Blair Shevlin
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bshev.bsky.social
Blair Shevlin
@bshev.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Icahn School of Medicine. Computational Psychiatry. Neuroeconomics. Decision-Making
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Y’all are reading this paper in the wrong way.

We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:

This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA

It’s quite the opposite!

(thread)
“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”
Neural dynamics outside task-coding dimensions drive decision trajectories through transient amplification
Most behaviors involve neural dynamics in high-dimensional activity spaces. A common approach is to extract dimensions that capture task-related variability, such as those separating stimuli or choice...
www.biorxiv.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
‼️Now published in @imagingneurosci.bsky.social‼️
(with @judithschepers.bsky.social & @benediktehinger.bsky.social)

Do you have RTs in your 🧠📈-data? Fixation durations?

How do event-durations affect your data? And how to deal with this?

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

🧵 ⤵ 1 / 7

🧪 #EEG #fMRI #neuroimage
November 25, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
How do mood and psychotic disorders differentially affect effort-cost decision-making 💪💰 and how is that related to subjective value representation ⭐?

Learn more here 👇
Understanding Effort-Cost Decision-Making Mechanisms in Mood and Psychotic Disorders: A Computational Modeling Approach Across Physical and Cognitive Effort Paradigms
Effort-cost decision-making (ECDM) is a core component of motivational deficits across diagnostic boundaries, yet mechanisms underlying ECDM deficits are not yet fully understood. Importantly,…
www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org
November 25, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
In this systematic review, Kabotyanski and colleagues summarize how intracranial neural biomarkers relate to psychiatric symptoms and can guide the development of closed-loop neuromodulatory therapies, emphasizing the need to consider disorder-specific time constants for effective implementation.
Intracranial neural biomarkers of psychiatric symptoms and their utility for guiding neuromodulation therapy: a systematic review
The quest to develop and improve neuromodulatory therapies for treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders has been fueled by the discovery of intracranial neural biomarkers of symptom dimensions. These...
www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com
October 13, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
In this study, Piray shows a problem of low statistical power in many studies that use Bayesian model selection with computational modelling in psychology and neuroscience.
Addressing low statistical power in computational modelling studies in psychology and neuroscience - Nature Human Behaviour
Piray shows a problem of low statistical power in many studies that use Bayesian model selection in the context of computational modelling in psychology and human neuroscience.
www.nature.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
New paper in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, where we show how attention impacts political choices. With an eye-tracking study, we find that people's votes aren't set in stone - they take longer to vote on divisive issues and can be swayed by gaze manipulations. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.
authors.elsevier.com
November 21, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
📣🔥Thrilled to announce that 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference will take place in New Haven, CT, btw July 14-16 -
www.cpconf.org

@robbrutledge.bsky.social @drrickadams.bsky.social @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social @docqhuys.bsky.social @clairegillan.bsky.social Sonia Bishop

More info to come soon!
November 21, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
New pontification piece with @awestbrook.bsky.social and Jean Daunizeau, just out in TICS:
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
(or why does it hurt to think)

never written a review paper before in my life, that was a new and unusual experience
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
A widespread observation is that people avoid mentally effortful courses of action, and much recent work examining cognitive effort has explained subjective effort evaluation – and, consequently, pref...
www.cell.com
November 19, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
📢 New preprint! 📢

Very excited to be a part of the project led by
@saurabhbedi.bsky.social on how the brain learns from multimodal inputs (e.g. audiovisual):

Separable neurocomputational mechanisms underlying multisensory learning
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 19, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
I remember reading a paper on the causal confounds involved in analyzing only RTs from successful trials, but I can't find it again. Maybe, @dingdingpeng.the100.ci, you mentioned it at a certain point?
November 19, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Oh tragic irony: online research made LLMs possible, LLMs kill online research
November 18, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
🧠Our new preprint is out on PsyArXiv!

