We have recently published work in Psych Science and JEP:LMC showing a surprising relationship between initial capture and learned suppression of salient distractors. Ultimately, this has led us to believe that attentional control is much more flexible than often assumed. Read more on my blog!

From Capture to Suppression: How Distraction Shapes Attentional Control

By Nick Gaspelin and Yue Zhang Zhang, Y. & Gaspelin, N. (2026a). From capture to control: Initial capture increases learned suppression. Psychological Science. 37(4), 2…

gaspelinblog.wordpress.com

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...

out today! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Chaz Firestone@chazfirestone.bsky.social · last mo.

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

The global neuronal workspace (GNW) is currently the best documented neuroscience mechanism by which conscious processing arises in the human brain — and now Anthropic researchers have discovered a similar workspace inside their large language model ! www.anthropic.com/research/glo...

A global workspace in language models

Interpretability research on Claude's internal thoughts.

anthropic.com

Lovely to see the full range of excellent commentaries on our BBS article with @matthiasmichel.bsky.social, together with our response, now out: Target article: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Commentaries: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Our response: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Matthias Michel@matthiasmichel.bsky.social · last yr.

Very happy to announce that our paper “Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision” is now out as a target article in BBS!! @smfleming.bsky.social and I present a new theory of the evolution and functions of visual consciousness. Article here: doi.org/10.1017/S014.... A (long) thread 🧵

If our experiences unfold like a stream over time, how would this stream unfold in other animal species? Together with @birchlse.bsky.social and @anilseth.bsky.social, a review of temporal illusions and a path for temporal phenomenology in animals! a 🧵/n www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

We are hosting a special issue on "Is There More to Consciousness Than Computation?" in @nconsc.bsky.social. Full information here: academic.oup.com/nc/pages/cal... With @krysdolega.bsky.social and Yair Pinto.

Call for Papers | Neuroscience of Consciousness

Neuroscience of Consciousness (NCON) is a peer-reviewed, fully open access journal that provides a unique forum for the interdisciplinary fields of consciousnes

academic.oup.com

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our work during my RA in Taiwan is out! "Cortical representation of motion sequence processing in younger and older adults: an fMRI study" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to share this paper, led by @ajhaskins.bsky.social ! We find that how people look around the world is stable and idiosyncratic — and that these gaze patterns are shaped in part by the conceptual priorities each person brings to a scene. 1/3 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper: "Introspection and Scientific Data" for the Handbook of Introspection, about the role of introspection in the production of scientific data. My view: introspection doesn't deliver a special 'subjective' kind of data and there's nothing special about studying consciousness.

We wrote a book! www.cambridge.org/core/books/s... Consciousness science is a fascinating but bewildering field: many competing theories, little consensus, and big open questions. If you are looking for an accessible guide through this complex landscape, this book is for you.

Scientific Theories of Consciousness

Cambridge Core - Neurosciences - Scientific Theories of Consciousness

cambridge.org

Spatiotemporal routines in visual perception Perspective by David Pascucci & Árni Kristjánsson go.nature.com/3QGlVQ1

Collin Scarince and I have a new paper out in QJEP. This is an impressive feat by Collin to modify the Guided Search model with a multidimensional scaling "plug in" that helps extend computational capacity to capture performance with featurally complex stimuli. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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

Attention in the wild: balancing flexibility and stability

To prioritize the visual processing of task-relevant objects in our surroundings, we rely on an attentional template—an internal representation of object features that guides attention toward potential targets. Decades of research have characterized attentional templates for simple targets in artificial arrays. How could templates function in real-world search, where target appearance is variable and objects are embedded in complex, dynamic scenes? We consider two possibilities: (i) flexible templates that are adapted to changing scene contexts and (ii) stable (‘one-size-fits-all’) templates that generalize across contexts. We review recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for both possibilities and discuss how optimal search depends on balancing the relative costs and benefits of template adaptation, enabling efficient attention ‘in the wild’.

dlvr.it

🚨Exciting news!🚨 🧠 We’re delighted to announce that the MESEC workshop Computational Modelling for Consciousness Science will be chaired by ⭐️Prof. Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social⭐️ 🏝️Join us in Carcassonne, France 📆29 Aug–5 Sept 2026. 👀Applications open until 29 May: mesec.co/event/worksh...

