Matthew Apps

📢 New publication! 📢 Excited to share our new paper "Preserved higher-order mentalising during strategic interactions after medial prefrontal cortex damage" in collaboration with @thepsychologist.bsky.social's lab - out now in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📢 New paper 📢 I am excited to report that our paper 'Transdiagnostic factors differentially shape choices and decision times in social evaluative learning' is now published Open Access in Psychological Medicine! 1/5

We’re hiring two postdocs! Join the our Lab @unibirmingham.bsky.social to uncover how the brain resolves behavioural conflicts. Deadline: 22 September 2026 @wellcometrust.bsky.social Please share! www.rezavallab.org

Looking to work with a postdoc. Prior experience with fMRI and computational modeling required, interest in psychiatry desired. Fellowship provides three years salary plus independent travel/equipment funds. Send CV and 2-3 manuscripts (preprints OK).

New paper out in J. Neuro! We used MEG and pattern classifiers to ask: if a memory is reactivated in the brain, does that mean you'll recall it? Short answer: no. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1... Read on for the details! [1/7] #neuroscience #memory

Job! My lab is hiring a pre-doctoral research assistant to work on the neural computations of foraging, seeking common cross-species algorithms. In collaboration with @brainapps.bsky.social & Nathan Lepora. Closes April 21st Pls share! jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

New paper out now 🙂👇 link.springer.com/article/10.3...

I'm more and more convinced that low-dimensional manifolds in the brain are just an artifact of the experimental designs and analyses we use... 🧠📈 🧪

We are hiring a new Ph. D. student on neuroimaging and/or computational modeling on motivation and emotion. Tübingen is a great place to pursue work on these topics!! uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/...

*PhD funding through the @mrcaimdtp.bsky.social* interested in doing a PhD aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms underlying how sleep impacts on motivation in health and Parkinsons Disease? Want to learn computational modelling & brain imaging? Get in touch. more.bham.ac.uk/mrc-aim/phd-...

My very first paper is finally out in @pnas.org, with Catherine Tallon-Baudry and Patrick Haggard! Interoception, exteroception, the self and more, it's got it all. Also it should go open access at some point www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🌎 New paper in @commspsychol.nature.com 🌍 doi.org/10.1038/s442... There is an urgent need to choose behaviours that mitigate climate change, but these are often more effortful. Can we increase pro-environmental motivation? Joint w/ Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta & amazing international team 👇🧵

How can we encourage people to put in effort to benefit the climate? Our new task can help tell us how...

Super pleased with this one, led by the amazing PhD student and foraging expert @emmavscholey.bsky.social!

I’m thrilled to share that our paper is now published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General!🧵👇 psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Does dopamine modulate the willingness to help? New Psychology Today post, "How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others", written by me, with special thanks to @drjocutler.bsky.social and @thepsychologist.bsky.social www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-...

🎉 New paper alert! In this collaboration across 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 (n = 3,055), we developed a new pro-environmental behavior task and tested which psychological interventions actually make people more willing to put in real effort for mitigating climate change. Fully OA: tinyurl.com/2s46fppb

Read more about the story behind the project here - communities.springernature.com/posts/boosti... Thanks to all the co-authors across @sdnl.bsky.social, @msnlab.bsky.social, @thechbh.bsky.social, @uob-sop.bsky.social, @scanunit.bsky.social & others

Finally, we found that people who believe climate change is man-made and support policies to protect the planet had higher pro-environmental motivation specifically. People lower in trait apathy and who rated the task as less effortful were more likely to help both causes.

Using computational modelling, we showed that these effective interventions changed how rewards 💰 for the climate 🌍 (vs. food charity) were devalued by effort 💪. This was independent of how noisy participants' choices were 🤔

Two interventions robustly decreased the preference to help food over climate, across measures and analyses. These interventions: - decreased psychological distance to the negative effects of climate change - used system justification theory to promote pro-environmental action

We tested the 11 expert-sourced interventions from the International Climate Psychology Collaboration led by @madalina.bsky.social, @kimdoell.bsky.social, @jbakcoleman.bsky.social & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social See doi.org/10.1126/scia... & doi.org/10.1038/s415... (all the data are freely available!)

People were more willing to exert effort when: 💪 the effort required was 🔽 💰 the reward available was 🔼 In the control group without intervention, motivation was higher to provide food than mitigate climate change 🌍 ➡️ Interventions that promote climate motivation are key

3,055 ppts from 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 did our new online Pro-Environmental Effort Task ✨ the PEET ✨ On each trial, they choose between rest or work: exerting effort by clicking boxes to earn more credits 💪 Credits were donations to a climate charity 🌍 or a matched control food charity

How can we encourage people to put in effort to benefit the climate? Our new task can help tell us how...

Had a brilliant day at the Mechanistic Basis of Foraging conference in Birmingham so far - presenting @johalgermissen.bsky.social’s work and listening to many great speakers 🥳🧠🐠

Really delighted to share our new article in Current Biology showing that the cingulate-to-dorsolateral prefrontal pathway is not involved in trial-to-trial short-term adaptation but rather in sustained motivational control. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the @msnlab.bsky.social in the @thechbh.bsky.social. Deadline 27/11. More info: tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7