Peak retired academic moment. 1. One of those emails: Are you the R Watt who wrote xxxxxx? 2. Nope, but it sounds vaguely interesting. Wonder what they found. 3. Google - read it and discover that I did write it.

We're excited to share our new study on decoding brain activity in participants with post-stroke aphasia! We think this is an important step towards cognitive brain-computer interfaces for patients with language disorders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/8

Somehow this must be useful for vision science 🧠

Very cool. The white matter connectivity of early visual cortex recapitulates the polar angle variation of retinal structure. One look at this figure and you know you are in the world of retinal meridians and that Marisa Carrasco will be making an appearance.

I am standing for election to the VSS board. The slate of candidates [with 25% immodesty] is fantastic. Please consider engaging in the difficult decision process of identifying a just-noticeable-difference in great folks who are eager to serve vision science.

Man I missed out on being on that 900 author paper. I’m holding out for a 9000 author paper.

I read bioRxiv titles in all caps as the scientist excitedly yelling the result to their colleagues. Can you believe it?? SENSORY MAPS IN THE TELENCEPHALIC PALLIUM!!

Congratulations to @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, winner of the 2026 Ken Nakayama medal from @vssmtg.bsky.social! Nancy is not only a brilliant scientist, she has also been an inspiring mentor to several generations of vision scientists (including me).

Beautiful essay from @samhenri.gold about the joy of hacking, disguised as a review of the MacBook Neo. samhenri.gold/blog/2026031...

The BCBL would be an amazing place to work. Great colleagues in a gorgeous location with some of the finest food in the world.

There’s an interesting lawsuit out of Connecticut I’ve been following that rests on the question of whether darkness — yes, darkness, the primordial Erebus himself— is a natural resource. Here’s why that’s potentially a big deal.

Take me down to the Parallax city where the far moves slow and the near moves quickly

Happy VSS deadline extension to all the vision scientists out there.

This is really cool. There is some interesting thinking to be done regarding optimal temporal experimental design within this framework.

As it is spooky season, you should read this study of Aztec skull whistles, and listen to the screaming sounds that they produce.

Philly on the march.

Today, the PhD student I co-supervised with Dr. Toni Saarela, Lari Virtanen, is defending his thesis on color ensemble perception at the University of Helsinki. It is both a happy and a sad day. Toni passed away only two weeks ago and just missed seeing his first PhD student graduate. RIP Toni ❤️😔

Application now open: Career Awards for Medical Scientists (CAMS) is a highly competitive program that provides $700,000 awards over 5 years for physician-scientists, who are committed to an academic career Deadline: 10/07/25 www.bwfund.org/funding-oppo... #bwfcams

Our new paper, “A neural compass in the human brain during naturalistic human navigation” is out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! First-author @zhenganglu.bsky.social led the charge, with Josh Julian and collaborator @gkaguirre.com. www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

By studying the tilt illusion—when the visual cortex sees straight lines as angled—Professors Alan Stocker and Geoffrey Aguirre are making inroads into fundamental computational processes that could inform neuroscience and better AI. @pennmindcore.bsky.social @gkaguirre.com @sas.upenn.edu

🧠✨ Excited to share that our literature review on retinotopic mapping in the human visual cortex is now published! tinyurl.com/5d9ne68b Amazing collab with Noah Benson and Alex Puckett! We hope this will be a helpful resource for pRF modellers and visual neuroscientists!

The next macOS version is bringing the bouba.

My op-ed was published in @al.com ! www.al.com/news/2025/06... @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social

Going through months-worth of Google Scholar Alert emails getting caught up on neuro papers, so I figured I'd share some fun findings here 👇

Such an honor for me to receive this award named after Bob Boynton, who I never knew, but whose approach to science was an inspiration for me. His son just happened to attending #VSS2025 when the award was announced. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Wishing all the vision scientists safe travels #vss2025

This work with Alan Stocker, @lingqiz.bsky.social, and Jiang Mao is now in print. We benefited from very thoughtful reviewers. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Delighted to announce this spring semester's programme for our Seminar Series "Current Topics in Circadian & Visual Neuroscience", featuring a roster of speakers discussing their cutting-edge research in vision and/or circadian rhythms. Register now! www.tscnlab.org/seminar

We bought a license 6-pack yesterday. License validation is easy. Happy to support the continued development of this useful scientific tool.

🚨New job alert! My lab is hiring a lab manager. Perfect position for a graduating senior who is interested in full-time research before applying to graduate school. #Neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #VisionScience #MLSky Apply here: www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?...

We are building a gaze calibration apparatus. The observer positions their head at the center of a large hemisphere. They fixate on LEDs displayed at 3 foot distance at various visual angles while we record from a pupil camera. Today, I found the perfect structure to use for the hemisphere.

I study how perception is altered in neurologic disease. In particular, why some visual experiences are painful (i.e., produce photophobia), especially for people with migraine. These studies use custom devices for presenting stimuli and measuring the environment. Here’s a look at some of these.

Covert consciousness, where unresponsive patients willfully modulate brain activity to command, is gaining attention. But these assessments are fundamentally limited. What if we could just... read their minds instead? 🧵 about our paper in @greenjournal.bsky.social www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...

Some people see spontaneous faint flickering flashes in their visual field, a condition known as Visual Snow Syndrome (VSS, not to be confused with @vssmtg.bsky.social). Maybe a visual equivalent of the auditory tinnitus? Here is a very nice study from the lab of @sengelweb.bsky.social.

Looked up some reviews of my new orthopedist and am ☠️

Go Birds.

This lucid set of figures is going in my career advice slide deck.

A great coastal battle was over the organization of the 4th retinotopic, cortical visual area in humans. Split into quarter-fields like the macaque? Or a unified, ventral hemifield representation? Epic stuff, featuring at one point the romantic phrase “venous eclipse”.

Loving this thread. In the future, my coffee order will also be an encephalatte.

You—or someone you know—is likely to have the photic sneeze reflex, an autosomal-dominant trait of sneezing in response to bright light. Lucien and Manuel had a sneezer wear a light logger and found the illuminance recipe that triggers the sneeze. It’s gotta be the ipRGCs that carry this signal…

I especially like the category “hat”.

Welcome to @hansopdebeeck.bsky.social, vision scientist of object categories (and other interesting topics). And congratulations for grabbing the Bluesky handle before that other Hans (the visual artist) did…

What are your favorite conferences? We are debating where to go. #visionscience #cogsci #cogneuro #cognitivescience #cognitiveneuroscience

You gotta get in on this Brain trash talk thread.

Unaware that the whole cortex has no glia whatsoever. Problematic!! Unfollowing cortex now

Great news! @dumoulin.bsky.social, master of the population receptive field (and other matters visual), is here.

After 3 years and *6* submissions an R01 proposal by my UPenn colleague (Phil Gehrman) has received a fundable score. I respect this commitment to exhausting a study section. If all goes well I get to contribute measures of melanopsin and ipRGC function in bipolar disease and disordered sleep.

I'm looking for a research specialist with experience in fMRI analysis to help with a project studying covert consciousness in unresponsive patients, in collaboration with @gkaguirre.bsky.social. Please message me or email me at [email protected] if interested!

darmok and jalad at study section