Henry Beale

from a published academic paper by highly influential authors: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests - Nature Machine Intelligence Tangtartharakul and Storrs use standardized neuropsychological tests to compare human visual abilities with those of visual language models (VLMs). They report that while VLMs excel in high-level obje...

Our latest paper, “Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests”, is now out in Nature Machine Intelligence: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Non-paywalled version:
arxiv.org/abs/2504.10786

Tweet thread below from first author @genetang.bsky.social...

Visual confidence accurately tracks increasing internal noise with eccentricity in peripheral vision https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.28.702447v1

Check out our new paper on Journal of Vision showing that both endogenous and exogenous attention enhance contrast sensitivity uniformly across meridians despite differential adaptation effects!

jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx...

Using artificial neural networks to reveal the human confidence computation Author summary Human decisions are accompanied by a sense of confidence which reflects the decision accuracy. Conventionally, human confidence has been studied using two-choice tasks with simple stimu...

How do people compute a sense of confidence? This question is usually addressed using very simple images because we don't know how complex stimuli are represented internally. In a new paper, we addressed this question using artificial neural networks (ANNs).

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain No two neurons are the same, yet models often treat neural populations as pools of identical and interchangeable elements. Here, Dahmen et al. highlight recent theoretical advances that reveal the imp...

At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Illustration of the hypothesized flows of information between perception, memory and cognitive control in a conceptual model of working memory. Stimuli attributes are processed to varying degrees of abstraction and parts of these representations can be loaded into working memory under the guidance of cognitive control. Familiar stimuli such as the letter B activate visually abstract representations while less familiar stimuli are limited to sensory representations. Information can be shifted both up and down levels of the perceptual hierarchy to build either more or less abstract representations of either perceived or imagined stimuli. Working memories can be shifted into or out of the hierarchy as needed.

We recently published a theoretical review about how compositional and generative mechanisms in working memory provide a flexible engine for creative perception and imagery.

Pre-print:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A dynamic spatiotemporal normalization model captures perceptual and neural effects of spatial and temporal context The effects of spatial and temporal context on sensory systems have mostly been studied independently of each other. This study shows that the modulation of visual perception and neural activity by th...

Happy to share this new paper from the lab led by Angus Chapman, now out in PLoS Biology! It presents an integrated spatiotemporal normalization model for continuous vision. @afchapman.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

🚨 new preprint alert! biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

what is the architecture of an individual working memory?

1/n

Great talk Will!

Tracing the neural trajectories of evidence accumulation and motor preparation processes during voluntary decisions Voluntary decisions have previously been described by where they arise in the brain and how actions corresponding to one's choice are prepared. However, the processes by which these internally guided ...

Interested in how we make preference-driven decisions, and how this is implemented in the brain?

We report that neural correlates of evidence accumulation (CPP, Mu/Beta) are also observed during value-based decisions.

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

Led by @laurencf.bsky.social (Lauren Fong)

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What is the representation underlying cognition? Formal models rely on multidimensional scaling of similarity judgments to derive the representation. In this preprint with @mdlbayes.bsky.social, we take an alternative approach; we build Bayesian generative models for three cognitive tasks. /1

How does our brain excel at complex object recognition, yet get fooled by simple illusory contours? What unifying principle governs all Gestalt laws of perceptual organization?

We may have an answer: integration of learned priors through feedback. New paper with @kenmiller.bsky.social! 🧵

Super happy to share my very first first-author paper out in
@sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show content-specific predictions are represented in an alpha rhythm. It’s been a beautiful, inspiring, yet challenging journey.
Huge thanks to everyone, especially @peterkok.bsky.social @jhaarsma.bsky.social

A Systematic Review of Aperiodic Neural Activity in Clinical Investigations This systematic literature review examines aperiodic neural activity in clinical disorders, summarizing current findings and discussion topics. One-hundred seventy-seven reports from across 38 distin...

📜🎉 I'm happy to share that my review of clinical research investigating aperiodic neural activity is now published!

It examines 177 reports of aperiodic activity in clinical disorders summarizing findings, discussion topics, & making some recommendations!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!)

Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....

1/11

Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We present our preprint on ViV1T, a transformer for dynamic mouse V1 response prediction. We reveal novel response properties and confirm them in vivo.

With @wulfdewolf.bsky.social, Danai Katsanevaki, @arnoonken.bsky.social, @rochefortlab.bsky.social.

Paper and code at the end of the thread!

🧵1/7

Precise temporal localisation of M/EEG effects with Bayesian generalised additive multilevel models Time-resolved electrophysiological measurements such as those obtained through magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) offer a unique window onto the neural activity underlying cognitive processes...

Happy to share a new preprint in which @paulbuerkner.com and I introduce a novel model-based approach for precisely estimating the onset and offset of M/EEG effects!

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

Nice work @brainboyben.bsky.social!

The Latency of a Domain-General Visual Surprise Signal is Attribute Dependent Predictions concerning upcoming visual input play a key role in resolving percepts. Sometimes input is surprising, under which circumstances the brain must calibrate erroneous predictions so that perc...

🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience,

Generation of surrogate brain maps preserving spatial autocorrelation through random rotation of geometric eigenmodes

direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Produces surrogates for null hypothesis testing of nonlinear effects within and correlations between brain maps

Out now @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, w/ @akalt.bsky.social & @drmattdavis.bsky.social.

Are sensory sampling rhythms fixed by intrinsically-determined processes, or do they couple to external structure? Here we highlight the incompatibility between these accounts and propose a resolution [1/6]

Expectation effects based on newly learnt object-scene associations are modulated by spatial frequency Objects typically appear within rich visual scenes. Some models of visual system function propose that scene information is extracted from low-spatial frequency components and rapidly propagates throu...

New preprint from the lab!

We tested for effects of learning scene-object pairings on distributed patterns of EEG signals. We report clear effects on ERPs but not object decoding performance.

Led by Morgan Kikkawa w/Marta Garrido

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

"The moral of this story is that the finding of statistical significance is perhaps the least important attribute of a good experiment; it is never a sufficient condition for concluding that a theory has been corroborated, that a useful empirical fact has been established with reasonable confidence—or that an experimental report ought to be published. The value of any research can be determined, not from the statistical results, but only by skilled, subjective evaluation of the coherence and reasonableness of the theory, the degree of experimental control employed, the sophistication of the measuring techniques, the scientific or practical importance of the phenomena studied, and so on."

"The finding of statistical significance is perhaps the least important attribute of a good experiment...."

David Lykken (1968). Statistical significance in psychological research. Psychological Bulletin. doi.org/10.1037/h002...

New paper out in @plosbiology.org w/ Charlie, @phil-johnson.bsky.social, Ella, and Hinze 🎉

We track moving stimuli via EEG, find evidence that motion is extrapolated across distinct stages of processing + show how this effect may emerge from a simple synaptic learning rule!

tinyurl.com/2szh6w5c

Great work on this Will. Really nice model results too!

Wonderful illustrations! Looking forward to reading this