Selected Work

Five key career contributions:

How fear and anxiety flow through the brain via a cortical-midbrain axis. (e.g., Mobbs et al., Science, 2007; Mobbs et al., PNAS; Qi et al., PNAS, 2018; Mobbs et al., TICS, 2020; Kim et al., PLoS Biology, 2024).
The discovery of a specific cortical region involved in safety detection signals (e.g., Tashjian et al., TICS, 2021; Tashjian et al., PLoS Biology, 2025) and how social and curiosity drives can make people riskier (e.g., Deng et al., PNAS, 2026).
The first to create gamified environments to study the dynamics of threat and social foraging (Silston et al., Nature Communications, 2021; Mobbs et al., Neuron, 2022)
What are the prerequisites of toxic online interactions? How is toxicity represented in the human brain, and the link to anxiety and habit formation (e.g., Garg et al., submitted)?
Developed theoretical frameworks for survival-based fear, anxiety, and decision-making (e.g., Mobbs et al., TICS 2020; Mobbs et al., NBBR, 2024).

Papers by Topic or Approach

LLMS

Matyas, J., Cunningham, W.A., Vezhnevets, A.S., Mobbs, D., Duéñez-Guzmán, E.A., Leibo, J.L. (Preprint). Stabilising Generative Models of Attitude Change.

Kocielnik, R., Han, P., Song, P., Marmarelis, M.G., Debnath, R., Mobbs, D., Anandkumar, A., Alvarez, R.M. (Preprint.) Rethinking Psychometric Evaluation of LLMs: When and Why Self-Reports Predict Behavior.

Han, P., Kocielnik, R., Song, P., Marmarelis, M.G., Debnath, R., Mobbs, D., Anandkumar, A., Alvarez, R.M. (Preprint). The Personality Illusion: Revealing Dissociation Between Self-Reports & Behavior in LLMs.

Okada, N., Garg, K., Deng, W., Mobbs, D. (Preprint). Do LLM Agents Compromise Like Humans? Risk and Responsibility in Dyadic Decision-Making.

Computational Approaches

Deng, W., Garg, K., and FMobbs, D. (2026). Linking compromise and responsibility attribution to risky decision-making in dyadic foraging. PNAS.

Wise, T., Charpentiar, C., Dayan, P., Mobbs, D. (2023). Interactive cognitive maps support flexible behavior under threat. Cell Reports. 42. 8.

Tashjian, S.M., Wise, T., Mobbs, D. (2022). Increased model-based control for acquiring protection. PLoS Computational Biology. 18 (12), e1010805.

Zbozinek, T., Wise, T., Qi, S., Perez, O., Fanselow, M., and Mobbs, D. (2022). Ambiguity Drives Higher-Order Pavlovian Learning. PLoS Computational Biology. 18 (9), e1010410.

Mobbs, D., Wise, T., Suthana, N., Guzman, N., Kriegeskorte, N., Leibo, J., (2021). The Promises and Challenges of Human Computational Ethology. Neuron. 109; 14; 2224-2238.

Fear and Safety

Tashjian, S. M., Cussen, J., Deng, W., Zhang, B., and Mobbs, D. (2025). Subregions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrate threat and protective information to meta-represent safety. PLoS Biology. 23 (1), e3002986.

Tashjian, S.M., Zbozinek, T., Mobbs, D. (2021). A Decision Architecture for Safety Computations. Trends in Cognitive Science. 25; 5; 342-354.

Mobbs, D, Adolphs, R., Feldman-Barrett, L. Faneslow, M., LeDoux, J., Ressler, K., and Tye, K. (2019). Viewpoint: Approaches to defining and investigating fear. Nature Neuroscience. 22, 1205-1216.

Fung, B., Qi, S., Hassabis, D., Daw, N., Mobbs, D. (2019). Slow escape decisions are swayed by trait anxiety. Nature: Human Behavior. 3, 702-708. Perspective by Neil McNaughton.

Mobbs, D, Trimmer, P., Blumstein, D.T., Dayan, P. (2018). Foraging for foundations in decision neuroscience: Insights from ethology. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience. 19, 419-427.

Mobbs, D., Yu, R., Rowe, J., Eich, H., Feldmanhall, O., Dalgleish, T. (2010). Neural activity associated with monitoring the oscillating threat value of a Tarantula. PNAS. 107: 20582-6.

Mobbs, D., Petrovic, P., Marchant, J., Hassabis, D., Seymour, B., Weiskopf, N., Dolan, R.J., Frith, C.D (2007). When Fear is Near: Threat Imminence Elicits Prefrontal - Periaqueductal Grey Shifts in Humans. Science. 317; 1079-1083.

Social and Online Behavior

Pandita, S., Garg, K., Zhang, J., Mobbs, D. (2024). Three Roots of Online Toxicity: Disembodied, Accountability, and Disinhibition. Trends in Cognitive Science. 28 (9), 814-828.

Molapour, T., Hagan, C.C., Silston, B., Wu, H., Ramstead, M., Friston, K., Mobbs, D. (2021). Seven computations of the social brain. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience. 16 (8), 745-760.

Silston, B., Wise, T., Qi, S., Sui, X., Dayan, P., and Mobbs, D. (2021). Neural encoding of socially adjusted value during competitive and hazardous foraging. Nature Communications. 12 (1) 1-11.

Mobbs, D., Meyer, M., Yu, R., Passamonti, L., Seymour, B.J., Calder A.J., Schweizer, S., Frith, C.D., Dalgleish, T. (2009). A Key Role for Similarity in Vicarious Reward. Science. 324, 900.

Takahashi, H., Kato, M., Matsuura, M., Mobbs, D., Suhara, T., Okubo, Y. (2009). When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude. Science. 323, 937-939.