Nordic Neuroscience Meeting 2027 in Iceland! June 14-16, 2027 Call for symposia, see details below
Andrew Corcoran
@corcorana.bsky.social
vagally-interested postdoc @ nexs.ku.dk | bunny herder | caffeine abuser | open science enthusiast | thoughts almost certainly not his own
“Theory and Model Building in Psychology” New book edited by @fabianhutmacher.bsky.social and Alexander Wendt, with chapters by @ufeest.bsky.social, @devezer.bsky.social, @mieronen.bsky.social, and @bringmannlaura.bsky.social. link.springer.com/content/pdf/...
What do people actually mean when they say cells *communicate*? That question drove my PhD. The preprint with the main findings is now live: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/30461/ 1/
Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
How quickly we update our beliefs depends on the environment. This recently published work, shows that humans adjust their learning rates both rapidly, from recent prediction errors, and gradually, through environment-specific meta-learning—supported by representations in the orbitofrontal cortex.
Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience@ghentccn.bsky.social · 2w agoTwo time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Seems sensible... might also be illuminating to think through some of the implications of not having a body, & its contribution to the training curriculum (but ofc I would say that, wouldn't I...) journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Body as First Teacher: The Role of Rhythmic Visceral Dynamics in Early Cognitive Development - Andrew W. Corcoran, Kelsey Perrykkad, Daniel Feuerriegel, Jonathan E. Robinson, 2025
Embodied cognition—the idea that mental states and processes should be understood in relation to one’s bodily constitution and interactions with the world—remai...
journals.sagepub.com
Vlad Ayzenberg@vayzenb.bsky.social · 2w agoExcited to share our review in @cp-neuron.bsky.social with @lauriebayet.bsky.social and @mickbonner.bsky.social! We describe how implementing principles from child development can advance the mechanistic plausibility and capacities of AI models We packed A LOT into this review, here's a quick 🧵
"Here we used measurements in awake monkeys to show that the baseline-evoked relationships evident within these two different measures are unreliably coupled between them: baseline-evoked relationships of the pupil are not predictive of those in the LC, and vice versa."
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2w agoLimitations of pupil diameter as a proxy for modes of locus coeruleus activity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738598v1
Rhythms of interaction – the timescales of social coordination and why they matter www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
New perspective paper from our lab: “The hippocampus as a generative model” out now !! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... The traditional view of the hippocampus is that it creates a cognitive map. Here we extend this view to conceptualise the hippocampus as a “generative model”.
The hippocampus as a generative model
Abstract. A generative model can be defined as a model of the latent causes of sensory input that can be used to generate new data samples. By examining em
royalsocietypublishing.org
How do we update our predictions when our environment changes? The hippocampus rapidly integrates previously distinct sequences to support updated predictions. New work w/ @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social – part of the theme issue on hippocampal predictions!
The hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictions
Abstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the
royalsocietypublishing.org
Why are living things different from nonliving? In this piece for @quantamagazine.bsky.social I argue that it is because they are purposive and goal-directed: a capacity we can productively characterize as agency. www.quantamagazine.org/is-life-just...
Is Life Just Different? | Quanta Magazine
The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?
quantamagazine.org
Our paper "Neural timescales from a computational perspective" is finally out in @natneuro.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... We discuss how computational models and methods can distill empirical observations on neural timescales into quantitative, testable theories of brain computation.
Neural timescales from a computational perspective - Nature Neuroscience
This review integrates computational approaches to provide a unified view on how data analysis methods, biophysical mechanistic models and machine learning approaches can help to uncover the origins a...
nature.com
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...
Review of CH Waddington's influence on developmental biology and evo-devo: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... includes supp info with his 50th birthday songs!
C.H. Waddington's lasting achievements in development and evolution
ABSTRACT. C.H. Waddington (1905-1975) was a British biologist and perhaps the major figure in developmental biology between the 1940s and 1960s. He is one of the few pre-molecular-age developmental bi...
journals.biologists.com
Nice effort, but it's obvious what it would do: those retired engineers would just come back with a point-by-point refutation of this paper.
Prof Stephen Serjeant@stephenserjeant.bsky.social · 2mo agoMany pro astrophysicists receive unsolicited letters from amateurs with new but subtly wrong physics theories, often about relativity and from retired engineers. This cute new paper is a perfect reply & I love how it uses cyclotrons & transponders & radar 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2605.21660
Ultralow frequency vaso-oscillations in human cerebral arteries are independent from Mayer waves https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731141v1
An inevitable development for for-profit Open Access publishers is Fordism: automation & massification. If you earn money piece-rate for each paper you want to increase the flow of papers while minimizing cost. e.g. very low and *uniform* turnaround times at Frontiers and MDPI
Michael Okun@michael-okun.bsky.social · 2mo agoI’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
It has been super fun to work on this, where we learned that: 1) Mouse PFC is needed for model-based override of habits. 2) Separate PFC populations encode a 'policy' and the current 'value'. 3) The policy and value codes alternate theta sweeps towards the goal. ...and much much more!
