Matan Mazor

brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis

Are you sure there’s no mosquito in the room?
With @matanmazor.bsky.social, Chichi Dézier, @nfaivre.bsky.social & Louise Goupil, we study how we combine multiple sensory sources to be confident in presence and absence: While detection rely on one modality, confidence requires both channels to align!

Fascinating. Also....what if the tiny people are real and all around us and the mushrooms just let us see them.

Bearing Down on a Placebo Effect

www.science.org/content/blog...

Our new paper is out in @natmed.nature.com 😱! A thread:

Can our thoughts and feelings directly affect our physical well-being? Our pre-registered, double-blind RCT investigated this by testing if modulating the brain's reward system could enhance immune responses to vaccination.

Out now in @nconsc.bsky.social 🧠😶‍🌫️

academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Loulan (19 months old, shoulder height 29cm, 11.5kg) is now in a shelter in Romania, but will arrive in the UK by the end of the month, and is looking for a loving home.

abldr.org.uk/applications...

We have never needed this guy more

WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.

If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.

eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

a project I really like, now officially out!

"Shape Guides Visual Pretense"

by Qian and me

paper link: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

I'll walk through a quick version here

To get a sense of it, first consider:

Would it make more sense to pretend that this block is a car, or a strawberry?

As the inner endless loop of "jingle bells" and "last Christmas" is gradually departing, 🚨 reminder about this funding opportunity for postdocs to transition to a PI role by Research Ireland👇

PhD Studentship: Social Learning of Metacognition and Awareness at Birkbeck, University of London jobs.ac.uk now advertising a PhD Studentship: Social Learning of Metacognition and Awareness Visit jobs.ac.uk to apply and to browse more PhD opportunities.

I've got a fully-funded PhD studentship open at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social, investigating social learning about metacognition & awareness, w/ behavioural studies & neuroimaging (fMRI) - thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk

More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p...

#cogsci #neuroskyence

Comic. [Comment section on a video. 564 comments, including posts from three different avatars: “Who else is here in 2023?” “Is anyone else watching this in 2017?” “Anyone else here in 2025?”] [caption] For some reason, confused time travelers always try to find each other using YouTube comments.

Anyone Else Here

xkcd.com/3188/

The attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

In Hebrew they are cows!

I’m predicting that no amount of peer reviewed research will be sufficient to convince a lot of folks that they can’t reliably distinguish between AI and non-AI writing, no matter how well read they are.

Beautiful 😍

Unless "later" is after a specific future time point, I'm fine with saying this is not a decision

I think what's missing to me is a symmetry of committal. A decision to sprout is committal, but a decision not to sprout can be changed later by deciding to sprout

Isn't this more like deciding when to sprout?

Intuitively a decision involves arbitrating between a set of discrete option, which is not the case for a plant growing toward the light.

Hey, it's actually pronounced "jaslight"

You've been saying it wrong this whole time.

Cultivate insight, not just information.

From Kinds of Minds (1996)

What a beautiful figure

Getting journal rejections like

😭

existential dread indeed :(

All eyes on UCL for its 200th birthday. Across 3 nights our Wilkins Building and main Quad will transform into an immersive sound and light experience as UCL illuminated takes us through the history of London’s oldest university. 11–13 Feb 2026 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/event-ticketing/app/ev/25074/