Peter Kok

Quote: Kabinet over schrappen paraatheidsplannen pandemie speld.nl/?p=243288

But "Alternatively, in higher-order representation of a representation (HOROR) theory, the relevant higher-order state in PFC itself is phenomenally conscious."

For some HOTs, "consciousness is ‘jointly determined’ by concurrent activity in the higher-order areas and areas that maintain the lower-order representations."

Understanding the Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspa...

My understanding is that yes, some HOTs argue that contents are re-represented in the higher-order model and only that model is important for consciousness.

How do we balance external attention to the outside world and internal attention to our thoughts & memories?

We review evidence that external and internal attention can compete, unfold concurrently, or cooperate!

Loved working on this with @samversc.bsky.social & @tobiasegner.bsky.social!

Objects warp space in our mind, and events warp time in our mind. @samiyousif.bsky.social and I teamed up to review the work in these two literatures and suggest that there may be deep connections across them (with analogous influences of objects on space and events on time).

Today I am excited to introduce respyra - an open-source Python toolbox for respiratory tracking experiments in interoception research!

Now on PyPI (pip install respyra) with a preprint on PsyArXiv:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

GitHub: github.com/embodied-com...

UK business secretary urges EU to stop ‘putting up barriers’ Comments by Peter Kyle come on Brussels trip aimed at securing British access to ‘Made in Europe’ scheme

🚨🚨 Major irony warning:

The UK decision to depart from the EU in the "hard" way opting for the TCA was the most severe barrier to EU trade that could be imposed.

Now live with it or renegotiate the basic terms of this framework. #brexit

www.ft.com/content/05e0...

This is great from the @athenaakrami.bsky.social lab — hippocampus is required for unsupervised statistical learning, and dCA1 populations split into subspaces for sensory features vs abstract rules. Elegant optogenetic + recording approach.

https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.14.705916

Bilingual language processing relies on shared semantic representations that are modulated by each language www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... fMRI with participants reading hours of natural narratives in their native & non-native languages then compared semantic representations between the two languages

Can’t help but think this an issue….

The Rise of Eyes Began With Just One

Vision Science makes the front page of NYT!!
featuring work from @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social with comments from Berkeley's own @karthikshekhar.bsky.social
#visionscience

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/s...

Excited to see this Version Of Record of my work out in @elife.bsky.social!
elifesciences.org/articles/106...
We investigate the mental representation of geometric shapes in adults and children using fMRI and MEG. Each figure has a video of me explaining the figure: go and read it, or read below.

Infant brain categorizes common objects by two months of age Brain activity patterns in the ventral visual cortex appear to distinguish images across 12 categories, including birds and trees, fMRI scans suggest.

The Transmitter writes about @clionaod.bsky.social's work with
@ainedineen.bsky.social, @annatruzzi.bsky.social, Graham King, @lorinanaci.bsky.social, Keelin Harrison, Enna-Louise D'Arcy, Jessica White, @chiarac.bsky.social, Tamrin Holloway, Anna Kravchenko, @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social!

This really stuck out - the loans are currently unrepayable for the vast majority of students. This means you pay for the entire 30 years it takes before it gets wiped, and so you end up paying maybe twice what you borrowed. This is an insane burden to place on students

An ICE agent shot and killed Ruben Ray Martinez, a US citizen and San Antonio resident, in March 2025. Then ICE and the Texas Department of Public Safety covered it up. He was 23 years old. I am calling for a full investigation into this shooting, including why there was an 8-month cover up.

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

A retired British primary school administrator with a British passport and a valid visa was shackled, chained and detained for six weeks by ICE

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

March 27, 1936: Portraits of the Führer are raised on official buildings across Berlin. This one at the Potsdamer Railway Station reads "Freedom - Peace"

Producing more while understanding less with large language models Many scientists are enthusiastic about the potentials of 'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) for research. We recently examined the vision of ‘AI Surrogates’ [1]: computer models [including but not limited to large language models (LLMs)] designed to simulate human participants for the purpose of generating knowledge about human cognition and behavior. Some scientists believe that AI Surrogates can improve the generalizability of cognitive science: first, by simulating diverse populations that are not readily accessible, overcoming the field’s overreliance on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) samples; and second, by enabling researchers to quickly and cheaply explore vast experimental design spaces, expanding the diversity of situations that can be probed experimentally.

Online Now: Producing more while understanding less with large language models

No surprise there. Ru wants Ukraine to surrender but can’t compel them. Ukraine isn’t losing on the battlefield and they don’t want to submit to Ru occupation. The US is not an honest broker but trying to help Ru achieve its goals diplomatically. US has stopped aid to Ukr so it has little leverage.

These two women are suing Andrew Tate, alleging he raped them. Here they visit the social media companies that created Tate. Please share.

*one voice altered to disguise identity

A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".

2026 basically

There must be trials. Not as an emotive aspiration, rhetorical meme, or empty threat. A concrete plan. A dedicated special court for it. Structural legislation and prosecutors and funding and all the rest of it. Everything necessary for it can be done constitutionally. All it takes is the will.

Children in American concentration camps in the 21st century. The inhumanity of it.

Thrilled to finally share this work! 🧠🔊

Using a new reinforcement-free task we show mice (like humans) extract abstract structure from sound (unsupervised) & dCA1 is causally required by building factorised, orthogonal subspaces of abstract rules.

Led by Dammy Onih!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The human brain reimagined: Eleanor Maguire, transforming understanding of neuroscience Eleanor Maguire transformed our understanding of human memory and how we approach neuroscience research, inspiring generations of scientists and paving the way for some of our biggest breakthroughs.

We are delighted to see departmental alumni Eleanor Maguire, and her former PhD student Sir Demis Hassabis, honoured in the UCL Faces project, as part of UCL’s bicentenary celebrations. Read about their valuable contributions on the UCL Faces webpage.

www.ucl.ac.uk/about/search...

Index RSF's World Press Freedom Index aims to compare the level of press freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories.

EU's Kaja Kallas: Coming from a country that is number two in the Press Freedom Index, hearing criticism regarding press freedom from a country that is fifty-eighth on this list (the U.S.) is interesting.

Ranking ⬇️

rsf.org/en/index

Why does a billionaire living in Monaco think the UK has been ‘colonised’ by migrants? | The News Agents Jim Ratcliffe, believed to be the seventh-richest Brit in the world, has faced backlash for claims the UK has been “colonised” by migrants. Has this language been normalised in Britain?

"I have a hunch more Brits would say they prefer people, immigrants or not, who pay their taxes, rather than billionaires who bugger off to Monaco and don’t," says
Emily Maitlis.

Jim Ratcliffe, she adds, is "out of his depth" with 'colonisation' claims

www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/why-...

PM Tusk:

Some say that Ukraine should be grateful for everything.
The truth is exactly the opposite. The rest of us should be grateful to Ukraine.