Poornima
akpoorni.bsky.social
Poornima
@akpoorni.bsky.social
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🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉
We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience.
It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic.
Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif
November 26, 2025 at 11:38 AM
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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
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Excited to share our manuscript about BrainEffeX, a tool for exploring fMRI effect sizes. Includes why we made it, how to use it + contribute, and how we made it.

@sneuroble.bsky.social @psychonetrics.bsky.social
@alexkfischbach.bsky.social
@nichols.bsky.social
@dscheinost.bsky.social & MINDS Lab
November 12, 2025 at 7:46 PM
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New preprint with @rogierk.bsky.social @paulbuerkner.com - we introduce "relative measurement uncertainty" - a reliability estimation method that's applicable across a broad class of Bayesian measurement models (e.g., generative-, computational- and item response theory-models osf.io/h54k8
OSF
osf.io
October 1, 2025 at 8:17 AM
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New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist.

Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(1/6)
September 19, 2025 at 3:19 PM
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Do you ever wish you could just use python to pull together the files and code for running FSL's randomise? Me too! I made this: github.com/jmumford/ran... It will even replace the numbers in the file outputs with contrast names of your choosing (and replace corrp with 1minusp).
GitHub - jmumford/randomise-prep: Generate design matrices, contrasts, and scripts to set up FSL randomise analyses.
Generate design matrices, contrasts, and scripts to set up FSL randomise analyses. - jmumford/randomise-prep
github.com
September 12, 2025 at 1:41 AM
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With students heading back to the classroom, a group of cognitive scientists and AI researchers has published one of the most forceful and evidence-backed calls yet to reject the "uncritical adoption of AI" in academia:
Cognitive scientists and AI researchers make a forceful call to reject “uncritical adoption" of AI in academia
A new paper calls on academia to repel rampant AI in university departments and classrooms.
www.bloodinthemachine.com
September 9, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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@ualberta.bsky.social’s Richard Sutton won the Turing Award — the Nobel Prize of computer science. 🧠💻

His work shapes how AI systems learn and reason — powering tools like chatbots — but he reminds us that AI is about “understanding humanity.”

A big win for ethical, Canadian-led research.
September 4, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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Our #CCN2025 GAC debate w/ @gretatuckute.bsky.social, Gemma Roig (www.cvai.cs.uni-frankfurt.de), Jacqueline Gottlieb (gottlieblab.com), Klaus Oberauer, @mschrimpf.bsky.social &‬ @brittawestner.bsky.social asks:

📊 What benchmarks are useful for cognitive science? 💭
2025.ccneuro.org/gac
August 13, 2025 at 7:01 AM
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August 14, 2025 at 4:27 AM
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Here’s my top line overview:
August 8, 2025 at 1:10 AM
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Update: A Trump administration effort to block all funding that flows to outside health researchers was scrapped Tuesday evening after senior White House officials intervened www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
July 30, 2025 at 3:26 AM
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I'm hiring 2+ 2.5-year postdocs over the next few months.

Job 1: looking for someone with deep expertise in computational modelling (reinforcement learning, agent based modelling) on real-world/complex data (closing: 18 August, starting: October-December), www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/52059/
July 16, 2025 at 2:51 PM
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I'm very excited that this is out as preprint. In this study, 370 participants completed up to 30 runs of reward learning. We see that BMI and and Binge eating are associated with distinct RL patterns. Includes hierarchical models using Stan (+ many hours of sampling) and MRI data of an effort task
Our big behavioral precision mapping preprint is out. Based on 1,486,950 observed choices in a reward learning task, we show that BMI is associated with higher and more variable learning rates. Binge eating was associated with lower reward sensitivity. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
June 23, 2025 at 12:23 PM
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📢BREAKING: Just left the courthouse for our NIH grant termination case

Judge ruled terminations are “VOID & ILLEGAL”

As a plaintiff, I felt a wave of relief & hope; he acknowledged the discrimination & harm

Closed by asking, ‘Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?’
June 16, 2025 at 9:26 PM
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🚨 Dataset & Manuscript alert! 🚨 The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project (TCP) manuscript is now available @natureportfolio.nature.com Scientific Data! 🎉

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵1👇
The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry
www.nature.com
June 4, 2025 at 6:30 PM
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New in Nature MentalHealth! with Vrizzi, Najar, Lemogne, and @mael-lebreton.bsky.social

We tested whether behavioural and RL-based model parameters are test-retest reliable and predict mental health traits.

The result? Not really.

A cautionary tale for comp. psychiatry
doi.org/10.1038/s442...
Behavioral, computational and self-reported measures of reward and punishment sensitivity as predictors of mental health characteristics - Nature Mental Health
Reinforcement learning task-based behavioral and computational measures displayed low test–retest reliability at the individual level. Also in contrast to self-assessed personality measures, behaviora...
doi.org
May 26, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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📢 #RLDM2025 is nearly here – 11–14 June at Trinity College Dublin ☘️

Join researchers from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond to explore the latest in reinforcement learning & decision making.

🎟️ Register now to secure your spot: rldm.org #ReinforcementLearning #AI #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience
May 26, 2025 at 12:18 PM
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🚨 New WP! 📄 "Publish or Procreate: The Effect of Motherhood on Research Performance" (w/ @valentinatartari.bsky.social
👩‍🔬👨‍🔬 We investigate how parenthood affects scientific productivity and impact — and find that the impact is far from equal for mothers and fathers.
May 22, 2025 at 8:03 AM
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My med school textbook says stimulants like Ritalin treat hyperactivity by “stimulating” the brain’s attention and cognitive control systems. We studied children taking stimulants in the ABCD Study, and the largest differences were actually in arousal and reward networks! Check out our preprint!
May 22, 2025 at 9:33 PM
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All NSF GRFPs to students choosing to attend Harvard in the Fall were just terminated
May 22, 2025 at 7:38 PM
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⛔️ UPDATE:

We obtained the full list of NIH terminations at Harvard. Lowlights:

- 659 total grants at Harvard in the NIH-created list
- $2.19 billion in total award value
- $960 million in award remaining

You can view them all using the "Harvard" tab on the airtable

grant-watch.us/nih-data.html
nih-data – Grant Watch
grant-watch.us
May 22, 2025 at 12:33 PM
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This is just epic! 🧱

Nearly 400,000 LEGO bricks have been used to create this Ferrari 👊

#F1 #MiamiGP #LEGO
May 2, 2025 at 8:31 AM
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I'm excited to share that the last chapter of my PhD thesis is now published in Nature! 🍾

What drives serotonin neurons? We think it's the expectation of future reward and --- critically --- how fast this expectation is increasing. 📈

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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A prospective code for value in the serotonin system - Nature
Merging ideas from reinforcement learning theory with recent insights into the filtering properties of the dorsal raphe nucleus, a unifying perspective is found explaining why serotonin neurons are ac...
doi.org
March 27, 2025 at 9:04 PM