Media Neuroscience Lab
The Media Neuroscience Lab promotes research and teaching at the intersection of media psychology, technology, and neuroscience | https://medianeuroscience.org
- 🎮 New on Channel 3 (ABC KEYT) this Wednesday at 6pm PST: A new UCSB study finds that video game addiction in teens often stems from underlying mental health issues — not the games themselves. #gamingdisorder #mentalheath #videogames
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience Lab📢 CCR needs a new Editor in Chief! 📢 @vanatteveldt.com is rotating out so we are inviting (self)nominations to lead our journal through its next phase. Deadline 15 January, see link for details: journal.computationalcommunication.org/announcement...
- Thank you to everyone in the Communication & Social Cognition division who joined us for Alison Oliver's talk, “A Pupillometric Evaluation of Moral Judgments.” We really appreciated the great discussion! #nca2025 #commsky
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience Lab🚨 #COMMSky Spotlight Alert! 🚨 @nibasaleem.bsky.social is featured in the November 2025 edition of the #ICA (@icahdq.bsky.social) Newsletter! 🌟 Check out the member spotlight at the 🔗 below. We’re proud to see our PI's research focus and mentorship aspirations highlighted on the global stage! 🌎
- Get to know ICA Member, 🌟Muniba Saleem🌟 in this month's newsletter! 🔗 buff.ly/5vHXvYg
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabExcited to present our project “Character Profiles: Broadening Theoretical Conceptualizations of Character Schemas” at #NCA2025! This work examines character and person perception processes of distinct character types (e.g., pirates, cowboys, mad scientists). Thurs Nov 20 - 2:30PM - Maple 05
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabI am super excited to see the #CommSky community at NCA 2025! Stay updated with an NCA feed here: bsky.app/profile/did:... You can be featured by simply including these hashtags in your posts: #NCA25 #NCA2025
- 🎮 New study: Teen gaming addiction may stem more from pre-existing mental health issues (like anxiety & depression) than from video games themselves. It is not just about the joystick, but it’s about what’s going on in the mind. 🧠 Read more: news.ucsb.edu/2025/022004/... #commsky #psychsci #gaming
- “Why is my teen addicted to video games?” Our new study in JAMA Network Open shows that psychopathology is a key driver--not an outcome of gaming disorder! Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and social challenges may underlie gaming disorder. Treat the root, not just the game. 🎮🧠 #commsky #psychsci #gaming
- Read the article here: ja.ma/4o9EM1N
- Very excited to share our latest article on Psychopathology and Gaming Disorder in Adolescents published in JAMA Network Open (ja.ma/4o9EM1N).
- In this cohort study of 4289 adolescents, we found that higher baseline levels of psychopathology were significantly associated with an increased risk of developing gaming disorder later, but gaming disorder was not associated with worsening psychopathology.
- This study looked at behavioral data from the ABCD study dataset. A closer look at specific reward dynamics in video game content and at the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms will follow! Big kudos to Kylie Falcione (@kyliewoodman.bsky.social) for her heroic efforts in this project!
- Did you meet the media neuroscience lab at #ica25 ? @b-wheeler.bsky.social @musamalik.bsky.social @kyliewoodman.bsky.social Drop a like or comment who you met and we will give you a follow! P.S. All three of these brilliant researchers are going on the job market this year!
- 🎉 Congratulations to former lab member Dr. Sungbin Youk on winning a Top Paper award at @icacsab.bsky.social! His research used multifaceted analytic approaches to explore how brain activity can help us understand and predict donation behaviors in response to Singapore PSA videos #ica25
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabDoing or planning digital platform research? We want to hear from you. Take our 5–8 min survey to help shape tools, infrastructure & training for researchers. 🔗 tiny.cc/aio-survey #AIO2025survey
- 🎉 Congratulations to @fhopp.bsky.social on winning @icacsab.bsky.social’s Rising Star Award! Dr. Hopp, PI of the Moral Computing Lab at ZPID and former MNL member, continues to shape the field through rigorous and high-quality science. We’re so proud!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabICYMI: 🏆 Congratulations to the winners of Saturday's #ICA25 posters! 🏆 Yoo Joo Lee (Washington State U) won the Top Poster award, and Brittany Wheeler (U of California, Santa Barbara) received the Top Student Poster award!
- We hope you had the opportunity to swing by and see @b-wheeler.bsky.social 's TOP STUDENT POSTER! If you didn't get to see it check out the poster below ⬇️⬇️
- Swing by @b-wheeler.bsky.social poster session at 1:30 to snag one of our exclusive MNL 3D printed brain keychain. 🧠 She is also on the job market this year 👀👀 #ica25
- Excited to present at #ICA25 Today! 🗓 1:30pm | Poster #70 | Centennial Foyer (Regency) “Is Academic Online Bullying a Widespread Phenomenon? A Study of Scholarly Discourse on Twitter/X” If you're attending, stop by to discuss our findings...and pick up a fun brain keychain while you're there! 🧠
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabExcited to present at #ICA25 Today! 🗓 1:30pm | Poster #70 | Centennial Foyer (Regency) “Is Academic Online Bullying a Widespread Phenomenon? A Study of Scholarly Discourse on Twitter/X” If you're attending, stop by to discuss our findings...and pick up a fun brain keychain while you're there! 🧠
- One final presentation to go at #ICA25! @b-wheeler.bsky.social will be sharing our emerging research on online hate and bullying!
