Xinyuan Yan
PhD · Postdoctoral Researcher, Baylor College of Medicine
About
A normal person. Find science fascinating. A passerby on Earth.
For the past decade I have been learning how to do science — first through fMRI and behavioral modeling of social value learning and decision-making, and then through two postdoctoral chapters of intracranial human neuroscience. In my first postdoc at the University of Minnesota, I worked with Dr. Alexander Herman and Dr. David Darrow on iEEG signatures of value, uncertainty computation, and their relevance to psychiatry. I am now in my second postdoc at Baylor College of Medicine, working with Dr. Sameer Sheth and Dr. Ben Hayden on single-neuron recordings of human language, and concept representations.
What I hope to spend the rest of my life thinking about: how concepts are formed; how they are represented across modalities; how different languages — spoken and signed — converge on, and diverge from, a shared conceptual space; and how human and artificial intelligence might come to understand each other.
My Light
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
— Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)
Featured Publications
Distinct computational mechanisms of uncertainty processing explain opposing exploratory behaviors in anxiety and apathy
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging · 2025
Distinct computational mechanisms underlie exploration deficits in anxiety vs. apathy. Anxiety increases sensitivity to environmental uncertainty, driving excessive exploration; apathy reduces sensitivity to reward information, causing exploitation of known options.
Neural representations of the multidimensional self in the cortical midline structures
NeuroImage · 2018, 183: 291–299
Representational similarity analysis of fMRI data showed that mPFC and PCC patterns distinguish self from others and discriminate dimensions (traits, physical attributes, social roles) of self-knowledge — suggesting distinct codes for identity-sensitive vs. dimension-sensitive self-representations.
Placebo treatment facilitates social trust and approach behavior
PNAS · 2018, 115(22): 5732–5737
The mere belief in receiving a pro-social drug increases social trust and approach behavior toward strangers — revealing how expectation shapes interpersonal behavior independent of pharmacological action.