Borjan (Boki) Milinković

“A musician finding his ear become every day more delicate, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave..”

Hume, 1739, presaging predictive processing

Thrilled to share our new study: “Distilling the neurophenomenological signatures of pure awareness during Transcendental Meditation”, combining subjective reports with large-scale screening of neural features to investigate pure awareness. Thread below! 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The eternally flagrant optimist in me would like to believe that this work will have far-reaching impact.

Synergistic Motifs in Gaussian Systems High-order interdependencies are central features of complex systems, yet a mechanistic explanation for their emergence remains elusive. Currently, it is unknown under what conditions high-order inter...

🚨 How do collective behaviours (high-order interdependencies) *emerge*❓

Can systems with low-order interactions do it?
What do these minimal synergistic systems look like?

In arxiv.org/abs/2505.246... we show when and how synergies emerge when no high-order mechanisms are involved.

Short 🧵: 1/N

Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a seri...

🚨 New preprint 🚨
"Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure." We analyzed 1,024 awakenings collected across 196 nights with high-density EEG (256 ch.) to explore the relationship between dreaming and subjective sleep depth.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Throwing this one into the virtual void in the hope there are a few hapless souls interested:

Would anyone like to participate in an #Information #Geometry reading/journal/study club? Preferably in person, if you're in Paris.

But, would consider doing an online one *for sure*.

But it does, however, look exactly like the long black coffee ;-)

Brighton feels as good as I remember it.

🧠 New preprint! 🧠

As part of a forthcoming book on consciousness, we wrote a chapter on:

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences across wakefulness and sleep
osf.io/preprints/ps...

with @parboulakis.bsky.social @ademertzi.bsky.social and @jdsitt.bsky.social

A brief 🧵!

This really does sound amazing. I'll be looking into this.

Also, I absolutely love the colour pallette. :-)

Congratulations!

Integrated information and predictive processing theories of consciousness: An adversarial collaborative review As neuroscientific theories of consciousness continue to proliferate, the need to assess their similarities and differences -- as well as their predictive and explanatory power -- becomes ever more pr...

The first major output of the @templetonworld.bsky.social @arc-intrepid.bsky.social adversarial collaboration testing IIT & predictive processing theories of consciousness is out now

arxiv.org/abs/2509.00555

📜 ¡New preprint! 📜

𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧪🧠

With amazing alumni from @mesec-community.bsky.social and including:
@zefanzheng.bsky.social
@robertchisciure.bsky.social
@jaanaru.bsky.social
@bechir-jarraya.bsky.social

Thank you so much for having me!! I always have a blast chatting with @bethfisher.bsky.social and this time was no different! 💕 Also I loved your reflections in the end and how both of you have change your mind perhaps a bit through sharing your experiences with each other. So cool and precious!

The rise of the machines or the age of digital-infantilism? Will technology make us organismic zombies, or is it all, just techno-noise?

The rise of the machines or the age of digital-infantilism?

I tried a thing..

Here I write on the current digital-situation we find ourselves in. With an optimistic view on our future, with wider-reaching - and hopefully biologically-centred - aspirations.

It's fun, general, and personal writing

If #emergence is your thing, and, even if it isn't, here is a great annual workshop -- now on its third iteration(!) -- where you will get to hear some great presenters, of which, I am the least interesting.

Really looking forward to it!!
@sussexcogs.bsky.social

Opinion | Silicon Valley Needs to Stop Obsessing Over Superhuman A.I.

Today, Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu write in the @nytimes.com on the necessity for a deflation of idolising #AGI. Great piece.

Agree! I think the challenge, and the secret, lies in the *degree* of 'similar-enough' 🤗

So wait, they are or they aren't important? If they enable specific processes, doesn't that imply they are important?

Precisely my question, what criteria of biological naturalism do others think is necessary, sufficient, or even just interesting to explore..(?) 🤓

Would this by a biologically-centred position you’d be willing to buy into?

Nothing magical—just something specific to only biology (as we currently know it), but does not need to remain so.

Haha, no, not necessarily. Doesn’t have to be qualified with ‘special’. 😊

Let’s say, there are biomechanisms that are engineer-able. But that you don’t get with current systems. Those engineer-able mechanisms might be precisely those that operate in systems like us—wet packets of biochemistry.

What about rather than life itself, it is rather some #features of life processes that are also core ingredients for the soup of consciousness?

And, I’d be interested to hear what would be a good argument #for biocentrism—as I do agree, we should avoid just replacing one magic, with another..

Interested in Network hubs, cortical hierarchies, and gradients? Ever wonder where they come from? Check our latest review, where we cover different approaches to mapping hubs, models for their evolution, and mechanisms for how they develop:

osf.io/preprints/os...

Great article by @markdhumphries.bsky.social here. Humphries’ work had a significant impact on my thinking. This is precisely what we attempt to do in our recent preprint, and in previous published neural modelling work.

I’m sympathetic to the focus on dynamics in coarse graining.

The post Rick Bretzel reposts is one I am enamoured by as I currently read the paper myself.

I completely agree with Rick that slow, and thoughtful science is the way forward. Not everything, everywhere, all at once.

It reminds me that in a world levelled by noise, the quiet resounds furthest

Postdoctoral Research Associate (Physics) Full time, 2-year fixed term position with potential to extend. Located on the Camperdown Campus at the School of Physics. Exciting opportunity to conduct research in a world-leading interdisciplinary...

Are you interested in our work on complex physical systems and applications (to neural systems)?

Wanna join us in Sydney? 🐨 🦘

We have two open positions:

1. Postdoc position: usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA...

2. Fully-funded PhD position: www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...

Interested in cortical wave dynamics? Check out our new preprint led by J Cruddas with @jchrispang.bsky.social where review the physics and physiology of cortical waves and their implications for psychological function:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

@nsb-lab.bsky.social

Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain

If you are in Paris on October 1-3 : we are organizing a fantastic cognitive neuroscience conference at Collège de France, on topics ranging from language to math, education and consciousness, with many of my favorite scientists !
Full program here:
www.unicog.org/seeing-the-m...

🫀

This caution, to me, includes measures of emergence and my own work, as well. They are, like all complexity measures not exempt from it. So maybe, like what I find in my results--that more emergence doesn't equate to more consciousness: same for complexity.

Very happy to discuss all of this more!