Luca Barlassina

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°!

In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances!

We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

A multisensory, bidirectional, valence encoder guides behavioral decisions A key function of the brain is to categorize sensory cues as repulsive or attractive and respond accordingly. While we have some understanding of how sensory information is processed in the sensory pe...

How is valence computed in the brain? Check out our new preprint about a single cell that integrates excitatory and inhibitory input across modalities according to valence and impacts behavioral decisions. An exciting collaboration across many labs. Enjoy reading!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Logical Concepts of (Im)possibility Guide Young Children's Decision‐Making The human capacity for rational decisions hinges on modal judgment: the discernment of what could, has to, or cannot happen. This ability was proposed to be a late outcome of human cognitive develop.....

🌟From Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti, Sofia Jáuregui, Peter Mazalik, Shaun Nichols & Justin Halberda:

Logical concepts of (im)possibility guide young children's decision-making

Wild orangutans feast on fruit to prepare metabolically for famine, according to a new field-based study in #ScienceAdvances. https://scim.ag/3UQdXm0

Why a Classic Psychology Theory about Vision Has Fallen Apart The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we see the world? Wonderful piece in @sciam.bsky.social by @norabradford.bsky.social, ft. an interview with @dorsaamir.bsky.social about our work on the 'cultural byproduct hypothesis'.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

Mental representation of the locations and identities of multiple hidden agents or objects by a bonobo | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Humans are adept at navigating the social world in part because we flexibly map the locations and identities of agents around us. While field studies suggest primates can track individual conspecifics...

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind?

In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners

royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

Knowledge-first mindreading? Antilici & Mei say, "No".

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Cover of TICS with vertical beige toned sound waves

my review 'core systems of music perception' is on the cover of TICS this month (algorithmic art by @kennyvaden.bsky.social)

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Evidence of mood states in reptiles - Animal Cognition There is increasing evidence that non-human animals experience ‘free-floating’ mood states, but such evidence is lacking in reptiles, hindering the debate as to their affective capacity and with subse...

Evidence of mood states in reptiles | Animal Cognition
share.google/fi900djWYTjX...

Model-based algorithms shape automatic evaluative processing | PNAS Computational theories of reinforcement learning suggest that two families of algorithm—model-based and model-free—tightly map onto the classic dis...

A key takeaway from 20+ years of computational RL is: model-free=automatic, model-based=deliberate. My new paper w/ @benedek.bsky.social challenges this view, suggesting that MB algos are more ubiquitous, & automatic processing more sophisticated, than currently thought: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Out now in TiCS, something i've been thinking about a lot:

"Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"

(by Balaban & me)

relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...

different coloured mice on a white background

Turns out, two of pain’s most famous messengers — Substance P and CGRPα — might not be so essential after all. Mice missing both still felt pain just fine, challenging decades of assumptions about how pain signals travel.
buff.ly/ypISrtx

Sensitivity to visual features in inattentional blindness As a group, inattentionally blind participants can successfully report the location, color, and shape of stimuli they deny noticing, and exhibit a systematic bias to report not noticing.

5 years since our first pilot, and 25,000 participants later, I'm super happy this work with Makaela Nartker, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and Howard Egeth on inattentional blindness is now out in eLife! A little 🧵 of what we found... 1/12 elifesciences.org/articles/100...

Researchers have known for decades that chimpanzees drum, but two new studies show that the animals drum to a distinct beat—which varies across their societies.

Learn more: scim.ag/3YJ7R9r

The essay by @awaisaftab.bsky.social does a fine job of describing how cliff-edge fitness functions may explain vulnerability to some diseases. For an accessible Psychology Today article on the topic, see the link below. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Objective pain score? Here’s the problem with that The problem of pain measurement is not technological, but philosophical. Biomarkers won’t solve it.

Laurenz Casser on whether objective pain measurement is possible. He says, "No, it is not" #philsky #psysky #pain

Thousands buried in 17th century Italian crypt reveal lives of working poor Remains recovered from beneath a Milan hospital shed light on health, diet, and drug habits during the 1600s

Between 1637 and 1697, people who died at Milan's biggest hospital were dropped into underground vaults. Now their remains (including nearly 3 million bones & preserved brains) are helping archaeologists reconstruct the lives, diet and drug habits of people historians often overlook. @science.org

Introspective access to value-based multi-attribute choice processes - Nature Communications People routinely choose between multi-attribute options, such as which movie to watch. Here, the authors show people often have accurate insight into their choices, challenging the notion that people ...

Are we “strangers to ourselves”? Classic theories say people have limited insight into how they decide. Our new paper at @natcomms.nature.com challenges this view. With @rcarl.bsky.social sky.social, @hedykober.bsky.social y.social, and @mjcrockett.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵

A Mysterious Publication - Daily Nous An article published recently in Synthese caught the eye of a few Daily Nous readers. Remember the game, "which one of these is not like the others?" Give it try on this selection of the latest articl...

Synthese is the Florida Man of philosophy journals.
dailynous.com/2025/04/25/a...

In a new preprint (doi.org/10.31234/osf...) a huge range of data+methods shows that people can evaluate what others know without first evaluating what they think/believe. Representations of knowledge seem to be an independent and conceptually primitive way of representing others' minds. 🧵 below!

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 🧵

I got an email yesterday afternoon that my NSF SPRF Postdoctoral Fellowship was terminated. My grant focused on testing interventions to address online misinformation and I was 8 months into a two year appointment.