Antonia Hamilton 's Avatar

Antonia Hamilton

@antoniahamilton.bsky.social

Social Neuroscience Professor at UCL studying human brain and behaviour in real world social interactions

3,720 Followers  |  2,246 Following  |  70 Posts  |  Joined: 31.08.2024  |  1.9535

Latest posts by antoniahamilton.bsky.social on Bluesky

This is now out in Cerebral Cortex.

Open Access: academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

@antoniahamilton.bsky.social @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social Uzair Hakim @paola182.bsky.social Danny Thompkings @fdi55.bsky.social

02.12.2025 12:19 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
Post image

In 2021 we reported that live learning outperformed recorded learning. In a new preregistered analysis, my first senior-author paper led by Stan de Visser (pre-print), we find that this benefit does not increase with interactivity. The potential to interact may be enough to boost learning. A thread:

01.12.2025 11:26 β€” πŸ‘ 27    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 1
macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies.

macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies.

Haven’t read the full article yet, but this is a big deal if true!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

28.11.2025 10:02 β€” πŸ‘ 24    πŸ” 9    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 3
Preview
Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making - Communications Psychology Using a continuous social foraging game, this study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these str...

This study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these strategies to interaction dynamics, payoffs, and cost of cooperation.
@violapriesemann.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

27.11.2025 03:48 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
A busy figure showing some time series and timing distributions movement versus speech

A busy figure showing some time series and timing distributions movement versus speech

Team science (all shared authorship), pre-registered, diamond open access paper now accepted at Open Mind: "Foreign Language Learners Show a Kinematic Accent in Their Co-speech Hand Movements".

with Bosker, Marieke Hoetjes, Doenja Hustin, Lieke van Maastricht

www.wimpouw.com/files/POSTPR...

26.11.2025 13:35 β€” πŸ‘ 20    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

New preprint !

Baby steps in conscious experiences

- I explain why every single step matters when we climb the mountain of our embodied conscious life

Check it out : it involves also drinking red wine versus seeing red wine 🍷

And thomas Nagel versus my grandma πŸ˜ŽπŸ˜…

osf.io/preprints/ps...

24.11.2025 21:44 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Dynamic neural processing of self-other synchronisation error in interpersonal coordination The human capacity to produce precisely synchronised actions with others is critical for everyday cooperative activities. Such interpersonal coordinat…

Dynamic neural processing of self-other synchronisation error in interpersonal coordination
sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

21.11.2025 03:12 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

We replicated one of the oldest experiments in Psychology (Triplett, 1898) as a registered report. Children completed a task faster in pairs than when they were alone.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

19.11.2025 10:41 β€” πŸ‘ 44    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 2
Preview
Visual statistical learning and social attention in neurotypical, minimally speaking and speaking autistic preschoolers - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Visual statistical learning and social attention in neurotypical, minimally speaking and speaking autistic preschoolers

"Our findings point to previously unknown strengths in autistic children who are minimally speaking across statistical learning and social attention, suggesting that spoken language differences in this population might be unrelated to these domains" www.nature.com/articles/s41... free

07.11.2025 11:08 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration | Royal Society Open Science Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But scientists under career pressure are lured to purchase fake publications from β€˜paper mills’ that use AI-generated data, text and image fabrication....

Here's the link

07.11.2025 04:22 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

nice work but would the results be the same if this was a live social interaction (rather than watching a video)?

06.11.2025 08:33 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The effect of ostensive communication on immediate and delayed memory of novel and familiar action patterns - Memory & Cognition Actions are often learnt incidentally by observing other individuals. How aspects inherent to the social context in which an action is seen affect action learning remains poorly understood. Here we st...

🚨new article with C. Galusca & L. Bonatti @springernature.com
Learning is best when a teacher engages directly with the learner, e.g., by routinely gazing toward them. Is social engagement always beneficial for learning? If not, when?
Full story in open access πŸ‘‰ link.springer.com/article/10.3...

05.11.2025 20:27 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I found this article super-interesting: Why more social interactions lead to more polarization in societies | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

04.11.2025 19:35 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Preserved spontaneous mentalizing amid reduced intersubject variability in autism during a movie narrative. Paper by Margot Mangnus & al. with Peter Hagoort
doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.10.007

31.10.2025 12:19 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Problems with ELife's new article type: Replication studies I was interested to receive an email from eLife last week, telling me that "As part of our commitment to open science, scientific rigour ...

New blogpost on @elife.bsky.social's new Replication study type deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/10/prob.... tldr = I think it's doomed.
#Replication #Publishing #Reproducibility

27.10.2025 09:33 β€” πŸ‘ 32    πŸ” 21    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 5
Preview
Cardiac synchrony remains stable across repeated intergenerational encounters but is enhanced during high stakes collaboration Intergenerational social programs provide opportunities for people of all ages to form new relationships. Furthermore, existing qualitative and behavioural evidence from such programs points to health...

