Rosalind McAlpine

If you're an ECR interested in consciousness research / psychiatry, do consider applying for the next MESEC Workshop in Lago di Bolsena, Italy (30th August - 7th September 2025)!

Thank you to study lead @rosmcalpine.bsky.social , and collaborators Merve Utanğaç, Joanna Kuc, Henok Pankhurst, Milly Sellers, Doug Kraft, Andrew Litchy, Naina Eira Gupta, @christimmermann.bsky.social , and Sunjeev Kamboj

The study of >100 experienced meditators and psychedelic ...

Schopenhauer’s sense of self Dutch philosopher Bernardo Kastrup explains Arthur Schoenphauer's metaphysics of self, and why core subjectivity transcends bodily death.

Can our core subjectivity survive bodily death? | https://buff.ly/2V6PU4D

@bernardokastrup.bsky.social uses the work of Arthur Schopenhauer to explore the conception of self.

#philosophy #consci #philsci

MIT Human Insight Collaborative announces funding awards for inaugural series of projects - MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences The MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) has announced funding for thirty-two projects.

Happy to announce funding for, and founding of, the MIT Consciousness Club
shass.mit.edu/mit-human-in...
#neuroscience

1/ Here are some of the books I read and listened to this past year, mostly in order. Some real gems, as always. “A life without books is a life not lived” Jay Kristoff.

Fascinating work showing that ants working in groups outperform individual ants in solving the piano movers’ puzzle. Human groups do not show such improvement and can even perform worse than an individual person, if communication is restricted. #neuroscience 🧪 🧠

How the human brain thinks about itself | Royal Society Royal Society Francis Crick Prize Lecture by Professor Stephen Fleming.

I'll be talking about all things metacognitive on 23rd Jan in a public lecture at the @royalsociety.org

It's free to attend and will also be broadcast live on the RS YouTube channel (no pressure then 😅)

royalsociety.org/science-even...

I co-edited a special issue on dreaming and mind wandering for @phimisci.bsky.social
The first papers are now online. Check them out!

And don't hesitate to follow/read this amazing, free & open access journal!

🔬🧠💤💭

Delusional Unreality and Predictive Processing Phenomenological psychopathologists have recently highlighted how people with delusions experience multiple realities (delusional and non-delusional) and have suggested this double bookkeeping cannot be explained via predictive processing. Here, we present data from Kamin blocking and extinction learning that show how predictive processing might, in principle, explain a pervasive sense of dual reality.

New from us:

People with delusions sometimes feel that the world is unreal.

Here, we explain this in terms of prediction errors, with Kamin blocking behavioral and computational data from patients, psychics, and controls

www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245...

Crafting visual worlds: scientist-artist Nicolas Decat’s vision for science storytelling - Communications Biology Nicolas Decat is a PhD student in neuroscience at the Paris Brain Institute. By day, he investigates what goes through people’s minds as they drift off to sleep. When they’re sleeping, he works on way...

Meet Nicolas Decat, our scientist-artist at @dreamteamicm.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

This beautiful interview is a tribute to Nicolas' passion for science and talent for turning it into images that tell stories!

He started with nothing but his ideas. Dedication pays off!

Honoured to be included in Webdelics’ list of Top 25 Emerging Leaders in Psychedelic Research and Modern Theory, alongside so many inspiring friends and colleagues.

You can check out the full list here: www.webdelics.com/top-25-emerging-leaders-in-psychedelic-research-and-modern-theory

The claim that consciousness constitutively involves self-consciousness has a long philosophical history, and has received renewed support in recent years. My aim in this paper is to argue that this surprisingly enduring idea is misleading at best, and insufficiently supported at worst. I start by offering an elucidatory account of consciousness, and outlining a number of foundational claims that plausibly follow from it. I subsequently distinguish two notions of self-consciousness: consciousness of oneself and consciousness of one’s experience. While ‘self-consciousness’ is often taken to refer to the former notion, the most common variant of the constitutive claim, on which I focus here, targets the latter. This claim can be further interpreted in two ways: on a deflationary reading, it falls within the scope of foundational claims about consciousness, while on an inflationary reading, it points to determinate aspects of phenomenology that are not acknowledged by the foundational claims as being aspects of all conscious mental states. I argue that the deflationary reading of the constitutive claim is plausible, but should be formulated without using a term as polysemous and suggestive as ‘self-consciousness’; by contrast, the inflationary reading is not adequately supported, and ultimately rests on contentious intuitions about phenomenology. I conclude that we should abandon the idea that self-consciousness is constitutive of consciousness.

My article 'Constitutive Self-Consciousness' is now published online in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. It argues (spoiler alert!) against the claim that self-consciousness is constitutive of consciousness.

On behalf of the #ASSC28 Scientific Program Committee, the Symposia and Tutorials are now announced 🥳
assc2025.gr/programme/sy....

Paranoid and teleological thinking give rise to distinct social hallucinations in vision - Communications Psychology When asked to judge if a chase was present in a visual display of moving discs, people with higher paranoia and teleological thinking were more likely to perceive a chase in its absence. They were als...

Out today: we discovered a new class of social hallucination - perception of chasing with high confidence. It is elevated in people who are paranoid and people who perceive meaning in the universe www.nature.com/articles/s44...

It’s hard to distinguish conscious from unconscious states in patients – a more precautionary approach is needed Standard medical exams miss subtle signs of awareness in around 40% of cases.

