Intrinsic rewards guide visual resource allocation via reinforcement learning

Intrinsic rewards guide visual resource allocation via reinforcement learning

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02573-7Tangible rewards are known to sharpen visual processing of associated objects. Tomić et al. show that an internal sense of confidence—acting as an intrinsic reward—similarly biases attention, revealing how the brain prioritizes limited resources.

dlvr.it

Today I'm releasing the "1000×1000 collection": a unified place to learn about dynamical structure. 1000 simulated time series (1000 samples each) spanning 133 dynamical processes. Have a play? 🐛 #timeseries #dynamicalsystems #complexity #opendata dynamicsandneuralsystems.github.io/1000x1000/

This year has been brutal, and like most people you probably want to do more about climate change. But what, and how? Great news – I’ve written just the book for you! It’s called What One Person Can Do and it’s a clear and simple how-to guide, a roadmap to help you make influential changes...

Repeatedly subdividing a triangle using its centroids

We derived six laws of psychophysics from a single efficient-coding equation. The laws include Weber's law; scaling laws in visual working memory (which had been noted before, but with unclear theoretical justification); Wei & Stocker's law of human perception; arthurprat.com/pdfs/Prat-Ca...

Check out our new Trends In Cognitive Science paper on mechanisms of cognitive flexibility - a broad collaborative piece with Florian Bähner, Ali Hummos, Sarah Oh, Kai Sandbrink, and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility: a translational perspective

Cognitive flexibility allows us to adjust behavior when environmental rules change and to recombine prior knowledge in novel situations. However, the …

sciencedirect.com

This paper shows how measures and constructs in psychology get introduced but rarely reused. Would love to see a similar analysis done on methods of analyzing neural data. A Fragmented Field: Construct and Measure Proliferation in Psychology" Anvari et al., 2025 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

My doctoral thesis is now online! 📕 "Disabling Acoustics: Impact of daily life acoustic environments on neurodivergent, auraldivergent and noise sensitive people" www.researchgate.net/publication/... I've created a site for those who prefer an HTML version: disablingacoustics.wordpress.com

Disabling Acoustics

Impact of daily life acoustic environments on neurodivergent, auraldivergent and noise sensitive people. [Doctoral thesis by Carmen Rosas-Pérez]

disablingacoustics.wordpress.com

I am happy to share some good news: my lab has received an NSF CAREER award and an NIH R01 this summer, supporting our work on how the brain handles uncertainty during learning. We will be hiring postdocs and PhD students in the coming year, so please get by email in touch if you are interested.

I don’t care what he did or didn’t do; he was a human and deserved dignity and humane treatment and not to be sacrificed on the altar of culture wars and I’m so angry and sad for him.

🚨Now out in Science Advances @science.org: #Parkinson's patients off dopamine medication (PD-) explore too much and exploit too little. Modeling shows they overvalue uncertainty, not that they choose randomly. On levodopa (PD+) they become comparable to controls www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵👇

Dopamine depletion in Parkinson’s increases directed but not random exploration

Levodopa restores the balance between exploration and exploitation in Parkinson’s disease.

science.org

Five autistics walk into an autism support group - before immediately realising what a stupid fucking idea that was. And that’s before the mysterious earthquake and useless magic powers. It’s a Superpower?? Chapter One is out!! allmylinks.com/itsasuperpower

Observe the rank anthropomorphization here. Models don't "conclude" anything, nor do they "hack", "wriggle", or "cheat". You simply can't write clear informative articles about this stuff if you displace agency away from the people (organized into corporations) responsible. /fin for now.

Really pleased that our new paper has been published in The Lancet Regional Health: Europe, looking at #ADHD prevalence and incidence over the past 25 years in England. You can find the paper (open access) here: doi.org/10.1016/j.la... ⬇️ More info below. @kingsioppn.bsky.social

i assume banning kids from social media will be accompanied by a huge investment in teen-friendly communtiy spaces (like youth clubs) and social activities? No? Huh.

In a meta-analysis of 210 biomedical AI studies that statistically compared models under cross-validation, 97% used invalid statistical tests. Here's our new preprint doi.org/10.64898/202... led by @tianchu.bsky.social @hetuli.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social @nichols.bsky.social 1/N

Feeling really proud of this one: a review of Bayesian efficient coding with Máté Lengyel and Paul Bays (@bayslab.org) is now available online in TICS! authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...

