Mel Goodale

Photo of Canadian Niagara Falls (Horseshoe Falls) on a bright sunny day midwinter. A rainbow can be seen in the mist.

Another view of Canadian Niagara Falls (Horseshoe Falls) on a bright sunny day midwinter. A rainbow can be seen in the mist.

Visited Niagara Falls (Canada) last Saturday. Falls were partly frozen and because it was a bright and sunny day, a rainbow had formed in mist. Stunning.

Yes, at Western’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping @cfmm.bsky.social , we have a lot of Tesla (34.6 T to be exact), but the most important equipment where the best ideas come from is a bit cheaper.

Ice coating the branches of a small tree decorated with Christmas lights outside our dining room window.

Large ice-covered tree branches fallen across the cycling/walking path along the river in London Ontario.

Ice storm in London Ontario on Boxing Day coated the branches of the trees with ice. Beautiful but dangerous. Power was out in various places with trees falling on power lines.

Lake Simcoe needs a local focus

If you live in Ontario, particularly in the Lake Simcoe area, send a letter to MPPs telling them that watering down protections for Lake Simcoe is a bad idea! Please please re-post.
share.nwmd.social/s/3cxdHHMF

breathtaking tour de force presentation from Guillaume Dumas at the #CIFAR Consciousness Winter School just now!

Neuro needs philosophy, explanation, and @neuromatch.bsky.social!

Thanks for the plug for our #neuroAI course, Guillaum!

Photo of Ausable Channel in PInery Provincial Park, part of the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority.

Doug Ford plans to consolidate Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into 7, overseen by a new provincial agency making it easier for development by streamlining decisions at the expense of environmental protection and local accountability. Public comment: ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-1... PLS repost

Picture showing brain activation in a person with congenital blindness. Although early visual experience is essential for the proper development of visual cortex, Striem-Amit et al. show that the underlying connectivity structure of retinotopic mapping is retained even in congenitally blind individuals. This basic organisational principle emerges independently of visual input and persists despite lifelong experience-dependent plasticity.

Ella Striem-Amit (@striemamit.bsky.social) at Georgetown University is looking for a postdoc interested in brain plasticity and behavior in people born with blindness, deafness, or without hands, using behavioral paradigms, computational methods, and fMRI. Details at: apply.interfolio.com/177838 🧠🧪

wow, massive illusory motion effect here

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Another lovely effect a bit like the last one (but maybe even more distressing!), for those seeking illusory content. No idea who made this one I'm afraid - if you happen to know, let me know so I can credit them!

For your enjoyment (by @jagarikin)

Old white oak tree in the sunlight. The tree is 10 stories high.

We hiked to the Meeting Tree, a 670 year-old White Oak, located at Westminster Ponds Conservation Area, London Ontario earlier this week. The tree was a safe meeting place for slaves leaving America and traveling up north to Canada via the Underground Railroad.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Small Sumac with drooping red frost-covered leaves.

Frost on Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina). Fall is finally here. It's been exceptionally warm for October. 🌿

People enjoying the rocky beach on Bruce Peninsula.

People enjoying the little beach on Bruce Peninsula.

Photo of a Yurt.

This weekend we stayed in a Yurt in Bruce Peninsula National Park parks.canada.ca/pn-np/on/bruce
The weather was amazing -- preternaturally warm. The Grotto and Indian Head Cove looked like the Mediterranean.

The image depicts the University of Lethbridge, located in Southern Alberta, Canada. The prominent building shown in the image is the Science Commons, which is situated on the university campus within the coulee landscape.

The Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge has a tenure-track position for a neuroscientist studying brain function across the life span in nonhuman animals. Join a terrific community of researchers in a beautiful part of the country.🧠🧪 Re-post
uleth.peopleadmin.ca/postings/8586

Close-up photo of American Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum)

White baneberry or doll’s eye (Actaea pachypoda)

American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana)

I spotted these berries on trails near London ON: bright red American Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum); white baneberry or doll’s eye (Actaea pachypoda); and dark purple American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). Only the Highbush Cranberry is edible; the other two are poisonous to humans.🌿🌱

Waters meet along a mountain trail in Glacier National Park - Hidden Gems of BC The Meeting of the Waters is a magical hidden gem in Glacier National Park between Revelstoke and Go

You can find in Glacier National Park in British Columbia, Canada. hiddengemsofbc.ca/2021/08/14/w...

Photos of the faces of three women, one young, one middle-aged, and one elderly. Text: Apparent facial age plays an important role in social interactions and is a meaningful marker of biological aging. Although both humans and AIs achieve reasonable accuracy in estimating age from a person’s face, performance remains imprecise. Drawing on principles from classical psychophysics, we show that the conventional measure used to benchmark the accuracy of human and AI performance is fundamentally confounded by response bias. We introduce a new framework based on simulated data, reanalysis of existing data, and new experimental results. Our framework provides novel insights into how facial age is processed by humans and AIs, offering new directions for future research and applications in the study of aging.

How good are we at estimating someone's age from their face and how does that change with the face's chronological age? @tganel.bsky.social et al.'s new framework disentangles bias and error, revealing new insights into how facial age is computed by humans and AIs. 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Photo of a Peck's Skipper butterfly feeding on the purple flower of a Liatris.

I think this is a Peck's Skipper (Polites peckius) gracing our front garden. If you look closely, you can see its long proboscis stretching into the Liatris flower. 🌿

OHBM Oz rego + abstracts now open. Get amongst it!

End of August means ECVP! This year, I am here (in beautiful Mainz) with a special mission - to find postdocs who will join us in (equally beautiful) Krakow, PL! Drop me a DM if you are interested!
@ecvp.bsky.social

Common Eastern Bumble bee on pink flower of the Grape-leaf Anemone with Oxeye or False Sunflower in the background.

Common Eastern Bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) foraging on new blooms on a Grape-leaf Anemone (Anemone tomentosa) in our front garden on this fine August afternoon. 🌱 🌿

Animal welfare is important when conducting scientific research that benefits human health. A well thought out essay by Dr. Arthur Brown, Chair of the Animal Care Committee at Western University. torontostarreplica.pressreader.com/article/2816...

DS Artistry Labs Journal - Workshop-Collections Free Public Workshop

RARE BOOK COLLECTIONS IN TODAY’S LIFE - Old books carry the voices of our ancestors—the artistry of centuries. Discover the stories behind the pages—and how they shape the present. FREE public workshop and one is online! Register! www.journal.dsartistrylabs.com/home/collect...

Screen shot from conference site: Ethical and Societal Implications of Neural Organoids, Assembloids and their Transplantation, November 10-12, 2025

Upcoming conference will explore the evolving ethical and societal questions posed by human stem cell-derived neural organoid and assembloid research, discussing strategies for the responsible advancement and communication of these technologies.
sto.stanfordtickets.org/ethical-and-... 🧪🧠 re-post

Four Monarch caterpillars on one Milkweed plant.

Not one, not two, not three, but four Monarch caterpillars on one Milkweed plant in my daughter's front garden. Usually, Monarchs lay only one egg per plant. Was it a confused mother butterfly, or did different females lay their one egg on the same plant?

Now that’s what I call a special issue

The brain’s map of the body is surprisingly stable — even after a limb is lost Study challenges the textbook idea that the brain region that processes body sensations reorganizes itself after limb amputation.

A brain-imaging study of people with amputated arms has upended a long-standing belief

go.nature.com/3Jp9NPG

MIT Consciousness Club The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

Here's the schedule for the MIT Consciousness Club this year: sites.google.com/view/mit-con.... I'm looking forward to it! (Rooms will be announced soon; and we're currently working on a zoom option for those who would like to join online)