Mona-Marie Wandrey & me on the need to take a precautionary approach towards patients in a so-called "vegetative state" (and the term is part of the problem!). theconversation.com/its-hard-to-...

YouTube video by Mind Chat S04E06 The Experience Machine

This app is no good for posting extended commentary since it gets chopped up, but on FB I agree with @philipgoff.bsky.social, not Andy Clark and @keithfrankish.bsky.social (see their nice Mind Chat), that PP ala Andy leaves something out about experience.

www.facebook.com/naturalism/p...

Metastability demystified — the foundational past, the pragmatic present and the promising future Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Metastability is a concept from dynamical systems. In the brain, it is thought to reflect the balance between the cooperative and independent functioning of brain...

Finally published:
“Metastability demystified — the foundational past, the pragmatic present and the promising future”
rdcu.be/d3bh9

All about metastability: what the heck it is, how to measure it in models and data, and how to interpret it in neuroscience!

Great work from Emilia exploring attentional focus. This could be an interesting avenue to explore DoC patients. The rest of the amazing work that Emilia did during her PhD will soon go out. Stay attentive!

On-scalp printing of personalized electroencephalography e-tattoos This study introduces a breakthrough in noninvasive brain-monitoring technology through on-scalp-printed and self-drying conductive inks for electroencephalography (EEG). These ultrathin, skin-conformable temporary e-tattoos provide a comfortable and precise way to capture brain activity, overcoming the limitations of traditional EEG systems, such as bulky equipment and manual setup. With personalized sensor layouts, distinct electrode and interconnect inks, and a hair-compatible digital printing process, these on-scalp-formed e-tattoos represent a promising tool for clinical diagnostics, brain-computer interfaces, and wearable health applications.

Anyone interested in an EEG head tattoo?

www.cell.com/cell-biomate...

🧠📈 🧪

Naturalistic encoding of concepts in the brain

@viktorkewenig.bsky.social shows that, while concepts generally encode habitual experiences, the underlying neurobiological organisation is not fixed but depends dynamically on available contextual information. 👏🍾🐐

elifesciences.org/articles/91522

Understanding the neural code of stress to control anhedonia - Nature Examination of the neural activity in the basolateral amygdala and ventral CA1 of mice during tasks or rest following exposure to social stress reveals signatures of resilience and susceptibility to s...

🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"... when mice are exposed to traumatic social stress, susceptible animals become socially withdrawn and anhedonic ... Manipulation of vCA1 inputs to the BLA in susceptible mice rescued dysfunctional neural dynamics... and reversed anhedonic behaviour.... "

YouTube video by Mind Chat S04E06 The Experience Machine

Mind Chat is back 4pm today (UK time)! Great interview with leading philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark. It's a pre-record but at least one of me and @keithfrankish.bsky.social will join you in the live chat.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=taDM...

‘An investigation into the varieties of extended difficulties following psychedelic drug use: Duration, severity and helpful coping strategies’

Full text: akjournals.com/view/journal...

Examining differences in the effects and contexts of naturalistic psilocybin use for White participants vs. Participants of Color: A longitudinal online survey study Psilocybin (a psychoactive compound found in “magic mushrooms” or “shrooms”) has been gaining increased attention in research and popular culture as a…

New publication by CPCR Faculty Albert Garcia-Romeu, Sandeep Nayak, Nathan Sepeda, and colleagues! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

New paper! This was a fun lil collaboration with Maastricht University in which we thought we might find evidence that ayahuasca would increase false memory in an observational study. WRONG! Ended up enhancing memory (but read 'til end for caveats)
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
1/8

Optimal metacognitive decision strategies in signal detection theory - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Signal detection theory (SDT) has long provided the field of psychology with a simple but powerful model of how observers make decisions under uncertainty. SDT can distinguish sensitivity from respons...

finally published! Optimal metacognitive decision strategies in signal detection theory -- with the brilliant Brian Maniscalco and Lucie Charles
#neuroskyence #neuroAI #metacognition #consciousness #psychology

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Study design features increase replicability in brain-wide association studies - Nature Optimizing study design is critical for increasing standardized effect sizes and replicability, and the features that increase replicability in cross-sectional and longitudinal brain-wide association ...

✨Our paper is out in Nature today! ✨
In this work, we investigated how we can leverage study designs to improve the replicability of brain-wide association studies (BWAS)

👇👇👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results" w @ken-lxl.bsky.social
and braingpt.org. LLMs integrate a noisy yet interrelated scientific literature to forecast outcomes. nature.com/articles/s41... 1/8

Sleep-like state during wakefulness induced by psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT in mice Psychedelics lead to profound changes in subjective experience and behaviour, which are typically conceptualised in psychological terms rather than corresponding to an altered brain state or a distinc...

Sleep-like state during wakefulness induced by psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT in mice

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Body-wandering reveals an embodied dimension of thought with distinct affective and neural signatures Humans often engage in self-generated thoughts when unoccupied by external events, a phenomenon commonly known as mind-wandering. Previous research has predominantly focused on the cognitive aspects o...

There are also exciting ways we can take this forward. for example, we could expand the types of thoughts we used mDES to measure, such as to include awareness of our bodies - see this cool work by @leahbanellis.bsky.social and @micahgallen.com

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...