Now out at PNAS - congratulations to Ramanujan Srinath and the team! Ram's ability and willingness to connect all these data, models, and ideas has changed my thinking/interpretation of many findings. I suspect I will keep learning from this study for a long time. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The structure of correlated variability reflects task-relevant information in sensory neurons | PNAS

Shared trial-to-trial variability across sensory neurons is reliably reduced when perceptual performance improves, yet this variability is low dime...

pnas.org

Marlene Cohen@marlenecohen.bsky.social · 12mo ago

One of the joys of being a scientist is the ability to think about a problem for a long time. Our new preprint solves a mystery that has been bugging me since I was a graduate student (which was, ahem, a while ago). 🧪🧠🧵1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint ! 🎺 👇 We show that objects can facilitate scene recognition irrespectively to their semantical link to the scenes. TMS to Object-selective LOC eliminated such facilitation! Congratulations to Aaron for his first paper coming from a chunky master thesis project!

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · last mo.

Behavioral and causal evidence for object-based scene recognition in visual cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.29.735096v1

How do we keep up with the pace of our surroundings? Previously, we’ve shown that working memory encoding speeds up when you expect limited encoding time. How does the brain accomplish this? In new work, we found that the brain uses an accelerated neural code⚡🧠: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/6)

Neural acceleration drives adaptations in working memory encoding speed

Humans and non-human animals adaptively boost their encoding speed when they expect limited sensory exposure time, so that they can capture essential information before it is gone. However, it is uncl...

biorxiv.org

I became a dr. last week! Thanks to everyone who made it an amazing day - I had a blast.

New preprint (doi.org/10.64898/202...) shows that where you look next is an economic decision. Saccades trade off effort-costs (measured via pupil) against monetary rewards. 1) By default, participants have strong saccade direction preferences (e.g., cardinal over diagonal, up over down) (1/4)

Reward and intrinsic effort-costs drive saccade selection 👀. But what happens when these factors compete? Our newest preprint shows that saccade selection follows principles of economic decision-making:

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New preprint (doi.org/10.64898/202...) shows that where you look next is an economic decision. Saccades trade off effort-costs (measured via pupil) against monetary rewards. 1) By default, participants have strong saccade direction preferences (e.g., cardinal over diagonal, up over down) (1/4)

We often fail to pay attention to what's important for extended periods of time. What's going on in the brain when we're failing to pay attention? In a new preprint, we show that frontal potentials (fP3) track visual and auditory attentional lapses. doi.org/10.64898/202... #neuroscience

New paper out: Trial-level sequence modeling reveals hidden dynamics of dual-task interference. We decoded, at the trial level, the sequence of cognitive operations people take when multitasking. We found that how cognitive operations interleaved across tasks predicted RT and accuracy!

Trial-level sequence modeling reveals hidden dynamics of dual-task interference

Author summary In our daily lives, we are often required to juggle multiple tasks at once, for example when operating an in-car device while driving. While multitasking is increasingly common, researc...

journals.plos.org

Investigations into whether we can search for multiple targets in a simultaneous fashion have led to mixed findings. In this new PsychScience article, we report that people CAN search concurrently, but don't always DO so... 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Past experiences shape current selection. But when and how strong are past and present targets represented in the brain? In our newest paper, we show that past and present search targets are concurrently represented in the brain. Out now in @plosbiology.org doi.org/10.1371/jour... #neuroscience

Past and present goals are represented concurrently during visual search

Past experience and our current goals guide what information to focus on. But how and when does the brain represent the past and the present? This new study shows that the brain represents the past an...

doi.org

What do we look for when searching for objects in our daily-life environments? Very happy that I can now share this review, together with @suryagayet.bsky.social , @predictivebrain.bsky.social and @peelen.bsky.social🥳 A brief thread below!

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Online Now: Attention in the wild: balancing flexibility and stability

New paper alert: very proud to share our review published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, spearheaded by @maellelerebourg.bsky.social, and together with @peelen.bsky.social and @predictivebrain.bsky.social, about goal-directed search in real-world environments. See below for a thread/tldr!

Maëlle Lerebourg@maellelerebourg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

What do we look for when searching for objects in our daily-life environments? Very happy that I can now share this review, together with @suryagayet.bsky.social , @predictivebrain.bsky.social and @peelen.bsky.social🥳 A brief thread below!

Do you want to measure pupil size while participants move their eyes around 👀? We offer a straightforward solution to gaze-induced distortions on pupil size measurements in our newest paper!

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 4mo ago

For those interested in (re)analyzing (video-based) pupil data and looking into a solution for the foreshortening error (resulting from changes in the angle between camera and eye), check our open access Behavior Research Methods paper! rdcu.be/faNse link.springer.com/article/10.3...

direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...

Dissociating Spatial Attention and Working Memory Storage with Pupillometry

Abstract. Extant work establishes a close relationship between spatial attention and working memory (WM) storage. Indeed, spatial representations of memorized items emerge spontaneously, even when…

direct.mit.edu

We show that synesthesia is sensory and automatic in nature: the pupil scales with the brightness of experienced synesthetic colors. doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Now in its new dress @elife.bsky.social (convincing & valuable in round 1). If anyone wants to pick up the method, happy to share & explain!

