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Akram Bakkour

@akrambakkour.bsky.social
390 followers 325 following 25 posts

Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. I study how we use memory to make better decisions.

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Reposted by Akram Bakkour
Blair Shevlin @bshev.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Women with bulimia nervosa typically avoid high-fat foods, yet binge on them during periods of negative mood. Why? In our new paper in @elife.bsky.social, we used computational modeling to find out 🧵 elifesciences.org/articles/105...
elifesciences.org
Client Challenge
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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Medial PFC interacts with the hippocampus to retrieve context-congruent memories.. but HOW?? was what started this. Simulating mPFC-HIP🧠, we designed an RNN🤖 that retrieves memories similar in context, on top of self-attention. It learns to retrieve like humans faster! arxiv.org/abs/2609.37791
arxiv.org
A neural network that maintains and retrieves memories based on context
Every day, people continuously infer situational context and adjust the way they understand and remember the world. Context, signaled by the prefrontal cortex, is known to modulate working memory and ...
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ReproducibiliTea @reproducibilitea.org · 28/09/2026
☕️Shape the future of Open Research: Join the ReproducibiliTea Steering Committee for 2027! We are thrilled to announce that applications are officially open to join the ReproducibiliTea Steering Committee starting in early 2027.
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Ignacio Saez, PhD @ignaciosaezphd.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
📣 We're hiring! The Saez Lab at Mount Sinai is seeking a postdoctoral researcher with experience in intracranial recordings, electrophysiology, BCIs, mood disorders, and/or computational modeling, to explore the neural basis of human cognition. 🗓️ Apply by September 30, 2026. Please share widely!
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
New preprint! Using a task based on Battleship, we find that older adults persistently forage for information, even at the cost of reward and learning speed. Why do older adults display this costly info-seeking exploratory behavior?
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I expect to recruit a PhD student this cycle! The Control and Decision Making Lab at WashU studies control, effort, and decision making, combining behavioral experiments with modeling and neuroimaging. If that sounds cool, check out our work: cdmlab.wustl.edu. How to apply: psych.washu.edu/apply
cdmlab.wustl.edu
Control and Decision Making Lab
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Katie Insel @katieinsel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The CATS Lab is moving to Columbia next year, and I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle to start Fall 2027 in the Department of Psychology. Learn more about how to apply here: psychology.columbia.edu/content/prep... I am also recruiting a postdoc and staff for 2027. More info coming soon!
psychology.columbia.edu
Preparing to Apply | Department of Psychology
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 03/09/2026
We are searching for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. Please apply or forward to anyone who might be interested! facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Assistant Professor, Psychology - Stanford University, California, United States
The Department of Psychology at Stanford University is seeking applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. In addition ...
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Tal Golan @talgolanneuro.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16
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Igor Utochkin @utochkin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Our new preprint w/ @edvogel.bsky.social presents a neural marker of a competition/interaction taking place in working memory between memory and current goals. We label it r-CDA Check out preprint for details about r-CDA and other interesting neural dynamics osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Megan deBettencourt @mdebettencourt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Come work with me at Google! We have an open 6-month temp role on my team - it’s a great opportunity for someone with a cog neuro or psych background interested in exploring big tech. Looking for comp modeling experience (e.g. RL, DDMs) and Python/JS. Reach out to learn more or pass along any names!
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
A new paper shows that reward spreads across multiple links in memory and selectively preserves the structure of related items. In other words: reward doesn't just travel through memory, it shapes it to guide what you choose next.
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Nora Harhen @noraharhen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
How do we make good decisions with little experience? Adults can rely on memories of past choices. In our new study in @pnas.org we show kids & teens do something similar–but what they remember turns out to be quite different! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Developmental changes in memory structure and precision alter the use of retrieved episodes during decisions for reward | PNAS
Most widely studied option evaluation strategies rely on knowledge accumulated across repeated experiences. But how should options be evaluated in ...
