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Ian Ballard

@iancballard.bsky.social
1.2K followers 483 following 36 posts

Assistant Professor at UC Riverside studying learning and goal-directed behavior. Director of the Computational Cognitive and Neural Sciences Lab (www.ballardlab.org). He/him

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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1! tinyurl.com/yjubmvvb
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Jeremy Hogeveen @jeremyhogeveen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The Society for the Science of Motivation is hosting a pre-meeting at @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social this year (coordinated by rockstar postdoc Pelin Tanberg).
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Speakers so far include @kimberlychiew.bsky.social, myself, and @ashenhav.bsky.social
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
📝 Call for abstracts for data blitz and talk slots! Submission deadline: October 1st 2026. 🔗 More info & submission link: ssmmotivatedcognition.my.canva.site Send inquiries to ssmmotivatedcog@gmail.com #AcademicTwitter #PsychResearch #CognitivePsychology
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
📢 Save the date! The Society for the Science of Motivation (SSM) is excited to announce the first-ever Motivated Cognition satellite meeting at Psychonomics 2026 in San Diego! 🗓️ Thursday, November 19th, 11am–5pm 📍 San Diego ssmmotivatedcognition.my.canva.site #Psychonomics2026 #MotivatedCognition
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Thank you for the kind words-- I am glad you enjoyed it! I hope the technique can be useful to folks.
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1! drive.google.com/file/d/19m8i...
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Decision & Aging @srndna.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
🎧 New Decision & Aging Insights🎙️ episode ‪@vpmurty.bsky.social describes his research for an SRNDNA Pilot Grant and finding inspiration at a haunted house. He also talks about moving his lab across country and the impact of a single line in his presentations. Listen now: srndna.utdallas.edu/podcast/
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
🧠👀 Do goals & desires shape what we see—or just what we say we see? In our review, we outline a neurocomputational framework where motivation biases perception and action via distinct neural systems: 👉 Amygdala & LC-NE boost what we want to see. 👉 Striatal dopamine biases what we choose to report.
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RLDM @rldmparis2027.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
#RLDM2025 officially starts tomorrow! 🚀 Have you checked out our program? See details below, full program is available at rldm.org 👀 New to RLDM? Join our first-timers gathering tonight, 6-7pm, at Kennedy's Pub (30-32 Westland Row) 😊
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RLDM @rldmparis2027.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Only ONE WEEK until #RLDM2025 ☘️ We can’t wait to welcome brilliant minds from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond for cutting-edge talks on reinforcement learning & decision making. Spaces are disappearing quickly so grab your spot before it’s gone! Register now 👉 rldm.org
rldm.org
RLDM | The Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
@alanajaskir.bsky.social @marcelomattar.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @actlab.bsky.social
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Excited to share our upcoming workshop on neuroscience, reinforcement learning, and decision making at RLDM 2025 in Dublin, Ireland — June 11–14! Check out the terrific speaker lineup: 🔗 sites.google.com/view/neurorl... Co-organized with @angelaradulescu.bsky.social @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social
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RLDM @rldmparis2027.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
📢 #RLDM2025 is nearly here – 11–14 June at Trinity College Dublin ☘️ Join researchers from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond to explore the latest in reinforcement learning & decision making. 🎟️ Register now to secure your spot: rldm.org #ReinforcementLearning #AI #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience
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David Clewett @davidclewett.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
New from our lab: your brain doesn’t just remember time - it bends it. We show that the dopamine system responds to natural breakpoints in experience, and this relates to more stretched memories of time. Blinking also increases, signaling encoding of new memories. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Dopaminergic processes predict temporal distortions in event memory
Our memories do not simply keep time - they warp it, bending the past to fit the structure of our experiences. For example, people tend to remember items as occurring farther apart in time if they spa...
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Martin Wiener @martinwiener.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
Excited and thrilled and humbled that our work is now out at Nature Human Behaviour linking Memorability with Time Perception! I hope you all find it of interest 🙂 Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) #academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science
nature.com
Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) - Nature Human Behaviour
In this Article, Ma et al. show, across a series of experiments, that time and memorability (the probability of recalling a visual stimulus) mutually influence one another, suggesting that time is a f...
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Big milestone for the Ballard Lab—we scanned our very first neuroimaging participant today! Grateful to be collaborating with my UCR colleagues @halledz.bsky.social and @brenthughes.bsky.social. I love the excitement of new data rolling in...
