Dr Poppy Watson
@popwatson.bsky.social
University of Technology Sydney, Lecturer in Psychology. Attention, reward, control, associative learning, habits, goal directed, PIT, addiction
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions
Nature Neuroscience - Liu and colleagues show that the vigor (that is, speed and amplitude) of dexterous movements is not controlled by ongoing fluctuations in extracellular dopamine within the...
rdcu.be
November 10, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
This is a fantastic resource - good to see some behavioural measures in there
New preprint from the lab led by @violetchae.bsky.social! We debut an open EEG dataset for research into food cognition and dietary choices.
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Our new preprint on the FOODEEG open dataset is out! EEG recordings and behavioural responses on food cognition tasks for 117 participants will be made publicly available 🧠 @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social @tgro.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 11, 2025 at 8:42 AM
This is a fantastic resource - good to see some behavioural measures in there
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
New preprint from the lab led by @violetchae.bsky.social! We debut an open EEG dataset for research into food cognition and dietary choices.
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Our new preprint on the FOODEEG open dataset is out! EEG recordings and behavioural responses on food cognition tasks for 117 participants will be made publicly available 🧠 @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social @tgro.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
FOODEEG: An open dataset of human electroencephalographic and behavioural responses to food images
Investigating the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying food choices has the potential to advance our understanding of eating behaviour and inform health-targeted interventions and policy. Large, publi...
www.biorxiv.org
November 11, 2025 at 1:50 AM
New preprint from the lab led by @violetchae.bsky.social! We debut an open EEG dataset for research into food cognition and dietary choices.
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Featuring data from 117 different brains relating to 120 different food stimuli.
@tgro.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Can what you eat (or not eat) save the Planet? I talk with Prof Karen Charlton about @thelancet.com #Planetary #Diet + eating habits to boost planetary health.🎧Spotify shorturl.at/q8OrL
📺YouTube youtu.be/IPS2Syzdgas @nmnteatwell.bsky.social @hmriaustralia.bsky.social @dietitiansaus.bsky.social
📺YouTube youtu.be/IPS2Syzdgas @nmnteatwell.bsky.social @hmriaustralia.bsky.social @dietitiansaus.bsky.social
Can what you eat (or choose not to eat) save the Planet? ... with Professor Karen Charlton
YouTube video by Nutrition Science Bites
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Can what you eat (or not eat) save the Planet? I talk with Prof Karen Charlton about @thelancet.com #Planetary #Diet + eating habits to boost planetary health.🎧Spotify shorturl.at/q8OrL
📺YouTube youtu.be/IPS2Syzdgas @nmnteatwell.bsky.social @hmriaustralia.bsky.social @dietitiansaus.bsky.social
📺YouTube youtu.be/IPS2Syzdgas @nmnteatwell.bsky.social @hmriaustralia.bsky.social @dietitiansaus.bsky.social
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Opportunity for early career researchers to spend 3 years working with us in Oxford. Cool surroundings, interesting people. Eligibility: need some UK academic connection. Get in touch if interested! Details: www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/11...
November 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Opportunity for early career researchers to spend 3 years working with us in Oxford. Cool surroundings, interesting people. Eligibility: need some UK academic connection. Get in touch if interested! Details: www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/11...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
🚀 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
November 6, 2025 at 10:56 AM
🚀 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 🙌
This must be what the students are using 😁
I got an invitation to use the "Nature Research Assistant", put up a paper on intuitive physics and asked it for more references to relevant papers; can you guess why I marked those parts in red
October 29, 2025 at 8:42 AM
This must be what the students are using 😁
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
I got an invitation to use the "Nature Research Assistant", put up a paper on intuitive physics and asked it for more references to relevant papers; can you guess why I marked those parts in red
October 28, 2025 at 1:08 PM
I got an invitation to use the "Nature Research Assistant", put up a paper on intuitive physics and asked it for more references to relevant papers; can you guess why I marked those parts in red
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
First clinical trial with a non-hallucinogenic psychedelic analogue!
"Rapid, robust and durable antidepressant effect": ~50% drop on the MADRS.