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
📢New paper out today in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social led by Seoyoung Lee! Does reward spread across multiple links in memory organized in a cognitive graph? Yes! We see graded spread through a recalled (even if incorrect) learned graph. Reward preserves proximal structure to support decisions.
authors.elsevier.com
Reward selectively preserves relational structure in memory
Memories tend to form networks that reflect relationships between experiences. These networks, or cognitive graphs, have been used to study how struct…
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CogCompNeuro @cogcompneuro.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is a wrap for #CCN2026! We look forward to meet again in Edinburgh next year!
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I’ve been enjoying #CCN2026! Come by Euan’s poster this Wednesday morning at 9:30am to check out what we’ve been up to! Poster C20: Super-diffusive memory search drives fast and accurate decisions
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aaron bornstein @aaronbornstein.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Excited for the lab's presentations at @cogcompneuch.bsky.social 2026! see you in ✨New✨York✨City✨ (🧵 1/7)
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duncanlabuoft.bsky.social @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Please spread the word: We’re recruiting a postdoc! 📣 We study how shifting brain & attentional states shape memory and how people experience their worlds. fMRI/iEEG + a fun, supportive lab community + space to pursue your own ideas. 📅 Apply by Aug 15 tinyurl.com/fx5k7teb
tinyurl.com
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Jennifer Bussell PhD @jenbussell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
How does the brain represent the value of knowledge? In our paper--out now at Nature Neuroscience--we identify a representation of intrinsic information value within neural population structures in the orbitofrontal cortex in mice. www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02377-y #neuroskyence 🧠🧪 (1/8)
nature.com
Representations of the intrinsic value of information in mouse orbitofrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Mice are motivated to seek information of no extrinsic value. Recording neural activity in orbitofrontal cortex reveals a representation of the value of information that is distinct from the value of ...
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Rayna Tang @raynatang.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Excited to share that my first-ever first-author paper (w/ @atabk.bsky.social @AngeliqueDelarazan @zreagh.bsky.social) is now out in PNAS! Building a story to link two objects boosts associative memory and inference, but not memory for the objects themselves. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵
pnas.org
Active linking through narratives facilitates associative inference | PNAS
In daily life, we often draw inferences about novel associations from prior experiences. This ability, associative inference, is thought to be a ke...
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SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
#JNeurosci: Findings from van Geen et al. support an integrated view of decision-making where mnemonic and value-based systems interact even in basic learning contexts, and highlight age-related disruptions in the transfer of info across brain regions. doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1459-25.2…
Diagram showing decision-making task with images of houses and participant information including sample sizes.
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Deepu Murty @vpmurty.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Come to ICOM next summer, it's going to be lit! Rumor has it that the first memory-based comedy show (ICOMedy) may be taking place.
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aaron bornstein @aaronbornstein.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Looking to work with a postdoc. Prior experience with fMRI and computational modeling required, interest in psychiatry desired. Fellowship provides three years salary plus independent travel/equipment funds. Send CV and 2-3 manuscripts (preprints OK).
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Jan Drugowitsch @jdrugowitsch.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
🚨 Big news 🚨 After 10 years at Harvard, my lab is moving to Barcelona in Spring 2027 to join @cbc-upf.bsky.social and the Department of Engineering at @upf.edu. 1/4
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Matthieu Chidharom @matthieu-mx.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
After five years in the US 🇺🇸, I'll soon be returning to my hometown of Strasbourg, where I'll join INSERM as a tenure-track Junior Group Leader and launch the MInD (Motivation, Inattention & Distraction) Research Group. 🇫🇷🇪🇺 Two graduate positions available: matthieuchidharom.wixsite.com/mind
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
How do people build new ideas from existing knowledge? By tracking Wikipedia searches, we found that novel ideas emerged when people balanced exploration with exploitation—alternating between distant topics and deep dives into related information.
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Hippocampal engrams configure prefrontal context representations to guide flexible decisions www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Igor Utochkin @utochkin.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
In a new preprint, @keisukefukuda.bsky.social and I investigated stimulus-specific memorability with ROC analysis. We find that the variability of latent memory effects (familiarity) caused by individual memory items across people is a game-changing dimension of memorability osf.io/c62an/files/...
