Sebastian Gluth

How do people search for information to make efficient decisions? Our new theory, now out in Psychological Review, suggests that an efficient search rule is (at the core of) the answer. And eye-tracking data support our theory. Check out here (it's open access): psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Taken together, our results support a hierarchical and integrative account of multi-attribute choice, in which integrated option-value representations form the basis of choice - consistent with MASC. Sample 👁️ → Update 🧠 → Integrate ⚖️ → Choose 👆 Work together with @sgluth.bsky.social & Romy Frömer

Finally, we followed the hierarchy downstream to emerging preference. Lateralized preparatory motor activity tracked the emerging preference as the difference between option-level value representations 👆, even before the eventual response.

If option-level signals reflect integration, they should be sensitive to attribute importance - and they were, while attribute-level signals were not. Option-level signals also interacted with sampled attribute value to predict which option was eventually chosen.

And we found a striking hierarchy with dissociable effects! Attribute-level updates → fronto-central positivity Integrated option-level updates → centro-parietal positivity

Next, we asked: can we uncover signatures of MASC's proposed hierarchy in fixation-evoked neural activity? We derived fixation-level predictions from MASC regarding attribute- and option-level belief updates and tested them directly against fixation-evoked potentials! 👀🧠

To answer this question, we combined EEG & eye-tracking with our Multi-Attribute Search & Choice (MASC) theory.📊 MASC describes how each fixation updates attribute beliefs, which are then weighted and integrated into option-level representations.

Some accounts propose that attributes are integrated into single value representations for each option, which are compared to make a choice. Others assume that isolated option-level representations do not exist at all, with choices arising directly from attribute-level comparisons.

📣 NEW PREPRINT ALERT! 📣 📝Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... When choosing between options with multiple attributes, what does the brain actually compare - individual attributes or integrated option values? We combined EEG + eye-tracking to find out... and found evidence for the latter 🧠

Last week, we had our 2nd lab retreat at Schloss Basthorst! 2.5 days, 16 scientific sessions, German herbs, a boat tour, and lots of good company and team-building.🌿🍵🚤 Grateful to our amazing team for all the effort, ideas, and energy they brought along! A little glimpse of our retreat.☺️

Very excited to share our new work (my first @arxiv-cs-ai.bsky.social!) We compared mentalising abilities across human and LLMs across two games and models. We thought the field'd re-embrace the interdisciplinarity of cognitive science. Curious? Read here! 👇 arxiv.org/abs/2608.26291

New #DHPRLab paper by @wanjawolff.bsky.social and @jokeyser.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy together with @sgluth.bsky.social 💪🥳 Check out the post below, in case you're interested! ⬇️

This is a bit of a deviation from my usual effort & boredom research: with Johannes Keyser and @sgluth.bsky.social I have been working on a passion project on what makes a lab good, flexible, and future-proof. Not about AI or stats, but the physical hardware and how devices talk to each other 🤩 🧵

Now published in eLife: elifesciences.org/articles/103... We find strong evidence that activity in Pre-SMA and vmPFC scales with gaze-weighted accumulated evidence, suggesting attention directly modulates value signals in canonical decision-making circuits! 🧵 on the methods + findings:

New paper on how #stress affects #moral inference. Beliefs about „bad people“ are typically more volatile, but acute stress transiently increased belief #volatility for good people - an effect correlated with cortisol reactivity. #BayesianModeling #BeliefUpdating doi.org/10.1016/j.ps...

SNE is pleased to announce the creation of a new Committee for Early Career Researchers. ECRs are invited to help launch the committee & share ideas for programming, mentorship, networking, and advocacy within the Society. Volunteer by July 10, 2026 #SNE2026 #Neuroeconomics #EarlyCareerResearchers

Happy to see this paper out in #JNeurosci! We combine computational modeling of behavior and fMRI to better understand maladaptive decisions about what to eat.

New paper in Nature Communications 🎉 Led by @romanececchi.bsky.social, with @sgluth.bsky.social, we show that attention shapes value normalization in human reinforcement learning. Eye-tracking models explain nonlinear reward scaling better than an ad hoc parameter. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bottom line: the human brain goes far beyond simple duration tracking. It actively integrates temporal dynamics AND choice difficulty to decode what others prefer. 🧠 Many thanks to @sgluth.bsky.social for years of patience, guidance, and support with this project! Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 New preprint with @sgluth.bsky.social on social learning and EEG! 🧠 We've recently found out that, to learn about others' preferences, humans don't just look at WHAT they choose, but also HOW FAST they make a decision. How does the brain actually process this? 👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

In this work, I combined eye-tracking with fMRI to investigate how information search differs between within-domain and across-domain choices in value-based decisions. I also looked at the link between subjective value and neural activity during these decisions.

Over the past two weeks, I had the great opportunity to present my work at both #SBDM2026 in iconic Paris and #PuG2026 in picturesque Heidelberg. Thank you to the organizers for providing this environment for scientific exchange, and to everyone who stopped by to share their insightful feedback.

