How does the human brain extract abstract structure from experience? We show that sensory-independent relational representations emerge in mPFC over several days. Work with @mgarvert.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol...

📢 We’re hiring! We are looking for a postdoc for a funded inter-lab project on the computational mechanisms of creativity and humor, and their role in communication and neurodivergence. 🧠✨ Questions? DM me @amirtal.bsky.social or @yoedkenett.bsky.social Please RT to help us spread the word!

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...

I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student, funded by a new ERC grant. The grant focuses on the role of the hippocampus in visual perception, using 7T fMRI (hippocampal subfields, cortical layers) and MEG+iEEG. The intended start dates for both positions are in early 2027. 🧠🟦 1/3

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

A bee analogue of Kohler's insight learning experiments

A paper in Nature describes plague outbreaks dating back to around 5,500 years ago documented in hunter-gatherer communities from southeast Siberia. The findings, based on an analysis of ancient DNA, may be the oldest-known evidence of the plague and could shed light on its origins. 🧬🏺🧪

📢PhD job alert! A exciting PhD project that involves using MEG and biophysical modelling to try to predict effects of a glutamatergic treatment for psychosis... plus you can develop your own side project. Join our great team! www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

If insects are sentient and sentience implies rights, what follows for food security and public health? I call this the "insect challenge" for animal ethics. The Journal of Practical Ethics has a new symposium on it, with an article by me and 3 replies: journals.publishing.umich.edu/jpe/news/ 1/5

The Kafka Diaries ➛ is.gd/thisisnt

Have another Irish #painting. "Glenbrook II" was the second time I painted the Cork Harbour village. Put houses in a row and I'm gonna be tempted to paint them. Then again, given the state of the country, just put houses somewhere - they don't even have to be in a row. #SpéirGhorm#ArtYear

Sam Gross, 1973 ➛ https://is.gd/cyfbxS ★ via

They're made out of meat www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usX...

Thinking about neurological syndromes that "could" exist but don't, is there any disorder that causes loss of well-learned motor skills? Motor skills seem very robust, they survive memory loss like hippocampal damage or dementia. Is there any disorder where you specifically lose skills?

Weekend plans, Oleksandr Shatokhin ➛ https://www.instagram.com/shat.art88/ ★ via

5-year post-doctoral fellowships at All Souls College (application deadline: 4 September 2026) www.asc.ox.ac.uk/post-doctora...

Out in PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Inequality is not only hard to solve. Sometimes, it is hard to *see*. We ask a simple question: Do people notice when members of minority groups are absent? Across field studies and experiments, the answer was often no.

"Nobody needs convincing that a science of the Meaning of Life is the wrong project. I will argue that a science of phenomenal consciousness is wrong for exactly the same reason: neither is amenable to the third-person perspective science requires." by @profdata.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2606.00226

Your periodic reminder of Goodheart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

My much more radical opinion is that all ethical approvals for human/animal biomedical research should be openly published, and all papers resulting from those studies should be easily linked to the approval. This one *really* freaks people out and I suspect we all know why.

Oxford, the longest running continuous weather station in UK history, with temperature observations stretching back to 1815, has preliminarily broken its maximum temperature record for May yesterday by OVER 3ºC with a temperature of 33.7ºC. Unprecedented in its 211-year history.

A game of whack-a-mole with methodological confounds. We saw the same thing in the Botox-for-depression lit Improvements in attractiveness only matter in Study 1. Expectancies only matter in Study 2. Inability for women to express nonverbal disapproval only matters in Study 3, etc. 🙈

Somewhat overstated, but yet again we see humans quicker to grant rights to rivers, mountains, ecosystems, or forests than to other animals. The river gets rights against being polluted by industrial chicken farming, the chickens themselves get ignored. Dispiriting.

New publication from the lab in Cortex How does the brain generate the feeling that “I am the one causing my actions”*? In our preregistered EEG + VR study, we manipulated visual feedback of finger movements to see neural correlates of Embodied Agency. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"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

Well, 3/4 of it was painted plein air. . Spring Sunset In The Woods Behind My Studio 12“ x 12“ oil on wood panel

How well-calibrated are we to the difficulty of the (mental) actions we are about to take? *Right now* in the Banyan Breezeway, undergraduate Lana Milman explores the perception of "mental affordances", using countability as a case study! #VSS2026

I spent the past semester building interactive teaching apps with AI-assisted coding. I used my personal website to share them with my students, but that makes them hard to find for other educators. So I built Galvoro — galvoro.app

How does the brain rapidly distinguish similar memories? We use 7T fMRI to show dynamic shifts between pattern separation and reinstatement signals in hippocampal CA3 and DG with changing task demands: doi.org/10.64898/202...

@anilseth.bsky.social may well be correct about consciousness in AI, but we should also bear in mind that this type of rationalization is of high demand at the moment osf.io/preprints/ps...

Ahh, the poetry of power lines and corvids. . Transformers 8”x6” Oil on cradled wood panel . Available on my website

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...

I am so so proud of @noamsarna.bsky.social for his tremendous work on this. Now out in @pnas.org. @oxexppsy.bsky.social @ruvidar.bsky.social

A great @radiolab.bsky.social episode about value and ethics. It's not an easy listen, but an important one. Especially if you eat meat. open.spotify.com/episode/3Dgd...

Happy May Day Tom Disch ➛ is.gd/thisisnt

Intelligent

i have had only one very important world changing idea: slack makes you dumber AND makes you pay to access your own data and ideas. email rulez.

The anti-AI crowd on this website went from making good points against AI to being completely delusional and extremely toxic as AI spreads and the in-group/out-group mentality developed As Bluesky’s data is fully open, it would be a prime case study for scientists studying online toxicity

***4-year Career Development Research Fellowship in Psychology now available at Oxford!*** Open to all areas of Psychology, including Cognitive/Behavioural Neuroscience. PhD in last three years, or be about to submit (some exceptions apply). Deadline: 21st May. www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/vac...

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Today is the 2 year anniversary of when I met the Ravens. They just checked me out from a distance then! Here is some of my fav footage: them courting, feeding each other, barrel rolling and some of their vocalisations. They are the most amazing birds and I am so lucky to have them!

Here’s a way to get an LLM to declare itself a conscious AI (or, sometimes, a conscious human...). The Substack article has more examples and some discussion: aifails.substack.com/p/ai-declari...

New paper in PBR: "Working memory’s pointer system is governed by physical objecthood, not spatiotemporal information" rdcu.be/fd2tY Without valid WM pointers, we miss OBVIOUS changes in visible items; the study shows that this "resetting" process is all about objects and not spatiotemporal change!

Does Oxford University have a problem with Sticky Toffee Pudding?

Deadline is next week!

The Causality in Cognition Lab -- a supportive, bluesky-colored team -- is looking for a predoc to join us! Here are infos about the lab (cicl.stanford.edu) and the position (careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/iriss-p...). The application deadline is May 1st. Please share, thank you 🙏