Liuba Papeo

Excited to share that I’ll be joining Dr. Liuba Papeo’s lab (@ljubapi.bsky.social) at CNRS Institute of Cognitive Sciences in France (@isc-mj.bsky.social) as a postdoc this fall! Grateful to be supported by the Fyssen Foundation (@fondationfyssen.bsky.social ) -- looking forward to this new chapter!

And here is Violette Munin celebrating her first first author paper with a wonderful marble cake 😍

If you are aware of any relevant study that is missing, let us know and we’ll update the table! 😊

The paper includes a table reviewing available fMRI studies on social interaction perception, organized according to stimulus modality (dynamic vs. static) and content (just facing bodies vs. meaningful interaction), which reveals interesting patterns
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Converging evidence that left extrastriate body area supports visual sensitivity to social interactions Gandolfo et al. use a combination of correlational (fMRI) and causal (TMS) methods to show that activity in the left extrastriate body area (lEBA) is required to efficiently perceive face-to-face huma...

• Seeing two bodies face-to-face is sufficient to trigger the social interaction network, with effects that are strongly left lateralized (see also www.cell.com/current-biol... )

Two key findings:
• Key regions of the social-interaction network (pSTS, EVA and MT) show selectivity to social interaction also when depicted in static images. Thus, motion is not necessary to trigger the social interaction network

🚨 new paper out!
Perception of motion and of social interactions are two processes that happen to be localized around the same brain anatomy: lateral occipitotemporal areas. Is motion necessary to see social interactions network?
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@cnrs.fr @babylyon.bsky.social

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Judge rules against NIH grant cuts — and calls them discriminatory The decision means that the US biomedical agency has to restore funding to hundreds of research projects, but the government will likely appeal.

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

Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade - Nature Boys and girls exhibit very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a gender gap in favour of boys becomes highly significant after 4 months of schooling, which increases with years of schooling,&...

The maths gender gap emerges in favour of boys, in the first year of school. Uff!
@nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The AERG expresses grave concern over the future of fundamental research in Europe in a statement urging European leaders to protect fundamental science by reaffirming the autonomy of the @erc.europa.eu
aerg.eu/news/new-sta...

Read the full statement 👇
aerg.eu/storage/AERG...

The paper includes an internal replication of the effects and a set of interesting analysis in the supplementary material, which nicely support the conclusions of the study.

Two main observations:
1. A striking parallel between object and relation categorization suggests that relations between objects are extracted as rapidly as categorical object information;
2. Representations of objects and relations are the building blocks of scene recognition

We found that it takes no longer to access the category of objects (people vs other) in a scene, than to access the relation between them (facing vs non-facing), while recognizing their (inter)action (fight or dance) takes significantly longer.

We presented scenes showing two people (or two objects). We designed a behavioral paradigm to compare how much it takes to recognize that:
• There are people (vs other objects)
• They are facing vs facing away from each other
• They are dancing vs fighting

You wouldn’t drink from a glass if a fish is IN the glass, or would not grab a chair if one is already sitting ON it.
How do we represent relations between things? And how does it relate to object and action recognition?
New paper out osf.io/preprints/ps...
@mmellon.bsky.social

The paper includes an internal replication of the effects and a set of interesting analysis in the supplementary material, which nicely support the conclusions of the study.

Two main observations:
1. A striking parallel between object and relation categorization suggests that relations between objects are extracted as rapidly as categorical object information;
2. Representations of objects and relations are the building blocks of scene recognition

We found that it takes no longer to access the category of objects (people vs other) in a scene, than to access the relation between them (facing vs non-facing), while recognizing their (inter)action (fight or dance) takes significantly longer.

We presented scenes showing two people (or two objects). We designed a behavioral paradigm to compare how much it takes to recognize that:
• There are people (vs other objects)
• They are facing vs facing away from each other
• They are dancing vs fighting

As the AERG community @ercgrantees.bsky.social grows, the Board of Directors welcomes four new members.
Meet Elisabetta Aurino @bettaaurino.bsky.social (SH, Spain),
Dragan Mihailovic (PE, Slovenia),
Vikas Trivedi @viktri08.bsky.social (LS, Spain) and
Johannes Henn (PE, Germany)

Time to celebrate a new ANR-DFG funded project in collaboration with the stellar @dkaiserlab.bsky.social
Stay totally tuned!!! 😎

"Is it nature or is it nurture?" is a damn good question Some psychologists are confused about this

This is a damn good post!
@paulbloomatyale.bsky.social

smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/is-it-natu...

Heading to Marburg (Germany) to take part in an exciting event around brain and cognition 🧠 😎 🌈
@jlugiessen.bsky.social @unimarburg.bsky.social

Choose Europe for Science: ERC welcomes new budget for 'super grants' The Scientific Council of the European Research Council welcomes the offer of substantial additional budget from the European Commission for the development of a new ERC funding instrument offering la...

Choose Europe for Science
erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

The details of the new “super grants” funding instrument are being developed by the Scientific Council and will be announced soon.

Right! but the ERC with its programs to fund frontier research only based on excellence and regardless of the identity of the applicants aims to realize just that. And, I believe, in many ways it’s succeeding.

'They just don't understand me' - A qualitative exploration of autistic-identifying female experiences of social camouflaging.: https://osf.io/yx7bd

European Research Council (ERC) on X: "“Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party” President @vonderleyen, with a new €500M initiative to attract top global talent. In a fractured world, science remains a unifying force – rooted in diversity, driven by curiosity, & shared by all humanity. https://t.co/8x09HwyWnQ" / X “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party” President @vonderleyen, with a new €500M initiative to attract top global talent. In a fractured world, science remains a unifying force – rooted in diversity, driven by curiosity, & shared by all humanity. https://t.co/8x09HwyWnQ

“We can all agree that science has no passport no gender no ethnicity no political party and as such it does plays a critical role in connecting people and creating a shared future in today’s fractured world”
x.com/erc_research...

Choose Europe for Science: ERC welcomes new budget for 'super grants' The Scientific Council of the European Research Council welcomes the offer of substantial additional budget from the European Commission for the development of a new ERC funding instrument offering la...

The ERC welcomes the offer of substantial additional budget from @ec.europa.eu for the development of a new ERC funding instrument offering larger, longer-term grants, as announced by President Ursula Von der Leyen at the Sorbonne this morning.

👉 europa.eu/!NTYTTV

France and EU to incentivise US-based scientists to come to Europe Macron and von der Leyen expected to announce protections for researchers seeking to relocate amid Trump’s crackdown

Macron and von der Leyen expected to announce protections for researchers seeking to relocate amid Trump’s crackdown

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...