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Kirsten Adam @kirsten-adam.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
As of today, I'm officially an Assistant Professor at the University of California Davis! I'm so excited to be joining the Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain, and I'm looking forward to getting settled into the new lab and embarking on a lot of fun new research this year
A short blonde woman stands next to a concrete sign that says UC Davis. The background of the photos shows a view of a lawn, tree, and building on the UC Davis campus.
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Liz Siefert @lizsiefert.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
New preprint! We show low arousal states promote hippocampal ripple genesis in sleep and wake. This bridges rodent work, where ripples predominate during sleep, with human studies reporting ripples during active behavior, identifying low arousal as a common mechanism www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Arousal state modulates human hippocampal ripples
Hippocampal ripples are transient, high-frequency oscillations linked to memory replay and consolidation. Ripples are well-characterized in rodents to occur during periods of behavioral inactivity (i....
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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I've been told my discussion with NPR about US academics/scientists moving overseas will be on NPR later today on All Things Considered! Live broadcast 4-6pm Eastern. Don’t know when my segment will be within this, but tune in! Huge thanks to @npr.org for the opportunity to share my perspective.
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Natalia Vélez @natvelali.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
It feels strange to share good news, but: I’m moving to UCSD in July!! 🥳 I'm very grateful for my time at Princeton and SO excited for what comes next. We're building multiplayer games to study how teams are shaped by the problems they solve. If that sounds fun to you, I'm accepting grad students!
Paragliders hover between the cliffs and sea in Torrey Pines Gliderport, La Jolla, CA, USA. Photo credit Micah Fluhart for Unsplash.
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
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.
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Jonathan Nicholas @jonathannicholas.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
We make flexible choices in new situations by knitting together information from separate relevant memories. But what governs which memories are retrieved and when? In a new preprint, we captured how people build decision variables from different memories by tracking their gaze on a blank screen.
biorxiv.org
Flexible decisions arise from resource-rational memory sampling
Flexible decision making depends on retrieving and recombining memories. Yet because this process unfolds covertly, its governing principles remain unknown. Here we use gaze reinstatement to uncover t...
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Eren Günseli @erengunseli.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join my lab at Sabancı University in Istanbul for a 2-year TÜBİTAK-funded position, with possible extension. Interested candidates can email me with a CV and a brief note about their research interests. More details on gunselilab.com soon.
gunselilab.com
Memory, Attention, & Cognitive Control Lab | Istanbul | Sabanci Uni.
Memory, Attention, & Cognitive Control Lab at Sabancı University - Eren Günseli. We study how memory and attention interact, how humans control what to remember, what to forget, what to attend to, and...
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
New paper out today! Patients with Anorexia Nervosa make maladaptive decisions about what to eat. But we find that their decision making process does not differ from that of healthy individuals. Instead the brain regions engaged during deliberation about what to eat differ between groups.
jneurosci.org
Different brain regions support deliberation during food choice in disordered and healthy eating
The brain is wired to drive behavior towards foods that are high in sugar and fat. Yet, individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) prefer low-sugar and low-fat foods to the point of starvation and even de...
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Brad Postle @bradpostle.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Postdoc position available at postlab.psych.wisc.edu. Pls send cv to postle@wisc.edu
postlab.psych.wisc.edu
PO-STL-AB
Our interests in human memory and cognition encompass the cognitive and neural basis of working memory, attention, control, and consciousness.News  Madison Symposium on Memory & Control. On 30 May 202...
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Hayley Dorfman @hayleydorfman.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
🌵🏜️🌵 Out now in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @rbhui.bsky.social! If your advisor sends you an unclear email, do you interpret it as good or bad? 😏😱 In a new paper, we show how people make inferences about this type of ambiguous feedback during learning. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Ambiguity and confirmatory reward learning
We tend to interpret feedback in ways that confirm our pre-existing beliefs. Such confirmatory tendencies are often viewed as cognitive flaws, but mig…
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/06/2026
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
nytimes.com
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
When an expert on authoritarianism (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) is writing about your scientific meeting, alarm bells should go off. Write to American Diabetes Association CEO Charles Henderson at chenderson@diabetes.org and Chief Medical Officer Rita Rastogi Kalyani at rkalyani@diabetes.org.
