Dr Poppy Watson

Motor prediction reduces beta-band power and enhances cerebellar-somatosensory connectivity before self-touch to enable its attenuation Prevailing theories suggest that the brain uses an internal forward model to predict tactile input during voluntary movements, thereby reducing the intensity of the reafferent tactile sensation, a phe...

📣 New preprint 📣

The brain attenuates self-touch, but how does this unfold at the neural level before the touch? We used MEG to find out 🧠 👉👈

Finally out on Nat Comms 🚀
We show that an intrinsic motivational learning signal (information gain) is encoded through synergistic and higher-order functional brain interactions and is broadcast to prefrontal reward circuits.

Google says it's working on a fix for Gemini's self-loathing 'I am a failure' comments Google Gemini users said the bot is sharing self-loathing messages while attempting to solve tasks, including "I am a disgrace to this universe."

Google Gemini doesn’t appear to be doing too well:

‘"I am a disgrace to this planet. I am a disgrace to this universe. I am a disgrace to all universes . . . I am a disgrace to all possible and impossible universes and all that is not a universe," the bot continued.’

"Haha, yeah the AI gets this basic stuff wrong, but it excels at summarizing tax law or complicated literature."

MY BROTHER IN CHRIST IT'S JUST THAT YOU CAN'T TELL IN THOSE CASES BECAUSE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ENOUGH TAX LAW OR COMPLICATED LITERATURE

WHY ARE WE EVEN DOING THIS

Postdoc alert. Laura Corbit in Toronto is hiring! Seen at Pavlovian conference.

And some of the recent human data: doi.org/10.1016/j.ad...

Check out the preprint of this work: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Great to see @bradfield-neuro.bsky.social presenting recent work at Pavlovian conference in Sydney. Back-translation of our VMAC task and links to compulsivity in animals.

Still a classic

I am ridiculously excited about this! We made the cover!! (online-only... but still 😂). Love the philosophical twist to this Editorial at Nature Mental Health featuring our research.

Looks very sensible

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Position (80%) at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich. The ideal start date would be January 1st, 2026 but could be somewhat earlier or later. The position is for initially 3 years, with possible renewal for another 1.5 years. The successful applicant will work with the head of the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Prof. Dr. Klaus Oberauer, and the Cognitive Psychology team. The post involves research and teaching (one course per semester). Research at the Zurich Cognitive Psychology Unit focuses on capacity limits of cognition, in particular working memory, long-term memory, and attention, which we investigate with experimental, individual-differences and aging studies and computational modeling. For further information see: https://www.psychology.uzh.ch/en/areas/nec/allgpsy.html We offer: - An attractive research environment with close collaboration within the team - Excellent lab infrastructure - Salary according to Cantonal regulations We expect: - a PhD in psychology or a related discipline - experience with experimental research - excellent method knowledge and skills - very good command of English - interest in pursuing an academic career in cognitive psychology In addition, it would be desirable if you had: - experience with publishing in international journals - programming skills - experience with mathematical / computational modeling Please send applications including your CV and motivation letter no later than September 10, 2025 electronically as a single PDF to: Michaela Oestmann, michaela.oestmann@psychologie.uzh.ch For questions about the position please contact Klaus Oberauer, k.oberauer@psychologie.uzh.ch

🚨 PostDoc Opening 🚨 The lab of Klaus Oberauer is looking for a new postdoc, starting end of this/beginning next year. Research focus is #cognition, #workingmemory, #methods and #computationalmodeling or anything in that direction. I cannot highlight ENOUGH how great it is to work in this lab 🥰🤓

Imagine this at scale, unchecked: how is this not a fundamental threat to science?

(Also, this is a perfect example of how irrational and ironic it is for large publishing companies to use “AI” to generate content that is of a much lower quality than the human-created content they already own.)

Leveraging cognitive neuroscience for making and breaking real-world habits Habits are the behavioral output of two brain systems. A stimulus–response (S–R) system that encourages us to efficiently repeat well-practiced actions in familiar settings, and a goal-directed system...

The good news? If there’s more than one mechanism driving compulsive behaviour, there’s likely more than one way to intervene! We talk about this in our @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social review @eikekofi.bsky.social @parnianrafei.bsky.social

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

The Guardian too! You'd expect better

Before reading any article about microbiome biomarkers, see this: Zhang, J.,et al (2025). Identifying reproducible biomarkers for microbiome association studies requires thousands of sample sizes. Science Bulletin, 70(13), 2056–2060. doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

Photo of a tv. Onscreen a woman holds an axe with a periodic table visible behind.

Buffy is so old there were only 103 named elements, we’re at 118 now.

(Yes I pause every show that has a periodic table to see if its period accurate)

They then went on to quote the comment I had made on linked in "blah blah Dr Watson said". Of course, to be expected when you post in a public forum. But a new low that I personally had not experienced before.

"Other academics, including Poppy Watson from the University of Technology Sydney, said the partnership demonstrated the state of academic and research funding in Australia"

‘Tricky ethical space’: endometriosis centre funded by family with links to poker machine giant divides experts A $50m pledge to revolutionise research into the disease has divided academics and public health experts

I have been a bit wary of social media after a throwaway comment I posted underneath someone's post on LinkedIn was used in a guardian article as if I had been interviewed. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

In February 2024, I wrote Scientific Reports about a published meta-analysis claiming that mindfulness interventions affect neural plasticity, 'cementing the neuropsychological basis of mindfulness-based interventions'.

The paper was retracted yesterday—here a little summary of the process.🧵

This is wild! Thanks for persevering

Internet search traffic for health information has dropped precipitously, the outlier drop vs all other categories, as chatbots and genAI take hold
www.economist.com/business/202...

Nice Phd position on neuro&biofeedback: collaboration between donders Maastricht univ. vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...

Examining the biological causes of eating disorders to inform treatment strategies - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Recent years have seen a growth in our understanding of the biological drivers of eating disorders and their interactions with environmental and psychosocial factors. Foldi and Griffiths consider how ...

The biology of eating disorders www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Out now @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, w/ @akalt.bsky.social & @drmattdavis.bsky.social.

Are sensory sampling rhythms fixed by intrinsically-determined processes, or do they couple to external structure? Here we highlight the incompatibility between these accounts and propose a resolution [1/6]

I think many in associative learning have always been uncomfortable with the model-free = habit, model based = goal-directed so I look forward to reading this!

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/...

To determine distinct learning and decision-making profiles in obesity and binge eating (BE), we combined ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in a large online sample with a neuroimaging study. The figure shows the elements of the paper.

Binge eating (BE) is associated with reduced but more variable reward sensitivity. The panels show associations of BE with learning parameters and an fMRI-based reward sensitivity measure derived from the cue stage of an effort task (independent of learning).

Our big behavioral precision mapping preprint is out. Based on 1,486,950 observed choices in a reward learning task, we show that BMI is associated with higher and more variable learning rates. Binge eating was associated with lower reward sensitivity. #neuroskyence 🩺
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

What are the cool kids using for fonts (specifically for lab logos) these days? Or should I just embrace the professorial life and use Comic Sans?

Strong font opinions actually wanted for once 🙂