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Synesthetes claim sensory experiences, such as seeing color when reading or hearing a (black) number. 
But how genuine are these reports and sensations? We introduce a rather direct measure of synesthetic perception: Synesthetes’ pupils respond to evoked color as if it was real color #vision! 👁️🎨🧪

Hey bluesky 👋 really excited about this one! 👀

Sebastiaan Mathôt@cogsci.nl · 5mo ago

🚨 New #Review #Preprint 🚨 Veera Ruuskanen proposes a new, concrete framework to understand how and why pupil size 👁️, neural activity 🧠, and behavior 💃 interact. doi.org/10.31234/osf... #psychology #neuroscience #pupillometry #perception

My first TEDx talk just came out. It's always fun to talk about your own research area to the general audience, and its even more fun when you are lucky enough to be supported by such a platform. Happy to hear your thoughts :-) youtu.be/UyUclyHx8d8?...

How reality is simulated by your brain | Surgya Gayet | TEDxEindhoven

YouTube video by TEDx Talks

youtu.be

Our commentary @stigchel.bsky.social on Ruth Rosenholtz' Visual Attention in Crisis paper is now available: doi.org/10.1017/S014... We argue that effort must be considered when aiming to quantify capacity limits or a task's complexity.

Ruth Rosenholtz talks to strangers@ruthrosenholtz.bsky.social · 8mo ago

My Visual Attention in Crisis paper has finally appeared, along with 30 commentaries and response. I argue that it’s time to rethink attention from the ground up, and suggest key phenomena and possible directions. Requires access, alas. doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Celebration time 🥳 @liangyouzhang.bsky.social publishes the 1st empirical paper of his PhD! We show that numerosity adaptation (a seemingly high-level stim property) suppresses neural responses in early visual cortex; these adaptation FX increase as we progress thru the visual processing hierarchy.

Communications Biology@commsbio.nature.com · 8mo ago

Numerosity adaptation suppresses monotonic neural responses to numerosity displays in the early visual cortex, with more suppression for higher numerosity adaptors. Therefore, numerosity adaptation effects begin in early sensory stages of processing. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

This paper is now published in Journal of Neuroscience! www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Population-Level Activity Dissociates Preparatory Overt from Covert Attention

The neural signatures of preparing overt eye movements and directing covert spatial attention overlap as they recruit the same brain areas. Yet, these neural signatures are dissociable at the single-c...

jneurosci.org

Damian Koevoet@dkoevoet.bsky.social · last yr.

Preparing overt eye movements and directing covert attention are neurally coupled. Yet, this coupling breaks down at the single-cell level. What about populations of neurons? We show: EEG decoding dissociates preparatory overt from covert attention at the population level: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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...

Filled with a bunch of extra analyses, this is now accepted in The Journal of Neuroscience @sfn.org! You can have a sneak peak here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Population-Level Activity Dissociates Preparatory Overt from Covert Attention

The neural signatures of preparing overt eye movements and directing covert spatial attention overlap as they recruit the same brain areas. Yet, these neural signatures are dissociable at the single-c...

biorxiv.org

Damian Koevoet@dkoevoet.bsky.social · last yr.

Preparing overt eye movements and directing covert attention are neurally coupled. Yet, this coupling breaks down at the single-cell level. What about populations of neurons? We show: EEG decoding dissociates preparatory overt from covert attention at the population level: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧠 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-...)

Regularization, Action, and Attractors in the Dynamical “Bayesian” Brain

Abstract. The idea that the brain is a probabilistic (Bayesian) inference machine, continuously trying to figure out the hidden causes of its inputs, has become very influential in cognitive (neuro)sc...

direct.mit.edu

Spatial attention and working memory are popularly thought to be tightly coupled. Yet, distinct neural activity tracks attentional breadth and WM load. In a new paper @jocn.bsky.social, we show that pupil size independently tracks breadth and load. doi.org/10.1162/JOCN...

1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.

Very excited to announce my first paper is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Using EEG, we identify an item-based measure of storage in working memory that generalizes across auditory and visual items. authors.elsevier.com/a/1ljFF3QW8S... #PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #workingmemory

Surely you know about eye dominance. You probably don’t know it’s not a unitary phenomenon: in this paper I show that sensory eye dominance varies over the visual field. In the Discussion I propose an explanation for why this variation might exist. Curious? Read it here: doi.org/10.1167/jov....

Had a blast at last week's symposium! Inspiring to hear all the talks about EEG and attention. I presented on the neural correlates of saccade preparation and covert spatial attention. Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

@theeuweslab.bsky.social · last yr.

Last week's symposium titled "Advances in the Encephalographic Study of Attention" was a great success! Held in the KNAW building in Amsterdam and sponsored by the NWO, many of (Europe's) leading attention researchers assembled to discuss the latest advances in attention research using M/EEG.

Last week's symposium titled "Advances in the Encephalographic Study of Attention" was a great success! Held in the KNAW building in Amsterdam and sponsored by the NWO, many of (Europe's) leading attention researchers assembled to discuss the latest advances in attention research using M/EEG.