Our latest article published in Scientific Reports examines the multisensory profile of dreams and waking imagined sensations in Aphantasia. We found a varied correspondence between dreamt and waking imagined experiences, suggesting a neurological diversity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Join us on 1 July, 12:00–3:15 PM, for the Synaesthesia Science & Community Forum. Explore the latest research in consciousness, sensory neuroscience, auditory cognition, and phenomenology through talks and discussion. See here for more details: visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026/

I adapted a scheduler app that was shared at VSS for this conference: apcvepc2026.netlify.app. Hope others find it useful in organising their time. (And thank you to Miyoung Kwon who created the app originally).

Nice to see this paper out. It shows that suggested links between Aphantasia and Autism have been overstated. But people with Autism on average report muted imagined sensations, and there is a weak link to Multisensory (but not visual) Aphantasia. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Autism and Aphantasia

Aphantasia is characterised by an inability to have volitional imagined sensations. While initially characterised as an inability to visualise, Aphant…

sciencedirect.com

Cardiac vagal reactivity predicts visual imagery vividness. This challenges traditional efferent accounts in which autonomic activation is merely a byproduct of imagery; rather, autonomic afferent input shapes visual imagery itself www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Final days for Early Bird registration! Register now and take advantage of discounted pricing.

Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology@expsyanz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Another reminder that our Early Bird Registration closes next week (15th May 26). All presenters, including speakers and discussants, please register by then.

All speakers should have received information about the session & timings of their presentations at #epc-apcv-2026 by now! A preliminary (searchable) schedule is available on the website: visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026 Remember to register by the end of 15 May for early-bird rates!

Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology@expsyanz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Another reminder that our Early Bird Registration closes next week (15th May 26). All presenters, including speakers and discussants, please register by then.

Going to #VSS2026 this year? This mobile app organizes your schedule — 1,190 presentations searchable by title, author, abstract, day, etc. Export to Google or Apple Calendar. Works on iPhone and Android via the free Expo Go app. Just scan the QR code in the README: github.com/markwgreenle...

Researching visual imagery? Consider submitting to this new cross-journal special issue on visual imagery at Nature Communications, Communications Psychology, and Scientific Reports! We welcome a broad range of topics and methods - more info below 👇 www.nature.com/collections/...

I’m doing this again next week. Pint of Science pintofscience.com.au/event/mind-t...

Minds in Motion

Shake up your Tuesday night.<br /> <br /> Pint of Science brings researchers into the pub to explore how our minds work, differ and change. From the way people experie…

pintofscience.com.au

We're hiring! Looking for a postdoc to work at UNSW Sydney, studying impacts of reward and information on attention, using eye-tracking, EEG, and modelling - with Kelly Garner, Daniel Pearson and me. Application link below, please spread the word! external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53...

We have over 100 abstracts submitted already and are expecting a big spike in these last couple of weeks! EPC/APCV are very rarely in NZ (last was 15yrs ago). If you're kiwi, this is a great opportunity for a nearby international conference. If you're not, this is your chance to see beautiful NZ :)

Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology@expsyanz.bsky.social · 4mo ago

⚠️ Reminder: 2 weeks left until the abstract submission deadline for APCV & EPC 2026. Abstracts are due on 30 April 2026. Please also note that all presenters—including speakers and discussants in symposia—must register for the conference by the early-bird deadline on 15 May 2026.

Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron! Here is a download link (free for 50 days): authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH... Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social 🧵

Rodrigo Braga@rodbraga.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 🧠 We have a new preprint out where we studied which brain networks are engaged during mental imagery and self-generated thought. We used a precision fMRI approach along with multidimensional experience sampling (mDES) to get trialwise self-reports from each participant about what they imagined.

Happy to report that our survey study on the diversity with which people seem to experience their mental imagery is now published in RSOS :) doi.org/10.1098/rsos... I posted a longer thread summarising the findings some months ago when we first put out the preprint: bsky.app/profile/samp...

Sam Schwarzkopf@sampendu.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg: #psychskysci #neuroscience doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🔊 New preprint 🧠 for the first time we show congenital #aphantasia has physical brain anatomy alterations. Surprisingly, they have structurally intact #visual pathways. Structural alterations instead found in the fronto-temporal and cingulate systems. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Hamid Karimi-Rouzbahani, Anina N. Rich, and Alexandra Woolgar: Spatiotemporal characterisation of information coding in the multiple demand network doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Meet our second keynote speaker for APCV & EPC 2026! Prof. Elaine Reese from the University of Otago will deliver a keynote lecture titled "Memory Development: From Basic Science to Applied Approaches."

Our paper on double decisions in working memory tasks is now published in Computational Brain and Behaviour! When you give people a second chance, it reveals a lot about the contents of their memory. Led by @paulmgarrett.bsky.social @psychunimelb.bsky.social rdcu.be/e8SLX

Congratulations to Ian Thornton and colleagues who published their Mainz-Linez illusion in i-Perception (@pec-ipe.bsky.social): the red dots appears to wave left and right when one looks at one of the black dots, but they actually move straight journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Next up: Keynote Speaker Announcements. Introducing the first speaker for APCV & EPC 2026! Prof. Hakwan Lau will present a keynote lecture titled "Prefrontal Mechanisms for Perception."

⚡SYMPOSIA SPOTLIGHT #2 More symposia highlights from our upcoming conference!

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

#Aphantasia and visual working memory: No direct evidence of impaired visual working memory in aphantasics, either in behavioral performance or the accuracy of a multivoxel pattern classifier www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Aphantasia and visual working memory: No direct evidence of impaired visual working memory in aphantasics, either in behavioral performance or the accuracy of a multivoxel pattern classifier

Visual mental imagery and visual working memory are often thought to be closely related. After all, both have been argued to involve the temporary mai…

sciencedirect.com

⚡SYMPOSIA SPOTLIGHT #1 We are super excited to announce a series of symposia taking place throughout our conference. Here is a preview of some featured sessions and speakers. Of course, there is more to come. Stay tuned!

**Postdoc position in human category learning** @thecharleywu.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and I are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to lead a joint project on human category learning at the Centre for Cognitive Science @tuda.bsky.social. www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...

Everyone: Binocular rivalry describes an alternation between exclusive percepts from each eye. Me + Prof Bex: Which perceptual categories do observers experience during multistable perception? url: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Which perceptual categories do observers experience during multistable perception?

Abstract. Multistable perceptual phenomena provide insights into the mind’s dynamic states within a stable external environment, and the neural underpinnin

royalsocietypublishing.org

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Melinda Sabo, Tijl Grootswagers, et al: Multiple partially overlapping neural modules orchestrate conflict processing doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Legit super excited about this work coming out. My amazing doctoral student @ben.graphics has been working on an idea to use physically based differentiable rendering (PBDR) to probe visual understanding. Here, we generate physically-grounded metamers for vision models. 1/4 arxiv.org/abs/2512.12307

Coming to APCV & EPC from outside of Auckland, New Zealand? Here is some more information about Student Travel Awards. More available on our website: visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026/