Maybe you don't need the 'trip' for a good antidepressant effect after all? Wild stuff. Only a press release so far...
www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...
"Rapid, robust and durable antidepressant effect": ~50% drop on the MADRS.
Maybe you don't need the 'trip' for a good antidepressant effect after all? Wild stuff. Only a press release so far...
www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...
www.businesswire.com
October 28, 2025 at 7:03 PM
First clinical trial with a non-hallucinogenic psychedelic analogue!
"Rapid, robust and durable antidepressant effect": ~50% drop on the MADRS.
Maybe you don't need the 'trip' for a good antidepressant effect after all? Wild stuff. Only a press release so far...
www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...
"Rapid, robust and durable antidepressant effect": ~50% drop on the MADRS.
Maybe you don't need the 'trip' for a good antidepressant effect after all? Wild stuff. Only a press release so far...
www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...
After a busy semester of teaching it is so nice to be at the Biological Psychiatry Australia Conference. First up today is @foldi.bsky.social and team with the development of a 'library of animal models', which sounds like a fantastic resource for researchers studying clinical symptoms/disorders
October 27, 2025 at 10:20 PM
After a busy semester of teaching it is so nice to be at the Biological Psychiatry Australia Conference. First up today is @foldi.bsky.social and team with the development of a 'library of animal models', which sounds like a fantastic resource for researchers studying clinical symptoms/disorders
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
This looks very appealing for someone looking to do a PhD in sunny Malaga (Spain) with an excellent mentor and team.
JOB ALERT: I am offering a 4-year funded PhD opportunity. The position is specifically linked to the project “Assessing the balance between goal-directed and habitual processing through the course of learning". The project is about learning habits and include eye tracking and pupillometry...
October 24, 2025 at 10:26 AM
This looks very appealing for someone looking to do a PhD in sunny Malaga (Spain) with an excellent mentor and team.
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Wow. The dopamine story is constantly evolving and this looks like a very interesting study. We know from the work of @melissajsharpe.bsky.social (and others) that the standard explanations for dopamine function are insufficient, could this help explain a bit more? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dopamine dynamics during stimulus-reward learning in mice can be explained by performance rather than learning - Nature Communications
VTA dopamine activity control movement-related performance, not reward prediction errors. Here, authors show that behavioral changes during Pavlovian learning explain DA activity regardless of reward ...
www.nature.com
October 21, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Wow. The dopamine story is constantly evolving and this looks like a very interesting study. We know from the work of @melissajsharpe.bsky.social (and others) that the standard explanations for dopamine function are insufficient, could this help explain a bit more? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
𝗘𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻??
Astrocytes in the regulation of fear memories!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroskyence
h/t @claeneuro.bsky.social
Astrocytes in the regulation of fear memories!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroskyence
h/t @claeneuro.bsky.social
The astrocytic ensemble acts as a multiday trace to stabilize memory - Nature
Emotional experience evokes signalling in astrocytes, which form an ensemble that is reinforced by secondary astrocytic state changes resulting from repeated experience, leading to memory stabilizatio...
www.nature.com
October 21, 2025 at 5:57 PM
𝗘𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻??
Astrocytes in the regulation of fear memories!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroskyence
h/t @claeneuro.bsky.social
Astrocytes in the regulation of fear memories!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroskyence
h/t @claeneuro.bsky.social
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Debating between the need in science to document and produce evidence and the waste of proving what we all knew.
AI as a source for useless research endeavours. 🤔
AI as a source for useless research endeavours. 🤔
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models
"Furthermore, when generating and evaluating resumes, ChatGPT assumes that women are younger and less experienced, rating older male applicants as of higher quality."
No surprise, but now documented:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"Furthermore, when generating and evaluating resumes, ChatGPT assumes that women are younger and less experienced, rating older male applicants as of higher quality."
No surprise, but now documented:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature
Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differ...
www.nature.com
October 16, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Debating between the need in science to document and produce evidence and the waste of proving what we all knew.
AI as a source for useless research endeavours. 🤔
AI as a source for useless research endeavours. 🤔
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Sleep is still a bit of a mystery! Beautiful article from @vyazovskiy.bsky.social!
aeon.co/essays/two-b...
aeon.co/essays/two-b...
