Robb Rutledge

Cognitive computational neuroscientist @Yale interested in decision making, happiness & mangosteens.

Play games for science!

[Michael Browning @michaelbrowni19]

🧵THREAD: Our new study published in #lancetpsych! We found that pramipexole augmentation substantially reduced depressive symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression over 48 weeks of treatment. This is an important advance in how we treat depression! 1/6

[Brian Christian @brianchristian]

Reward models (RMs) are the moral compass of LLMs – but no one has x-rayed them at scale. We just ran the first exhaustive analysis of 10 leading RMs, and the results were...eye-opening. Wild disagreement, base-model imprint, identity-term bias, mere-exposure quirks & more: 🧵

[Karl Deisseroth @KarlDeisseroth]

Congratulations to our Human Neural Circuitry team; https://t.co/aGD7OacNs8 publishes today in Science! This was the hardest challenge of my career, but one of the most rewarding, after years of rebuilding– & for myself, expanding my inpatient neuropsychiatry work to the service of basic discovery:
https://t.co/4czK1YK2YV

I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with the amazing lead authors Isaac Kauvar @ikauvar, Ethan Richman, and Tony Liu @liutony66, and with equally brilliant faculty colleagues in our HNC program: Carolyn Rodriguez @CRodriguezMDPhD, Paul Nuyujukian, and Vivek Buch @VivekBuchMD, along with many other key collaborators spanning hospital and laboratory. https://t.co/qohlvNuQYF

[Paul Masset @paul_masset]

Our work with @pablo_tano8 ,
@HyungGoo_Kim @AtharNMalik @pouget_alex
and Nao Uchida exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @Nature
https://t.co/dBpTuYiOsC

[Joshua P Johansen @JoJoLab5]

I’m excited to share a new paper from the lab. The study led by Xiaowei Gu reveals how the mPFC encodes complex emotional memories, using an internal model to infer emotional associations and memories via projections to the amygdala
https://t.co/zkhSD98GlD
https://t.co/dgNBPSNj5l

[Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD @EricJNestler]

Please see this new publication by Arthur Godino, Marine Salery, and others now online in @Nature. We show opposite roles for D1 vs D2 dopamine receptor- expressing neurons in ventral hippocampus in controlling approach-avoidance behavior. @SinaiBrain
https://t.co/6FFmNXgHHc

[Nicole C Rust, PhD @NicoleCRust]

A putative neural correlate of mood!

One big (scandalous?) idea, simple analyses, and the STRONGEST brain/behavior correlation I've EVER seen (which is shocking, given that it's mood).

Work with: You-Ping Yang, Catrina Hacker & Veit Stuphorn

https://t.co/cI3b3uvhWP

[Robb Rutledge @RobbRutledge]

📢 Early registration prices end tomorrow 15 April! 🚨

The 3rd Computational Psychiatry Conference is 14-16 July in Tübingen, Germany. https://t.co/VvmFbvGNt1

Speakers inc. @PhilCorlett1 @CFraza Andreas Heinz @GeorgiaKoppe Jill O'Reilly @chandra_sripada Sophie Valk @torwager

[Clara Haeffner @chaeffner12]

I’m beyond excited to share that I’ll be starting my PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Yale this fall with support from the NSF GRFP! I feel deeply grateful to be joining this community and to work with @RobbRutledge and the Rutledge lab!

[Robb Rutledge @RobbRutledge]

Exciting new project led by @jpheffne showing prediction errors can explain happiness in human-AI interactions.

Builds off our recent work linking mood & language led by @jihyuncindy_hur https://t.co/HQqt53vIIt

If we want AI to increase well-being, we need to measure it.

[Joey Heffner @jpheffne]

I am SO excited to share my latest #preprint with collaborators @RobbRutledge, @zebkDotCom, @MartinJChadwick, @summerfieldlab, and others from DeepMind:

"Increasing happiness through conversations with artificial intelligence"
https://t.co/RGmAAGeqBS

A short 🧵
1/7

[Joey Heffner @jpheffne]

I am SO excited to share my latest #preprint with collaborators @RobbRutledge, @zebkDotCom, @MartinJChadwick, @summerfieldlab, and others from DeepMind:

"Increasing happiness through conversations with artificial intelligence"
https://t.co/RGmAAGeqBS

A short 🧵
1/7

[Nature Neuroscience @NatureNeuro]

Behavior and #dopamine responses track prospective, but not retrospective, contingency, which is explained by temporal difference (TD) learning models

@LechenQ @markhburrell @naoshigeuchida @MCB_Harvard

https://t.co/srTMSkvVfg

[Diego A. Pizzagalli, PhD @DiegoPizzagalli]

Dear colleagues & friends: In light of recent announcements, the search committees and I wanted to reassure potential candidates that the faculty search (three faculty openings) for our new UCI Depression Institute continues as planned. Please RT

[Brain @Brain1878]

Depression in Parkinson’s disease often includes motivational symptoms such as apathy and anhedonia. Costello et al. show that this depression may stem from a reduction in reward sensitivity that is unresponsive to dopaminergic medication. https://t.co/XQDiqFAr5O

[Guy Davidson @guyd33]

Out today in Nature Machine Intelligence!

From childhood on, people can create novel, playful, and creative goals. Models have yet to capture this ability. We propose a new way to represent goals and report a model that can generate human-like goals in a playful setting... 1/N

[Lei Zhang | 张磊 (@lei-zhang.bsky.social) @lei_zhang_lz]

🚨 Announcing the 2nd Birmingham-Leiden Summer School in Computational Social Cognition, Sep 2-5, 2025.

Fantastic line-up of keynote: Matthew Rushworth, Diana Tamir @DianaTamir, and David Amodio @david_m_amodio.

👇
Apply by 18 April (https://t.co/7xiZwGJGcS) and RT!

[Association for Psychological Science @PsychScience]

Congratulations to the 2025 APS Spence Award Recipients! 🎉@DrJuanDelToro @chazfirestone @ashleylwatts @minuekim @julia_a_leonard @Mark_A_Thornton @gemmasharp11

https://t.co/X5Y0NW2UUa

[Eiko Fried @EikoFried]

1/3 Tutorial on exploring ecological momentary data is online at AMPPS, with:
-Accessible ways to visualize data for better understanding
-Models to get some first insights
-Further reading boxes for more advanced topics
-Reproducible pipeline you can run over your own data

[David Ullrich @DavidUllrich202]

We are all bad at choosing random numbers in our own unique way

An experiment in which people were asked to choose random numbers or boxes on a grid, then do the same a year later, has revealed that we each have our own unique approach to randomness ― and we're generally very bad at it

https://t.co/KSD4i5LUmf

https://t.co/Ym1QijAibU

[tal boger @talboger]

Suppose you generated a sequence of 100 random numbers. Then one year later, you did it again. Do you think we could predict one sequence from the other? It turns out, we can!

Now in press @ JEP:G with @sami_r_yousif @smickdougle @RobbRutledge; https://t.co/IZg3yIui1S