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
So excited to see this come out!
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Thanks! Our technique is indirect (as, unlike PET, fMRI cannot directly assess dopamine), but it does seem to provide useful information linked to dopaminergic function.
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Deepu Murty @vpmurty.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Are you at CNS: hot* symposia alert featuring myself, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social, @chelseahelion.bsky.social, and @iancballard.bsky.social talking about uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, social cognition, and decision-making. See you Monday at 10:00 AM. *I sweat a lot giving talks
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Excited for my lab’s first CNS! Catch us at: Saturday 10:30–12:00: Datablitz Session 3 (Xinxu Shen) Monday 10:00 AM: Symposium – Uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, and decision-making Posters: Saturday 3:00–5:00 (A133), Monday 8:00–10:00 (D156), Tuesday 8:00–10:00 (F145)
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
thanks for sharing this!
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Have you run your estimation on striatal subregions? I'd be very curious to see what the HRFs look like!
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
I’m curious to hear what you find! In the preprint, we don’t model the HRF directly, but we have a project looking into trial-by-trial variability in the NAcc HRF time-to-peak
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Our TR was 2s. Would love to experiment with faster TRs in the future.
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Check out our preprint to learn more about how hemodynamic latencies map regional, individual, and pathological differences linked to dopamine. We'd love to hear your questions, ideas, or feedback! @anneberry.bsky.social @blaisefrederick.bsky.social
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
In individuals with cocaine use disorder, we found a spatial gradient of altered hemodynamic latencies in the striatum. This pattern independently correlated with nicotine use, revealing a conserved physiological profile associated with addictive substance use. 5/n
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Using PET, genetics, and pharmacology, we found that hemodynamic latency is tightly coupled to dopamine physiology. Broadly speaking, higher latency in the NAcc was associated with lower dopamine function and more perseverative behavior—linking BOLD signal timing to cognition. 4/n
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Hemodynamic latencies are markedly increased in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc)—a key dopaminergic region linked to addiction. This effect is strikingly precise: the anatomical NAcc boundary (green) aligns closely with the shift in hemodynamic latency. 3/n
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
fMRI doesn’t directly measure dopamine, but could dopamine influence BOLD signal timing? Dopamine axons wrap around microvessels, and dopamine triggers vasoconstriction. We hypothesized that higher extracellular dopamine increases the latency of the hemodynamic response. 2/n
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Interested in dopamine? Have fMRI data? We’ve identified a temporal BOLD feature that carries rich information about dopamine physiology. This measure, obtainable from resting-state and task fMRI, opens new ways to indirectly probe dopamine’s role in cognition and disease. 1/n tinyurl.com/bddyz67b
biorxiv.org
Temporal fMRI Dynamics Map Dopamine Physiology
Spatial variations in dopamine function are linked to cognition and substance use disorders but are challenging to characterize with current methods. Because dopamine influences blood vessel dilation,...
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Doby Rahnev @dobyrahnev.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
New paper alert! Have you ever looked at single-trial fMRI activation maps? If so, you know that they are super variable. Here we show that the variability is not just noise. In fact, the same task can consistently elicit different activation patterns. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Multiple brain activation patterns for the same perceptual decision-making task - Nature Communications
Here, the authors show the brain uses multiple activation patterns to perform the same task. Even the default mode network, which is often inactive during focus, plays a role.
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RLDM @rldmparis2027.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Exciting news - early bird registration is now open for #RLDM2025! 🔗 Register now: forms.gle/QZS1GkZhYGRF... Register now to save €100 on your ticket. Early bird prices are only available until 1st April.
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Emily G. Jacobs @emilyjacobs.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Advancing Inclusive AI in Women’s Brain Health 🧠✨ We are thrilled to announce a $1.5M award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support the Women’s Brain Health Initiative in advancing inclusive AI through multi-modal biomedical datasets.
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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
New lab paper out now in JEP:G! From Juliana Trach, @mdebettencourt.bsky.social , @angelaradulescu.bsky.social , and myself. "Rewards Transiently and Automatically Enhance Sustained Attention." t.co/r72fZRn3Nh 👇
task figure showing combined attention and RL task
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Deepu Murty @vpmurty.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
New paper with Johanna Jarcho, Isabel Leiva, and Sam Reisman looking at distortions in perceived liking and its relationship with bullying (in adults!). Don’t worry we collected memory data for future analyses! www.jmoodanxdisorders.org/article/S295...
jmoodanxdisorders.org
Peer victimization but not social anxiety negatively influences predicted enjoyment during peer interactions
We often underestimate how much others enjoy initial interactions with us - a phenomenon known as the liking gap. While widely documented, less research has explored how individual differences such as...
