Michael Pereira

🎉 APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN 🎉
Join the MESEC Winter School 2026 in Ephesus, Turkey, March 22–28. 🗓️☀️
A week of methods, ideas, and deep dives into consciousness with an international community.
Apply now and share the call. 🧠
🔗 mesec.co/event/winter...

Interested in whether EEG frequency-tagging can be used to measure conscious perception (visibility and confidence)? Check out our new preprint with @axc.bsky.social and Adélaïde de Heering!
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Neural correlates of perceptual consciousness from within: a narrative review of human intracranial research Despite many years of research, the quest to identify neural correlates of perceptual consciousness (NCC) remains unresolved. One major obstacle lies in methodological limitations: most studies rely o...

Everything you always wanted to know about intracranial correlates of #consciousness (but were afraid to ask):
arxiv.org/abs/2510.08736

With @francoisstock.bsky.social, @liadmudrik.bsky.social, @meaperei.bsky.social and many great clinicians too busy for bsky!

#iEEG

🚨 PhD/Postdoc alert 👇

If you are interested in doing a PhD/Postdoc in computational psychiatry (starting Sept 2026), do get in touch by October 4th at ondrej.zika@pm.me :)

Any inquiries are welcome. To apply, please attach your CV, half page motivation and half page research statements.

We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.

Leaky evidence accumulation for near-threshold stimuli in a late-sensory area, even during passive viewing! What a joy to work with @francoisstock.bsky.social! With @nfaivre.bsky.social and many others, including Ramla Msheik for the computational model. #iEEG #consci #neuroskyence

Introducing hMFC: A Bayesian hierarchical model of trial-to-trial fluctuations in decision criterion! Now out in @plos.org Comp Bio.
led by Robin Vloeberghs with @anne-urai.bsky.social Scott Linderman

Paper: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u... Thread ↓↓↓

#PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #Neuroskyence

WE ARE HIRING!!

Official posting coming soon for a tenure track assistant professor job in Psychology at George Mason University. Focus on Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and AI.

I’m chairing the search committee, so DMs and emails welcome.

Last days to apply!

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

We are recruiting a new PI at the FIL @imagingneuroucl.bsky.social, Associate or Full Professor. This is an amazing place to do cognitive neuroscience, in the heart of London. If you or someone you know might be interested, please pass it on. #neuroskyence

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

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...

🧵👇

We are hiring! We have open PhD and postdoc positions in Bern. Join us to study sleep/wake circuits, and/or auditory functions with iEEG/EEG #iEEG #Neurojobs

Postdoc: neuro.inf.unibe.ch/menu/announc...
PhD: neuro.inf.unibe.ch/menu/announc...

📣 We are hiring! 📣

#BCBL has new PhD positions available for you!

🔸 1 PhD – #Neurolinguistics and #Aphasia Group
🔸 1 PhD – #PerceptualInference Group
🔸 1 PhD – #BrainRhythms and #Cognition Group

The application deadline is soon!

+info 👇

www.bcbl.eu/es/unete-a-n...

Hello ppl at #ASSC2025, we'd love your fb on our work!!
🪧Pauline Laurent's poster (26; doubt in OCD; Mon 12:30)
🪧Shiva Mahdian's poster (210; intracranial NCCs; Tue 4:30)
🪧 @azizac.bsky.social's poster (342; priors & false-alarms; Wed 4:30)
📣My talk on comp. model and intracranial NCCs (Wed 16:10)

Hello world!

The account of the editorial team of Neuroscience of Consciousness is live!

We are the journal of @theassc.bsky.social, and we publish scientific articles on #consciousness 🧠🧪

@ademertzi.bsky.social and @thomasandrillon.bsky.social will be at @assc28.bsky.social if you want to chat!

Pre-stimulus beta power mediates explicit and implicit perceptual biases in distinct cortical areas - Communications Psychology Two EEG studies in healthy human adults suggest that choice history and stimulus probability-induced biases in somatosensory perception are reflected in distinct prestimulus beta power modulations acr...

Check out my published PhD work including links to analysis code and EEG data (n=83): www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Big thank you to my co-authors, the editor and the reviewers.

