Paul Sharp

Our lab has openings for PhD and Postdocs with very competitive salaries. We are studying how humans differentially model the world, and how that shapes planning and decision making. See sharplabbiu.github.io Email CV to paul.sharp@biu.ac.il

In honor of Ariel Bibas, the "Kimit Jerusalem" butterfly has been renamed "Kimit Ariel", according to the Israeli naming society. "We thought that this was the most fitting of all the orange butterflies in Israel," they wrote to Yarden Bibas. This specific orange butterfly was chosen because it previously held the name "Orange Jerusalem," and Ariel is recognized as one of the 70 names for Jerusalem, according to Kveller 🎗️

Offline contributions to early skill learning Review by Emily Brooks, Joshua Hendrikse (@JoshuaHendrikse), Ethan R. Buch, Nitzan Censor (@Censor_Lab), Leonardo G. Cohen, & James Coxon (@coxontweets) tinyurl.com/38esd53u

“It is unacceptable that during a multi-front war, the IDF is forced to deal with a threatening minority from within.” The IDF chief of staff sharply condemned settler violence in the West Bank, which has threatened both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in recent days.

🚨MAJOR NEW PAPER 🚨 just out in @JAMAPsych : Psychedelic Therapy vs Antidepressants for the Treatment of Depression Under Equal Unblinding Conditions (tinyurl.com/yu2rbtaf). I am very proud of this one, was a lot of work for me - both co-first and last author! Eternal gratitude to co-first @QuantPsychiatry and twitterless Hannah Barnett! The premise is that it is biased to compare open-label trials (=where patients know what treatment they are getting) to blind trials (=where patients do NOT know what they are getting). Open-label trials would gain an unfair advantage by higher placebo response. Even formally blinded psychedelic trials are practically open-label as its obvious to distinguish placebo from 25mg of #psilocybin. In contrast, traditional antidepressants (SSRIs/SNRIs) trials are are close to be truly blind (Lin 2022). Given the bias of open-label vs. blinded comparison, we compared the efficacy of psychedelic-therapy (which is practically always open-label) vs. open-label antidepressants for the treatment of major depression. We tested 3 prior hypothesis: - There will be a significant difference between psychedelic-therapy vs. open-label antidepressants, favoring psychedelic-therapy. - There will be a significant difference between blinded and open-label antidepressants trials, favoring open-label. - There will NOT be a significant difference between blinded and open-label psychedelic-therapy, as practically they are always open-label. In contrast with our prior hypothesis, we did not find psychedelic-therapy to be more effective than open-label antidepressants (H1). Not only was the difference not clinically meaningful, but practically there was no difference at all. This finding means that antidepressants administered knowingly to patients, which is the case in real-life medical practice, is as effective as psychedelic-therapy. This result was robust across variations in study selection, including when we removed psychedelic-therapy trials on treatment-resistant depression. We also assessed the impact of blinding in both psychedelic-therapy and antidepressants trials. We found that for antidepressants (H2), but not for psychedelic-therapy (H3), open label is associated with better outcomes than blinded treatment. However, even in the case of antidepressants, the difference was practically small (~1.3 HAMD units). How come hypothesis 1 failed, i.e. that psychedelic-therapy is no ore effective than open-label antidepressants, given that antidepressants trials are famous for small drug-placebo difference (~2.4 HAMD units), while psychedelic-therapy trials reported large effects (~7.3)? The key factor is that in psychedelic trials the placebo response is about 50% relative to antidepressants, ~ 4 vs 8 HAMD units (Hsu 2024, Hieronymus 2025). This suppressed placebo response leads to an inflated between-arm difference, as the treatment arm is measured against a lower floor. The suppressed placebo response in psychedelic-therapy trials is likely attributable to the ‘know-cebo’ effect, i.e. the disappointment when patients realize they are in the control group. In psychedelic-therapy trials, this placebo suppression accounts for 4.0 / 7.3 ~ 55% of the specific treatment effect. In other words, ~55% of psychedelic-therapy’s effect is not explained by patient improvement after the treatment, but rather by the lack of improvement in the placebo group. In summary, we found that for the treatment of depression, psychedelic-therapy is no more effective than open-label SSRIs/SNRIs. Our results for psychedelics are twofold: psychedelic-therapy demonstrated a robust and large therapeutic effects (~12 HAMD units), which justifies optimism. On the other hand, psychedelic-therapy’s lack of superiority compared to open-label SSRIs/SNRIs highlights the influence of blinding integrity and argues against overly optimistic narrative's about psychedelic-therapy's potential.

WHO HAVE IRANIAN MISSILES KILLED SINCE THE START OF THE WAR? 16 CIVILIANS. Not one soldier. - Mary Anne Velasquez de Vera, 32 — a pregnant Filipina caregiver. - A man and a woman in their 70s, killed in their home tonight at 1am in Ramat Gan. - A 102-year-old man, who died after falling down the stairs while rushing to a shelter during a missile attack. - Yaakov, 16; Avigail, 15; and Sara Biton, 13 — three siblings killed in a shelter after a missile strike in Beit Shemesh. - Marina Belyav, 68 — suffocated on her way to a shelter. - Sara and Ronit Elimelech — a mother and daughter killed in Beit Shemesh. - Bruria and Yosef Cohen — a mother and son killed in Beit Shemesh. - Gavriel Baruch Revach, 16. - Oren Katz — a father of four. - Rustem Golomov — a construction worker killed at a work site. - Amed Mortuzov — a construction worker killed at a work site. Since the start of the war, the regime in Iran has exclusively killed civilians in Israel with cluster munitions.

