The brain continuously optimizing its predictions. Local "leaky" circuits correct errors, while hierarchies link these computations using nonlinearities shaped by prior expectations. Predictive Coding with Bayesian Priors via Proximal Gradients arxiv.org/abs/2606.08374 #neuroscience

New paper out in JEP:HPP! psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/... Can we learn from things we're not paying attention to? We used a contextual cueing paradigm to pit selective attention against spatial prediction during visual search in 2 high-powered (N=104) experiments — and found they actively compete.

“The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue.“ It’s more intense than a one-year ban. You still can’t post preprints after one year, only papers accepted for publication.

Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain — a Perspective by Lisa Feldman Barrett & Earl K. Miller @lisafeldmanbarrett.com @earlkmiller.bsky.social #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Eyeball

It really is quite grimly hilarious how the drive for "Open Access" in academic publication was almost immediately captured by publishers who declared that, if readers weren't going to pay, then authors and their employers would have to. And we bought it, schmucks.

A new preprint, co-authored with @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social: The Deliberation Taboo Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/ osf.io/preprints/ps...

#hiring Come work with us to better understand the neuronal mechanism underlying perceptual consciousness! 18 months postdoctoral position at INSERM in Grenoble, France. ⌛Application deadline 10 March 2026. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/408445

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point. I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time in things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further

The black hole appears to expand. www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/akitaoka/Tha...

the cutoff scores for #MSCA postdoc fellowships are very high this year. has the score distribution shifted compared to previous years? I made a plot with scores from past years. if scores are at ceiling level, the process becomes essentially a lottery, because minor issues can lead to deductions.

𝗧𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 "Cortical traveling waves in time and space: Physics, physiology, and psychology" is going to the top of the list! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroskyence

Chatbots offer a magnificent bribe - a fast, frictionless route to information that bypasses the discomfort of learning. In this op-ed, we describe this as a Faustian bargain, in which we trade away what it means to be human & universities trade away their value www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Over een 'open-alles-tentamen' en massaal gebruik van ChatGPT. 'Een dappere vriendin kan nu op maximaal een vier rekenen. Ik haal met gedachteloos gestrest overschrijven waarschijnlijk een acht binnen. Het had omgekeerd moeten zijn.'

"Daarom verzoek ik u mijn medestudenten en mij te beschermen tegen toekomstige varianten van deze zinloosheid. Kijk alstublieft samen met opleidingen waar dit soort ‘toetsing’ plaatsvindt en grijp in. Inflatie voel ik al. Dat hoeft niet door te dringen in de waarde van mijn diploma."

What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Over 100 confirmed visitors to this conference, and there is still room to join for next week! Nijmegen, NL, 5-6 Feb

Do goal-directed actions minimize prediction error? Together with @haslagter.bsky.social and @fahrenfort.bsky.social I identified falsifiable predictions of active inference and reviewed the extent to which they are supported by empirical results. Read the preprint here: tinyurl.com/2by8k3h6

OPINIE - Heino Falcke, hoogleraar astrofysica, stuitte bij het boeken van een eenvoudig treinticket op het ‘bureaucratisch monster’ van de universiteit. Waanzin, schrijft hij, die meer veroorzaakt dan persoonlijke frustratie. (1/2)

Does anyone know of any articles, etc that looks at how the various flavours of nonrepresentational cognitive science relate to one another? Shapiro wrote a useful book mapping out the flavours of embodiment, but thinking more mapping out eco psych, enactivism, dynamical systems...

University of Groningen: ⭐ no more big-tech by 2030 ⭐ Google Workplace 🚫 Windows 🚫 MS Office 🚫 ChatGPT 🚫 A huge challenge! Meeting culture won't get us there. Dedication and focus will. 💪🚀 Let's get to work. ukrant.nl/magazine/we-... @rug.nl @rug-gmw.bsky.social #science

Check out this short piece I wrote, based on my recent visit to the Critical AI Literacy symposium at Radboud University, organised by @irisvanrooij.bsky.social, @olivia.science and others: www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...

This is a very good letter, and I especially endorse and appreciate this succinct specification of the goal of academic training.

