Peters Lab

A graphical abstract showing the research question and the operationalization of the study.

Out now in @ebiomedicine.bsky.social 🚨.
Hunger often affects our mood, but is this a conscious or a subconscious process? Using continuous glucose monitoring, we show that differences in mood are driven by hunger ratings, not just glucose. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.thelancet.com/journals/EBI...

Action repetition biases choice in context-dependent decision-making - Communications Psychology This study shows that decision biases previously attributed to value normalization (e.g. relative value learning or range normalization) are better explained by action repetition. Repeating an action ...

Very happy that this is out www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Together with @stefankiebel.bsky.social we show that decision biases in context-dependent decision making, previously attributed to different forms of value normalization, are very well explained by habit-like action repetition.

Foto: Nahaufnahme eines hellblauen, runden Smileys mit einer Hand im Vordergrund, unscharfe Person im Hintergrund.

Dopamin und das Warten auf Belohnungen🤩🎁
Eine neue Studie zeigt, dass L-DOPA, eine Vorstufe des Neurotransmitters Dopamin, Menschen dazu bringt, länger auf Belohnungen zu warten. Sie zeigt, dass der Effekt einer Verringerung der Impulsivität um etwa 20 % entspricht.
▶️ https://uni.koeln/WV6NT

Excellent question. Not sure, it looks like there might be circadian effect on Ghrelin levels? This might also be the reason for a sort of ceiling effect wrt the effect of sleep deprivation on Ghrelin.

‼️New preprint‼️
There does not seem to be an effect of ghrelin on risky decision-making in probability discounting. Not in behaviour, underlying computational processes, or neural activity.
More details ⬇️

2 Postdoc positions with my fabulous new colleague @bernhardspitzer.bsky.social - chair of biopsychology @tudresden.bsky.social
- thanks for sharing -
@dgps.bsky.social @biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social
www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/ste...

It was a big team effort, led by Ella Brands, so congrats to everyone - great to see this out.

Results confirm that tyrosine supplementation affects reinforcement learning and decision-making functions that are thought to depend on catecholamine systems.

Performance was improved under Tyrosine, and computational modeling showed that this was due to an increase in value-dependent exploitation, and a reduction in exploration.

Here we studied reinforcement learning in n=63 participants (gender-balanced, within-subjects, preregistered) using a standard tyrosine dosage of 2g vs. placebo.

Tyrosine supplementation may improve cognitive performance under some conditions, but well-powered studies on processes thought to be under catecholamine control are sparse.

Catecholamine Precursor Modulation of Human Exploration: Evidence From a Large Gender-Balanced Sample The catecholamine precursor tyrosine has been linked to improved cognitive performance, but investigations into decision-making and reinforcement learning processes known to be under catecholamine con...

Tyrosine supplementation and exploration in RL: new @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social preprint from the lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Job Vacancies - Universität Bremen Offene Stellen

We're searching for a new colleague at Uni Bremen: *Full Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience*! Includes researcher positions to fill & use of labs for e.g. (f)MRI,fNIRS,EEG, eyetracking. fMRI expertise desired. Please share!
www.uni-bremen.de/en/universit...
#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #neuroskyence

High capacity RNNs still deviated from human learners in several aspects, but our results confirm that the degree to which RNN and human behavior align substantially depends on network capacity.

However, increasing RNN capacity increasingly increased the fit of a computational model with a directed exploration term, compared to a model without. Following a more than 10-fold increase in capacity, the majority of networks showed evidence for directed exploration similar to human learners.

Exploration–Exploitation Mechanisms in Recurrent Neural Networks and Human Learners in Restless Bandit Problems - Computational Brain & Behavior A key feature of animal and human decision-making is to balance the exploration of unknown options for information gain (directed exploration) versus selecting known options for immediate reward (expl...

To understand how RNNs solve the task, we analyzed their behavior using a range of reinforcement learning models. RNNs with low capacity showed no evidence for directed exploration, in line with our earlier work: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In such tasks, human learners often use directed exploration, that is, they tend to sample options with uncertain values for information gain.

We studied how recurrent neural networks solve restless bandit problems, a standard reinforcement learning task frequently studied in cognitive and systems neuroscience.

Recurrent Neural Network Exploration Strategies During Reinforcement Learning Depend on Network Capacity Artificial neural networks constitute simplified computational models of neural circuits that might help understand how the biological brain solves and represents complex tasks. Previous research reve...

New neural network modeling work from the lab @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

And here is the access link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kRfA4sIRv...

This is one of those pieces that really benefitted from super helpful Reviewer input, so thank you 🙏 !!!

A neurocomputational account of multi-line electronic gambling machines Multi-line electronic gambling machines (EGMs) are strongly associated with problem gambling. Dopamine (DA) plays a central role in substance-use disorders, which share clinical and behavioral feature...

New work from the lab now out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences: A neurocomputational account of multi-line electronic gambling machines www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

🚨BREAKING 🚨 Abstract submission for the 2024 Psychology and Brain (PuG) conference is open (registration is expected to open next week) via pug2024.de. Deadline for symposia/panel discussions: 29.2, poster: 31.3. See you in Hamburg!

🚨Job alert 🚨we have an opening for a PhD position in cognitive/computational neuroscience, application deadline February 29th. Please repost!

Initial contract until 2025 (parental leave replacement) but will be extended as needed. Get in touch if you have any questions.

And our work on automatic detection of problem #gambling signatures in online data using large language models - now out as arxiv preprint arxiv.org/abs/2312.00804

We have some new work out for folks interested in #gambling and #gaming - #LootBox content is linked to increased user engagement on YouTube: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Functional neuroimaging as a catalyst for integrated neuroscience www.nature.com/articles/s41... - fun toi write this with @macshine.bsky.social and @esfinn.bsky.social !

1/4 🧠 In our latest work jneurosci.org/content/43/4...
@peterslab.bsky.social we show that chronic deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the anterior limb of the internal capsule/NAcc region impacts the reliability of intertemporal preferences in patients with treatment-resistant OCD.

All grants should follow the "just submit a 2-page letter first and then we'll let you know if you even have a chance" model.

#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky