Mel Goodale

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)

Monarch butterfly on Queen Anne's Lace.

Honeybee on Queen Anne's Lace.

Queen Anne's Lace and friends at Komoka Provincial Park this beautiful afternoon.
www.ontarioparks.ca/park/komoka

Orange and yellow caterpillar with white and black tufts on a Milkweed leaf.

A Milkweed Tussock Moth (Euchaetes egle) caterpillar chomping its way through a leaf of the Milkweed growing in our back garden. Like the Monarch butterfly, the adult moths become unpalatable to predators from feeding on the Milkweed when they were caterpillars.

Busy Carpenter bee foraging on Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) in our front garden. This tall perennial is native to southern Ontario. It attracts a lot of pollinators.

The quest to detect consciousness — in all its possible forms Insights from human brains might inform how scientists search for awareness in other animals and AI.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Monarch chrysalis.

Recently emerged adult Monarch butterfly hanging from the husk of the chrysalis.

An hour later and the wings are almost fully extended.

Hope! We have Milkweed growing in our yard, which attracts Monarch butterflies. We were pleased to see a Monarch chrysalis hanging from the top of a basement window a few days ago. Today, a beautiful butterfly emerged.

Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)

View of the Old Ausable Channel in Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario.

Fragrant White Waterlily (Nymphaea odorata) in the Old Ausable Channel in Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario.

Canoeing in the Old Ausable Channel in Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario.

Revitalizing walk in Pinery Provincial Park. We are lucky to have this wonderful resource so close to where we live.
pinerypark.on.ca
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinery_...

Some arguments for why we should believe that visual experience is the way it seems to be - in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, from myself and Giulio Tononi:

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMzy4sIRv...

Absolute honor to be awarded the David Marr Medal by the Applied Vision Association @theava-uk.bsky.social

Looking forward to my talk “Five Illusions Challenge Our Understanding of Visual Experience”

Thanks so much to NOMIS Foundation,
@italianacademy.bsky.social ,
@zuckermanbrain.bsky.social

Big beautiful white peonies with yellow centres.

Our peonies are doing well with all the rain we've had in London ON.

Worth looking again at this refreshing approach to understanding the biological significance of cognition. "The premise of this two-part theme issue is simple: the cognitive sciences should join the rest of the life sciences in how they approach the quarry within their research domain." 🧠 🧪 #consci

What songs get us up on the dance floor? New work by Riya Sidhu from the @neurobeats.bsky.social lab shows that it's the nostalgic throwback songs from our teenage years that are most likely to get us moving. 🧪 🧠

Yes. Students going into the 3rd year of their PhD in Septmber 2025 are welcome to apply to the CIFAR Winter School on the Neuroscience of Consciousness.

Dog-sled going past the Le Château Montebello.

Main public room in Le Château Montebello decorated for Christmas. The building is the world's largest "log cabin".

Le Château Montebello is situated on the banks of the Ottawa river, separating Quebec and Ontario.

Group photo the school of 2018 at the Winter school on the Neuroscience of Consciousness

CIFAR invites applications for senior PhD and postdocs to participate in the Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School, held in Montebello, Canada Dec 10-12, 2025. The Winter School is hosted by members of CIFAR’s Brain, Mind, and Consciousness program. Please repost.
cifar.ca/next-generat... 🧠🧪

Congrats, Frank. So well-deserved.