Join us in ASSC 2026 !

New today in @Nature: your visual cortex contains touch-based body maps. bit.ly/VisualBodyMaps Your brain transforms what you see into first-person, body-referenced codes: A previously unknown bridge between vision and touch.

Pre-print 🎉 "Subjective and objective approaches in the study of conscious perception" will be a chapter in www.horizon-minds.com. We explain that subjective and objective are poorly defined constructs and provide a taxonomy. doi.org/10.31234/osf... with @svangaal.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social

Out for a while but forgot to post it. Using pupil size as a proxy for arousal, we show that the inverted-U shaped arousal–performance curve (Yerkes-Dodson law) is not fixed, but can shift globally depending on neuromodulatory state (atomoxetine): arousal recalibration www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🧠 New preprint: Why do deep neural networks predict brain responses so well? We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics. 📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A great example of engagement with open peer review 👇

The great @stijnnuiten.bsky.social on the mechanisms of optimal arousal state. #ASSC28 @assc28.bsky.social

1/ New paper by Hame Park, (@AraziAyelet), Bharath Talluri, Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker & Tobias Donner published in Nature Communications – “Confirmation Bias through Selective Readout of Information Encoded in Human Parietal Cortex”: rdcu.be/etlR7. Here is a summary:

Very happy this is finally out 🎉. In this paper, we show that conf. reports are biased by a visual illusion, an asymmetrical base rate and a payoff scheme. Crucially, we show that only the visual illusion affects subj. experience, suggesting decision bias leaks onto confidence reports.

We show that memantine selectively improves neural decoding of attended illusory Kanizsa triangles, revealing NMDA receptor-dependent enhancement of feedback processing. elifesciences.org/articles/100... Thanks to Samuel Noorman @fahrenfort.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social Jasper Zantvoord

Out now @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, w/ @akalt.bsky.social & @drmattdavis.bsky.social. Are sensory sampling rhythms fixed by intrinsically-determined processes, or do they couple to external structure? Here we highlight the incompatibility between these accounts and propose a resolution [1/6]

🥳 The 2024 Impact Factor & CiteScores are now released. We're pleased to inform you that Neuroscience of Consciousness #NCONSC achieved an Impact Factor of  4.3 (2023 IF 4.1). We are very excited and thankful for our prolific community of consciousness science! #consci @thomasandrillon.bsky.social

1/ Can AI be conscious? My Behavioral & Brain Sciences target article on ‘Conscious AI and Biological Naturalism’ is now open for commentary proposals. Deadline is June 12. Take-home: real artificial consciousness is very unlikely along current trajectories. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🧠 Did you really see that? Or did your brain just think you did? How confidently we report what we see can shape our brain activity. That means our own reporting habits might blur the line between “aware” and “unaware” in research on #consciousness. buff.ly/L3c7sVe

I am opening one PhD position at the Neuroscience Center @uhneuro.bsky.social, focusing on large-scale neural interactions in perception and prediction (ECoG/LFPs/MEG) across human and non-human primates using comp. modeling and information theory. contact: www.helsinki.fi/en/hilife-he...

Finally the Version of Record of our paper "Criterion placement threatens the construct validity of neural measures of consciousness" is out in @elife.bsky.social as *fundamental* and *compelling*! doi.org/10.7554/eLif....

There are 2 PhD positions in my lab in Amsterdam (collaboration with Sander Bohte, @tessamdekker.bsky.social and Ingmar Visser) on NeuroAI of developmental vision. academicpositions.nl/ad/centrum-w...

(couldn't wait till Monday because I'm impatient) this lovely preprint has the last part of my phd work and now is out and about 🎉🎊. will write a thread on Monday. stay tuned 📻. osf.io/preprints/ps...

New preprint, w/ @predictivebrain.bsky.social ! we've found that visual cortex, even when just viewing natural scenes, predicts *higher-level* visual features The aligns with developments in ML, but challenges some assumptions about early sensory cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

To celebrate the defence of my PhD, and thanks to @ibbamsterdam.bsky.social, I will host a symposium titled "Vision as prediction: learning, action, and biases" on June 6. Program, registration and more information here: bit.ly/43reOgR

🎉 Our paper "Criterion placement threatens the construct validity of neural measures of consciousness" is now out in eLife! 🎉 TL;DR: Both simulations and empirical data show that you should not post-hoc sort neural data based on subjective measures of consciousness. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Neural and computational analyses further revealed that task effects on preparatory activity over motor cortex, resembling a starting point bias, were smallest on trials with high phasic pupil-linked arousal. (5/6)

For more details, go check out the full preprint at: dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs.... (6/6)

⚠️ Come see our new preprint, in which we (@degeelab.bsky.social, Jasper Zantvoord, @psterzer.bsky.social, @fahrenfort.bsky.social & @svangaal.bsky.social) show that phasic (task-evoked) and tonic (baseline) arousal distinctly shape human decision bias! (1/6) dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Protect international education in Dutch Academia! openletter.earth/against-lang...

Over 100 organisations still consider eLife papers when evaluating research contributions since losing our Impact Factor: buff.ly/wGQWNqs Help us rally more community support for research reform and let us know your funder or institution’s stance on the #ImpactFactor 💬

In @elife.bsky.social: Perceptual and attentional impairments of conscious access involve distinct neural mechanisms despite equal task performance doi.org/10.7554/eLif... by Samuel Noorman with @timostein.bsky.social and Simon van Gaal. Well done Samuel!