Robb Rutledge

Reading this made me tear up, and that's really special because we Germans only get to tear up twice a year. Professor Peter Fonagy, Chair of the Independent Review into Mental Health Conditions, ADHD and Autism (2026), with his letter to a young person.

Very excited to see this work from Eyiyemis Damisah's group at Yale out in @natneuro.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... They combined our gamified aversive learning task (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) with single unit recordings to show that claustrum neurons encode uncertainty

www.cell.com/trends/cogni... What if #interoception is more than accurately detecting the body? In our super-fresh Opinion in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social w/ @micahgallen.com @leahbanellis.bsky.social and Gioia Bottesi we ask a different question: what do bodily signals mean for the self?

Excited to be launching our new PhD program in Minds and Machines at UCL with co-Directors Tali Sharot and @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social To apply, find out more here: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc... Our launch event is on Nov 10th, with a cracking lineup of speakers: luma.com/cikzcth0

🚀 PhD opportunity in the Vaghi Lab, starting 2027 @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social We are looking to support applicants interested in: 🔬 precision neuroimaging 🧠 compulsivity/OCD 💻 computational approaches Available via the ESRC UBEL DTP PhD or MSc + PhD routes 🔗 surl.li/qunzzt Please share! 📢

Our newest paper, "The three biggest obstacles to solving motivated behavior, and how to overcome them," is now in press at Advances in Motivation Science 🎉 osf.io/preprints/ps... To learn more about the obstacles & solutions the paper poses, see the 🧵 below: bsky.app/profile/did:...

📖 New review out today in @natrevneuro.nature.com: Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition 🧠🧪 Full-text link to the paper is here: rdcu.be/9YK3mF7dYhFa

Happy to share the version of record of our locus coeruleus paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Prior thread on some of our discoveries in this study: bsky.app/profile/jere...

Apply to work with Joey! You won't find a better mentor. I'm looking forward to hearing about all of the cool science coming from his lab.

Good news! Early Bird Registration for #SNE2026 has been extended 🎉 Register by September 9 at 11:59 PM PT to take advantage of the discounted Early Bird rate. Join us October 9–11 in Pasadena for the SNE 2026 Annual Meeting! #Neuroeconomics

This book took about 10 years to write (or longer, depending on how you count)...I am fully on board with #SlowScience! mitpress.mit.edu/97802620450... Here are some tutorials that run example code in-browser, no back-end server or setup. #JupyterLite magic! torwager.github.io/elements-of...

Progress in Computational Psychiatry is is slowed down substantially because researchers (clinicians, cognitive neuroscientists, etc) lack the training in computational modelling and many studies dont follow the best practices in modelling. How can we change this? We've built the CPM toolbox:

Thread. I have yet to see a proper explanation of how LLMs actually work that is targeted to an informed general audience. So here is an explainer that I put together along with Tim @countzerozzz (inspired by @CIFAR_News LMB discussions).

I enjoyed writing this piece for The Transmitter. AI is a seismic change for science. What we make of it is up to us, but it’s a decision we can only make collectively. I hope more labs, and the field at large, will engage in finding a shared view of how we want to use AI.

🚨Our new reviewed preprint is out at eLife! 🎉 Using bi-daily gamified smartphone 📱 tracking, we ask: • Does depressive mood precede under-confidence, or vice versa? • How does depression affect the integration of local confidence into global confidence over time? elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Yale Psychology is hiring an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology! Review of applications will begin on September 2, 2026. Link: apply.interfolio.com/188806 Please share widely & apply!

Yale is hiring in developmental psychology (open rank )! We're especially interested in complementing and broadening our area, including via somewhat less traditionally central such as cross-cultural and comparative approaches. Feel free to reach out with questions!

Now up at @oecs-bot.bsky.social ! Looking to wrap your head around concepts & terms (and debates) in emotion & mood research (“affective science”)? Here’s a go to. oecs.mit.edu/pub/bhn7j5s7...

What a week! #CPC2026 was amazing, and it was such a joy to co-organize & host it here at Yale with @robbrutledge.bsky.social @xiaosigu.bsky.social @yiplab.bsky.social @francesghart.bsky.social & Al Powers & Katie Myerscough (our MVP!) Some highlights... 🧵

What an awesome #cpconf @ Yale! I am SO proud of my amazing students 👏👏 @noa-yadid.bsky.social won a poster award 🎉 on ITIs impact on learning @adipizanti.bsky.social lectured on our DYNA-checking model of worry @dyavetz.bsky.social presented a model of planning capacity & efficiency in aging

