from the docs now available online, it may seem like Epstein was especially interested in consciousness. but i don't think that's true. rather, perhaps consciousness science was especially interested in Epstein.

Our latest paper, “Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests”, is now out in Nature Machine Intelligence: www.nature.com/articles/s42... Non-paywalled version: arxiv.org/abs/2504.10786 Tweet thread below from first author @genetang.bsky.social...

I have news! After 4 fabulous years at Northeastern, this July I will be moving to Duke—with tenure! It’s hard to convey how grateful I am to everyone who has made this possible: from old professors in Mexico and mentors in the US to students, colleagues, and, of course, my amazing wife and family.

One day online conference on the ways behavioral and neural sciences can inform peace efforts. Organized by Duke's amazing @felipedebrigard.bsky.social Free! Tomorrow! (Fri Feb 6). To register see link below. behavioralscientist.org/program-neur...

Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

I've read a lot of slanted papers from tech company employees about the 'benefits' of AI, but the fact that Anthropic themselves have put out such a cautious paper should be a big cause for alarm for people who are trading learning for prompting And it doesn't improve productivity!

I just learned that Affinity got bought by Canva (almost 2 years ago!). So sad. I haven't even used the new one but I bet they'll ruin it somehow. At least Affinity was one of those last software hold outs that will sell you rather than lease you their products so I still have their version.

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Just a Monday morning reminder that we are searching for a tenure track faculty position in cognitive psychology.

The Visual Learning Lab is hiring TWO lab coordinators! Both positions are ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school. Application deadline is Feb 10th (approaching fast!)—with flexible summer start dates.

Happy to be part of this new paper analyzing lesion-induced aphantasia, now accepted in Cortex. One more reason to believe that the Fusiform Imagery Node is important for the conscious experience of mental imagery. Here: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....

Academics can be nasty to each other, but we’ve come a long way. Consider this: senior professors don’t even try anymore to gouge out each other’s eyes to prove their superiority. There’s hardly any chance left to brag about the heroic self-control involved in not squeezing your rival’s balls.

When reading a line like "the glow of the flame briefly illuminated his face", most readers tend to build an image in their mind. 🧠 People with aphantasia, however, report that they do not. We wanted to know: Does this change how they physically read stories? (1/5)

Turns out a foot and a half of snow is a lot of snow.

Have you ever wanted to study individual differences in attention only to be frustrated by prohibitive low reliability? If so, what a coincidence! Let me introduce you to the first study from the newly formed Sheffield PandA lab: Using RSVPs to measure the speed of attention: rdcu.be/e0t0A 1/

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

get all the vaccines!

The connection between viral infection and other apparently unrelated diseases — HPV ➡️ cervical cancer; Epstein-Barr Virus (mono) ➡️ multiple sclerosis (MS); and increasingly looking like herpes zoster (shingles) ➡️ dementia — is probably the most paradigm-shifting medical discovery of my lifetime. 🧪

Our first of four Academy Info sessions is happening soon! 🎉 🤓 Join us by registering here: neuromatch.io/neuromatch-a... #CompNeuro #ClimateScience #NeuroAI #DeepLearning

We are hiring! We have an open position for a new lab coordinator in #primate #cognition and #behavior in the Cognitive Evolution Group at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Find out more at: sites.lsa.umich.edu/cognitive-ev...

I find the idea of being in need of an urgent delivery of a philosophy book very amusing

Our college asking us to submit monthly budget forecasts:

aspirational

tangential, but one of the most remarkable episiodes in the history of science to me is that fact that people in the 19th century correctly inferred the basic facts about the physiology of color vision by doing math on our color phenomenology

A mathematical glitch means that lesion network mapping, which aims to find condition-specific dysfunctional networks, produces strikingly similar results regardless of the condition being studied:

More than 200 published studies and at least seven ongoing clinical trials rely on potentially faulty brain network maps, according to a study published yesterday. By @avaskham.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...

