT for learning. This is consistent with my own experience. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Awesome work from @mollycrockett and co on the limits of the limits of introspective accuracy
x.com/that_adammor...
x.com/that_adammor...
x.com
May 11, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Awesome work from @mollycrockett and co on the limits of the limits of introspective accuracy
x.com/that_adammor...
x.com/that_adammor...
The cuts to NIH and NSF will cost 100s of billions in the short term and will reduce GPT by ~7% over the next 25-30 years
May 3, 2025 at 4:42 PM
The cuts to NIH and NSF will cost 100s of billions in the short term and will reduce GPT by ~7% over the next 25-30 years
The scientific catastrophe has formally arrived. This is what Trump's budget would do to science funding in the US. Science funding after WWII is what made the US the powerhouse it is. Is there any US advantage Trump won't squander?
May 3, 2025 at 4:33 PM
The scientific catastrophe has formally arrived. This is what Trump's budget would do to science funding in the US. Science funding after WWII is what made the US the powerhouse it is. Is there any US advantage Trump won't squander?
The scientific catastrophe has formally arrived. Trump's budget for next year would cut scientific funding by 40% (NIH) to 55% (NSF). NIH would no longer fund psychology (though neuroscience would get its own institute). This would be a disaster if passed. www.reuters.com/business/hea...
Trump budget proposes drastic cuts for US scientific research
The White House wants to reduce U.S. health spending by more than a quarter next year, with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facing the brunt of billions of dollars in cuts.
www.reuters.com
May 3, 2025 at 4:22 PM
The scientific catastrophe has formally arrived. Trump's budget for next year would cut scientific funding by 40% (NIH) to 55% (NSF). NIH would no longer fund psychology (though neuroscience would get its own institute). This would be a disaster if passed. www.reuters.com/business/hea...
Academics - ever wonder what the book of your lecture course would look like? I have the transcript of my class and it would be over 800 pages. Looks like someone needs an editor.
April 30, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Academics - ever wonder what the book of your lecture course would look like? I have the transcript of my class and it would be over 800 pages. Looks like someone needs an editor.
How has Google not figured out it is sitting on a non-monetized gold mine. Create an LLM trained on every manuscript and article in Google Scholar. Every scientist would pay $20/month to be able to speak to a full up-to-date literature.
April 27, 2025 at 11:47 PM
How has Google not figured out it is sitting on a non-monetized gold mine. Create an LLM trained on every manuscript and article in Google Scholar. Every scientist would pay $20/month to be able to speak to a full up-to-date literature.
If you use ChatGPT a lot (and have 'memory' turned on so it knows everything from all your conversations) ask it "Based on everything you know about me, what are my biggest blindspots about myself". Very eye opening.
April 20, 2025 at 4:07 AM
If you use ChatGPT a lot (and have 'memory' turned on so it knows everything from all your conversations) ask it "Based on everything you know about me, what are my biggest blindspots about myself". Very eye opening.
The line between brains and computer chips just got blurrier. Everyday chips made to work like neurons with a simple modification. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Synaptic and neural behaviours in a standard silicon transistor - Nature
A standard commercial CMOS FET can exhibit synaptic-like long-term potentiation and depression or neuron-like leaky-integrate-and-fire and adaptive frequency-bursting behaviour when biased in a specif...
www.nature.com
April 5, 2025 at 5:03 PM
The line between brains and computer chips just got blurrier. Everyday chips made to work like neurons with a simple modification. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
For academics - Just asked ChatGPT Pro (decided to try for a month) to critique a manuscript of mine and to tell me what different camps would likely push back on. Too humbling to share here but outstanding review. Suggested multiple next studies to run. Very valuable.
April 3, 2025 at 5:28 PM
For academics - Just asked ChatGPT Pro (decided to try for a month) to critique a manuscript of mine and to tell me what different camps would likely push back on. Too humbling to share here but outstanding review. Suggested multiple next studies to run. Very valuable.