Laura Ana Bustamante, PhD
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lauraabusta.bsky.social
Laura Ana Bustamante, PhD
@lauraabusta.bsky.social
Staff scientist @WashU👩🏻‍🔬 Neuro PhD @Princeton, researching cognitive control, decision making & neurodivergent in computational psychiatry, she/her, Latina 🇨🇺. Views my own. Stand Up for Science!
Hoi #CCN2025 👋 come to poster C90 (with a great view of #Amsterdam) to hear about how working memory supported reinforcement learning is related to mental health in a representative community sample! This is my first conference as a ‘free agent’ & I’m grateful for support from the Travel Award ☺️🙏
August 15, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Really feeling you on this as I’m packing up my apartment today for the end of my postdoc! You got this 💪💪
July 30, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Got great feedback and fresh perspectives on my project. I was able to spread the word far and wide that I am looking for the next opportunity in EU/UK 📣 and feeling optimistic! Seriously outstanding conference and community #cpconf2025 🫶
July 16, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Heyy skyline #cpconf2025 has been AMAZING🤩 if you’re here catch me at poster 19 today and at the poster spotlight in 1 hour (!) to hear about relationships between working memory supported reinforcement learning and mental health phenotypes in a representative online sample!
July 16, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Friends, please join me in signing your name as a public supporter of the #BethesdaDeclaration and #SaveOurScience

Details here:
www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

#StandUpForScience #StandUpForNIH #NIH 🧪
June 9, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Both would be great thanks @gweindel.bsky.social !
June 1, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Fantastic thank you @sebastiaanmathot.bsky.social !
June 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
That would be great thank you @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social !
June 1, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Yayyy thanks @samversc.bsky.social ! 🙏
May 28, 2025 at 3:40 PM
👋 anyone with successful (or well done) #MSCA or #VENI postdoctoral fellowship applications they are willing to share for me to see examples? Will trade for cat pics 📸😹 🧪 #EU #Netherlands #AcademicChatter
May 28, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Spotted in Illinois 👀
April 20, 2025 at 11:41 AM
April 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Providing alt text :)
April 9, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Alsoo, here is the #JeffersonCity, #Missouri, #StandUpForScience rally I co-organized, w 200+ attendees who drove HOURS to the Capitol #HandsOffOurScience. Thanks to @hankgreen.bsky.social 4 the #HandsOff Higher Ed slogan. Hear me on the bullhorn 🤘 in this media clip 😋: www.komu.com/news/midmiss...
April 6, 2025 at 2:49 PM
#HandsOff in St. Louis, MO, many people turned out in the pouring rain ☔️ all along the sidewalk of a busy shopping area. Great support from passersby 🚙, there was constant honking, people driving by hung signs out of their windows, and many shouted their thanks ☺️
April 6, 2025 at 12:30 AM
🚨 TOMORROW 3/7 we unite to Stand Up For Science❣️come say hey 👋 if you join in Jefferson City, #Missouri where you’ll hear me speak on the paramount value of lived experience in #science, & the need to defend #diversity, #equity, #inclusion, and #accessibility! @standupforscience.bsky.social
March 7, 2025 at 12:39 AM
Finally, greater overall depression was related to decreased patch leaving thresholds. This is consistent w reward rate-based accounts of reduced vigor in MDD. Patch foraging may be used as an ecologically valid tool to study depression, with possibility for cross-species translation
January 26, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Greater anxiety severity was selectively associated with lower cognitive effort cost (i.e. greater willingness to exert effort) to our knowledge this direction of association has not been reported! Anhedonia symptoms were associated w increased physical effort costs, consistent with prior studies
January 26, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Contrary to our predictions, none of the decision-making measures differed with MDD diagnosis & there were mostly no group differences in effort task performance. However, each of the measures were related to symptom severity, over and above effects of ability (i.e., performance)
January 26, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Here, we used the Effort Foraging Task to quantify cognitive & physical effort costs, & patch leaving thresholds (hypothesized to reflect perceived opportunity cost of time) & investigated their shared vs distinct relationships to symptom domains in participants w MDD (N=52) and comparisons (N=27).
January 26, 2025 at 12:36 AM
As a student & then assistant instructor for an fMRI decoding course 🧠🧪 w Ken Norman we did notebook exercises with fMRI data: brainiak.org/tutorials/ . I enjoyed it as it was demystifying/made concrete. He gifted us copies of your book, which I happened to pull out to show someone this morning 😆!
January 7, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Come check out my poster #46 today at #ACNP2024 ‘Associations between Working Memory Contributions to Reinforcement Learning and Mental Health Phenotypes in a Representative Online Hypothesis-Generating Sample’ looking forward to getting your brilliant feedback!
December 11, 2024 at 2:53 PM
First time in Arizona 🏜️😎 for #ACNP2024 & feeling excited for the first conference day! Bellini wanted to come with and was unhappy there was no space in the packed suitcase… #Skychiatry @acnporg.bsky.social
December 8, 2024 at 1:35 PM
On the family grocery list I wrote ‘oat milk’ which was misread as ‘cat milk’ and fulfilled without question. I present Bellini trying cat milk: she rated it five paws ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ whilst licking off her milk mustache 😹😹😹
December 1, 2024 at 10:44 PM
This was well along my path, as I was in grad school, but Mad At School by was the first #disability studies book I read. It blew me out of the water how much needed to change for #education to be inclusive of mental disabilities 🧠, and I refocused my work on how neuroscience and psychology can help
November 19, 2024 at 9:42 AM