Francesco Ellia

Already published the ‘Teorema’ #FreeWill book symposium on Sapolsky’s ‘Determined’, with contributions by @wiringthebrain.bsky.social and others.

revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/te...

No open access?

Self-Awareness and Personhood in Non-Human Animals Beyond simple consciousness or sentience, some non-human animals may possess more sophisticated cognitive abilities linked to capacities for self-awareness or even personhood, capacities that may infl...

Our new book chapter is out, looking at self-awareness/personhood in nonhuman animals, and how it may relate to questions of suffering
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Comparative neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Iwaniuk revels in unlocking the what, how and why of bird behaviour | UNews

If you are interested in bird behaviour or animal brains, our book has you covered. Available next week, you can order direct from @mitpress.bsky.social (mitpress.mit.edu/978026255273...) or wherever books are sold.
#birds #neuroskyence 🪶🧠🧪🇨🇦

See more on it here:
www.ulethbridge.ca/unews/articl...

The smartest kid will ask Gemini to evaluate GPT output 😆

I'm going to be no fun and suppress the impulse to make fun of that, because it actually raises an interesting point. Can the emergent macroscopic 'whole' reach down and control the otherwise random quantum goings-on within it?

how are "cognition" and "cognitive labour" defined here? Is a map AI? a poket calculator? Block notes?

Does meditation just happen to address multiple types of suffering, or does its broad effectiveness hint at something deeper about the mechanisms of suffering or well-being itself?

We address this in our new preprint!
@rubenlaukkonen.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

This looks good!

You forgot the part where in 2028 the shop now charges you more because everything in Europe is more expensive and they still need to make a living. Then you calculate USD conversion and tariffs on the new pricetag.

Whoa! If you focus on the middle you can “bring it back”

YouTube video by Neural basis of Consciousness & Qualia Structure Paper Presentation on Beyond the gaze: Communicating in Chronic Locked in Syndrome by Lugo et al

#psy3280
Student presentation by Ashreye Chopra on Lugo et al. (2015). Beyond the gaze: Communicating in chronic locked-in syndrome. Brain Injury. youtu.be/KYd2TpkSpG0

Very good point! We started from similar premises in our 2021 paper academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

And a similar claim was made more recently by Trachtenberg and colleagues journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Philosophy of psychiatry and neuroscience of consciousness have a lot in common!

This looks genuinely amazing. My streak of bad luck with conferences in 2025 continues because I won’t be in Kyoto at that time 😭

Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures - Nature Reviews Neuroscience As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research app...

Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures — a Comment article by Fernando E. Rosas, Andrea I. Luppi, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Morten L. Kringelbach, Luiz Pessoa & Federico Turkheimer

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very pleased that my commentary on Jonathan Birch's fantastic "The Edge of Sentience" has finally appeared. @birchlse.bsky.social and I agree on many things, but there was enough distance between our views to make this a productive exchange.

There is much enthusiasm, in principle, for adversarial collaborations (ACs), a scientific conflict resolution technique that encourages investigators with clashing models to collaborate in designing studies that test competing predictions. Adversarial collaborations offer the promise of breaking deadlocked debates, resolving disputes, and providing a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of a research domain. In practice, however, adversarial collaborations are more the exception than the rule, and there is almost no evidence on how scholars who have ventured into ACs assess the experience. To understand these perspectives, we surveyed and interviewed 29 scholars who participated in 13 AC projects. The data revealed that interpersonal conflicts were generally minor, that these projects required more upfront effort than typical collaborations, but benefited from high-quality results and more thoughtful post-publication debates. Rather than producing a clear “winner,” the most common outcome was a deeper understanding of the problem space through the integration of opposing perspectives. Although the generalizability of these findings is limited by a sample consisting only of scholars who completed an AC, they nonetheless highlight the value of ACs as a tool for advancing scientific inquiry and offer practical guidance for scholars and journals exploring this approach.

29 scholars reflect on their participation in adversarial collaborations:

“Rather than producing a clear 'winner,' the most common outcome was a deeper understanding of the problem space through the integration of opposing perspectives”

Open Access: doi.org/10.1007/s111...

#MetaSci #Methodology 🧪

Thank you very much for your kind words @keithfrankish.bsky.social and sorry if in the confusion I forgot to reply to your message, today is the first day my headache has been merciful.. hope to meet you next year!

Thank you for your kind words Steve 🙏

Thank you so much Anil, I was also really looking to meet you! I’m recovering well but it was a big scare.

Thank you so much Roy! I saw you also had to cancel, please take care 🙏

Awesome!

Have you considered turning this into a full paper? It is something that could be valuable and I’d be happy to cite!

Done!

Thank you Andrew! I would have really loved to see you again! From our lab @anikokusztor.bsky.social will be there!

I was really looking forward to this event and meeting old and new friends, and listening to so many amazing talks, but this is really beyond my current capacity. I’m really sorry.

I’m incredibly thankful for my PI and lab mates for their genuine care and support, thank you so much.

This was 3 days ago and the doctor advised against flying. I still have an intense headache, but if my condition improves I’ll try to ask the organizers if they can kindly allow me to deliver my talk online. For now just staring at a screen is painful.

I’m very sad to say that I had to cancel my flight to ASSC.

Life is ironic: I had to overcome several challenges to attend this conference but when everything was ready, I experienced a severe heatstroke from which I haven’t recovered yet. Genuinely one of the worst experiences in my life.

Really great!

Gladly! We might disagree on the fundamentals but I always admire your way to argue your position!