Currently recruiting 2 postdoc fellows, 1 Ph.D student and 1 research assistant to work on research projects about the EEG/fMRI mechanisms underlying temporal cognition and their modulations using VR.
DM if interested!
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
Excited to share latest study from the lab by an amazing RA, Dylan Flink.
We solved a small (important) puzzle while in the trenches of a larger (wavy 🌊) puzzle.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵...
Postdoctoral research position in #ComputationalPsychiatry and #EEG as part of relmed.ac.uk trial testing reinforcement learning as biomarker for antidepressant treatment response. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @mikebrowning.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social
Graphical visualization of the research question
Your stomach called – your striatum picked up!
But does this actually happen in humans?
Using simultaneous dopamine PET/fMRI, we show that the gut hormone ghrelin helps the brain adjust motivation to current metabolic need.
Here’s what we found👇
Preprint: shorturl.at/pq4A3
#neuroskyence #🩺
Thrilled to share that I’ve been awarded a Newton International Fellowship, which will take me to @ucl.ac.uk next year to work with @drrickadams.bsky.social on all things E/I balance and computational psychiatry. Thank you @royalsociety.org, what an unbelievable privilege. See you in London! ✈️🗺️🧠
Thank you A/P Collins for a fantastic and thought provoking keynote #ACNS2025
Great start to #ACNS2025 with pre-conference workshops held at @deakinuniversity.bsky.social
Lovely campus!
📣🔥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!
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.
A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.
A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.
The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:
a 🧵 1/n
Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Congrats Sam that’s huge!
🚀 We’re hiring - Join our lab 🚀
🔍 Hiring: PhD (75% TV-L) & Postdoc (100% TV-L)
🧠 fMRI, VR, EEG, modelling
We combine a range of cognitive neuroscience methods to study flexible behaviour.
📅 Start: Feb 2026 or later | ⏳ Apply by Nov 3!
More details:
tinyurl.com/ms3a9ajt
#CognitiveNeuroscience
Regular lunch spot at @monashuniversity.bsky.social complete with ducks 🦆 ✅
Please spread the word! I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle (Fall 2026 start) to join my team in a new venture: the neuroscience of mood.
If you are curious to learn more, this short talk provides a good overview of why, what and how.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIK...
New #job alert! Clinical research fellow / postdoc in #computationalpsychiatry at the @mpc-comppsych.bsky.social / @uclqsion.bsky.social and UCL psychiatry. We will aim to understand the computations engaged by serotonin in the treatment of depression. Please re-sky. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
Post doc job alert 📢! Announcing a v exciting job on a Wellcome-funded project in my group at UCL, looking at auditory hallucinations... Advert here 👀: rb.gy/230w8l - deadline is end of Oct. Please apply! 1/5
Computational postdoc ad for KCL funded by the Wellcome Trust on the NEPTUNE project
🧠 We're hiring a computational postdoc!
3+ years with me & @mitulamehta.bsky.social on @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded social cognition/paranoia research at the IoPPN.
Lead & develop computational work, collaborate with experimentalists on psychosis/THC data.
DM for details! lnkd.in/eCMy9Jf5
Fascinating article (long read) from the New Yorker about psychosis and psychiatry, and more broadly about identity
Book cover: The Nature of Emotion (Ekman, Davidson)
What's the difference between emotions & moods?
While old (1994), this book dives into it.
Richard Davidson suggests a functional difference, whereby emotions bias action and moods bias cognition. (Hmmm... the action/cognition distinction is a tricky one).
psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-...
Looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night, we see not only its content (a French village beneath a night sky) but also its *style*. How does that work? How do we see style?
In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I take an experimental approach to style perception! osf.io/preprints/ps...
🔥💥📣 Excited to announce a new policy at the Computational Psychiatry (CPSY) journal @cpsyjournal.bsky.social. Starting from April 2025, CPSY will compensate reviewers for their time and effort invested in reviewing manuscripts. w/ @drrickadams.bsky.social
cpsyjournal.org/articles/10....
5/5
I liked the German tradition of knocking on the table instead of clapping - that was cool! ✊👏
4/5
German audiences seem very engaged, with emphasis on questions / discussion after a talk to further probe the work presented - an immense improvement on Australia imo. I do wonder if the pervasive casual-ness in Australian culture is sometimes a barrier to serious critical engagement. 🙋💡
3/5
Germany seems quite formal and hierarchical, including (especially?) in academia. This was fascinating coming from Australia, which is famously the opposite! (I can barely figure out Dear vs. Hi, so I’m confident I’d struggle with Sie vs. Du!) 👔🫡
2/5
Students and junior researchers appear to be operating at a very high level. This surely reflects the quality of training, but also that these fields are highly competitive at German universities, with entry requirements comparable to medicine in some cases. 🧠📈
Some reflections from my foray into German 🇩🇪 #psychology #neuroscience academia
🧵 1/5
We’re hiring for a major role in the US, an investigative journalist to cover what’s happening with science in the US and beyond. This is extremely important territory for us. 🧪
workforus.theguardian.com/jobs/795 The Guardian :: Senior Science Investigative Reporter
We are hiring for several research positions for this grant, starting early next year. Please reach out if you're interested!
More details on the jobs here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...
Haha true and anyway it turns out that hot coffee makes a decent icebreaker!
Bloopers reel of #CPConf2025:
-Spilling coffee onto an editor of a prominent journal 😑
-Finding that the QR code on my poster was redirecting to a site selling dodgy QR codes 💀
