Growing pressure on probationary staff to win grants represents ‘material divergence’ from agreed policies, argue UCU leaders. @jgro-the.bsky.social reports #research #highered #UCU #academicsky https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/research-income-targets-liverpools-new-academics-unfair

Andrea Floris, I don't know.who you are, but thank you for writing this. I hope it reaches the people who need to read it! www.linkedin.com/posts/andrea...

Another aphantasia face memory preprint just dropped - an impressive mega-study led by Varg Koenigsmark! The Role of Visual Imagery in Face Recognition and Confidence Revisited: New Evidence from Aphantasia, Sampling Context Effects, and a Meta-Analysis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Role of Visual Imagery in Face Recognition and Confidence Revisited: New Evidence from Aphantasia, Sampling Context Effects, and a Meta-Analysis

The absence of voluntary visual imagery, known as aphantasia, offers a unique lens into the role of visual imagery in visual memory processes such as face recognition. While aphantasics often report d...

biorxiv.org

Grant writing season

Hamilton: Writing Scene from Broadway

ALT: Hamilton: Writing Scene from Broadway

static.klipy.com

Humans are not black boxes. Experience is everything. This is not a definition problem. This is a "completely ignoring human experience" problem. Some things cannot be measured objectively (yet). Until then, qualitative evidence is the most important evidence we have.

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

Mental image vividness and aphantasia judgements are fundamentally compromised by overlooked definition problems - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Vividness judgements are intended to capture variance in the axis that uniquely separates the experience of a mental image from other unambiguously sensory perceptual experiences, and from a completel...

link.springer.com

This is such an amazing and comprehensive resource on the research related to mental imagery up to 2014. Does anyone know how to contact Nigel J T Thomas, or have any information on him since 2014? He seems to have disappeared, I can't even find an obituary... plato.stanford.edu/archives/fal...

Individuals with aphantasia show independent impairments in face perception and face memory, but not face matching By the wonderful Zoe Pounder et al: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Individuals with aphantasia show independent impairments in face perception and face memory, but not face matching

Some individuals with aphantasia, an absent or reduced ability to form visual imagery, report face recognition difficulties, and studies have shown ap…

sciencedirect.com

Very excited to get started on this multi-lab intl collab investigating the role of mental imagery, schizotypy, and sensory sensitivity in visual perception! With @mmonzel.bsky.social, @tesvlee.bsky.social, @katechristodoulou.bsky.social, and Raquel Krempel: rr.peercommunityin.org/PCIRegistere...

The business model of higher education is real, and it's depressing for academics who have a love for knowledge and see the greedy leaders at the top who just see the bottom line. Students and staff suffer under this model. If you think it's all fine, you've got your head in the sand.

Benjamin Braun@benbraun.eurosky.social · 2mo ago

"short of the arrival of some kind of Noah’s Ark, the British university as we know it is destined for extinction sooner rather than later." Lorna Finlayson in Sidecar, @newleftreview.bsky.social. 4/4

So @mmonzel.bsky.social read my bsky thread and proposed we extend these ideas into a theory paper - and thus, this preprint was born! A unifying theory of aphantasia: Aphantasia as the inability to disengage from the external environment osf.io/preprints/ps...

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social · 7mo ago

With this new pub arguing that aphantasia is NOT an episodic memory condition, I agree that aphantasia must be defined, first and foremost, by a lack of imagery. However, aphantasia reduces the vividness of episodic memories in predictable ways. Here's another idea... 1/8 rdcu.be/eYxns

When you have a feedback section at the end of your study and the person just writes "dope" 👌😁

From the article: "The ability to conjure mental imagery is a key aspect of being human." This is amusing, because I literally have a paper under review titled "mental imagery is not essential to being human" 🤣

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺@seeingwithsound.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Seeing and imagining are handled by the same brain cells www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/05/12/s... "Researchers make advances in understanding how human brains are wired by pinning down how the same neurons are used for both imagining and seeing objects."

Paper now published in Neuroscience of Consciousness and led by @chkhaidze.bsky.social: From dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

From dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations

Abstract. A rapidly alternating red and black display known as Ganzflicker induces visual hallucinations that reflect the generative capacity of the visual

academic.oup.com

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social · last yr.