“The goal of academic training is not to solve problems as efficiently and quickly as possible, but to develop skills for identifying and dealing with novel problems, which have never been solved before.” Open letter, consider signing 🖊️ if you haven’t yet 🙏 openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Fantastische column van hoogleraar natuurkunde Tjerk Oosterhuis over de staat van de universiteiten na decennia van onderfinanciering: www.mareonline.nl/opinie/ga-di...

WOinActie! Gift link naar een opiniestuk van @rensbod.bsky.social @remcobreuker.bsky.social en @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social. @woinactie.bsky.social www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

« The real tragedy isn’t that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It’s that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking. »

“Brain rot is not really rotting our brains,” says Earl Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s constantly creating an environment that our brains are not equipped to deal with. www.nationalgeographic.com/health/artic... #neuroscience

Somehow I've only just now gotten around to signing this. Highly recommended! openletter.earth/open-letter-... Great initiative by @olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social and others. Interesting to note how many AI experts are in fact signing this...

I don't know why my muscles are atrophying when I stopped walking and started using my ScooterGPT to get everywhere. now I can't stand up for any amount of time. it's so weird!

How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all times, Yes, I teach it to students daily, and refer to it in lots of papers. Sorry. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

Ode to the original language model, or: Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs) *(no predictive coding either!) By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n

«If you object that we’re not in a zombie movie because there are no brain-eating cannibals, let me reassure you, there are.» – @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social

🚨🧠🚨 POSTDOC POSITION 🚨🧠🚨 in my lab: www.ru.nl/en/working-a... Connectivity in Working Memory. Deadline 12 Nov! Apply via website; please repost.

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

also massage therapy would arguably be a much better investment for everyone why is our university sponsoring hype that deskills workers instead of actually making lives better?

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you? students: no AI I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

Finally one thing they are, due to being statistical models of text, these neural networks and other large language models are indeed designed to do: milquetoastify boringify language. LLMs steal and drain off human creativity originality verve by merely copying. english.elpais.com/technology/2...

Years ago I started the Green Young Academy with @sanlifaez.bsky.social & @anne-urai.bsky.social. Across meetings, zoom calls, pitches and even a meeting with the King, this grew into 2 projects launched today: A report on Universities' sustainability plans & a manifesto with sustainability pledges

Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language. tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬 1/n

Planning on running a RIFT study? In a new manuscript, we put together the RIFT know-how accumulated over the years by multiple labs (@lindadrijvers.bsky.social, @schota.bsky.social, @eelkespaak.bsky.social, with Cecília Hustá and others). Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Check out our latest work led by @joeyzhou.bsky.social on alpha oscillatory networks in PLOS Biology! ➡️ journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Do ongoing alpha activity fluctuations influence perceptual sensitivity or criterion?

Prominente professoren en onderzoekers luiden de alarmbel over AI in het hoger onderwijs. Ze verzetten zich tegen wat ze “de AI-hype” noemen en waarschuwen voor het verlies van kritisch denken, een kunst die vooral niet uitbesteed kan worden aan “best guess machines”. apache.be/2025/10/23/a...

🧠 Regularization, Action, and Attractors in the Dynamical “Bayesian” Brain direct.mit.edu/jocn/article... (still uncorrected proofs, but they should post the corrected one soon--also OA is forthcoming, for now PDF at brainandexperience.org/pdf/10.1162-...)

Excellent piece. We know how to improve writing ability: it's by doing more, not less of it. "LLMs do not improve one’s writing ability much like taking a taxi does not improve one’s driving ability. Students should hone their writing, thinking, and other academic skills at every opportunity."

I've updated my document that tackles four of the common arguments used to encourage teachers to use AI. I hope this will be helpful to those educators wanting to push back on AI mania.

This is FANTASTIC. Thank you, @lutzfernandez.bsky.social, for doing this work and so generously sharing it

🚨 New preprint: Invisible neural frequency tagging (RIFT) for the underfunded researcher: 👉 www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... RIFT uses high-frequency flicker to probe attention in M/EEG with minimal stimulus visibility and little distraction. Until now, it required a costly high-speed projector.