We have a PhD position for an upcoming project in metacognition research in Potsdam / Berlin. A great opportunity for those interested in cognitive modeling of confidence and EEG.

More information at coconeuro.github.io/phd2025

Kindly share this opportunity with potential candidates - Thanks!

🚨Registration for #PracticalMEEG 2025 opens June 12th, 2025 at 10am CEST!
📍Aix-en-Provence | Oct 28–31, 2025
🚀Spots go fast—get ready!
💻Pick your toolbox [Brainstorm, FieldTrip, EEGLAB, MNE-python] & join hands-on training, lectures, posters, toolbox bouquet & more
👉 cuttingeeg.org/practicalmee...

🚨PhD position alert!🚨
Joint PhD position with @fedemar.bsky.social @predictivebrain.bsky.social and Sonja Kotz, to investigate the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual decisions
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
Please share and if you have questions, send me a message!

Oh wow. Starting grant 0-10 years post PhD from 2027, Consolidator 5-15

Subcortical correlates of consciousness with human single neuron recordings Subcortical brain structures contain neurons encoding subjective reports of stimulus detection in human participants, suggesting a role for conscious perception.

6/6 🙏 Huge thanks 🙏 to the patients for their involvement and to the amazing teams at West Virginia University Hospital and EPFL, as well as co-authors including senior authors Ali Rezai and Olaf Blanke.

Link to the article: elifesciences.org/articles/95272

5/6 This points to multiple temporal stages of processing in subcortical circuits during perception.
While we’re cautious not to overclaim, it’s a rare window into how subcortical structures might be involved in perceptual consciousness.

Bimodal distribution of sensory- or perception-selective effects around stimulus onset.

4/6 Interestingly, we found a bimodal distribution of neuronal response latencies:
⏱ One early cluster ~ 120–150 ms
⏱ One late cluster ~ 315–330 ms
This was true for both sensory- and perception-selective neurons.

Firing rate around stimulus onset for a sensory-selective neuron (left) and a perception-selective neuron (right). Insets show action potentials. 'Catch' activity is an estimation of the corresponding activity when no stimulus was presented. Hit: trials for which stimuli were detected. Miss: trials for which stimuli were not detected.

3/6 We labeled (putative) single neurons as:
🔹 Sensory-selective — firing changed after stimulus onset.
🔹 Perception-selective — firing differed between detected and missed stimuli.

Firing rates of neurons while the tip of the microelectrode is lowered in the subthalamic nucleus (left) or thalamus (right).

2/6 During surgeries, microelectrode recordings guide targeting.

Meanwhile, we estimated patients’ tactile threshold and had them perform a 10-minute detection task. We recorded from the thalamus and subthalamic nucleus, maintaining a detection rate of ~50% using an adaptive procedure.

Operating room during a DBS surgery.

1/6 Recording single neurons in subcortical regions of the human 🧠 during cognitive tasks is pretty rare and challenging.

We utilized microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgeries to investigate how these neurons may encode tactile perception.

Subcortical correlates of consciousness with human single neuron recordings Subcortical brain structures contain neurons encoding subjective reports of stimulus detection in human participants, suggesting a role for conscious perception.

New “version of record” in @elife.bsky.social! ‬

We recorded neurons in the thalamus and subthalamic nucleus of humans and found both sensory- and perception-selective neurons with two distinct latencies!

7-year project with @nfaivre.bsky.social + @foscobernasconi.bsky.social.

A short thread 👇

Large-scale interactions in perception and prediction across species | HiLIFE – Helsinki Institute of Life Science | University of Helsinki Andres Canales-Johnson research group

I am opening one PhD position at the Neuroscience Center @uhneuro.bsky.social, focusing on large-scale neural interactions in perception and prediction (ECoG/LFPs/MEG) across human and non-human primates using comp. modeling and information theory. contact: www.helsinki.fi/en/hilife-he...

🏁 Big news from #Cogitate!🏁

We’re proud to deliver the first part of our promised open multimodal dataset:
iEEG data from 38 patients across 3 centers, collected under a unified protocol.

📄 Paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
📀 Data: www.arc-cogitate.com/data-release
💻 Code: github.com/Cogitate-con...

Neuroscience needs to empower early-career researchers, not fund moon shots Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration.

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...