Two billion humans are doing something bizarre right now: sleeping | Aeon Essays
It is our biggest blind spot, a bizarre experience that befalls us every day, and can’t be explained by our need for rest
aeon.co
October 16, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Sleep is still a bit of a mystery! Beautiful article from @vyazovskiy.bsky.social!
aeon.co/essays/two-b...
aeon.co/essays/two-b...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
This article is now published in @plosone.org. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... New analysis added: seemingly habitual responses are explained because contingency deg didn't work for some participants (in line with recent outcome dev results in our lab and in @clairegillan.bsky.social lab)
The degraded contingency test fails to detect habit induction in humans
In experimental psychology and behavioral neuroscience, habits are considered stimulus-response (S-R) associations formed through extended reward training. Accordingly, habits are assessed using one o...
journals.plos.org
October 16, 2025 at 7:31 AM
This article is now published in @plosone.org. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... New analysis added: seemingly habitual responses are explained because contingency deg didn't work for some participants (in line with recent outcome dev results in our lab and in @clairegillan.bsky.social lab)
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
We're searching for a tenure track assistant professor in clinical psychology here at the University of Arizona! Come to Tucson-- great place to live and work! 🌄🌵🏀 @uarizona.bsky.social
arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
Assistant Professor, Psychology (T/TE)
The candidate will be
expected to build and sustain an externally funded, nationally recognized
research program, provide effective instruction at the...
arizona.csod.com
October 13, 2025 at 8:33 PM
We're searching for a tenure track assistant professor in clinical psychology here at the University of Arizona! Come to Tucson-- great place to live and work! 🌄🌵🏀 @uarizona.bsky.social
arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Fresh from the press 🍃
In this article, we put forward a framework for understanding goal-directed and habitual control. We propose how interactive loops in the brain & shortcuts between them may shape our behavior – and that of Transformers. Looking forward to your thoughts💡
doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
In this article, we put forward a framework for understanding goal-directed and habitual control. We propose how interactive loops in the brain & shortcuts between them may shape our behavior – and that of Transformers. Looking forward to your thoughts💡
doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
Redirecting
doi.org
October 14, 2025 at 7:41 AM
Fresh from the press 🍃
In this article, we put forward a framework for understanding goal-directed and habitual control. We propose how interactive loops in the brain & shortcuts between them may shape our behavior – and that of Transformers. Looking forward to your thoughts💡
doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
In this article, we put forward a framework for understanding goal-directed and habitual control. We propose how interactive loops in the brain & shortcuts between them may shape our behavior – and that of Transformers. Looking forward to your thoughts💡
doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
“If our job as journalists is to hold truth to power, then surely asking legitimate questions – politely – to the President of the United States should be acceptable. But in this day and age in America now, it’s not,”
ABC’s Americas editor John Lyons
ABC’s Americas editor John Lyons
September 17, 2025 at 7:24 AM
“If our job as journalists is to hold truth to power, then surely asking legitimate questions – politely – to the President of the United States should be acceptable. But in this day and age in America now, it’s not,”
ABC’s Americas editor John Lyons
ABC’s Americas editor John Lyons
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment @theage
www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...
www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...
September 15, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment @theage
www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...
www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
This is what meetings with undergraduate dissertation students are like.
October 10, 2025 at 8:17 AM
This is what meetings with undergraduate dissertation students are like.
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Would love some recommendations for biostats texts! Especially biostatistics using R. Feeling a little out of my depth with this, but hoping to find a great resource for self-teaching.
October 7, 2025 at 9:37 PM
Would love some recommendations for biostats texts! Especially biostatistics using R. Feeling a little out of my depth with this, but hoping to find a great resource for self-teaching.
Reposted by Dr Poppy Watson
Deadline 11/15 "candidates whose work develops computational methods in any area of linguistics and specifically connects linguistics to artificial intelligence" faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793
October 7, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Deadline 11/15 "candidates whose work develops computational methods in any area of linguistics and specifically connects linguistics to artificial intelligence" faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793