@peterdoohan.bsky.social · 2mo agoHow do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
"Structure and metabolism should no longer sit in separate boxes. The brain’s wiring could also be part of its fuel strategy. Myelin may be more than insulation; it may also form part of the brain’s adaptive metabolic infrastructure." 🧠👇 #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/metabolism/b...
Beyond glucose: The brain may feed itself
Myelin may serve as an energy reserve for the brain, and neuroscientists are rethinking how the brain stores, shares and protects energy.
thetransmitter.org
1/ New paper alert! Stress often builds over time, but many scientific studies treat it as just an on/off thing. In this paper, we introduce the Leiden Stroop-like Stress Task (LSST): a new paradigm for inducing graded, mild-to-moderate stress in the lab. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The Leiden Stroop-like Stress Task: A tool to reveal physiological dynamics using graded stress induction
Stress evokes a complex repertoire of psychological and physiological responses. This paper introduces the Leiden Stroop-like Stress Task (LSST), a pa…
sciencedirect.com
Indeterminism and the physics of open neural dynamics www.cell.com/trends-open/... - the brain is not a deterministic system
Discover 40+ chapters on the science of consciousness: humans, babies, animals, artificial systems, etc! Experts from various disciplines and views came together under the lead of Umberto Olcese and Lucia Melloni A precious resource for anyone interested in #consciousness! www.horizon-minds.com
Horizon Minds
horizon-minds.com
Our brains don’t think in a steady stream. They rhythmically “scan” different alternatives, using attention cycles to sample and compare choices. Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience
Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain - Nature Communications
How humans process competing information when making multi-alternative decisions remains unclear. Here, the authors show that the brain resolves the trade-off between “evaluating within” and “comparin...
nature.com
This is a new paper testing Bayesian computational mechanisms of improvements in cardiac interoception due to a training program developed by @sarahgarf.bsky.social and colleagues. Led by a very talented grad student @chatrins.bsky.social (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
A hierarchical Bayesian model reveals increased precision weighting for afferent cardiac signals, and reduced anxiety, as a function of interoceptive training
Interoceptive interventions offer a promising avenue for improving mental health conditions, which commonly feature bodily or interoceptive symptoms. …
sciencedirect.com
ah yes, the perennial 'it's not for cognition, it's for action' bait
Neuroskeptic@neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 3mo ago"The common conception that the brain is primarily for thinking, or other cognitive processes, is potentially misleading... [the brain's actual function is] allostasis: the predictive regulation of competing demands from internal bodily systems" www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... hmm.
Out now in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, we compare & contrast the theories & predictions being tested by @arc-intrepid.bsky.social -- plus some meta-scientific commentary on theory testing, adversarial collaboration, & Bayesian evidence accumulation www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Integrated information and predictive processing theories of consciousness: An adversarial collaborative review
As neuroscientific theories of consciousness continue to proliferate, the need to assess their similarities and differences – as well as their predict…
sciencedirect.com
Andrew Corcoran@corcorana.bsky.social · 11mo agoThe first major output of the @templetonworld.bsky.social @arc-intrepid.bsky.social adversarial collaboration testing IIT & predictive processing theories of consciousness is out now arxiv.org/abs/2509.00555
We've learned a lot about the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP), but as this recent meta-analysis suggests, we have a lot more to learn when it comes to clinical applications of it. Kudos to Erica, Carolyn et al. on a monumental effort. #interoception pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42092635/
A comprehensive meta-analytic review of the neurophysiological properties of the heartbeat evoked potential in health and disease - PubMed
Based on these results, no firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the utility of HEP amplitude as a clinical biomarker. Substantial heterogeneity and widespread methodological inconsistencies across ...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Experience-dependent development of vagal circuitry in rodents and humans -- Panvini et al, in press www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
EXPERIENCE-DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT OF VAGAL CIRCUITRY IN RODENTS AND HUMANS
Given clear connections between mental and physical health, the impact of dysfunctional brain-body communication on emotional behavior and psychopatho…
sciencedirect.com
🚨🚨JOB ALERT🚨🚨 I'm hiring a cogsci/philosophy/compneuro postdoc at @ucl.ac.uk @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @uclpals.bsky.social! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRH486/p... Come to London & work on frameworks for "testing" for consciousness using Bayesian belief updating & latent variable modeling. Pls share!
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL
Discover Postdoctoral Research Fellow jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
jobs.ac.uk