Postdoc and Research Technician in Intersection of Decision and Affective Neuroscience

Are you interested in working at the intersection of decision and affective neuroscience?

Do you want to build and apply computational models of learning, decision making, or emotions? We are looking for you!

We are pleased to accept postdoc and research technician applications to start in Summer 2024 (start date flexible) in the Department of Psychology at Yale. Applicants should be interested in contributing to the fields of neuroeconomics and/or computational psychiatry. Postdoctoral applicants should have experience with computational modeling and should also have experience with either neuroimaging or clinically relevant research (both is fine too!).

To apply, send a cover letter, CV, and the names of 3 references to robb.rutledge@yale.edu

We will start reviewing applications on March 1, 2024. Review of applications will continue until the positions have been filled.

We build computational models of decision making to explain variability in decision making including in relation to affective experience. We use neuroimaging, pharmacology, and smartphone-based data collection to build new models for mood and behavior. We are currently collecting neuroimaging and smartphone data from 250 people with a history of major depression. Can we predict how symptoms will change over months in samples of hundreds of people with depression or anxiety? How do those changes relate to the structure and connectivity of the brain? How does behavior changes over months or even years?

Much of our research uses large datasets acquired using our smartphone platforms including The Happiness Project which has had over 15,000 downloads. Data from 47,067 participants playing a risky decision making and happiness task in our previous app is freely available on Dryad. Let us know if you discover anything interesting! A few of our collaborators include Conor Liston and Faith Gunning (Cornell Weill), Chris Lambert and Liam Mason (UCL), Sam McDougle and Avram Holmes (Yale), Molly Crockett (Princeton), and Zeb Kurth-Nelson (DeepMind).

Relevant papers

1. Feng G, Rutledge R (preprint) Surprising sounds bias risky decision making. PsyArXiv. [Abstract]

2. Jangraw D, et al. (2023) A highly replicable decline in mood during rest and simple tasks. Nature Human Behaviour 7, 596-610. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

3. Kao CH, Feng GW, Hur JK, Jarvis H, Rutledge RB (2022) Computational models of subjective feelings in psychiatry. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 105008. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

4. Gillan CM, Rutledge RB (2021) Smartphones and the neuroscience of mental health. Annual Review of Neuroscience 44, 129-151. [Abstract] [PDF]

5. Chew B*, Blain B*, Dolan RJ, Rutledge RB (2021) A neurocomputational model for intrinsic reward. Journal of Neuroscience 41, 8963-8971. [Abstract] [PDF] [BioRxiv]

6. Nair A*, Niyogi RK*, Shang F, Tabrizi SJ, Rees G, Rutledge RB (2021) Opportunity cost determines action initiation latency and predicts apathy. Psychological Medicine, 1-10. [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

7. Blain B, Rutledge RB (2020) Momentary subjective well-being depends on learning and not reward. eLife 9, e57977 [Abstract] [PDF] [PsyArXiv]

8. Rutledge RB, et al. (2017) Association of neural and emotional impacts of reward prediction errors with major depression. JAMA Psychiatry 74, 1-8. [Abstract] [PDF] [Supplemental] [Commentary]

Our lab is committed to reproducibility and we strive to incorporate principles of open science in our research, including sharing our data and code. We believe that our science is better with a diverse team. We embrace and encourage our lab members’ differences in age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our lab members who they are.