An interesting must-read spotlight connecting sampling rhythmicity to computational models of decision-making!

📣 New preprint 📣 "Neural Dynamics of Belief and Value Computations Guiding Strategic Social Decisions" We use EEG and computational modeling (combining learning + DDM) to explain participants' choices, RT, and neural signals in a strategic game. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Now published at Scientific Reports 🚀 If you ever wondered whether and how hunger affects your decision-making beyond food choices, make sure to check out our paper! 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🧵below

Meet the SNE 2026 invited speakers: Carlos Brody of Princeton University, Cary Frydman of the University of Southern California, and Daniela Schiller of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Join us Oct 9-11 in Pasadena! #Neuroeconomics #SNE2026 neuroeconomics.org/speakers/

🚨New preprint alert🚨 Does hunger affect your decisions beyond food? We tested whether being hungry affects attention & choice across food, intertemporal and social domains. Spoiler: the effects of hunger state on attention and choice are more limited than you might think🧵👇

I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models. A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐

Interested in information search? 👀🔍 Make sure to check out our latest theory explaining how people search for information; now out in Psychological Review! @sgluth.bsky.social @jordantdeakin.bsky.social and Jörg Rieskamp

Did someone want systematic reviews of the effects of psychedelics? We have two: A review of electrophysiology, out now in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral reviews www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... And a review of cognitive effects in J of Psychopharmacology journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Curious about how context influences decision-making? 👀🧠 Make sure to check out our symposium on Wednesday 11:00-12:30 at Room N2 #TeaP2026 Featuring✨ @tiborstoe.bsky.social @nunobusch.bsky.social @dmding.bsky.social @barbaraoberbauer.bsky.social

How does the brain decide which mental strategy to use when inferring others' beliefs? Excited to (finally!) see my first first-author paper out @natneuro.nature.com Summary below 🧵 #CogSci #CogNeuro www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thought-provoking talk at our research colloquium yesterday! 🧠 @lilweb.bsky.social presented ambitious work on testing and improving methods in computational psychiatry. We thank Lilian for her visit and the valuable discussions throughout the day in our lab!

🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉 We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience. It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic. Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif

Check out our new preprint, led by Romy Froemer and in collaboration with Chih-Chung Ting and Sebastian Gluth: “Goals shape dynamics of attention and selection for value-based decision-making”. 🔗 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Read our paper if you're curious or reach out if you have any questions. Kudos to my great coauthor team Tobia Spampatti @tspampatti.bsky.social, Sebastian Gluth @sgluth.bsky.social , Kim-Pong Tam & Ulf Hahnel. Happy Halloween everyone 🎃🧛 /end

Our new paper is out as a reviewed preprint in @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... Congrats to @hashimsat.bsky.social and our amazing collaborators on this great team effort. Special shout-out to @haukeren.bsky.social, who made this possible through his generous support 🙌

In contrast, we found only response deliberation to increase for behaviorally less effective numeric translations (carbon emissions in kg).

Our modeling results suggest that a translation in form of an evaluative rating caused participants to make more ecological choices as a result of a shift in attribute weights in favor of the translated attribute, a decreased attentional bias on the attended option, and increased deliberation.

Attribute translations promote behavior change by translating decision-relevant information into more meaningful units and have been widely adopted by policy makers (e.g., EU energy label). However, little is known about the computational mechanisms that underlie their effects on behavior.

Excited to share joint work with Ulf Hahnel and @sgluth.bsky.social on investigating how attribute translations - a widely implemented behavior intervention - lead to more ecological consumer choices. Main results are below, but check out our preprint 👇 www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

Proud to see this one out as Version of Record in #eLife doi.org/10.7554/eLif... 🥰

Excited to present our research at this epic location #EGPRO2025 with @sgluth.bsky.social, @maryamtohidi.bsky.social and @jennamarch.bsky.social 🚀

Amazing sunny team event with our lab today! ☀️ We tackled an escape room aboard the historic ship Rickmer Rickmers - nothing like solving puzzles surrounded by maritime history ⚓🧩 So lovely bonding outside the lab and putting our problem-solving skills to work in completely new settings! 🤓

Absolutely recommend! Nice environment and excellent research project

📢 New Publication 📢 Effort differentially shapes behavior before, during & after an action. w/ @bcheval.bsky.social, Silvio & Florent, we explore stage-specific effects of physical effort & how these dynamically modulate each other. Now out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences 🤩🤩 Curious? ⬇️

🧠 Job Alert: Postdoc Position Available! We're hiring a postdoc as part of the exciting DFG Research Unit on Belief Updating 🔬 🔍 What we're looking for: Strong quantitative skills & passion for belief updating research 📍 Location: University of Hamburg ⏰ Duration: 2 years, full-time 🔗 Link below