Dan Mirea

Dan Mirea

@danmirea.bsky.social

Incoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at UMiami. Currently a MindCORE Fellow at UPenn. PhD from Princeton. He/they 🏳️‍🌈🇷🇴. https://dan-mirea.com/

326 followers308 following41 posts

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Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Thrilled to announce that I will be joining the University of Miami as an Assistant Professor of Psychology next year! I am recruiting a PhD student to start in Fall 2027 — please reach out if you are interested in joining the lab! For more info check out my website: dan-mirea.com

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Thrilled to announce that I will be joining the University of Miami as an Assistant Professor of Psychology next year! I am recruiting a PhD student to start in Fall 2027 — please reach out if you are interested in joining the lab! For more info check out my website: dan-mirea.com

Dan Mirea reposted

Logic of Emotion Lab
@logicemotionlab.bsky.social

Congrats to @danmirea.bsky.social who led a new paper published in @jamapsychiatry.com! "The Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in Depression". jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.comThe Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in DepressionThis study investigates individual differences in the effect of social media likes on posting behavior and their association with and specificity to depressive psychopathology.
Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Full paper thread ⬇️

Dan Mirea@danmirea.bsky.social

🚨 Now out in @jamapsychiatry.com 🚨 Are people with depression less responsive to rewards on social media, just like in the lab? Actually…quite the opposite! 🧵 📄 Read the paper here: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.comThe Reinforcement Effect of Social Media Likes in DepressionThis study investigates individual differences in the effect of social media likes on posting behavior and their association with and specificity to depressive psychopathology.

Dan Mirea reposted

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Replying to @danmirea.bsky.social

We also applied a transdiagnostic approach on dataset 3, and found a double dissociation: 👍 reinforcement tendency was specifically linked to anxious-depression 🤳 behavioral persistence (a measure of posting habits) was specifically linked to compulsivity

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

We also applied a transdiagnostic approach on dataset 3, and found a double dissociation: 👍 reinforcement tendency was specifically linked to anxious-depression 🤳 behavioral persistence (a measure of posting habits) was specifically linked to compulsivity

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Altogether, the findings: ✅ highlight potential mechanisms linking social media use to mental health ✅ illustrate the importance of studying real-world behavior

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

The main finding: across all datasets, people with depressive psychopathology were❗️more❗️likely to be reinforced by likes This contrasts with lab findings of blunted sensitivity to rewards in depression

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

This suggests the link between depression and reinforcement learning might look very different in the real world, where personally meaningful, often social rewards motivate our behavior

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

There is a lot of concern about the impact of social media use on mental health, yet few studies examine psychological mechanisms using objective data. At the same time, computational psychiatry studies cognitive mechanisms of mental health, but the evidence largely comes from artificial tasks.

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

We set out to address both of these limitations with a simple idea: using social media to study the link between reinforcement learning and depression Across 3 Twitter datasets, we defined a behavioral signature of RL – reinforcement tendency – as the effect of yesterday's likes on today's posts

Dan Mirea reposted

Princeton Neuroscience Institute
@princetonneuro.bsky.social

Congrats to PNI + affiliated trainees named 2025 Honorific Fellows by the @princeton.edu Graduate School! 👏 Victor Geadah 👏 Isaac Christian 👏 @danmirea.bsky.social gradschool.princeton.edu/news/2025/ho...

gradschool.princeton.eduHonorific Fellows celebrated by Princeton Graduate School amidst 125th AnniversaryThirty-two exceptional graduate students who received named or endowed fellowships for this academic year were recently feted by the Princeton Graduate School. The honorific fellowships support advanc...

Dan Mirea reposted

Zachary Cohen
@depressionlab.bsky.social

1/n Out today in @jamapsychiatry.com: Interpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire Instructions. We find troubling variability in whether people think they should respond based on the frequency of the Sx or the frequency of being bothered by the Sx. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.comInterpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire InstructionsThis survey study assesses whether responses to the Patient Health Questionnaire reflect symptom frequency and severity.

Dan Mirea reposted

Arielle Keller
@ariellekeller.bsky.social

Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇

pnas.orgCognition varies across the calendar year in multiple large-scale datasets | PNASChildren’s cognitive abilities vary across short and long timescales, from circadian fluctuations to year-by-year developmental changes. “Summer sl...
Arielle Keller@ariellekeller.bsky.social

☀️ New preprint! ☀️ Cognitive tests from 23,000+ participants in 4 datasets show cyclical fluctuations across the calendar year, including a small but replicable “summer slide” where youth show worst performance after school vacation. t.ly/OMzgl #PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #CogDev #devpsy #CogSci Thread /1

Dan Mirea reposted

Eleanor Holton
@eleanor-holton.bsky.social

Super happy to see this review out! We ask why people are so reluctant to abandon goals and how this commitment could be understood computationally. Work with Jill O'Reilly & @yaelniv.bsky.social

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

Online Now: The adaptive value of stubborn goals

dlvr.itThe adaptive value of stubborn goalsHumans exhibit a striking tendency to persist with chosen goals. This strong attachment to goals can often appear irrational – a perspective captured by terms such as perseverance or sunk-cost biases. In this review, we explore how goal commitment could stem from several adaptive mechanisms, including those that optimise cognitive resources, shield decisions from interference, and scaffold motivation in the absence of accessible reward signals. We propose that these computational considerations have important implications for algorithmic architectures supporting decision making, including separate algorithms for goal selection and implementation, and for monitoring ongoing goals versus alternative sources of reward. Finally, we discuss how a variety of mechanisms supporting goal commitment and abandonment could relate to dimensions affected in mental health.

