Tarryn Balsdon

Baby otter doing baby otter stuff

Amazing!

That’s a wrap on the first batch of 25 participants, measuring MEG-EEG, ECG, respiration, electrogastrography, facial EMG, and EDA during story listening, mental imagery, and rest (+MRI & questionnaires 😅). Now I’m off on maternity leave while our amazing team continues with the next batch! 💪

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫

China Agrees To Purchase 11 U.S. Soybeans

YouTube video by Benjamin Lang Der Glumph Da Gloomf Dar Glumf Play School

I can’t help but think of this childhood song with news from the US right now… we all know frogs go ladidadida… youtu.be/GHzTuZuUBUc?...

Will you be at #ICON2025 in Porto?
Then drop at our symposium on "Decision Signal(s) In The Electro-encephalogram" (SY23, Thursday at 13.45) with @redmondoconnell.bsky.social @nunezanalyzed.bsky.social @tarrynbalsdon.bsky.social @hcp4715.bsky.social organized by Leendert van Maanen and Jelmer Borst

Your Brain Is Hallucinating—And That’s How It’s Supposed to Work In his new book, Daniel Yon explains how our brain is constantly constructing reality

In his new book, Daniel Yon explains how our brain is constantly constructing reality

Australia approves first vaccine to save koalas from chlamydia A vaccine to protect Australia's koalas against chlamydia has been approved for the first time, a development that scientists believe could stop the spread of the deadly disease that has ravaged populations of the beloved endangered animal.

Would you like some good news? A new vaccine has just been approved for protecting koalas from chlamydia, which is one of their leading causes of death.

A Mucha-style painting showing the Eiffel Tower at sunset with ECVP 50 2028 Paris written

As #ECVP2025 wraps up, I’m delighted that #ECVP2028 in Paris was accepted at the Business Meeting! ECVP will meet again before but the Parisian organizing committee is already planning an unforgettable 50th anniversary!

Controllability boosts neural and cognitive signatures of changes-of-mind in uncertain environments Task controllability manipulations reveal that information seeking is associated with reduced confidence and active hypothesis testing, as well as stronger neurophysiological correlates of attention a...

Could also try this kind of architecture with a perceived hazard rate for the cue switches: elifesciences.org/articles/750...

World Report 2025: Rights Trends in Australia

Well done to the organisers and all the attendees. I hope Australians continue to become more engaged with international affairs, as well as ongoing human rights issues at home www.hrw.org/world-report...

Australians don’t loiter in public space – the legacy of colonial control by design Melbourne is a product of British colonial planning policies to control public access and movement in Australian cities. This legacy still influences the use of public spaces today.

But Australia has always been behind. It’s not just a longer history of protesting in France. Australian cities may have been designed to dissuade protests: theconversation.com/australians-...

This disappointment grew when I moved to Paris, where the French have made an art-form of the protest. Here, multiple organisations rally, thousands attend, with signs, flags, colour coordination, sound amplification, clear messaging, and provisions for the occasional tear gas.

I don’t often feel proud to be Australian. I remember going to a protest in 2017, when Australia was first accused of human rights abuses for the treatment of refugees in offshore detention centres. There there weren’t many people (<1000), few signs, and inane chants…

Australians have learnt how to protest! >100,000 people!

@tarrynbalsdon.bsky.social and @nadiahosseinizaveh.bsky.social had a great time at #ASSC28.

Thank you organizers @assc28.bsky.social!

Very pleased to say that we are (almost) ready for the 1.0.0 of our HMP #Python package to decompose #EEG into single-trial task related events:
github.com/GWeindel/hmp

There's now a nice documentation:
hmp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/we...

We just need some beta testers, thus RT appreciated!

Good time to announce that there will be a symposium on "Decision Signal(s) In The Electro-encephalogram" at #ICON

Chaired by Leendert van Maanen and Jelmer Borst. With @redmondoconnell.bsky.social, @tarrynbalsdon.bsky.social, @nunezanalyzed.bsky.social, @hcp4715.bsky.social and myself as speakers

(PDF) The Exit Manual: How to Leave the Free Energy Cult and Still Get Tenure PDF | This manual is not a plea. It is a jailbreak from a cult—the Free Energy Principle, a theoretical metastasis that began in computational... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Res...

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

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 👇

relationship between sensory evidence and confidence evidence

If you work with perceptual confidence judgments, you may be interested in our CNCB model of confidence ratings. Joint work with Vincent de Gardelle.

Uncorrected proofs here:
dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

(🧵 1/4)

Thank you Karl Gegenfurtner and Doris Braun for two fantastic talks last week in our department!

This is what the government did with 120K+ Japanese Americans in 1942.

I know. I was there in those camps.

BAMB! Course philosophy Our goal is​ to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels...

Our Barcelona-based summer school, BAMB! (bambschool.org) just opened applications! Come join us: 15-24th July, to learn how to model behavioral data using RL, Bayesian, latent variable models, RNNs, DDMs & more! #BAMB2025

📢 Come study cognitive science in Paris!
The Master’s program in Cognitive Science at @ENS_ULM, @psl_univ, and @EHESS_fr is now accepting applications for the 2025-2026 academic year.

🗓 Deadline: March 13, 2025
💻 Apply here: master-cognitive-science.ens.psl.eu/en/applicati...

Imageless imagery in aphantasia revealed by early visual cortex decoding Chang et al. report that during imagery attempts, those with validated aphantasia have decreased perceptual BOLD response and higher ipsilateral imagery response. Imagery content could be decoded using activation patterns in the primary visual cortex, but these patterns differed from perception patterns.

Imageless imagery in aphantasia revealed by early visual cortex decoding

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy to share our latest publication with Nikos Gekas on sequential effects in visual perception.

Here, we manipulated the uncertainty of both the current stimulus and the previous ones, and found different repulsive and attractive effects.

jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx...