Lukas Gunschera

mic-lab.deResearch Associate (m/f/d): Models, Interventions, and Cognition — MIC-LabModels and interventions of cognition.

🚨 Does social media use show established neurocognitive signatures of addiction? Concerns about social media addiction are widespread, yet whether platforms' design features actually engage the same neurocognitive pathways as established addictions has remained untested. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Dan Quintana

@dsquintana.bsky.social

New preprint! Universities increasingly expect academics to practise open science. But is it rewarded when hiring? We analysed 1,356 academic job ads from Norwegian institutions and found that <5% of ads mentioned open science as a required or desired qualification osf.io/preprints/ps...

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Lilian Weber

@lilweb.bsky.social

✨New PhD Position!✨ Come and work with us on understanding cognition with a mix of cognitive modelling and ultrasound neuromodulation! More info on the lab & position: mic-lab.de/positions/ph... Official job ad: tinyurl.com/miclab-phd 🙏Please RT - deadline is Oct 14 ‼️

Addiction has become the default framework for interpreting problematic social media use. It shapes how it is measured, discussed, regulated, and what support young people are offered. But does it match the experiences of young people who report feeling addicted to social media? 🧵(1/7)

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The preprint goes into much more detail on the experiences young people consider most harmful, what support they consider most effective, and the potential psychological consequences of this framing for young people For more detail, please read the preprint at: doi.org/10.31234/osf... (6/7)

I would like to thank my brilliant collaborators Jamil Adjallah, Ioanna Fokas, @gabmackie.bsky.social, Jo Hickman Dunne, @aliceroe.bsky.social, @jadedavies.bsky.social, @camillanord.bsky.social, @margaritap.bsky.social, @orbenamy.bsky.social, without whom this wouldn't have been possible! (7/7)

Our findings suggest the addiction framework captures only parts of lived experience well, and some of its components are rarely or not at all reflected in young people's accounts. (4/7)

This highlights the importance of developing and validating measures that incorporate the experiences of those affected, rather than imposing a predefined framework on young people's complex experiences in digital environments. (5/7)

Measures of problematic social media use rely on rephrased criteria from established addictions. Without independent conceptualisation or validation, this becomes circular: addiction-based measures are predisposed to find addiction-consistent features and are used to validate the construct. (2/7)

@adigitaltanay.bsky.social

We wanted to reverse this direction of inference. Across 8 workshops, 44 young people (16–21) who reported 6+ months of social media-related impairment shared their lived experiences, ranked perceived harms, and discussed how young people could be better supported and by whom. (3/7)

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Tanay Katiyar

Does spreading mental health awareness online amplify self-diagnosis? In my first PhD pre-print, I empirically examine this question (n =3392) with some kick-ass collaborators and tools from cultural evolution A 🧵

jamanetwork.comDesigning Social Media Health Warnings for Teenagers and Young AdultsThis randomized clinical trial examines whether teenagers and young adults perceive that social media warnings discourage them from wanting to use social media and increase their awareness of the harm...

10 Sept

Instead of asking whether telling people (including minors) that their behaviour is harmful puts them off, we should ask about the harms this message itself could cause.

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Gabriel Mackie

@gabmackie.bsky.social

Honoured to receive a Poster Prize at #BAP2026 for my project investigating the Effects of Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS) on Interoceptive Attention. I'm grateful to everyone who worked on this project, @camillanord.bsky.social and Veronica Forslund, who were at the conference, and...

Does problematic social media use involve the same dopamine-related reward mechanisms as addiction? That’s the question motivating the research I presented at the @bapsych.bsky.social Summer Meeting, involving a dopaminergic manipulation to probe the involved mechanisms. #BAP2026

Also, proud of Jamil Adjallah, who won a poster award for our work involving young people with lived experience to address conceptual shortcomings of current measurement approaches and inform how young people can be better supported online.

@kellydonegan.bsky.social

Massive thank you to all the collaborators involved across the projects: @orbenamy.bsky.social, @camillanord.bsky.social, @saramehrhof.bsky.social, @margaritap.bsky.social, @gabmackie.bsky.social, @aliceroe.bsky.social, @jadedavies.bsky.social, Ioanna Fokas, Jo Hickman Dunne.

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Kelly Donegan

20 July

Excited to be chairing/presenting at our post-doc symposium discussing the advancements (and challenges 🤫) of computational psychiatry with a ⭐️ line-up of @saramehrhof.bsky.social @yanivabir.bsky.social & Alicia Rybicki. If at #BAP2026, come join us today at 2pm ‼️

British Association for Psychopharmacology@bapsych.bsky.social

Three high quality Post-Doc symposia will be running in parallel on Monday afternoon, 20th July, with subjects including computational psychiatry, long-term effects of stopping antipsychotics and antidepressants, and challenges of psychosis prediction modelling #BAP2026

bap.org.ukThe British Association for Psychopharmacology | 2026 Summer Meeting – BirminghamThe British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) promotes research and education in psychopharmacology, and brings together people in academia, health services, and industry

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Georgia Turner

@georgiaturner.bsky.social

25 June

🎉 Now published in Nature Communications! 🧠 We develop a novel computational reinforcement learning & habit model of Twitter data, and show that younger people & women are more behaviourally sensitive to 'Likes'. Read the paper: bit.ly/4f1vsKS

bit.lyA computational model of reward learning and habits on social media - Nature CommunicationsThe cognitive processes driving social media use could be key to understanding social media’s impact. Here, the authors develop a computational model of real-world social media behaviour, identifying ...

Georgia Turner@georgiaturner.bsky.social

🚨New preprint 🚨 **A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media** 🧵 We develop a computational reward learning model of real-world social media data, which infers the separate goal-directed and habitual cognitive processes driving posting...

Lukas Gunschera reposted

Sara Mehrhof

@saramehrhof.bsky.social

8 May

Excited to share our new paper asking a simple question: Why do mental and metabolic health so often go hand in hand? We (@camillanord.bsky.social @hugofleming.bsky.social) tested whether shared neurocognitive signatures play a role in this relationship www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comComputational phenotyping of effort-based decision-making in type-2 diabetes on and off semaglutide - NeuropsychopharmacologyNeuropsychopharmacology - Computational phenotyping of effort-based decision-making in type-2 diabetes on and off semaglutide

There are further neurocognitive processes implicated in addiction that we did not examine. Rather than drawing definitive conclusions, we hope this work contributes to a more mechanistic, theory-driven approach to understanding problematic social media use.

This work would not have been possible without my wonderful collaborators. Massive thanks to @saramehrhof.bsky.social, Clelia Veith, Ethan Ong, @bcdavidson.bsky.social, @matti.vuorre.com, @camillanord.bsky.social, and @orbenamy.bsky.social!

Also, none of the neurocognitive markers of addiction were associated with scores on the most commonly used self-report measure of social media addiction.

💡 These findings challenge the idea that problematic social media use shares neurocognitive mechanisms with established addictions. This doesn't diminish real struggles with social media, but questions whether an addiction framework is the right lens and what that means for support and interventions

The neurocognitive signatures tested: 1️⃣ Elevated wanting: heightened motivational salience. 2️⃣ Wanting-liking dissociation: increased craving alongside stable or declining hedonic enjoyment. 3️⃣ Devaluation insensitivity: loss of goal-directed control resulting in behaviour that is rigid.