This paper is an absolutely beautiful combination of a deep set of cognitive ideas, a super creative task, a surprisingly impressive behaviour, and an elegant modelling framework. One of my favourite things in the last year.

I concur that it’s great to see all the responses on so many aspects of consciousness! So much so I can’t even be mad at the target article’s vision-centrism 😆

Did the evolution of consciousness begin with smell? I have a piece arguing it might well have done (in response to @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's recent vision-centric picture). Free to read here: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZhrI...

The whole (absolutely massive) debate thread can be found here for those with access. Must be about 60K words in total. As attention spans are dwindling, BBS is going BIG! bsky.app/profile/smfl...

Lovely to see the full range of excellent commentaries on our BBS article with @matthiasmichel.bsky.social, together with our response, now out: Target article: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Commentaries: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Our response: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

On cheap artificial consciousness: important message from @matthiasmichel.bsky.social articulating common misreadings of functionalism, and why the problem of artificial C requires tackling broader questions in philosophy of mind, not just theories of C philpapers.org/rec/MICOCA-3

We had a great experience with submission and review. Def recommend to people!

A bee analogue of Kohler's insight learning experiments

I have had wonderful experiences with Open Mind so far. Fair reviews. Speedy. Thoughtful editorial assessment. No pressure to oversell claims or enhance "narrative" for the sake of splash and sparkle (looking at you, vanity journals). Solid science and solid community. Will keep sending stuff there!

Get submitting to OpenMind!! Not a bad deal :-)

If you join this committee, your ideas will influence the educations & scientific trajectories of thousands of students. Neuromatch's interactive student body has topped 14,000, estimated 40,000 engaging with Neuromatch activities & materials. One of the most impactful things you can do in science!

Finally submitted my response - The Stuff Matters - to the 50(!) commentaries on my 2025 BBS paper 'Conscious AI and biological naturalism'. I'm sorry to all commentators that it took so long. Hopefully the whole caboodle will be published soon. Target paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Many congratulations Nadine!!

The last Consciousness Club of the summer term will be given by Aniruddh Patel on "Musical beat processing: cognitive, neural, and cross-species perspectives" Wed 17th June 4pm-530pm UK time All welcome, for more info see: metacoglab.org/consciousnes... Looking forward to it! 🧠 🧪

Feeling incredibly honored to receive the William James Prize from the @theassc.bsky.social for our paper on how the brain distinguishes imagery and perception! Thank you to the committee and thanks @smfleming.bsky.social for being the best mentor!

This was a fun discussion - thanks BIU for the invite!

To many of us, myself included, the greatest puzzle in neuroscience is how our brains give rise to our very rich perceptual experience of the world. But studying the neural correlates of rich perception is difficult, so we usually resort to very simple stimuli. 1/3 #neuroskyence

(YouTube) Steve Fleming on "Sensory horizons and the functions of conscious vision" www.youtube.com/watch?v=euGC... with @smfleming.bsky.social

who wants to come work with us, on whether AIs can introspect? e.g. something similar to this - transformer-circuits.pub/2025/introsp... - but maybe especially in the perceptual domain? we just got some new funds to collaborate with our friends at Yale (on foundational models for fMRI data), & ...

Yes, I agree! And some emergent capabilities of the models are just hard to dismiss as "fancy auto-complete", e.g. this amazing paper from Jack Lindsey arxiv.org/abs/2601.01828

LLM introspection revisited. if we do the controls properly we may not have strong enough evidence just yet arxiv.org/html/2605.26...

"Remembering what you did: Episodic memory for self-actions", with @silviaseghezzi.bsky.social and Sanjay Manohar now in NBBR. @oxexppsy.bsky.social @ndcnoxford.bsky.social @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social

As one example, human selfhood is just as mysterious to me as LLM selfhood. I don't see why one is more illusory than the other.

Last call to apply! ⏰ Applications close 10 June! ⬇️⬇️⬇️ cifar.ca/next-generat... #NeuroscienceResearch #ConsciousnessStudies #PostdocOpportunities #AIConsciousness #NeuroscienceOfConsciousness

authors.elsevier.com/c/1nA3C_KOmx... new paper in Neuron in which we argue that many claims on consciousness in AI & animals etc are inconsistent. they are driven by theories/views that are not really supported by empirical evidence. they confuse subjective experience w/ cognition or perception

direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... maybe there's a way to study metacognitive monitoring w/o collecting confidence? could be handy for studying animals and infants?

