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.

👁️🧠🧪 Vision takes time. But how does visual information flow through the human brain? Our new PLOS Computational Biology paper uses population receptive field (pRF) modelling to bring the spatial precision of fMRI to MEG, revealing the temporal dynamics of visual areas. 📖 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Non-invasive mapping of the temporal processing hierarchy in the human visual cortex

Author summary Vision doesn’t happen instantaneously, but unfolds over time. While we understand a lot about how the brain processes visual space, understanding how the brain processes information ove...

doi.org

And for our own contribution to the theme issue: Oliver Warrington and I show that the dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions. This finding complements our previous work showing a transition from errors to predictions during learning (Aitken & Kok 2022). 🧠🟦

Dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions

Abstract. The hippocampus is involved in learning predictive associations, responding to prediction errors as well as representing predictions of future in

royalsocietypublishing.org

Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · 4w ago

The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social

An absolute banger of an exclusive from the Sunday Times. It's devastating. For the first time, I'm uncertain if Farage can actually survive this www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Revealed: Nigel Farage secretly funded by convicted criminal

The Reform UK leader did not declare benefits including staff, security and housing by crypto-gambler George Cottrell, our investigation reveals

thetimes.com

What if much of human thought is navigation? 🧠 New open-access review: I argue that the DMN + hippocampal–entorhinal system form a domain-general engine for "mental navigation" across physical and abstract spaces (e.g. social, conceptual, and value). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Finally out at @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. Everything I think I know about word meanings. Particular focus on words that are unfamiliar or ambiguous. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

(YouTube) Steve Fleming on "Sensory horizons and the functions of conscious vision" www.youtube.com/watch?v=euGC... with @smfleming.bsky.social

Prof Steve Fleming on "Sensory horizons and the functions of conscious vision"

YouTube video by BIU Vision Science

youtube.com

Nothing makes you feel like a witch like making bread with backyard herbs. #bread #baking

🎉New paper out today in Nature Reviews Psychology🎉 with @mjdahl.bsky.social, @mariamaly.bsky.social, and @thiasmittner.bsky.social. We've been working on a unified framework for attentional states and the dynamics of transitions between them. 🧵

I love you, my students, who write genuinely awkward, human essays. That’s the whole point. We try.

@senthorun.bsky.social @manmetuni.bsky.social explores how a critical-creative re-imagining of facial recognition in asylum law steers how AI might authenticate sexuality and what this means for legal truth-making. Read now in the Trust's latest newsletter: www.flipsnack.com/leverhulmetr...

Prefiguring a legal nightmare: how can facial recognition affect queer refugees?

Senthorun Raj explores how a critical-creative re-imagining of facial recognition in asylum law steers how AI might authenticate sexuality and what this means for legal truth-making

flipsnack.com

I had not actively worked on synaesthesia research for more than 12 years. After moving from Sydney to the UK, my research over the past decade focused primarily on the brain basis of semantic cognition. It wasn't until joining Birkbeck last year that I decided to revisit synaesthesia tssues.

Professor Anina Rich was presenting her work on decoding the temporal profiles of synaesthetic versus real colours - how can we use MEG to assess different theories of synaesthesia? #synaesthesia @mqpsy.bsky.social #synesthesia

Professor Jamie Ward was presenting his work on #musicality and #synaesthesia 🎶🎵 🎶🎵 #IASAS2036 #Amsterdam #science

People with music-colour synaesthesia often see colours and shapes when they listen to music 🎶 #synaesthesia #synesthesia

Synaesthesia is not a disability, not a disorder, not abnormal. Adults, parents, teachers often dismiss their kids' synaesthetic experiences or believe they might be just "making up stories" or "seeking attention." We need to raise awareness & support kids with this unique condition. #synaesthesia

This is probably the most visually pleasing & aesthetically satisfying conference I've been to! 😃 #synaesthesia #IASAS2026 #Amsterdam #synesthesia

A small note for our reviewers: In the responses, we stated that revisions were in blue text. Following the journal's request, it's later changed to yellow highlighting, but we forgot to update blue to yellow in the response letter. Thank you for your suggestions, & please forgive this small slip 💝

n this project, generously funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk, we'll explore the cognitive and neural basis of the fascinating experiences of #synaesthesia! If you suspect you may have synaesthesia and want to get involved, visit surveymars.com/q/3O5k0Ax5H 🌈🧠🌞

In this project, generously funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk, we'll explore the cognitive and neural basis of the fascinating experiences of #synaesthesia! If you suspect you may have synaesthesia and want to get involved, visit surveymars.com/q/3O5k0Ax5H 🌈🧠🌞

How does synaesthesia shape the way we perceive and think? How does it happen in the brain? We're excited to launch our new project, funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk . Learn more & get involved in our research - visit our website: birkbeck-synaesthesia.weebly.com

I'm proud to say we are releasing LAION-fMRI, a densely sampled 7T fMRI dataset of natural images, with very broad stimulus sampling for testing countless hypotheses and for deeply exploring brain representations. The dataset is now available at laion-fmri.hebartlab.com What does LAION-fMRI offer? 🧵

LAION-fMRI - a 7T fMRI dataset of human vision

LAION-fMRI (LfMRI / LAION MRI dataset): 5 subjects, 25,052 launch-release natural images, 165 acquired 7T fMRI sessions with single-trial GLMsingle betas, retinotopy, localizers, and diffusion.

laion-fmri.hebartlab.com

See also the commentary by Chen, Rosen & Polimeni in the same issue: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BOLD fMRI reflects both vascular and metabolic signals - Nature Neuroscience

A recent study by Epp et al. uses advanced, quantitative functional MRI measures to demonstrate that the ‘canonical’ interpretation of blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) — ...

nature.com

My grant was almost funded but then rev 2 did something...

Minneapolitan goblin (they/she)@mosscloud.bsky.social · 3mo ago

ARD, holy shit ❤️‍🔥 #PWHL

Re the council elections, I'm not surprised by the results but still feel disappointed. Good to see LibDem & Green have gained seats. The surge of Reform is expected but worrisome. I guess if Farage becomes the PM, his Home Secretary will curb the number of international students 😪Bad for all uni

Last year my book The Animal and the Thinker came out. Basic idea – how the operating principles of instinct and reason together answer big human questions. Right and wrong. Culture wars. Family and work. The meaning of life. That sort of thing. Now as an add-on I’m starting a blog…

I always assumed that brain function had to line up with cytoarchitectonics. It turns out I was wrong. Human cortex, especially PFC, is tiled by chains of functional patches that subdivide and interlink architectonic areas into parallel processing streams. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

YNiC is a fantastic workplace - something I can personally attest to! 👍

Aidan Horner@aidanhorner.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Exciting job opportunity! The York Neuroimaging Centre (YNiC) is looking for a new Lead Technical Specialist to manage the facility and the amazing team of techs. YNiC is an brilliant facility with 3T MRI, whole-head OPM-MEG, TMS, and EEG. Please RT! #neurojobs #psychjobs #psychscisky 🧪

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Art nurtures creativity and innovation, plays an important role in sharing knowledge, and encourages curiosity and dialogue. Today, on #WorldArtDay, we take a look at inspiring research in the arts.