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David Abel @dabelcs.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
The RLDM workshop list is now up! Have a look: rldm.org/call-for-wor... More workshop details coming soon :) There were so many wonderful submissions---this was really tough for the committee. Huge thanks to all involved, and looking forward to seeing folks in Dublin
rldm.org
CALL FOR WORKSHOPS | RLDM
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Some tips for making and keeping New Year's resolutions! @ucriverside.bsky.social news.ucr.edu/articles/202...
news.ucr.edu
Will you keep your New Year’s resolutions?
A UC Riverside psychologist shares his thoughts on how to make them last
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Ignacio Saez, PhD @ignaciosaezphd.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
In our recent preprint, we unveil a new role for neural activity in the human dopaminergic system in reward learning - at the single neuron level! 🧠🖥️ #EEG #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Image of preprint author line and title from bioRxiv
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
How do rewards influence how we select and pursue goals? Our study finds that rewards can create 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐢𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 in goal selection and execution—similar to habits—but without reducing cognitive flexibility. Check out our paper for more! @jocn.bsky.social direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...
direct.mit.edu
Reward Reinforcement Creates Enduring Facilitation of Goal-directed Behavior
Abstract. Stimulus–response habits benefit behavior by automatizing the selection of rewarding actions. However, this automaticity can come at the cost of reduced flexibility to adapt behavior when ci...
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Check out rldm.org/invited-spea... to see invited speakers!
rldm.org
INVITED SPEAKERS | RLDM
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Get your abstract submissions ready for RLDM 2025, at Trinity College in Dublin (abstracts due 1/15). Tutorial submissions close on 12/20. RLDM is a terrific interdisciplinary conference at the intersection of computational theory (AI, ML, robotics), cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience.
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Carlos G. Correa @cgcorrea.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
My paper on hierarchical plans is out in Cognition!🎉 tldr: We ask participants to generate hierarchical plans in a programming game. People prefer to reuse beyond what standard accounts predict, which we formalize as induction of a grammar over actions. authors.elsevier.com/a/1kBQr2Hx2x...
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Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JoCN) @jocn.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
dlvr.it
Neural and Computational Mechanisms of Motivation and Decision-making
AbstractMotivation is often thought to enhance adaptive decision-making by biasing actions toward rewards and away from punishment. Emerging evidence, however, points to a more nuanced view whereby motivation can both enhance and impair different aspects…
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Harrison Ritz @hritz.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Starter pack for researchers studying the control of cognitive processes e.g., attentional control, inhibition, task switching, working memory, error adaptation etc go.bsky.app/12KTqED
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Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Representational spaces in orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex: task states, values, and beyond www.cell.com/trends/neuro... #neuroscience
cell.com
Representational spaces in orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex: task states, values, and beyond
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial-prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) play a key role in decision-making and encode task states in addition to expected value. We review evidence suggesting a conne...
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 25/11/2024
Are you tempted to orthogonalize the regressors in your fMRI model? @jeanette-mumford.bsky.social tells you why this is almost never a good idea, and is likely to wreck the interpretation of your model. mumfordbrainstats.tumblr.com/post/1337933...
mumfordbrainstats.tumblr.com
Collinearity...is orthogonalization the answer? (No)
If I had a dollar for every time I read a paper purporting to have repaired a multicollinearity issue by orthogonalizing regressors...  Unfortunately, once collinearity is there and the data have been...
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
I'd love to be added! Thank you for making this list
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Brad Postle @bradpostle.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
ALSO in this month's @jocn.bsky.social Special Focus: Neural and Computational Mechanisms of Motivation and Decision Making Debbie M. Yee Tyler J. Adkins, Taraz G. Lee Ian C. Ballard, Michael Waskom, Kerry C. Nix, Mark D’Esposito Yue Zhang, Xiamin Leng, Amitai Shenhav
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Ian Ballard @iancballard.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Check out our Special Focus on motivation and decision-making in JOCN 🚨. Each paper applies computational process modeling to reveal how motivational factors shape the cognitive processes guiding decision-making. @tarazlee.bsky.social @lindazhang.bsky.social
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