What is the difference between autonomy and agency?

Thanks @pessoabrain.bsky.social !!

🎊📜 NEW PAPER 📜🎊 Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness? And if so, where do we start? I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on. 1/n

🎊📜 NEW PAPER 📜🎊 Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness? And if so, where do we start? I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on. 1/n

Under challenging conditions, human vision turns into iterative problem solving. Typical deep learning algorithms don't do this. Our paper out now in Plos Computational Biology journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... work led by @tarunkhajuria.bsky.social #visionscience #neuroAI

Preprint time: “Symmetries at the origin of hierarchical emergence” arxiv.org/abs/2512.00984 On how symmetries generate hierarchical macroscales and shape the structure of our beliefs, making high-dimensional inference tractable

🚨 New preprint on cortical slowing, stroke, and attention **Sleep-like slow waves in wakefulness index post-stroke behavioural alterations** Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @dreamteamicm.bsky.social @institutducerveau.bsky.social 🧠🧪💤

This place..

The process of writing feels like a never-ending process of not being able to deliver. A constant regurgitation of ideas that one is never satisfied with once vomited out. It is not satisfaction that deems the work complete, but the inability to stomach the bile any longer.

Beeping the hive-mind: Has there been anything published as an exposition of, *if* and *how* GNWT aligns with functional computationalism? ..Or is it primarily based on unofficially assumed relations?

Doom scrolling BlueSky recently, I love that @earlkmiller.bsky.social single-handedly stirred you all. ..On whichever side of the argument you sit on. ;-) Keeping it Punk whilst retaining rigour. Solid move, if you ask me.

If we continue like this, a degree will soon be nothing more than a driving licence for AI.

This looks really nice!

I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow

Our new preprint on the FOODEEG open dataset is out! EEG recordings and behavioural responses on food cognition tasks for 117 participants will be made publicly available 🧠 @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social @tgro.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our School is recruiting! Come and join a great team @MonashUni careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

🚨New spotlight paper at Neurips 2025🚨 We show that in sign-diverse networks, inherent non-gradient “curl” terms arise, and can, depending on network architecture, destabilize gradient-descent solutions or paradoxically accelerate learning beyond pure gradient flow. 🧵⬇️ www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.02765

A multiple sclerosis patient in the UK was the first to receive CAR T cell therapy, invented by UCL researchers, in a clinical trial testing whether this personalised treatment can slow or even halt the progression of the disease. @uclqsion.bsky.social www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oc...

The final paper of my PhD is now out as a preprint. This is a follow-up piece in series of two companion papers modelling awareness and suppression in a new variant of continuous flash suppression. arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154 🧵 1/3

It is an enormous pleasure—and a dream, really—to share that the University of Bamberg has approved an initiative dedicated to mathematical approaches in #ConSci. The initiative is called Bamberg Mathematical Consciousness Science Initiative, or BAMΞ for short. bamxi.org #BAMΞ @uni-bamberg.de

Will academia remain a viable option for many of us? I still hope so. With love for this game, I hope science promises to still be a field we can participate it. In this world filled with doom-noise, lets aspire for optimistic mindsets.

“A musician finding his ear become every day more delicate, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave..” Hume, 1739, presaging predictive processing

Thrilled to share our new study: “Distilling the neurophenomenological signatures of pure awareness during Transcendental Meditation”, combining subjective reports with large-scale screening of neural features to investigate pure awareness. Thread below! 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The eternally flagrant optimist in me would like to believe that this work will have far-reaching impact.

🚨 How do collective behaviours (high-order interdependencies) *emerge*❓ Can systems with low-order interactions do it? What do these minimal synergistic systems look like? In arxiv.org/abs/2505.246... we show when and how synergies emerge when no high-order mechanisms are involved. Short 🧵: 1/N

🚨 New preprint 🚨 "Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure." We analyzed 1,024 awakenings collected across 196 nights with high-density EEG (256 ch.) to explore the relationship between dreaming and subjective sleep depth. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Throwing this one into the virtual void in the hope there are a few hapless souls interested: Would anyone like to participate in an #Information #Geometry reading/journal/study club? Preferably in person, if you're in Paris. But, would consider doing an online one *for sure*.

Brighton feels as good as I remember it.