We study how getting more feedback (seeing what you could have earned) and facing gains vs losses change the way people choose between risky and safe options.
🖇️Link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

It's a thread🧶:
November 16, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
New paper in CPS 🎉: We developed and validated a novel trial-by-trial belief update task, which allowed us to examine the association with depression quite precisely: dep symptoms were related to a slower update of established negative beliefs following pos info. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Intraindividual Trajectories of Belief Updating in Relation to Depressive Symptoms: Reduced Integration of Positive Performance Feedback - Sebastian Meyerhöfer, Charlotte Ottenstein, Lukas Kirchner, L...
Previous research suggests that depression is related to difficulties with revising established negative expectations. However, it is not yet clear how precisel...
journals.sagepub.com
November 14, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
How do we succeed at self-control? In a new paper in @pnas.org with James Wilson, David Kalkstein, and Melissa Ferguson, we use mouse-tracking of ~47,000 decisions of long-term over short-term to show that 'willpower' is too narrow a conception of self-control www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
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
November 12, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Going to SfN this year? Come share your science journey with
@investnscience.bsky.social — from the questions that drive your work to the breakthroughs that inspire you. We are a group of scientists highlighting how science benefits everyone.

DM me to sign up or with any questions!
Going to SfN? We want to connect with you!

Meet up with us to collaborate and share your science journey: from the questions that drive your work to the breakthroughs that inspire you.

Sign up here:
calendly.com/investnscien...

And share with your science friends!
November 12, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
🧠 New paper on breathing and the brain, out now
@plos.org Computational Biology! 🫁
"The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making"
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
We show how respiratory 'tidal computations' alter our decisons!
The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making
Author summary Breathing is more than just a vital process for survival — it influences how we perceive and interact with the world around us. Recent research suggests that the rhythm of breathing, fr...
doi.org
August 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#blueprint 1/7
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning - Nature Neuroscience
Dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors naturally fluctuates over females’ reproductive cycles with estrogenic signaling due to reduced expression of dopamine reuptake proteins.
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
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.
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
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text

But... can they? We don’t actually know.

In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.

And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
arxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
🚨 Paper alert 👇
Does war trauma leave a lasting imprint on civilians’ brains🧠?

We analyzed ~40k MRIs in the #UKBiobank, including ~6k of people born during WWII. Those exposed to close bombings in-utero show differences in brain structure, even decades later.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 7, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
📢 PhD opportunity 📢

Looking for a PhD in neuroeconomics, social, or decision neuroscience? I'm looking to support an application for the MIBTP ESRC program starting Fall 2026. Details below, but please get in touch with me before applying!

Pls share!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Cooperative Behaviour at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Cooperative Behaviour at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Interested in how we make preference-driven decisions, and how this is implemented in the brain?

We report that neural correlates of evidence accumulation (CPP, Mu/Beta) are also observed during value-based decisions.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Led by @laurencf.bsky.social (Lauren Fong)

1/n
Tracing the neural trajectories of evidence accumulation and motor preparation processes during voluntary decisions
Voluntary decisions have previously been described by where they arise in the brain and how actions corresponding to one's choice are prepared. However, the processes by which these internally guided ...
www.biorxiv.org
November 3, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Still think brain regions don’t exist? That everything is everywhere? That cell types don’t matter and that everything is a dynamical phase portrait?

Wrong.

Interconnected brain modules exist at the level of fine grained transcriptomics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Whole-cortex in situ sequencing reveals input-dependent area identity - Nature
BARseq interrogates the expression of 104 cell-type marker genes in 10.3 million cells over nine mouse forebrain hemispheres to reveal the role of peripheral inputs on cortical area development.
www.nature.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
An in-depth look at the video team that helped so many people get into the Zohran Mamdani campaign: defector.com/selling-zohran
Selling Zohran | Defector
On a cool Sunday in November, a few days after Donald Trump’s re-election, Zohran Mamdani stood on a street corner in Jamaica, Queens, holding up a hastily drawn cardboard sign that read “DID YOU…
defector.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Blair Shevlin
Alright, let my first action on this platform be to share our new paper.

"Sleep Reactivity Amplifies the Impact of Pre-Sleep Cognitive Arousal on Sleep Disturbances"

Led by Noof Shaif /w Ju Lynn Ong, Julian Lim, Anthony Reffi, and Michael Chee
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
<em>Journal of Sleep Research</em> | ESRS Journal | Wiley Online Library
This study investigates how sleep reactivity moderates the ‘stress-pre-sleep arousal-sleep’ pathway in university students. At the within-individual level, both high and low sleep-reactive groups sho...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 3, 2025 at 11:40 PM