Xinyuan Yan

Xinyuan Yan

PhD

About Me

A normal person

Find science fascinating

A passerby on Earth

Past 10 years: learning how to do science, intensive training in social value learning and decision-making, with fMRI and behavioral modeling

Past 3 years: focusing on human uncertainty-value learning and decision-making, with intracranial EEG and behavioral modeling

Maybe my rest of life: neural representations of multi-modal concepts—why and how different languages (spoken, signed) reach the same concept space; how humans learn new concepts and maintain stable representations; how concepts link to our affective feelings

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)

Curriculum Vitae

View CV (PDF)

Featured Publications

Anxiety and apathy mechanisms

Distinct computational mechanisms of uncertainty processing explain opposing exploratory behaviors in anxiety and apathy

Yan, X., Ebitz, R. B., Grissom, N., Darrow, D. P., & Herman, A. B.

Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2025

We identified distinct computational mechanisms underlying exploration deficits in anxiety versus apathy. Anxiety increases sensitivity to environmental uncertainty, driving excessive exploration; apathy reduces sensitivity to reward information, causing exploitation of known options. These opposing patterns emerge from separable cognitive computations.

[Paper] [Supplementary] [Responses to Reviewers]
Neural representations of multidimensional self

Neural representations of the multidimensional self in the cortical midline structures

Feng, C.†, Yan, X.†, Huang, W., & Ma, Y. (†equal contribution)

NeuroImage, 2018, 183: 291-299

Using representational similarity analysis of fMRI data, we revealed that multivoxel neural patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex distinguish self from others and discriminate different dimensions (personality traits, physical attributes, social roles) of self-knowledge. The PCC activity patterns were more strongly coupled with dimensions of self-knowledge than self-identity, suggesting distinct neural codes for identity-sensitive and dimension-sensitive self-representations.

[Paper] [Supplementary]
Placebo and social trust

Placebo treatment facilitates social trust and approach behavior

Yan, X., Yong, X., Huang, W., & Ma, Y.

PNAS, 2018, 115(22): 5732-5737

We demonstrated that placebo treatment—the mere belief in receiving a pro-social drug—increases social trust and approach behavior toward strangers. This effect operates through expectation-driven modulation of social decision-making, revealing how beliefs shape interpersonal behavior independent of pharmacological action.

[Paper] [Supplementary]

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Failure Chronicle

Lessons Learned: Success without extreme pain and desperation is not stable and a fairy tale.