I’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. 👇

Interested in research integrity, reproducibility, open science, or research culture? Join the King's Open Research Summer School for five days of talks, workshops, and discussion with leading researchers trying to improve science. Register free; open to all: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-kings-...

The latest episode of the Blindboy Podcast is about Autistic flow, and by extension monotropism (although he doesn't use the word). He discuses Towards Autistic Flow Theory (2024) and Transitioning in and out of Autistic Flow (2026). Links & further reading below. podcastaddict.com/the-blindboy...

by artist JB Cornish

When it comes to blood flow in the brain, not all neurons are created equal. Rather, only a subset of neurons may be driving vascular changes, a new study finds. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neurovascula...

Arousal neuron activity explains brain blood flow in mice

The findings could impact how researchers interpret signals from techniques that use blood flow as a surrogate for neural activity.

thetransmitter.org

Disgusting reporting by BBC using a tiny number of cases to suggest widespread abuse of a system which routinely denies LGBTQIA+ individuals asylum and forces them back into environments of persecution. This article massively distorts the reality of the situation. 1/ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Legal advisers help migrants pose as gay to get asylum, undercover BBC investigation finds

The BBC exposes a shadow industry charging migrants thousands of pounds to help them cheat the asylum system.

bbc.co.uk

This looks like a significant discovery from Doris Tao's lab: Rapid concerted switching of the neural code in the inferotemporal cortex @nature.com "..our findings indicate that there is a previously unknown mechanism for neural representation:.." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rapid concerted switching of the neural code in the inferotemporal cortex - Nature

Face cells in the macaque inferotemporal cortex are initially able to detect faces and then rapidly switch to a face-specific neural code to discriminate between different face identities.

nature.com

How to motivate autistic students: Let them access their strongly held interests! School staff won't need to prompt them much—or even at all, plus the students will be more motivated, independent, & relaxed than when given repetitive tasks. By @thewoodbug.bsky.social: woodbug.blog/2019/03/27/a...

Autistic children and intense interests: the key to their educational inclusion?

Autistic children and adults are often described as ‘obsessive’ or as having ‘narrow’, ‘restricted’ or ‘circumscribed’ interests. And when this trait…

woodbug.blog

When they say the left hates technology ask what? 🚬 or 📚? AI or paper & pens? Redefine tech to mean pollution causing bs and you can say we're anti tech. > Let's talk about the benefits of existing technology. A book isn't full of pop-ups and ads, and it doesn't funnel money and power to big tech.

Felienne Hermans@felienne.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Skipped a week, sorry non-Dutch friends! But this week's newsletter is translated again! www.felienne.nl/2026-14/#eng... (Including a translation of my opening remarks in The Dutch Parliament this week on AI in schools)

Jay Chester, 48, who regularly puts their foot in their mouth during routine social interactions, often redrafts their faux-pas over the course of the following weeks, months or years – but to their dismay, their attempts to submit their revised chitchat has been met with confusion

Autistic writer upset they can’t submit second draft of conversation

An autistic writer has reportedly been left “frustrated” that they are unable to submit the second draft of the very stupid thing they just said in casual conversation. Jay Chester, 48, who regularly…

thedailytism.com

Really important points at the core of debates on the ethical use of AI in all of healthcare, education and research

King's College London@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social · 7mo ago

“AI must be compatible not just with individual users, but with the communities whose collective questioning defines what a practice is for.” In the latest issue of @nature.com, Professor Sylvie Delacroix, from @kcllaw.bsky.social explores the challenges of AI interpretability. ⬇️

Thrilled to share our new paper, which shows that the relative timing of cholinergic and dopamine release dynamically gates whether dopamine acts as an RPE for in vivo plasticity and reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving

Nature Neuroscience - Jang et al. measured dopamine and acetylcholine release in the striatum of rats performing a decision-making task and found that the relative timing of cholinergic and...

nature.com

Hey friends, my new paper was just published in JAMA Psychiatry. I draw on biological species classification to sketch a new framework for psychiatric nosology. Brief summary follows below. Full text link: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... 🧪 #PsychSciSky #MentalHealth

Mental Disorders as Homeostatic Property Clusters

This narrative review explores the idea of understanding mental disorders according to homeostatic property clusters rather than through typical classification systems.

jamanetwork.com