super excited to share my preprint with @meganakpeters.bsky.social stimulus familiarity shapes hierarchical structure learning and metacognitive dynamics🚀😊!! osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper coming out in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: "Consciousness doesn't do that". I explain why I believe that animal sentience research is in large part built on sand. In my opinion, we should be skeptical of many of the claims made in this field. philpapers.org/rec/MICCDD

New preprint: Confidence-accuracy dissociations in perceptual decision making. A review I was supposed to write 3 years ago for my VSS Young Investigator Award. Better late than never 😅 I tried to organize the literature and explore the likely mechanisms. Feedback welcome! osf.io/preprints/ps...

I was tricked by this naturally occurring visual illusion. Odd large puddle?

Not that I’m close to getting a sabbatical, but close enough (hopefully!) that I’ve started to think what would be an interesting, productive thing to plan for. What do people use it for? Visit a single place? Go on talk tour? Write a book? Acquire a new skill? Something else?

Happy start of the semester! Coming back from sabbatical and immediately facing a flood of student emails inspired me to repost this hack (I've used the accommodation letter one 10x already today). #Academicsky

✨Reminder✨ The symposia deadline for PSA 2026 is 15 January (this Thursday!)

become ungovernable

New paper from the IMC lab! I am very excited about this one. For years, I have been arguing that one of the main claims of the so-called "simulation heuristic" is likely not true for episodic counterfactual thinking, namely that the harder it is to mentally simulate it, the less plausible (1/n)

It’s always amazes me how recent some scientific theories are. Plate tectonics did not become mainstream until the late 60’s. The Alvarez hypothesis (non-avian dinosaurs became extinct because of a large asteroid impact) became accepted 15 years ago.

If you’re Reviewer 2, the second number does not increase. 🤨

What should psychology journals do about this? What’s a reasonable policy/standard to apply to research using online data collection methods?

From Sam McDougle's love of music has sprung a focus on how people learn and get better at motor skills – an area he sees as sometimes neglected in cognitive neuroscience. Read a new Q&A with him, a preview of his #CNS2026 YIA talk: www.cogneurosociety.org/taking-actio... @actlab.bsky.social

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

When you have many collaborations and a flexible working schedule within your lab, being in Discord's top 5% users is what happens.

My reward after the VSS submission rush

This Thursday, 12pm (ET) The MIT Consciousness Club is thrilled to host: Marisa Carrasco (Department of Psychology, New York University) - "Perception action dissociations as a window into consciousness" Join us over Zoom, if you will. #neuroscience sites.google.com/view/mit-con...

About a month to go to submit a symposium to PSA26! Deadline 15 Jan 2026.

I agree! Scientific threads are fun to write (even though it takes time and effort to do them right!). They are a great way of disseminating and learning about research, and making new connections too. My small contribution: How about dropping the term tweetorial for the fresher “blueprints” ;)

2/ As a genre, tweetorials don’t play well on places that want you to share one-off pieces of ‘content‘ (like on LinkedIn). But this is a good thing. They are works of art, made for long-term consumption. Refreshing! Here is one by on Bluesky by @jorge-morales.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/jorg...

TWEETORIALS: They are still worth it! When scientists left Twitter/X, many also left the ‘tweetorial’ behind. That’s a pity. Because they are the perfect antidote to AI-generated slop on newsfeeds. Here is my latest blog: mikeyoungacademy.dk/tweetorials-... I appreciate any reposts! [Thread]

VSS abstracts done*. * We just need to cut each of them in half.

are better-performing face recognition models more human-like? turns out: NO in terms of how we see/treat different faces as similar/different to each other, there seems to be tradeoff: better models are LESS human-like so they already work in some 'alien' ways... osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧠📈🧠🤖🧠💻

When we see something that's moving, our memories about it end up projected forward in time: We remember it further along than it was. In a new paper in 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, out today and led by @dillonplunkett.bsky.social, we demonstrate that this happens even when there is 𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙤𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.🧵