This is well worth a read from Ted Chiang in The Atlantic www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2... An elegant reminder about the powerful illusions of selfhood generated by chatbots

I have been so excited about this project. In many ways the most surprising thing to me was how seemingly similar the AI-discovered models were to simple ones I thought I understood, even though they fit way better. This means we can also really get what makes them work.

my last PhD chapter is finally out 🪅🥳 (although not nicely formatted yet). it's very easy to introduce detection biases in otherwise appearance based tasks. A more digested thread coming later. w/ @cjungerius.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social @svangaal.bsky.social @fahrenfort.bsky.social

1/n New preprint: What biology can, and cannot, tell us about conscious AI arxiv.org/abs/2606.02121 With @ulysse-klatzmann.bsky.social

My book is out! 🎉 It grew out of an intro CS course I teach. The goal is to build a solid intuition for algorithms through hands-on practice. If you or your students want a stronger foundation in programming before delegating to LLMs, this might be for you :)

Sensorimotor transformation of number in the primate parietal cortex www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience

A neuronal basis for mental imagery www.nature.com/articles/s41... by @smfleming.bsky.social @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social; #neuroscience

Have a look at the programme we have prepared for the workshop and the amazing speakers who will be joining us! 🧠 Including @smfleming.bsky.social @seanfw.bsky.social @neurograce.bsky.social @jolienfrancken.bsky.social @naotsuchiya.bsky.social Applications close 29 May!⏳ mesec.co/event/worksh...

Beautiful location for our annual MetaLab retreat, sourced by hero of a lab manager Sarah Kalwarowsky @arcethos.bsky.social - a converted church on Chesil Beach! 😍🦖

Don't miss the @mesec-community.bsky.social Workshop 2026: Computational Modelling for Consciousness Science — From Fragmentation to Integration. Happening in Carcassonne, France, 29/8-5/9. Apply by 29/5. Chaired by @smfleming.bsky.social. Deets: mesec.co/event/worksh...

See also the commentary by Chen, Rosen & Polimeni in the same issue: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is the May cover of NN but it has already been debunked on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Such a clear statement about the ridiculous pace of publishing (not just NN).

More data that norepinephrine is more spatially and temporally specific that was often believed 🧪

New paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com with @simonag.bsky.social and Darko Odic! We show that young children and adults use different internal signals for reporting memory versus perceptual confidence judgements. But by age six, the internal signals become comparable. Free access link: rdcu.be/fgZvV

Abstracts closing May 15th!

@ehudahissar.bsky.social will give this week's Consciousness Club on "Mind-body dualism: A perceptual core" Check out his recent Psych Rev paper for background: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40839447/ Wed 13th May 11am-1230pm UK, all welcome! See metacoglab.org/consciousnes... for info and how to join

We wrote a book! www.cambridge.org/core/books/s... Consciousness science is a fascinating but bewildering field: many competing theories, little consensus, and big open questions. If you are looking for an accessible guide through this complex landscape, this book is for you.

How do response biases complicate the relationship between mental health and metacognition? Super excited this is out now in PNAS! Fortunate to work with @matanmazor.bsky.social and @ruvidar.bsky.social Check it out! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Join us in wishing a massive happy 100th birthday to the man who has inspired millions of people around the world to care about nature and look after our planet - the incredible Sir David Attenborough! 🎉

Looking forward to this!

Fascinating new research from UWaterloo Psychology’s @ccolomb.bsky.social Clara Colombatto and colleague (@smfleming.bsky.social Steve Fleming) examines attributions of metacognitive states in human-AI interactions. More here: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Watch and read Molly’s brave and deeply timely thoughts. What a role model for us all in terms of how to use our platforms. 🤩

In a new preprint w/ @tianqizhan.bsky.social & @smfleming.bsky.social, we developed a new measure of metacognitive bias (over/under confidence in individual decisions)! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

A new measure of metacognitive bias: non-confounded, reliable, directly derived from the meta-d’ model, and easy to compute using the hmetad package in R.