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Sam McDougle

@actlab.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1.2K following 307 posts

psychology prof @yale actcompthink.org

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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Preprint updated with a new set of modeling analyses. Naser finds that an RL-style 'policy gradient' model explains these novel effects quite well, where the motor system tunes its error sensitivity according to a movement-specific value gradient --> www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
New lab preprint, "Abstract Representations of Sensorimotor Transformations in Human Premotor Cortex." Led by @sanghoonkang.bsky.social , with Juliana Trach. We'd love any thoughts, feedback! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
New York Knicks - absolutely amazing I vividly remember watching the Knicks playoff run in 1999 at my friend's apartment building across the street. Formative Knicks fan moments. Ups and downs, of course a tough ending. This time will be different. We want the Spurs again! #Knicks 🏀
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
My FIRST PhD students, Drs. Juliana Trach & @hhillman.bsky.social, defended their FANTASTIC PhDs! They started with me in 2020 (a very uneventful year of course) Juliana and Hanna tease me for my "dad photos" of them giving posters/talks mid-sentence or eyes-closed. So here are two of those ->
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Thrilled to have this preprint out, from the amazing Zekun Sun! "Motor abstraction training generalizes to the refinement of specific movement patterns" In brief, across 8 experiments we found evidence of a causal role for abstract representations in motor learning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
🏀
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Lab tradition when poster session is over: #NCMKobe
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Awesome
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Excited for @ncmsociety.bsky.social in ~3 weeks, in Kobe Japan! Here is a preview of my labs' posters this year: #NCMKobe
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Leo chatting w Amy Goodman :) @democracynow.org
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
new haven folks, this is tomorrow! -->
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
My mom at Yale circa 1971 next to Erik Erikson. Huey P Newton is at the table too
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Bob weir 😔 RIP Come wash the nighttime clean Come grow this scorched ground green
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Preprint updated --> Key new results: we found a brain-behavior correlation between performance on an RL task (under short feedback delays) and short-delay RPE signals in the 'cognitive' cerebellum! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Key Takeaways: • 'Atomic' actions contain meaningful internal structure • Visual perception represents the event structure within atomic actions. • Automatic perceptual action segmentation at brief timescales draws on both semantic knowledge and visual cues
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
There's a lot of fun details and experiments, including my favorite new control stimulus (which Zekun invented) - the 'spiralized stimulus' 😵‍💫🌀
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Zekun asked how our visual system automatically parses brief ("atomic") actions. Strikingly, she finds that both low-level visual features (e.g., motion energy) and high-level semantics (e.g., discrete action 'phases') shape event perception during action observation
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
New paper from the lab, "Perceiving Event Structure in Brief Actions," now out in Cognitive Psychology :) Led by the inimitable Zekun Sun This was my lab's first foray into event cognition gift link: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
heading to @sfn.org? Check out our group's posters -->
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
🐝
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
thrilled!! but speaking after @monicarosenb.bsky.social ??? that's too tough to follow
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
the best neurons
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
saturday -->
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
We review behavioral and neural evidence for MWM, focusing on the system's various roles in retrospectively maintaining motor representations, prospectively planning movements, and motor learning. Please share! And feedback welcome :)
schematic of idea for a prospective/retrospective "working memory for movements"
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Thrilled that our new review "Motor Working Memory" is now in press at TiCS! @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social By me + Hanna Hillman We argue that a dedicated research program on 'working memory for movements' is long overdue Link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lmMX4sIRv...
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
New preprint from the lab! 🧠 Led by Juliana Trach, w/ Sophia Ou Using fMRI, we discovered evidence for time-sensitive reward prediction errors (RPEs) in the human cerebellum. Builds on, and extends, recent work in both rodents and NHPs
figure showing cerebellar RPE responses
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Unprompted, my kid Leo wrote this on my office whiteboard “The brain controls the body.” Also, seems like drawing is referencing the contralateral control scheme?
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
New England bluegrass fans: We (Audrey Mae) are playing tomorrow at the Podunk Music Festival!
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
if you didn't catch Juliana Trach's poster at @cogscisociety.bsky.social here it is ––>
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Gonna change my mind every ten minutes, but quick first go:
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
2003 déjà vu The vibes are not good
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
@rldmdublin2025.bsky.social morning run in a few, run off those guinnesses (guinnessi? guinnessae?) info below
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
7 pre-registered experiments and lots of fun control studies. Our favorite involves a new stimulus Zekun invented, the "Spiralized Stimulus"!
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
In this study, Zekun asked: When we visually segment observed actions, is perceptual segmentation fully driven by low-level features (e.g., motion dynamics, scene cuts), or also by high-level structure (e.g., distinct phases of a tennis serve). We find that BOTH matter.
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Apoorva Sharma giving her talk on “Temporal Indexing of Motor Memories”! @ncmsociety.bsky.social #NCMPan25
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Happening NOW! Our lab has 2 posters today, Juliana Trach on reward prediction errors in the cerebellum, and Hanna Hillman on working memory for movements and its relation to dynamic WM computations: [@ncmsociety.bsky.social #NCMPan25]
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Last talk of the day, from Leo Lee on cognitive maps for sensorimotor skills! @ncmsociety.bsky.social #NCMPan25
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Randy Flanagan giving the next talk, on "Real-world object manipulation tasks: where action meets cognition" @ncmsociety.bsky.social #NCMPan25
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
@adrianhaith.bsky.social beginning the 3rd and final Session of our satellite meeting, questioning the conventional wisdom concerning the role of cognition in motor skill learning @ncmsociety.bsky.social #NCMPan25
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