📣Going to #cpconf? Come see @luiantaverra.bsky.social A2 Tue 9am, Bidirectional relationship between aversive beliefs + avoidance & its association with transdiagnostic symptoms @alexnitsch.bsky.social B43 Wed 3:15pm, The role of aversive replay in avoidance behaviors in psychiatric disorders

We're excited to share the lab's findings at #Cpconf See 🧵 below & come by! C71 + poster spotlight! @adipizanti.bsky.social finds overthinking (using MB planning more effortfully without any benefit) is related to worry in 2 large datasets, and explains it with a new DYNA + internal checking model:

Very grateful to be able to travel to an academic conference in the US by train! A smooth 5-hr "high-speed" ride from DC to New Haven non-stop, lots of work done, and very excited to catch up with friends and colleagues at #cpconf #cpconf2026 🚨 My lab will be presenting 4 posters, details below 🔽

Very happy to be in New Haven at #cpconf with a bunch of the Translational Lab presenting! 🧵

After learning two equally structured graphs, an abstract relational map of their shared structure emerges in mPFC — but only after a few days 🧠 Huge thanks to all collaborators, especially @alonbaram.bsky.social for leading this and @behrenstimb.bsky.social for making so much of it possible.

Happy to share that our paper on objective quality assessment for "precision" fMRI is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social A recap of what it does, what's new since the preprint, and code you can run on your own data. cell.com/neuron/fullt...

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

Computational models are a key part of science but discovering new ones is hard! DataDIVER discovers concise models from data, which surface new mechanistic ideas and clear predictions for future experiments From Google Deepmind Neuroscience Lab + collaborators www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Full Study in Nature Neuroscience 👉 #DeepBrainStimulation induces white matter remodeling & functional changes to brain-wide networks - Satoka Fujimoto, Atsushi Fujimoto, Catherine Elorette, @russbeneuro.bsky.social, Helen Mayberg, @rudebecklab.bsky.social, et al. 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brilliant! In part b/c it holds up happiness as an illustration of what’s what 😉. But more seriously: IF YOUR SO CALLED THEORY DOESN‘T MAKE TESTABLE PREDICTIONS IT’S A FRAMEWORK. #TheoriesAreTheGoal Excellent example of an influential framework-not-a-theory here: experimentology.io/002-theories...

🎉New positions!🎉 Postdoc and Research technician openings in our lab @yale for computational psychiatry research. Technician position a great stepping stone to grad school. More info: rutledgelab.org/positions Work w/big data from our smartphone apps and large clinical samples happinessquest.app

Last weekend I received the Troland Research Award from the @nationalacademies.org. I’m so grateful to the communities who made this work possible. It's strange to receive this award at a time when much of the work being recognized is not eligible for federal funding. My remarks 👇 and a 🧵>>

📣🔥 Early bird registration now open for 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference cpconf.org at Yale July 14-16. Late-breaking abstracts now open (deadline: May 8) Trainee pre-conference (July 13) registration open (free!) See you in New Haven! #CPConf2026

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

New Annual Review with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social: “Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is.” We argue that the brain's 'planning' machinery is mostly used for learning from simulated experience, and that thinking prospectively at decision time is just one special case of this process.

To accompany my textbook (Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience) and the class I taught this semester, I'm open-sourcing my lectures slides: gershmanlab.com/lectures.html I'll continue to update these as I improve them.

Want a dataset to test ideas on neural basis of decision making or how areas interact as we make choices? Check out our data published today @rudebecklab.bsky.social. >16,000 single neurons from 22 anatomically confirmed areas in macaques performing a decision task. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 I gave Claude two things: a short paper (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) and a raw behavioural dataset with 3 lines of variable descriptions. Then I asked it to fit three computational RL models described only by equations in the manuscript. No code, no toolbox, no guidance on the fitting procedure. 1/3

🧠 Focused ultrasound changes emotional processing 🔊 In a new study published in Neuron today, we stimulated the human amygdala using transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) and show it plays a causal role in detecting and resolving emotional ambiguity.

🥁🎉The Psychosis Collective proudly presents our first preprint 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐳𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬-𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝘈 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴 starring Le He & Harriet Feldman www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We wanted to understand how antipsychotics work. Thread🧵

Excited to share our new paper proposing a new computational model accounting for the dynamic interaction btw drug #craving and #decision-making, led by Kaustubh Kulkarni, MD/PhD rdcu.be/fab6B #AddictionScience #Neuroscience #ComputationalPsychiatry #BehavioralScience

Thrilled to share our new paper, which shows that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release dynamically gates whether dopamine acts as an RPE for in vivo plasticity and reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species) he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202

Hey friends, my new paper was just published in JAMA Psychiatry. I draw on biological species classification to sketch a new framework for psychiatric nosology. Brief summary follows below. Full text link: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... 🧪 #PsychSciSky #MentalHealth