- We’re always amazed at the impact you can make in just 3 minutes. Thank you to CSAB for hosting an incredible showcase of groundbreaking work. All the presenters inspired us. A special shoutout to @musamalik.bsky.social for his standout paper on global morality! #ica25
- Huge thanks to everyone who joined @musamalik.bsky.social’s presentation this morning! 🌟 Grateful for such an engaged audience! #ica25
- Truly, is there anything @musamalik.bsky.social can’t do? If you haven’t had the chance to hear Musa share his research, you’re in for a treat. Catch him tomorrow at #ica25 , first at 9am in the Aspen Ballroom, then again at 12pm in the Mt. Blue Sky room. (He is also on the job market this year 👀)
- We’re thrilled to see MNL represented at @hackingcommsci.bsky.social! Huge thanks to @jacobtfisher.online and @kyliewoodman.bsky.social for organizing another fantastic hackathon and sharing valuable comm sci insights such as using GitHub and running fMRI analyses. #hackica25 #ica25
- Finally, it is published 😀 open access: The Extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD): A Crowd-Sourced Approach via the Moral Narrative Analyzer Platform www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
- Most previous moral mining research has been informed by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). Here, we develop and evaluate an alternative moral mining tool based on the theory of Morality as Cooperation (MAC), using crowd-sourced annotations and MoNA! mona.mnl.ucsb.edu.
- Our earlier companion paper with MFT as focus, the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD) can be found here: psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.3758/.... The score tools (eMFDscore and eMACscore) you can use for your own mining morality projects are available on Github (links are available in the papers).
- These papers and tools are a concerted effort of an amazing group of people I (Rene) had the pleasure to work with. A special thank you to all co-authors and extra kudos to @musamalik.bsky.social who spearheaded our eMACD work, very well done! Now, onwards to some new ideas in this area, stay tuned!
- Dr. Huskey is always making us proud as a MNL alum. Congratulations on another successful #CommHorizons2025 So many amazing scholars and presentations. We look forward to next year!
- At #CommHorizons2025, we're presenting six studies that explore how media, from headlines to platforms, shape our health, sleep, emotions, & decisions. From fMRI to iOS tools, see how we’re linking brains, behavior, & better outcomes: cogcommscience.com/cognitive-co...
- @kyliewoodman.bsky.social did a phenomenal job of representing our lab's research on media and well-being at #CommHorizons2025
- @kyliewoodman.bsky.social is always phenomenal & ambitious — 3 studies w/ 10k young people (ABCD study) looking for meaningful threshold criteria for problematic gaming categories in 8minutes #CommHorizons2025 @medianeuro.bsky.social
- Already looking forward to next year #SANS2026
- Come to sunny San Diego, April 14-20, 2026, for #SANS2026!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabCome to sunny San Diego, April 14-20, 2026, for #SANS2026!
- If you have questions about media addictions, @kyliewoodman.bsky.social is our in-house expert. See her present 2 posters at #SANS2025: examining the neural mediator between psychopathology and Gaming Disorder, and another on gender differences in the neural development of general media addictions.
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience Lab@kyliewoodman.bsky.social from @medianeuro.bsky.social holding down the court at @sansmeeting.bsky.social 🎉
- Last day of #SANS2025! Come check out our poster on the neural markers of media addiction in adolescents, using data from the ABCD study. Presented during the poster session at 1:50 PM by PhD candidate @kyliewoodman.bsky.social!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabA collection of modules, datasets, and other resources for learning to program in R, geared toward students in psychology and neuroscience: ritcheym.github.io/ppn/
- Incredibly thoughtful research coming out of the CCSL lab, featuring innovative affective clustering of news headlines, drift diffusion modeling, and fMRI news valence contrasts. @richardhuskey.bsky.social always knows how to captivate an audience. #SANS2025
- MNL alum @richardhuskey.bsky.social delivered a great Blitz talk on new media selection and the representation of negative news headline bias. Check out his poster tonight at #SANS2025!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabMy neural plasticity was in overdrive while listening to Dr. Beatrice Luna present her lab’s extensive research on adolescent 'Critical Period Plasticity.' Using techniques such as fMRI and magnetic spectroscopy, her work supports the Driven Dual Systems Model. #SANS2025
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabJust attended the Best Practices in Methods session at #SANS2025 so many practical takeaways! From Dr. Clelland and Dr. Cosme's push for SCA (links below), to Dr. Chen’s approach to voxel activation reporting, and Dr. Burns guidance on motion exclusion for hyperscanning—super useful insights!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabComic Sans (c) at #SANS2025! Our own unique stand up comedy show!
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience Lab@earlkmiller.bsky.social delivers the #SANS2025 presidential address: "Cognition emerges from neural dynamics"
- Last night, @kanupandey.bsky.social from UCSB truly livened up #SANS2025 with his upbeat amd witty humor at Comic SANS
- Find the MNL lineage at #SANS2025. You can find us nerding out about media and morality or neuroscience of interactive media @aeden.bsky.social @richardhuskey.bsky.social @kyliewoodman.bsky.social
- Reposted by Media Neuroscience LabFinding the balance between large consortium v. small bespoke research studies. A very cordial debate between @drdamienfair.bsky.social and @thaliawheatley.bsky.social . Which side are you on? #sans2025
