Jadyn S. Park, Kruthi Gollapudi, Jin Ke, Matthias Nau, Ioannis Pappas & Yuan Chang Leong (submitted). Emotional arousal enhances narrative memories through functional integration of large-scale brain networks. bioRxiv. Preprint

Hayoung Song, Jin Ke, Rhea Madhogarhia, Yuan Chang Leong & Monica D. Rosenberg (submitted). Cortical reinstatement of causally related events sparks narrative insights by updating neural representation patterns. bioRxiv. Preprint

Shan Gao, Ryleigh Nash, Shannon Burns & Yuan Chang Leong (2025). Predicting whole-brain neural dynamics from prefrontal cortex fNIRS signal during movie-watching. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Article | Preprint | Code

Jean Decety & Yuan Chang Leong (2025). Social neuroscience. In Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, Eli J. Finkel & Wendy B. Mendes (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (6th ed.). Situational Press. Article

Ren Calabro, Kannon Bhattacharyya, Wilma Bainbridge & Yuan Chang Leong (accepted). Humans and convolutional neural networks prioritize similar visual features in intuitive physics judgments. Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Jin Ke, Hayoung Song, Monica D. Rosenberg & Yuan Chang Leong (2025). Dynamic brain connectivity predicts emotional arousal during naturalistic movie-watching. PLOS Computational Biology. Article | Preprint | Code

Haena Kim, Alicia Liu & Yuan Chang Leong (2025). Desirability biases perceptual decisions in the aversive domain. Emotion. Article | Preprint | Code

Qiongwen Cao, Michael S. Cohen, Akram Bakkour, Yuan Chang Leong & Jean Decety (2025). Moral conviction interacts with metacognitive ability in modulating neural activity during sociopolitical decision-making. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. Article | Preprint

Begüm G. Babür, Yuan Chang Leong, Chelsey X. Pan & Leor M. Hackel (2024). Neural responses to social rejection reflect dissociable learning about relational value and reward. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Article

Yizhou Lyu*, Zishan Su*, Dawn Neumann, Kimberly L. Meidenbauer & Yuan Chang Leong (2024). Hostile attribution bias shapes neural synchrony in the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex during ambiguous social narratives. Journal of Neuroscience. Article | Preprint | Code | SSD News

Michael S. Cohen, Yuan Chang Leong, Keven Ruby, Robert A. Pape & Jean Decety (2024). Intersubject correlations in reward and mentalizing brain circuits separately predict persuasiveness of two types of ISIS video propaganda. Scientific Reports. Article | Code

Nakwon Rim, Marc G. Berman & Yuan Chang Leong (2023). Moral consensus and divergence in partisan language use. arXiv:2310.09618. Preprint

Ren Calabro, Yizhou Lyu, Yuan Chang Leong (2023). Trial-by-trial fluctuations in amygdala activity track motivational enhancement of desirable sensory evidence during perceptual decision-making. Cerebral Cortex. Article | Preprint | SI

Jin Ke, Yuan Chang Leong (2022). A connectome-based predictive model of affective experience during naturalistic viewing. In Proceedings of the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Article | PDF

Rosa Rossi-Goldthorpe, Yuan Chang Leong, Pantelis Leptourgos, Philip Corlett (2021). Paranoia, self-deception and overconfidence. PLoS Computational Biology. Article | Code/Data

Yuan Chang Leong, Roma Dziembaj, Mark D’Esposito (2021). Pupil-linked arousal biases evidence accumulation towards desirable percepts during perceptual decision-making. Psychological Science. Article | Preprint | SI | Code/Data 

Samuel Nastase, Yun-Fei Liu, Hanna Hillman, Asieh Zadbood, Liat Hasenfratz, Neggin Keshavarzian, Janice Chen, Christopher J. Honey, Yaara Yeshurun, Mor Regev, Mai Nguyen, Claire H.C. Chang, Christopher Baldassano, Olga Lositsky, Erez Simony, Michael A. Chow, Yuan Chang Leong, Paula P. Brooks, Emily Micciche, Gina Choe, Ariel Goldstein, Tamara Vanderwal, Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Kenneth A. Norman, Uri Hasson (2021). The “Narratives” fMRI dataset for evaluating models of naturalistic language comprehension. Scientific Data. Article | Preprint

Research Prior to the University of Chicago

Yuan Chang Leong, Janice Chen, Robb Willer, Jamil Zaki (2020). Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Article | Preprint | SI | Code/Data

Yuan Chang Leong, Brent L Hughes, Yiyu Wang, Jamil Zaki (2019). Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying motivated seeing. Nature Human Behavior. Article | PDF | SI | Code/Data | Commentary

Yuan Chang Leong, Jamil Zaki (2018). Unrealistic optimism in advice taking: A computational account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Article | PDF | SI | Code/Data

Sylvia Morelli*, Yuan Chang Leong*, Ryan Carlson, Monica Kullar, Jamil Zaki (2018). Neural detection of socially valued community members. Proceedings of the Academy of the Sciences. Article | PDF | SI | Code/Data

Yuan Chang Leong*, Angela Radulescu*, Reka Daniel, Vivian DeWoskin, Yael Niv (2017). Dynamic interaction between reinforcement learning and attention in multidimensional environments. Neuron. Article | PDF | SI | Commentary

Asieh Zadbood, Janice Chen, Yuan Chang Leong, Kenneth A Norman, Uri Hasson (2017). How we transmit memories to other brains: Constructing shared neural representations via communication. Cerebral Cortex. Article | PDF

Janice Chen*, Yuan Chang Leong*, Christopher J Honey, Chung H Yong, Kenneth A Norman, Uri Hasson (2017). Shared memories reveal shared structure in neural activity across individuals. Nature Neuroscience. Article | PDF | SI | Commentary

Natalia Velez, Yuan Chang Leong, Chelsey Pan, Hyowon Gweon (2016). Learning and making novel predictions about others’ preferences. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. PDF

Yael Niv, Reka Daniel, Andra Geana, Samuel J Gershman, Yuan Chang Leong, Angela Radulescu, Robert C Wilson (2015). Reinforcement learning in multidimensional environments relies on attention mechanisms. Journal of Neuroscience. Article | PDF | Commentary

Yuan Chang Leong, Yael Niv (2013). Human reinforcement learning processes act on learned attentionally-filtered representations of the world. 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making. PDF

Philip Johnson-Laird, Olivia E Kang, Yuan Chang Leong (2012). On musical dissonance. Music Perception. Article | PDF