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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
That's not a headline you expect to see www.medpagetoday.com/special-repo...
medpagetoday.com
Video: Police Tussle With Diabetes Experts at ADA Meeting
Researchers told they could no longer attend the annual scientific sessions
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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
🎊New Lab Alert! I'll be starting at the 🧡University of Texas at Austin🧡 this August! More info to come. thesonglab.github.io I send my deep gratitude to my mentors, Monica @monicarosenb.bsky.social, YC @ycleong.bsky.social, ShiNung @shinung.bsky.social & Zach @zreagh.bsky.social, for everything.
thesonglab.github.io
Song Lab
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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
go see rochelle's talk!
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Chong Zhao @zhaochong.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
In collaboration with @monicarosenb.bsky.social , we showed that individual diffs in LTM encoding is uniquely predicted by inter-electrode correlations even controlling for working memory abilities. This suggests that WM & LTM encoding are separate abilities coded by different neural signatures! 1/n
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Caroline Charpentier, PhD @carocharp.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
🚨🚨 The Social Learning and Decisions Lab is hiring! 🚨🚨 We're looking for a postbacc project coordinator/research assistant to join our team this summer. More details about the position and how to apply here: drive.google.com/file/d/1ySeA... Please share widely and reach out with any questions!
drive.google.com
RA_ad_2026-2027_Charpentier.pdf
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 27/04/2026
Our lab (w/ @patrickgbissett) is hiring a full-time research coordinator to work with us on cognitive control, dense fMRI, computational modeling, and human-AI interaction. Designed for post-bacs looking to start a Ph. D in ~2 years. Please repost. phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDNLbWAG
phxc1b.rfer.us
Social Science Research Coordinator (Hybrid Opportunity) in School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, California, United States
Professor Russ Poldrack’s lab is seeking a new full-time Research Coordinator. The RC will work closely with and report directly to Dr. Patrick...
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
🚨🚨 Job Alert! 🚨🚨 We are seeking a full-time Study Coordinator for a NIMH-funded project that aims to uncover cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying maladaptive food-choice behavior in anorexia nervosa using behavior, eye tracking, fMRI, and computational models. Pls spread the word!
uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com
Study Coordinator
Department SSD Institute for Mind and Biology: Staff and Temporary Employees About the Department The Eating Disorders Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the Univer...
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duncanlabuoft.bsky.social @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The Duncan Memory Lab and the Finn LAND Lab at the University of Toronto, Department of Psychology, are hiring a Full-Time Joint Lab Manager. Commitment: 1–2 years (Ideal for pre-grad school experience). Start Date: Early June Deadline: May 20th, 11:59 PM. Please help circulate the linked ad! TY!
docs.google.com
Lab Manager Job Posting (2026 Summer) Public
The Duncan Memory Lab and the Finn Learning and Neural Development (LAND) Lab at the University of Toronto are seeking a full-time joint Lab Manager (20 hours a week in each lab) The preferred start d...
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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
🚨🚨JOB ALERT🚨🚨 I'm hiring a cogsci/philosophy/compneuro postdoc at @ucl.ac.uk @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @uclpals.bsky.social! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRH486/p... Come to London & work on frameworks for "testing" for consciousness using Bayesian belief updating & latent variable modeling. Pls share!
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL
Discover Postdoctoral Research Fellow jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
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Rahul Bhui @rbhui.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
What makes adaptive decision-making possible? New preprint connecting cognitive, social, biological, and computational views! w/ Dorst, FeldmanHall, @smfleming.bsky.social, @catehartley.bsky.social, Gottlieb, Lejarraga, Müller-Trede, @angelaradulescu.bsky.social, and Rosati osf.io/preprints/ps...
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