ERC EXPERIENCE

✨What is the relationship between aesthetic preferences and consciousness?✨

We are so very excited to welcome Richard Prum to discuss this question with us in Brussels.
Do not miss this event!

📅 18 of March, 2026
🕒 16h-18h
📍 Brussels, ULB campus Solbosch, Solvay

Home - ESCAN 2026 ESCAN 2026 is the 9th ESCAN Conference, the biennial meeting of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

🎉The XP team is so glad to present a symposium at #ESCAN2026 in Roma on the need to consider affect to understand the function of consciousness! Inès Mentec and Gabriel Brandolini will be joined by @ashenhav.bsky.social and Benedetto De Martino. 😁See you there!😁https://escan2026.eu/

👾 Our team is expanding! 👾
We are very glad to welcome Dr.Gabriel Brandolini as our second postdoctoral researcher.
His work on valence dimensionality will complement Dr. Medha Shekhar’s computational approach, further advancing our investigation of the functional role of phenomenal experience. 🧩

The value of consciousness: experiences worth having | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DC. Dennett (2020,personal communication) asked: ‘How do we go from doing things for reasons to having reasons for doing things?’. This question targets a fundamental shift in nature: while all organi...

1/Paper out today in Phil Trans B @royalsocietypublishing.org alsocietypublishing.org in a Special Issue «Evolutionary functions of consciousness», by @axc.bsky.social, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, @krysdolega.bsky.social and myself.

👉Open-access at this link: doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

⬇️ Summary below:

(6/6) If you can’t wait for the paper here is the preprint : osf.io/preprints/ps...

(5/6) Figure caption: Similarity and micro-valence relationship (A) at the sample level (B) and at the individual level. C) Top panel - Scree plot. Bottom panel – Different levels of micro-valence in the 3D similarity space.

(4/6) Finally, we observed a correlation between micro-valence distances and the distances in activation of the very first DNN layer.

(3/6) Micro-valence, and thus valence, appears to be involved in how humans organize their phenomenal space.

(2/6) We observed a correlation between micro-valence and similarity distances. Moreover, this correlation was not entirely mediated by stimulus perceptual features captured by DNN.

(1/6) We observed evidence for the existence of micro-valence, the valence of a priori neutral objects.

✨We are glad to announce that Inès Mentec, Ivan Ivanchei and Axel Cleeremans’ paper “Exploring the Role of Micro-Valence in the Phenomenal Space: Insights from Similarity Judgments and Deep Learning Models” has been accepted in Neuroscience of Consciousness! 👇Check the feed for highlights

And with that, #ASSC28 is over!
Thank you all for the wonderful discussions, and shared time. See you next year! 🧠✌️

🚨09/07, 16h30 at #ASSC28: check out posters 389 and 373. Inès Mentec will present her EEG study, with a strong claim: Neutrality doesn’t exist! 🤯
And @leamoncoucy.bsky.social’s experimental phil. studies is show that Unfelt Pains are Felt anyways.. 🤕

See you there!🧠
(Please bring them fresh water…)

It is not too late to talk to Anastassia about her research! You can find her during the rest of the #ASSC28 conference

Activities of our team of #ASSC28
Starting with the poster n.13 for Anastassia Loukianov on conflict adaptation. 😵
Tomorrow join us for Lena Lange’s talk at the Concurrent Session 15! She will present her work on the role of perceptual awareness in motivation.💪
And later, watch out for a pirate… ☠️

🚨 Do not miss this event! 🧠

Our workshop is filling up fast—registration closes tomorrow at midnight! ⏳

Grab one of the last spots by filling out the form here: survey2.ulb.be/index.php/41...

We’re also thrilled to announce two new speakers: Johan Wagemans and Martin Skov @mskov01.bsky.social ! 🎤

🚨ALERT🚨

Do not miss the deadline for abstract submission, on the 26th of February!

Looking forward to meet you at our event in Brussels 🧠

🚨ALERT🚨

Do not miss the deadline for abstract submission, on the 26th of February!

Looking forward to meet you at our event in Brussels 🧠

We are excited to announce our 2nd workshop, “Value, Valence, and Consciousness”!

📌 Where? Brussels, Belgium
📆 When? April 7–8, 2025
📢Call for abstracts? until Feb. 26
💸 Registration? Free but mandatory, until Mar. 12

More infos ⬇️
erc-xp.ulb.be/2025/01/20/t...

Looking forward to see you there! 🤩

1.. 2.. 3.. 🎤🤛 Is this thing on?