RFP director Ahmed Alkhatib has noticed a dramatic narrative shift inside Gaza: “away from the resistance story, and toward a nation-building story.” Somewhat counterintuitively, he says, the sheer horror of the past two and a half years, has pushed people in Gaza away from radicalism, and towards more pragmatic, personal considerations: safety, work, electricity, water, a future for their children: “For the first time you’re hearing consistent talk of - we're done with war, we're done with resistance, we're done with Hamas.”

"The region’s only democracy, with more than two million Arab citizens, is transformed in the Western press into a global-scale evil. Meanwhile, Iran—a state that has threatened “death to Israel” and “death to America” for decades [and sponsored terrorist groups and attacks all over the world - GK] and is developing a nuclear program—suddenly appears in headlines as a “victim” and a “country defending its sovereignty."

Reposting this ad for both PhD positions and Postdoc positions in the lab. Note, the salaries are highly competitive, but we do work on-site, and require prior background in psychology or neuroscience. Reach out with CV to paul.sharp@biu.ac.il #postdoc #phd #computational

A bunch of white Irish left wing radicals wearing keffiyehs telling actual Iranian refugees they’re “puppets” for resisting a brutal theocracy and totalitarian regime. A truly Orwellian moment in Belfast.

@SomniumSpace @varjodotcom We picked @SomniumSpace over Varjo for our cognitive science lab - great decision 💯

@varjodotcom Better, cheaper, no licence, made in EU ⬇️ store.somniumspace.com

Interested in the new Varjo workstation bundles? Through Varjo Academic Pricing 2026, your institution can now access the same hardware trusted in leading research labs at up to 42% off commercial pricing with configurations ready for procurement. Learn more: eu1.hubs.ly/H0sftgr0

we are prioritixing those with psychology and neuroscience backgrounds, although there could be fits with CS/engineering. #computationalcognitivescience #neurojobs #postdoc #phd

Our lab has openings for PhD and Postdocs with very competitive salaries. We are studying how humans differentially model the world, and how that shapes planning and decision making. See sharplabbiu.github.io Email CV to paul.sharp@biu.ac.il

אנו במרכז לחקר המוח יודעים שחשוב בימים אלו למצוא תעסוקה למוח ולגוף. לכן ארגנו עבור קבוצת הסטודנטים הבינלאומיים שלנו סדנת חומרה ותוכנה. תודה רבה לפרופ׳ יזהר בר-גד שבנה סדנה מושקעת. @BarIlanU @Bar_ilan @GondaBrain @bargadizhar

The first time I ever heard the word “Holocaust” was from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I grew up in Iran, went through the school system, studied “history” the way the Islamic Republic teaches it. When we reached World War II, there was no mention of the Holocaust. No mention of the systematic murder of Jews. NOTHING. Then one day, I heard the word because the president of my country was denying it. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood on the world stage and called it a myth. That was my introduction to one of the greatest atrocities in human history. He was also in power during the Green Movement and was responsible for thousands who were arrested, tortured, or killed for daring to protest. And in the end, the man who built his persona on hating the Jewish state was brought down by the very state he obsessed over. Burn in hell Ahmadinejad.🤚🏼 Thank you Israel🫶🏼

Iranian Independent Filmmakers Association Supports U.S. And Israeli Attacks in Iran That Have Killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei variety.com/2026/film/glob…

What does Mamdani want to keep Iranian-Americans safe from? Euphoria?

"I criticized Germany's Führer a thousand times. He was oppressing his own people and preventing democracy. But there’s one thing you can’t take away from him, he died on his own two feet, instead of kneeling to the Jews. That took courage. He didn’t bow."

About 1 p.m. on the morning of October 7 - as families were still being massacred, women raped, and children dragged into Gaza - this was the message posted here on X by Iran’s Supreme Leader: “Tyrannical Zionists: You cannot recover from the defeat of October 7. You brought this calamity upon yourselves.” Let there be no doubt: this is a regime that celebrates days like October 7. That is who Khamenei is - or, one hopes, was. The mother of all FAFOs

Calling this an "attack on Iran" is far from the truth. The Khamenei regime does not represent "Iran". They are occupiers. Not Iran. Most Iranian people I have seen on my timeline are celebrating. The angry people seem to be Pakistani Islamists and anti-Western leftists.

New maze world in @SomniumSpace is in progress! ▶️Started with scale sketch in @gravitysketch : main path + trap locations. ➡️Blender: cleaned junk, built architecture, UV unwrapped, textured. ➡️Unity: materials, lighting, animation #IrinaStepArt #VRart #Unity3D #GravitySketch