Dan Mirea reposted

Shawn Rhoads
@shawnrhoadsphd.com

📢 Thrilled to share our paper is out now in @natcomms.nature.com Shared computations underlie how we acquire actions that are mutually beneficial, instrumentally harmful (benefits self at the expense of others), altruistic (benefit others at the expense of self), or mutually costly 🧵 rdcu.be/eL8mZ

rdcu.beNeurocomputational basis of learning when choices simultaneously affect both oneself and othersNature Communications - When learning to make choices that simultaneously affect the self and others, asymmetric encoding of information guides future social behaviors across mutually beneficial,...

Dan Mirea reposted

Franziska Brändle
@frabraendle.bsky.social

What influences whether people have fun with a task? Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports! rdcu.be/eI069 Paper summary below 1/4

rdcu.beLeveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video gamesScientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

Dan Mirea reposted

Steve Rathje
@steverathje.bsky.social

🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵

Dan Mirea reposted

Colin Hoy
@colinwhoy.bsky.social

I strongly believe modeling behavior will be critical for understanding mental health well enough to develop new interventions, but the gap between task-based and naturalistic behavior is MASSIVE. Some great ideas here for bridging that gap!

Dan Mirea@danmirea.bsky.social

🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️

Dan Mirea reposted

Nicole Rust
@nicolecrust.bsky.social

Such an important topic: computational psychiatry at the nexus of lab-based understanding (eg of reinforcement learning and mood) and measures of real-world behavior and mental health conditions. (Scroll to the bottom for a link open to all).

Dan Mirea@danmirea.bsky.social

🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️

Dan Mirea reposted

Shawn Rhoads
@shawnrhoadsphd.com

📢 My lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is considering graduate student applications this fall We welcome applicants interested in using computational modeling & fMRI to study social connection 🗓️ Deadline: December 1, 2025 🔗 Learn more: sinclaboratory.com/apply #comppsychiatry #socialneuro

Dan Mirea reposted

Ondrej Zika
@ondrejzika.bsky.social

Fantastic paper by @danmirea.bsky.social ! 👇

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

Online Now: Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health

dlvr.itCognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental healthA core strength of computational psychiatry is its focus on theory-driven research, in which cognitive processes are precisely quantified using computational models that formalize specific theoretical mechanisms. However, the data used in these studies often come from traditional laboratory-based cognitive tasks, which have unclear ecological validity. In this review we propose that the same theoretical frameworks and computational models can be applied to real-world data such as experience sampling, passive data, and digital-behavior data (e.g., online activity such as on social media). In turn, modeling real-world data can benefit from a theory-driven computational approach to move from purely predictive to explanatory power. We illustrate these points using emerging studies and discuss the challenges and opportunities of using real-world data in computational psychiatry.
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Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Some to-dos for the field: - identify amenable types of real-world data - integrate them into data-collection pipelines alongside lab-based tasks - assess links to mental health - assess lab-based versus real-world convergent validity of parameters - expand models to accommodate real-world data

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Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Finally, we explore opportunities: 👍 Testing the generalizability of in-lab computational psychiatry findings to every-day life 👍 Incorporating linguistic behavior into cognitive models using LLMs (see figure)

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

…and challenges of this approach: ⚠️ Noisy data ⚠️ Analytical complexity ⚠️ Data collection burden ⚠️ Ethical considerations It remains to be seen whether real-world data can better computational psychiatry.

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Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

We review recent studies that probe cognition using real-world behavior, primarily in a reinforcement learning framework. Some of these have uncovered novel links to mental health (e.g. linking depression to blunted reactivity to positive prediction errors, or higher sensitivity to social rewards)

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

Computational psychiatry often relies on behavior in cognitive tasks, which are simpler, less engaging and often less social than real-world environments. By contrast, real-world data have intrinsic ecological validity and allow the continuous assessment of cognition and its variation over time.

Dan Mirea
@danmirea.bsky.social

By real-world data we mean any data that reflect a person’s every-day behavior. We distinguish 3 types: - experience sampling data (active, self-report) - passive sensing data (e.g. geolocation, physiology, social proximity) - digital-behavior data (e.g. social media, texting, phone/app navigation)

Dan Mirea reposted

Brandon C Davidson
@bcdavidson.bsky.social

🚨 New Preprint 🚨 Prolonged Isolation is associated with an increased behavioural sensitivity to ‘Likes’ on social media. 🧵 Social media rewards are inherently social—but does posting change during social isolation, when in-person social rewards are limited? It turns out, yes!

Dan Mirea reposted

Vinny Costa
@vincentcostaphd.bsky.social

This is an exquisite demonstration of using intracranial recordings in humans to validate our findings that amygdala neurons encode the value of exploring in NHPs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comRate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning - NatureHuman exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.