πŸ«€πŸ–ΌοΈπŸ«€What can 732 co-created drawings and heart rates from 61 dyads teach us about intergenerational relationship development and collaboration?

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
@escross.bsky.social @lucanaudszus.bsky.social

25.10.2025 08:54 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
Post image Post image

Fundamental features of social environments determine rate of social affiliation www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

18.10.2025 10:34 β€” πŸ‘ 13    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Longitudinal intergenerational hyperscanning reveals indices of relationship formation and loneliness Loneliness is globally acknowledged as a severe and burgeoning health risk, fuelling interest in helping people of all ages form meaningful social connections. One promising approach consists of inter...

What happens in the brain as people become less lonely? Intergenerational community programs can reduce loneliness, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We collected and analysed 732 🧠-scans to find out!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@introspection.bsky.social + @escross.bsky.social

16.10.2025 15:00 β€” πŸ‘ 23    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Social Context Matters for Turn‐Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we dise...

Conversational turn-taking feels effortless, but it's a complex dance. We find social contextβ€”who you're talking to and what you're talking aboutβ€”fundamentally changes conversational dynamics in both autistic & TD children. 1/

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... w @chrismmcox.bsky.social

15.10.2025 09:28 β€” πŸ‘ 63    πŸ” 20    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1
OSF

New paper! - I was wrong! We checked and checked again we were definitely wrong.

And I couldn't be happier that we are able to publish these findings at QJEP - Satchell, Hall & Jones 🧡

osf.io/preprints/ps...

08.10.2025 17:01 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The science fiction science method - Nature The β€˜science fiction science’ method simulates future technologies and collects quantitative data on the attitudes and behaviours of participants in various future scenarios, with the aim of predicting impacts of future technologies before they arrive.

Science fiction science, by the ever-thoughtful Iyad Rahwan: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

09.10.2025 20:06 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Congratulations. πŸ₯³πŸŽ‰

07.10.2025 11:16 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The social, decoupled self: interpersonal synchronization of breathing alters intrapersonal cardiorespiratory coupling People synchronize their periodic behavioural and physiological rhythms with each other during social interaction. While this interpersonal synchronization has largely been associated with positive ef...

🫁❀️New preprint out: The social, decoupled self

We show effects of interpersonal synchronization of physiological rhythms on intrapersonal cardiorespiratory coupling: when we sync our breathing, our breathing–heart rhythms decouple, with a perturbed phase-relationship
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

04.10.2025 11:47 β€” πŸ‘ 51    πŸ” 29    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
My voyage to explore how Marshallese sailors find their way at sea without technology Scientists have been exploring the role that neuroscience plays in ocean navigation.

Lovely article in @uk.theconversation.com by Maria Ahmad who is doing her PhD research supported by @leverhulme.ac.uk in my lab on oceanic navigation in the Marshall Islands.

This is her coverage of our voyage to Aur atoll this summer:

theconversation.com/my-voyage-to...

02.10.2025 09:50 β€” πŸ‘ 17    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

experiments with in-person social manipulations in the lab are like a miniature piece of theatre - the behaviour of the experimenter can impact on how the participant understands and performs the tasks. And Shakespeare is not the same with a bad theatre director.

26.09.2025 14:14 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Finally had a chance to read this study on conceptual alignment in human communication. Using a clever repeated reference game, it provides quantitative evidence that interaction drives people to converge on a shared, generalizable conceptual space:

arxiv.org/pdf/2509.05566
@rdhawkins.bsky.social

23.09.2025 18:00 β€” πŸ‘ 24    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
Article 'The conker tree'. BMJ November 1997.

Article 'The conker tree'. BMJ November 1997.

30 years since this happened (28 since I wrote about it). I still recall that wonderful tree and the generosity of my patient in her final illness. www.bmj.com/content/315/...

22.09.2025 19:46 β€” πŸ‘ 157    πŸ” 29    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 4
Post image

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Dalin Yang, Adam T. Eggebrecht, et al:

Mapping brain function underlying naturalistic motor observation and imitation using high-density diffuse optical tomography

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

22.09.2025 06:42 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image Post image Post image

Had the opportunity to present our #fNIRS hyperscanning study @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @saradefelice.bsky.social at #ICON2025 in the Social And Embodied Language Learning Symposium. Felt small in the huge auditorium but the room was filled w/ inspiring questions!

19.09.2025 16:03 β€” πŸ‘ 14    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The arts for disease prevention and health promotion: a systematic review - Nature Medicine The arts, according to a systematic synthesis of data from 95 studies (across 26 countries), may support non-communicable disease prevention by providing opportunities for increased physical activity,...

Don't underestimate the effect of the artsβ€”music, dance, visual, gardening, crafts, theaterβ€”for promoting health, a systematic review
@naturemedicine.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

18.09.2025 18:30 β€” πŸ‘ 230    πŸ” 81    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 7

@antoniahamilton is following 20 prominent accounts