Exciting news! Our groundbreaking work conducted by Kanen et al. (2022) has garnered recognition in the realm of science communication by PsyPost.

Recently, our research on the effects of LSD on learning and exploratory behavior in humans was featured on the highly regarded blog PsyPost. PsyPost is an independent science news website dedicated to reporting the latest research on human behaviour, cognition, and society. The article delves into our placebo-controlled study, revealing that LSD can enhance both learning and exploratory behavior. This breakthrough not only expands our understanding of psychedelic substances but also highlights their potential for positive cognitive impacts.

Our study titled “Goal-directed recruitment of Pavlovian biases through selective visual attention.” is now posted online in Journal of experimental psychology. Here, we examined prospective outcomes bias behavior in a "Pavlovian" manner, namely reward prospect invigorates action, while punishment prospect suppresses it.

Theories have posited Pavlovian biases as global action "priors" in unfamiliar or uncontrollable environments. However, this account fails to explain the strength of these biases-causing frequent action slips-even in well-known environments. We propose that Pavlovian control is additionally useful if flexibly recruited by instrumental control. Specifically, instrumental action plans might shape selective attention to reward/punishment information and thus the input to Pavlovian control.

In two eye-tracking samples (N = 35/64), we observed that Go/NoGo action plans influenced when and for how long participants attended to reward/punishment information, which in turn biased their responses in a Pavlovian manner. Participants with stronger attentional effects showed higher performance. Thus, humans appear to align Pavlovian control with their instrumental action plans, extending its role beyond action defaults to a powerful tool ensuring robust action execution

On Monday 3rd of April, Johannes Algermissen elegantly defended his thesis "On the origin and control over pavlovian biases in learning and decision making” and received his doctoral degree cum laude. The lab would like to congratulate Johannes on this great achievement! Johannes now works as postdoc working with Dr. Miriam Klein-Flügge at Oxford University.

As humans, we learn and make decisions best when we are actively engaged and having fun. Fortunately, Hanneke understands this well. In our lab, we incorporate fun and engaging lab activities that help us to learn and connect with each other.

Our study titled “Auditory confounds can drive online effects of transcranial ultrasonic stimulation in humans” is now published online on bioRxiv. Across four experiments, one preregistered, at three independent institutions, we employed tightly matched control conditions to we disentangle direct neuromodulatory effects of transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) from those driven by the salient auditory confound in a combined transcranial ultrasonic and magnetic stimulation paradigm.

We replicated motor cortical inhibition following TUS, but showed through both controls and manipulation of stimulation intensity, duration, and auditory masking conditions that this inhibition was driven by peripheral auditory stimulation rather than direct neuromodulation.

This study highlights the substantial impact of the auditory confound, invites a reevaluation of prior findings, and calls for appropriate control conditions in future TUS work. Only when direct effects are disentangled from those driven by peripheral confounds can TUS fully realize its potential for neuroscientific research and clinical applications.

An official preprint of the paper can be found here and a pdf version in our publications section. And if you want to know more, please get in touch with Benjamin or Hanneke!