Lei Zhang

Dopamine and temporal discounting: revisiting pharmacology and individual differences

The paper re-examines the pharmacological effects of L-DOPA on temporal discounting in a large sample and evaluates proxy measures for dopamine, finding a reliable reduction in discount rate with no credible effects from proxy measures.

Distinct neural computations scale the violation of expected reward and emotion in social transgressions

The paper models reward and emotional prediction errors in social transgressions using fMRI and finds distinct neural mechanisms for each, with reward PE having a stronger impact on punishment decisions.

Prior expectations about own abilities bias self-belief formation and hinder subsequent revision

This study shows that initial expectations bias self-belief formation and hinder their revision even when feedback contradicts them.

Hippocampus and Striatum Showed Distinct Contributions to Longitudinal Changes in Value-Based Learning in Middle Childhood

This study shows that hippocampal and striatal volumes in children relate to different aspects of value-based learning over two years, with hippocampus linked to delayed learning and striatum to both immediate and delayed learning.

Nature exposure induces hypoalgesia by acting on nociception-related neural processing

This study shows that nature exposure reduces pain perception by altering specific neural pain processing pathways, not just through general effects or reporting bias.

A longitudinal resource for population neuroscience of school-age children and adolescents in China

The paper introduces a longitudinal dataset of school-age children and adolescents in China, detailing its design, sampling, and neuroimaging measurements.

Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior in healthy males

This study shows that testosterone reduces strategic prosocial behavior in males when they are being watched, without affecting reinforcement learning itself.

The first sheep graph-based pan-genome reveals the spectrum of structural variations and their effects on tail phenotypes

The paper constructs a graph-based sheep pan-genome to identify structural variations and their association with tail phenotypes in domestic and wild sheep.

A causal role of the human left temporoparietal junction in computing social influence during goal-directed learning

This study uses brain stimulation and computational modeling to show that left TPJ causally influences how individuals adjust their choices based on others' dissenting opinions during learning.

Effective connectivity reveals distinctive patterns in response to others' genuine affective experience of disgust as compared to pain

The paper investigates neural responses to genuine vs. pretended disgust using effective connectivity and finds distinct brain network involvement compared to pain empathy.

Neural dynamics between anterior insular cortex and right supramarginal gyrus dissociate genuine affect sharing from automatic responses to pretended pain

Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on visual perspective taking: A meta-analytic study

This study meta-analyzes the effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on visual perspective taking, finding small effects and no strong evidence for higher-level mental rotation tasks.

A brain network supporting social influences in human decision-making

The paper identifies a brain network involving reward and social hubs that supports social influence in decision-making by tracking dissociable neural representations of direct and vicarious valuation.

Generating Templates and Growth Charts for School-Aged Brain Development

The paper develops a pipeline to generate age-specific MRI brain templates and growth charts for children and adolescents, revealing neurodevelopmental differences between Chinese and US populations.

Reduced Default Mode Network Functional Connectivity in Patients with Recurrent Major Depressive Disorder

The paper analyzes resting-state fMRI data from 1,300 MDD patients and 1,128 controls to find reduced default mode network functional connectivity in recurrent MDD, not first-episode MDD.

Revealing neuro-computational mechanisms of reinforcement learning and decision-making with the hBayesDM package

The paper introduces hBayesDM, an R package for computational modeling of reinforcement learning and decision-making tasks, enabling user-friendly Bayesian analysis and visualization.