Jorge Morales
@jorgemorales.me
Associate Professor at Duke University. I'm a philosopher, psychologist, and neuroscientist studying vision, mental imagery, introspection and consciousness. As S.S. Stevens said, "there are numerous pitfalls in this business." https://subjectivitylab.org
At long last, I’m excited to share our latest preprint on the cortical topography of mental imagery! Building on the tethering hypothesis of brain evolution, we examined the spatial layout of imagery-driven neural activities to know how visual, auditory, tactile & multisensory imagery is organised.
I’m still trying to understand why this car dealership subscribes to Science.
Now out in an issue! Children find it easier to represent uncertainty about *what* an object is than *where* an object is, with interesting implications for both early possibility reasoning and object representations ~~ Check it out 👉 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Children’s Representations of Possibility: Uncertainty About “What” Is Easier Than Uncertainty About “Where”
Abstract. Young children struggle in situations involving mere possibility, such as when a target object could be in one of two possible locations. This difficulty is often interpreted as a general li...
direct.mit.edu
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper in Open Mind! 2-to-4-year-olds find it easier to reason about an object's possible identity than its possible location, and we argue this asymmetry traces back to the architecture of early object representations. 🧵
No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...
Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation
PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...
theonion.com
Psychology paper studying undergraduates: “We need to confront the fact that our subjects are WEIRD and results may not generalize” Systems Neuroscience paper studying one inbred mouse strain: “Here is how the mammalian brain works.”
Recently discovered that the founder of our psychology department got fired after only a year due to a mail-fraud indictment. Later went on to a successful career in Hollywood, where he created Wonder Woman.
Our IRB is asking if we plan to use AI in our work. Considering trolling them and citing the tidyverse.
Does anyone have favorite references on the interdisciplinarity penalty (people doing interdisciplinary work are underrewarded in their appointing departments, run centers and degrees without resources or dedicated hires, go to double committee meetings, etc.)?
My Odyssey and Iliad translations are available as audiobooks, read/ performed by very talented real people: Claire Danes and Audra MacDonald. They do a much better job than the robots! www.audible.com/pd/The-Iliad...
The Odyssey
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Acclaimed actress Claire Danes burnishes an epic story of heroes, gods, and monsters in a groundbreaking translation of The Odyssey, the first great adventure story in the Western literary tradition. When the wily warrior-king Odysseus sets off for home ...
audible.com
We need to change norms around sexual harassment Yesterday Tessa West spoke up about a sexual harassment complaint she filed against John Jost. Not only is he a senior colleague in the dept of psychology, but he is one of the most prominant figures in the field of social and political psychology.
calling all researchers who collect data from humans 🧠🧪 we are running a very brief survey (<1 min) about jsPsych, the software ecosystem for browser-based data collection. if you use jsPsych, or if you collect data with any other software, please fill it out at tinyurl.com/jspsych-census!
Congratulations to Dr Megan Peters from UCL PALS who has been named a 2026 FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence Scholar. The honour recognises outstanding early-career neuroscience researchers for their scientific excellence, originality and leadership. 🔗Read more here: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...
My book on consciousness at Oxford University Press is now available! It is titled House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness. The (open access) pdf can be downloaded for free on Oxford Academic: academic.oup.com/book/62981 Printed copies should be available at the end of July.
House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness
Abstract. This book provides a defense and an exploration of illusionism regarding phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness supposedly encompasse
academic.oup.com
A fundamental discovery ! Immanuel Kant would have loved it.
Edvard I Moser@edvardmoser.bsky.social · 5mo agoIs spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Yet another thing destroyed by LLMs
Chilari@chilari.bsky.social · last mo.There's no backwards compatibility anymore
PSA for trainees cold emailing with interest in joining a lab: Be careful about your use of LLMs in writing these emails!! It is now *extremely* common to get emails with a bizarrely-detailed, clearly-LLM take on a paper finding or with specific phrases pulled from the lab website. Don’t do this!
You press ‘send’ on a high-stakes email but hesitate when lifting your finger. You make a chess move but linger on the piece before letting go. Familiar? In @pnas.org, Hanbei Zhou @ruizhegoh.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social & I show that response *duration* tracks confidence! shorturl.at/A9NVe
Last day at Northeastern. My office is all packed up and empty.
knock knock, it's the 90s. What software should I use for a simple listserv, ideally avoiding Big Tech?
Me to the attorney: Can you make us this tiny favor? Attorney: No, sorry, I'd need to charge you my hourly fee. ... Attorney: [sends wrong documents] Me: There's a mistake. Can you fix it? Attorney: It's ok, you can change it yourself. Me [to myself]: Should I let them know my hourly fee?
Five academic psychology jobs available here in Oz (not in my university) Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor - Perception external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/54... Lecturer/Senior Lecturer – Statistics external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/54...
Lecturer - Canberra / ACT, ACT, Australia
Classification: Academic Level B/Level CSalary package: $124,638 - $166,338 per annum plus 17% superannuation Term: Continuing, Full time The Position: This Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (Level B/C) rol...
jobs.anu.edu.au
These are really steep price increases from Apple (some over 30%). Yet another disruption from the machine learning explosion.
SPP off to a great start with Jennifer Nagel’s keynote “Conversations with machines”
Yeah, I really don't get this. I love my academic career and, boy, have my family and I made sacrifices for it. Certainly my career is *a* priority in my life. But it's only one of many, and it often loses against some of my other top priorities (e.g. my family).
Dani Wenner@daniwenner.bsky.social · 2mo ago"88% of men reported an academic career as their singular priority" I think this is the most important datum. cis men in academia make academia their life, & they often have caretakers around them to make that possible. but I read that and feel sorry for them. what an impoverished life it must be.