Thousands of people have provided written accounts of their Ganzflicker hallucinations, so @chkhaidze.bsky.social used NLP and machine learning techniques to explore the different content described by individuals across the imagery spectrum - what did she find? ... 1/5 arxiv.org/abs/2507.09011

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations

Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

doi.org

‘They can turn a normal city street into a jungle' Ella Rhodes spoke to Dr Reshanne Reeder @kerblooee.bsky.social (University of Liverpool), who researches extremes of mental imagery, individual differences in mental imagery, and their impacts. www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

Cool! A new mental imagery scale that gets rid of the pesky relative rating problem: what if my 4 is your 6? Led by @heidasigurdar.bsky.social: The Visual Imagery Visually Anchored Scale (VIVAS) reveals dissociable perceptual dimensions and category-specific structure osf.io/preprints/ps...

Somehow this must be useful for vision science 🧠

kottke.org@kottke.org · 4mo ago

For four years, Barbara Iweins took a photo of every single thing she owned, "from my daughters torn sock to my sons Lego, but also my vibrator, my anxiolytics... absolutely everything. 12,795 photos of 12,795 objects." Explore the collection here. [kottke.org]

Optogenetics induces aphantasia and hyperphantasia in mice I am thrilled to announce my latest study, providing objective neural evidence for imagery extremes – in mice! 🐁 Read the paper here: tinyurl.com/ycxnkka7 <----👀 A thread 🧵 1/N

Having weak imagery (hypophantasia) can make ppl feel like they don't belong in aphantasia research. But this is a critical group to study in refuting the "aph=metacognitive issue" hypothesis. Don't neglect the hypophants! When weak imagery is worse than none: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When weak imagery is worse than none: Core aphantasia and hypophantasia relate differently to mental health, mediated by subjective interoception

Aphantasia, characterized by absent or reduced visual mental imagery, has been associated with alexithymia and negative mental health outcomes. Howeve…

sciencedirect.com

This should be a concern for anyone relying on online data collection (most of us in aphantasia & extreme imagery research)! Added to my lab code of conduct on how to combat bots potentially infiltrating research: tinyurl.com/2kwwkm2w & happy to help develop high quality participation databases!

Superlab Handbook 2026 - Public

Superlab Handbook 2026 PI: Dr Reshanne Reeder Poster reads: In this lab, we believe SCIENCE is real, BRAINS are cool, DIVERSITY fuels innovation, RESEARCH is global, LOVE is love, IMMIGRANTS are we...

docs.google.com

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Recent work has shown how vulnerable online survey research is to LLMs. Motivated by this, we examined our online Posner cueing data from Prolific. It's concerning. We now must carefully consider when (or whether?) online behavioral data can be trusted. see our comment: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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! 👁️🎨🧪

Please repost! I have a wonderful colleague seeking a postdoc with expertise in *Bayesian Network Analysis* Position for 1 year in Liverpool, starting as early as next month (April)! Informal EOIs to Angelika Stefan: astefan1.github.io

x.com/tomebeyer/st...

Tom Ebeyer on X: "A post went viral this week calling people who can't visualize "furniture." I was one of the first 21 people ever documented with aphantasia. I've spent a decade studying it, building a global community around it, and learning from the researchers who named it. You are not" / X

A post went viral this week calling people who can't visualize "furniture." I was one of the first 21 people ever documented with aphantasia. I've spent a decade studying it, building a global community around it, and learning from the researchers who named it. You are not

x.com

Boomers still using mapquest must be laughing their asses off right now

Lamhfada@lamhfada.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Google must have finally incorporated AI into Google Maps. How do I know? It just told me I needed to leave now to be at Dublin Airport by 13:30 now to catch 9am Citylink that arrives in Dublin Airport at 11am. Then I should take the 11:45 Kells bus to Ballymun and walk back one hour to the airport

Thank god Robert Langdon is not in the Epstein files

Now available in its entirety, you can read Ruth Rosenholtz's Behavioral & Brain Sciences critique of attention as an explanation tool in vision science and our reaction to her piece. www.anthonybarnhart.com/news/bbs-pay...

BBS: Pay Attention to Eye Movement Behavior — Anthony Barnhart: Cognitive Scientist, Magic Scholar, & Speaker

Hayward Godwin, Michael Hout, and I have written a response to a provocative piece by Ruth Rosenholtz in Behavioral &amp; Brain Sciences where she argues for an abandonment of the concept of “attention” as an explanatory tool.

anthonybarnhart.com

🚨 New preprint! What if individual alpha peak frequency—often treated as a global marker of brain function and clinical phenotypes—actually reflects a mixture of independent alpha rhythms with distinct frequencies and neural origins? That’s what @davidpascucci.bsky.social and I suggest here. #EEG

Katalin Karikó is a fascinating and inspirational person - funders and universities never saw the use of her brilliant work. She never got tenure, but she eventually saved the world and won a Nobel Prize for it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin...

Katalin Karikó - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org