Gabriel Braun

New preprint alert! 🐥
"Continued memory for misinformation, continued trust in the sources that spread it: The effects of language and self-correction".

In my completely unbiased opinion, it’s a very nice and interesting read!

Full paper at: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

But wont most random people (not philosophers/scientists) percieve color to be more of a physical property? I think it will be a very skewed split of responses

There are things similar to pain, like heat/cold. But maybe something being 'beautiful'? You can see it as your own perception or the object/scene having some kind of "physical" beautiful properties? Doesn't 100% fit, but somewhat close

Looks really cool. Congratz to all involved! Can't wait to read it more thoroughly :)

Great job and congratulations!

NEW preprint!
We study cases with several meanings (e.g., replying “I’m feeling sick” to “Wanna go to the beach?”). How does being truthful in one meaning, but maybe not another, shape perceived commitment to each meaning and overall trust in a speaker?

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Shared disbelief and shared belief: Belief and disbelief as drivers of interpersonal neural synchronization during narrative processing Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 23, June 2025. SignificanceWe live in what many describe as a post-truth era, where truth is increasingly contested. Despite efforts to mitigate this issue, little is known about the cognitive processes underlying believed/disbelieved information. This fMRI study ...

Shared disbelief and shared belief: Belief and disbelief as drivers of interpersonal neural synchronization during narrative processing @PNAS.org

How scientific value is too often measured in dollars In this post, I want to touch on something a bit more controversial.

Bed-bound with high fever, while now and then having to run to a shelter filled with children. So.... seems like the right time to write and share my second substack post: "How scientific value is too often measured in dollars"

open.substack.com/pub/gabrielb...

Belief as the cognitive default Hey there!

Just me trying to write some words about belief, without having to be too formal and in APA7

open.substack.com/pub/gabrielb...

Neat! Congratulations and good job!

My intuition was: less visual imagery -> probably more 'rational' (?)-> more leaning towards deterministic views in general + anti free will views

But maybe it's just me basing it on myself (I can't even imagine my parents, they're just blobs)

Neat! Also happy to personally correspond with the correlation's direction

Shared disbelief and shared belief: Belief and disbelief as drivers of interpersonal neural synchronization during narrative processing | PNAS Despite living in an era where the mere concept of truth is increasingly contested, the cognitive processes underlying the processing of informatio...

Totally agree there’s a lack of neuroscientific work on misinformation. Honestly, even the basics of belief vs. disbelief in information is surprisingly underexplored.
We just released a new paper, and our very first sentence makes exactly that point.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Together, the results show how (dis)belief shapes narrative processing. Behaviorally, belief bias supports the notion of belief as a cognitive default, while neural patterns show belief and disbelief drive distinct processing, shared across like-minded listeners. 6/6

Neural synchrony associated with actual belief revealed broader patterns. High belief and high disbelief led to distinct activation patterns, which were unique to each narrative. This suggests shared interpretations shaped by how much participants believed (or disbelieved). 5/6

Now to brain processing: context shaped neural synchrony. Some regions synced more in belief contexts, others in disbelief, but never both. Disbelief boosted synchrony in cognitive control regions (Exp 1) + DMN (Exp 2, pic), while belief was focused in the DMN (Exp 2, pic). 4/6

Let’s start with behavior: did actual belief match the context? The answer was no! Even when told the witness was lying, many still chose to believe. And the mismatch wasn’t random, it consistently leaned toward belief. Some call it “truth bias,” but I prefer belief bias. 3/6

In practice, participants heard testimonies under belief/disbelief contexts while we scanned their brain activity. Afterward, they rated how much they actually believed the speaker. We then asked: how synchronized were their brains with others? And did belief boost synchrony? 2/6

How do belief and disbelief shape how the brain processes narratives? Unlike discrete facts, narratives push us to actively build interpretations. We manipulated contextual belief (told if the speaker is lying/truthful) and measured actual belief. Then looked at the brain. 1/6

For my first BlueSky post I want to share this freshly published paper in PNAS @pnas.org!
We show how belief and disbelief shape narrative processing in the brain, not just as opposites of a continuum, but as distinct effects, including a cool truth/belief bias.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...