🧠 New preprint! 🧠 As part of a forthcoming book on consciousness, we wrote a chapter on: Spontaneous thoughts and experiences across wakefulness and sleep osf.io/preprints/ps... with @parboulakis.bsky.social @ademertzi.bsky.social and @jdsitt.bsky.social A brief 🧵!

This really does sound amazing. I'll be looking into this. Also, I absolutely love the colour pallette. :-) Congratulations!

The first major output of the @templetonworld.bsky.social @arc-intrepid.bsky.social adversarial collaboration testing IIT & predictive processing theories of consciousness is out now arxiv.org/abs/2509.00555

📜 ¡New preprint! 📜 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧪🧠 With amazing alumni from @mesec-community.bsky.social and including: @zefanzheng.bsky.social @robertchisciure.bsky.social @jaanaru.bsky.social @bechir-jarraya.bsky.social

Thank you so much for having me!! I always have a blast chatting with @bethfisher.bsky.social and this time was no different! 💕 Also I loved your reflections in the end and how both of you have change your mind perhaps a bit through sharing your experiences with each other. So cool and precious!

The rise of the machines or the age of digital-infantilism? I tried a thing.. Here I write on the current digital-situation we find ourselves in. With an optimistic view on our future, with wider-reaching - and hopefully biologically-centred - aspirations. It's fun, general, and personal writing

If #emergence is your thing, and, even if it isn't, here is a great annual workshop -- now on its third iteration(!) -- where you will get to hear some great presenters, of which, I am the least interesting. Really looking forward to it!! @sussexcogs.bsky.social

Today, Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu write in the @nytimes.com on the necessity for a deflation of idolising #AGI. Great piece.

Interested in Network hubs, cortical hierarchies, and gradients? Ever wonder where they come from? Check our latest review, where we cover different approaches to mapping hubs, models for their evolution, and mechanisms for how they develop: osf.io/preprints/os...

Great article by @markdhumphries.bsky.social here. Humphries’ work had a significant impact on my thinking. This is precisely what we attempt to do in our recent preprint, and in previous published neural modelling work. I’m sympathetic to the focus on dynamics in coarse graining.

The post Rick Bretzel reposts is one I am enamoured by as I currently read the paper myself. I completely agree with Rick that slow, and thoughtful science is the way forward. Not everything, everywhere, all at once. It reminds me that in a world levelled by noise, the quiet resounds furthest

Are you interested in our work on complex physical systems and applications (to neural systems)? Wanna join us in Sydney? 🐨 🦘 We have two open positions: 1. Postdoc position: usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA... 2. Fully-funded PhD position: www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...

Interested in cortical wave dynamics? Check out our new preprint led by J Cruddas with @jchrispang.bsky.social where review the physics and physiology of cortical waves and their implications for psychological function: osf.io/preprints/ps... @nsb-lab.bsky.social

If you are in Paris on October 1-3 : we are organizing a fantastic cognitive neuroscience conference at Collège de France, on topics ranging from language to math, education and consciousness, with many of my favorite scientists ! Full program here: www.unicog.org/seeing-the-m...

@thomasandrillon.bsky.social puts it brilliantly here. Maybe indeed, less, rather than more, is more.

The pleasure remains mine. 🤗

📜🪇[PUBLISHED]: NEW PREPRINT!🪇📜 I am incredibly excited to announce that we have published our paper on how "Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics" [email protected] @anilseth.bsky.social Barnett, Carter Strap in! 1/n

Was a pleasure to present!! 🎉🤓

1/ Today at @assc28.bsky.social from the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science and friends: 9:50am, Kalokainouri Hall, @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social "Unfolding Sleep’s Emergent Dynamical Organisation in the Temporal and Spectral Domains"

We kick off #EmbracingComplexity with the inimitable @laurennross.bsky.social explaining two key aspects of emergence that cause philosophical and scientific challenges. Challenges we hope to tackle! @ifisc.uib-csic.es @rherzoga.bsky.social

We're looking forward to welcoming everyone to #Mallorca tomorrow at the @ifisc.uib-csic.es, for the #EmbracingComplexity: Principled and practical approaches to #emergence! It's going to be a stellar line-up, during what appears to be a few glorious summer days. See you tomorrow everyone! 🎉🎉