Matthias Michel

Stanislas Dehaene - Experimental Cognitive Psychology | Collège de France

All lectures will be recorded and made available a few days later on the wonderful @college-de-france.fr web site:
www.college-de-france.fr/en/chair/sta...

#PhiMiSci has recently launched a new special issue on "Structuralism and the Science of Consciousness". It opens with a new paper by David Rosenthal titled "Objective foundations for the study of mental qualities". Have a look!

Excellent piece today in @thetransmitter.bsky.social by @callimcflurry.bsky.social on a paper we’ve discussed at some length here (🧵below); she does a terrific job capturing different reasons to be excited about this work (as well as the controversies).

www.thetransmitter.org/emotion-proc...

I’ve been reliably informed that this paper is annoyingly good

electrical stimulation to the dlPFC can alleviate neuropathic pain, but only if we hit the exact right spot

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧠📈

Bluesky Fodorians rejoice, for our theories have infiltrated the minds of the next generation (well, at least Juan's mind)

This is an amazing paper and in my opinion a must-read for those interested in the Language of Thought hypothesis.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. G.Y. said it's like behind your head, there's just nothing. I don't think they experience it at all. Obviously, they know they don't see on one side, but that's different from experiencing the blind side as lacking (not sure what that would feel like).

When visual metacognition fails: widespread anosognosia for visual deficits Anosognosia for visual deficits – cases where significant visual deficits go unnoticed – challenges the view that our own conscious experiences are wh…

Other cases where the model might apply could be Anton syndrome and other cases of anosognosia for visual deficits. We recently reviewed the literature here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... We suggested that in some cases (of Anton in particular) it's due to a reality monitoring failure.

What if the they feel like they're answering totally randomly, like in (type-1) blindsight, without any sense of reality? Blindsight patients don't experience the blind field at all (i.e. it's not dark, instead it's like behind your head). That's what I find puzzling about this part of the paper.

Super cool. How do you interpret high sense of reality with zero mental strength (as in the blindsight case)?

After five years of confused staring at Greek letters, it is my absolute pleasure to finally share our (with @smfleming.bsky.social) computational model of mental imagery and reality monitoring: Perceptual Reality Monitoring as Higher-Order inference on Sensory Precision ✨
osf.io/preprints/ps...

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...

Confidence in absence as confidence in counterfactual visibility: a CogSci proceedings paper with star MSc student Maya Schipper, is now out on PsyArXiv:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵👇

🚨New preprint🚨 out with the dream team @matanmazor.bsky.social @giuliacabbai.bsky.social and @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social!

We report a novel and robust effect across five different datasets: vivid imagery is reported faster than weak imagery.

📝: osf.io/preprints/ps...

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, specially targeting conscious vs. unconscious processing, contact me. We are recruiting 🙏🧠 please RT

what's the best evidence for whether spontaneous fluctuations in fMRI activities are oscillatory or broadband? i.e. whether they are power peaks at specific frequencies above the 1/f curve?

could someone point me to your favorite reference for this pls?

🧠📈

Have a look at @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social tour de force: leveraging dynamical independence on #EEG to quantify *and* describe emergent dynamics under different anaesthetics!

For #consciousness, less can be more: conscious states show lower emergence but more structured emergent dynamics.

🧠🧪

Kenneth Black, Common Ground, Conditionals, and _Ceteris Paribus_ Pragmatics - PhilArchive In conversation, we make use of shared information in order to communicate. But what shared information? In theorising about conversation, it’s popular to allot a privileged position to a single body ...

Pleased to announce that my paper, “Common Ground, Conditionals, and Ceteris Paribus Pragmatics,” is forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy! 🧵

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound for Identifying the Neural Substrate of Conscious Perception Identifying what aspects of brain activity are responsible for conscious perception remains one of the most challenging problems in science. While progress has been made through psychophysical studies...

Excited to share this preprint on the possibilities of using transcranial focused ultrasound for identifying the neural substrate of conscious perception:
arxiv.org/abs/2507.08517

With Daniel K. Freeman, Seung-Schik Yoo, and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social.

Distinct neural representational geometries of numerosity in early visual and association regions across visual streams - Communications Biology This study reveals distinct neural codes for visual numerosity across the brain, showing that numerosity is independently represented from early visual areas to higher-level regions along both dorsal ...

Distinct neural representational geometries of numerosity in early visual and association regions across visual streams
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
#neuroscience

Excited about this in large part because Raphael is the absolute best

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound for Identifying the Neural Substrate of Conscious Perception Identifying what aspects of brain activity are responsible for conscious perception remains one of the most challenging problems in science. While progress has been made through psychophysical studies...

A roadmap for using transcranial focused ultrasound for identifying the neural substrate of conscious Perception: arxiv.org/abs/2507.08517. Comments welcome!

Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...

1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex:

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

I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.

But...

🧠📈 🧪

Cooperative thalamocortical circuit mechanism for sensory prediction errors - Nature Experiments in mice show that a cortico-thalamic circuit generates prediction-error signals in primary visual cortex that amplify visual input that deviates from animals’ expectations.

Pairs well with www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Our results indicate that individual V1 neurons do not signal how the actual visual input deviates from the animal’s predictions, as postulated within the predictive coding framework”

Thrilling to see a major theory get tested!

Visual Mental Imagery and Aphantasia Lesions Map onto a Convergent Brain Network Background Visual mental imagery, the ability to volitionally form perceptual representations without corresponding external stimuli, allows reliving of past events, solving problems and imagining the...

Interesting new lesion meta-analysis of aphantasia, in line with the importance of a specific region in the fusiform gyrus, previously identified by @alfredospagna.bsky.social et al, for visual mental imagery 🧠

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Was fun presenting our work on network localization of aphantasia at #ASSC @assc28.bsky.social - I get pretty excited about #consciousness and visual mental imagery

Onilne workshop on quantification! The Society for the Study of Measurement is delighted to host an event on the philosophy, sociology, and history of quantification across the sciences on August 9. Free with registration. #philsci #philsky #histsci #histtech #sts #sociology 🧪 tinyurl.com/5rn7p7sk

Excited for #ASSC and presenting some of our lab’s recent projects on LLM introspection and on what visual features make mental images vivid. 🧵 #consciousness

The temporal dynamics of metacognitive experiences track rational adaptations in task performance - Communications Psychology Using computational modeling and EEG, the study suggests several metacognitive states correlate with rational adjustments in behavior; this might benefit steering behavior towards optimality

The study suggests a few metacognitive states correlate with rational behavioural adjustments; this might help steering behaviour towards optimality.
@lucvermeylen.bsky.social @sebraem.bsky.social @kobedesender.bsky.social @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social @mruz.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...