Introducing meta-🔼! (meta-delta) Really excited about this one. We provide a principled, performance-corrected measure of metacognitive bias, placing it on an equal methodological footing with meta-d, and showing robust test-retest reliability to boot. Check out Kevin's thread for more details! 🧠🧪

Kevin O’Neill@kevingoneill.github.io · 3mo ago

In a new preprint w/ @tianqizhan.bsky.social & @smfleming.bsky.social, we developed a new measure of metacognitive bias (over/under confidence in individual decisions)! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

What does it mean for cognition to be Bayesian? The view that cognition is Bayesian inference is often intended at Marr's computational level. In a new paper in Nat Rev Psych, @kaixue98.bsky.social and I formulate the "explicit-Bayes" hypothesis that lives at the algorithmic level. rdcu.be/ff1XA

Online Now: Consciousness indicators, mimicry, and internal variants

Consciousness indicators, mimicry, and internal variants

In a recent article on methods for assessing artificial intelligence (AI) systems for consciousness, we argued that computational properties of internal processing should be used as indicators [1]. Commenting on our proposal, Pennartz argues that this method ‘should be supplemented with behavioural-cognitive methods’ (p. 1) because there is no consensus theory of consciousness [2]. We agree that the lack of a consensus theory of consciousness makes it more important to use every available source of evidence, but in our article, we preferred internal over behavioural assessments on the grounds that the latter can be ‘gamed’ by AI systems.

dlvr.it

Lovely work led by Dharsh Kumaran and his team at Google DeepMind shedding new light on the metacognitive profile of LLMs We show that LLM confidence estimates are both stubborn and brittle all at once Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Competing Biases underlie Overconfidence and Underconfidence in LLMs - Nature Machine Intelligence

Kumaran et al. show that large language model (LLM) confidence is shaped by two competing biases: a choice-supportive bias that inflates confidence in initial answers, and a systematic overweighting o...

nature.com

A computational theory of Aha! moments! New paper explaining why Aha! moments occur & why they feel so good. TLDR: They are a form of meta-cognitive prediction errors i.e. they occur when we surprise ourselves about our own abilities! @rachitdubey.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excellent review by Pearson and team on how imagery is implemented through modulatory rather than excitatory top-down signals to visual cortex: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41973795/

Spiking the mind: Rethinking the role of cortical feedback in visual mental imagery - PubMed

Recent research has revealed similarities between visual mental imagery and visual perception. Visual imagery is supported by cortical feedback involving multiple visual areas, including the primary v...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nadine Dijkstra's talk at the MIT Consciousness Club is now available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rciv....

Nadine Dijkstra - Distinguishing imagination and reality in a generative brain

YouTube video by MIT Consciousness Club

youtube.com

My review on the "Confidence-accuracy dissociations in perceptual decision making" is now published. I think that this will be useful to both experts and newcomers to the field. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Doby Rahnev@dobyrahnev.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New preprint: Confidence-accuracy dissociations in perceptual decision making. A review I was supposed to write 3 years ago for my VSS Young Investigator Award. Better late than never 😅 I tried to organize the literature and explore the likely mechanisms. Feedback welcome! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our new preprint on bioRxiv! rFEF+ is not necessary for exogenous attention, as revealed by TMS. And together with previous studies, we complete a double dissociation: rFEF+ is critical for endogenous but not exogenous attention, whereas V1/V2 is critical for exogenous but not endogenous attention

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Transcranial magnetic stimulation to frontal cortex, unlike occipital stimulation, does not disrupt exogenous attention https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.10.717799v1

Article by @earlkmiller.bsky.social @lisafeldmanbarrett.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Categorization, the grouping of objects, living organisms, actions or events into equivalence clusters, is fundamental to adaptive behaviour. In this Perspective, Barrett and Miller discuss evidence t...

nature.com

What are Dennett's powerful ideas? Discover it in this new thread on #vol39issue3. Let's start with an editorial by Felipe De Brigard on #AI and the breakdown of the intentional stance, free access here: doi.org/10.1080/0951... #philsky #philpsy 1/16

Artificial intelligence and the breakdown of the intentional stance

Published in Philosophical Psychology (Vol. 39, No. 3, 2026)

doi.org

#BIDS has been extended to #EyeTracking data! There is now a standard for organizing and sharing eye tracking, covering gaze position, pupil size, meta data, messages, and more. Great news for #OpenScience! 🎉 Martin Szinte et al: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Public communication alters private confidence - cool study from @danieljamesyon.bsky.social and team www.cell.com/current-biol...

Public communication alters private confidence

Andreassen et al. demonstrate that confidence exhibited in public affects our private assessment of confidence.

cell.com

Are our intuitions about consciousness reliable? In our new paper, we argue that building a reliable scientific foundation for intuitions about consciousness is not only necessary—but also achievable—for advancing consciousness science. w/ Sang Chul Chong doi.org/10.3389/fpsy...

Frontiers | Reappraising intuitions about consciousness

Scientific studies of consciousness derive their legitimacy from individuals’ intuitions about the degree to which measured functions can be associated with ...

doi.org