Our symposium, #“Aphantasia_and_Consciousness,” has been accepted for the upcoming @assc2026.bsky.social! Speakers include @matthiasmichel.bsky.social, @giuliacabbai.bsky.social, Lu Teng, and myself (Chair). Looking forward to great discussions — come join us if you’ll be there! theassc.org/assc-29/

wooooo congrats Lina!!! 🎉🎉

Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains? People with aphantasia are offering a window into consciousness.

Think about your breakfast this morning. Can you imagine the pattern on your coffee mug? The sheen of the jam on your half-eaten toast?

go.nature.com/3ZiHLtN

So excited to see this lovely paper with @benjyb.bsky.social, @matanmazor.bsky.social and @giuliacabbai.bsky.social published in @nconsc.bsky.social!

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

I am very excited to share our new preprint, spearheaded by the brilliant @lunahuestegge.bsky.social, w/ @peterkok.bsky.social and others: ‘An attempt to push mental imagery over the reality threshold using non-invasive brain stimulation’

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

We built the openESM database:
▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place
▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software
▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python

Find out more:
🌐 openesmdata.org
📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Contents of visual predictions oscillate at alpha frequencies Predictions of future events have a major impact on how we process sensory signals. However, it remains unclear how the brain keeps predictions online in anticipation of future inputs. Here, we combin...

@dotproduct.bsky.social's first first author paper is finally out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! Her findings show that content-specific predictions fluctuate with alpha frequencies, suggesting a more specific role for alpha oscillations than we may have thought. With @jhaarsma.bsky.social. 🧠🟦 🧠🤖

Why do we remember emotional events so vividly? Our new paper @nathumbehav.nature.com suggests that emotional arousal enhances memory by strengthening integration across large-scale brain networks! Led by the amazing @jadynpark.bsky.social & @ycleong.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Thank you, I totally agree on the VVIQ point (I also think we need a better measure) and that researchers should be more consistent in their cutoff criteria/definitions. This figure looks very interesting, I look forward to read your latest paper!

Self-reports are better measurement instruments than implicit measures - Nature Reviews Psychology Implicit measures are widely used because they are assumed to be superior to self-reports. In this Perspective, Corneille and Gawronski challenge this view and argue that claims about disadvantages of...

Ahem. Mental imagery (& imagery-critical) researchers should read this:

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Hi! While I agree with your point, in our study (Cabbai et al., 2024) nearly all aphantasics (22/24) had a VVIQ score = 16 (the minimum), with only 2 slightly higher. Removing those 2 does not change the V1 spontaneous imagery decoding results.

A transformation from vision to imagery in the human brain Extensive work has shown that the visual cortex is reactivated during mental imagery, and that models trained on visual data can predict imagery activity and decode imagined stimuli. These findings ma...

A transformation from vision to imagery in the human brain. Intriguing new preprint by Roy & Naselaris et al for anyone interested in mental imagery!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

the tldr of my thread is that, interoceptive sensing at rest has no relationship to mental health symptoms, and we think this is likely because we need to measure interoception during and after arousal, close in time to symptoms, with ecological measures.

Congrats Arii 🎉

The Effects of External Cue Overlap and Internal Goals on Selective Memory Retrieval as Revealed by Electroencephalographic (EEG) Neural Pattern Reinstatement This EEG study used multivariate decoding in humans to investigate how memories are selected when retrieval goals vary. The results showed that EEG neural patterns reinstating studied information tra...

🚨Paper now published! 🚨

The Effects of External Cue Overlap and Internal Goals on Selective Memory Retrieval.

Grateful for thorough reviews that made it stronger. Out now in #EJN: doi.org/10.1111/ejn..... w @alexamorcom.bsky.social @MattPlummer @ivorsimpson.bsky.social. Updated summary🧵👇

Genetic foundations of interindividual neurophysiological variability Individual brain activity profiles are shaped by lifelong genetic influences.

Very proud to share this one🥹! We show that personalized signatures of brain activity are heritable and relate to the expression of specific genes. That means my brain-fingerprint is very similar to my twin brother's! #ResearchIsMeSearch🧠 🧬 ♊️

Always late to the party, but really excited to share this new preprint led by @benjyb.bsky.social where we find an intriguing link between vividness ratings and reaction times!🧠💭

Shared and diverging neural dynamics underlying false and veridical perception We often mistake visual noise for meaningful images, which sometimes appear as convincing as veridical percepts. This suggests considerable overlap between the mechanisms that underlie false and verid...

New MEG paper by @jhaarsma.bsky.social and @dotproduct.bsky.social‬! Same design and behavioural results as our 7T layer fMRI study (www.jneurosci.org/content/43/4...), but now shedding light on the temporal dynamics of the sensory signals underlying false percepts. #neuroskyence

I am so excited to share that our paper 'A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality' is now published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! 🧠✨ See thread below! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Looking forward to presenting my work at the Consciousness Club tomorrow! 😊

How the human brain is like a murmuration of starlings | Aeon Essays The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony

@pessoabrain.bsky.social drops knowledge on us. Neuron spiking is highly coordinated. Waves of electric field influences are a great way to do that.

The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings
aeon.co/essays/how-t...
#neuroscience

Paper finally published in JEP General!

Individual variability in mental imagery vividness does not predict perceptual interference with imagery: A replication study of Cui et al., 2007: osf.io/preprints/os...

A study cited over 500 times couldn't be replicated, even in extreme imagery... a 🧵

1/8

On 15 May, we're organizing a very special hybrid event at the FIL: a Symposium on Setbacks in Science!
In a series of talks and discussions with a wonderful set of speakers, we will address the disappointments that are entirely common in research, but that we all hesitate to talk about. (1/3)

Thank you so much!

Dynamics of mental imagery Phenomenology of mental imagery can reveal the structure of underlying mental representations, yet progress has been limited because of its private na…

With nervous excitement, my most ambitious project yet: Dynamics of mental imagery.

We got over 800 people to recreate the contents of their mental imagery with a focus on distinct phenomenological properties. Temporal grain, smoothness, stability.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

a 🧵1/n

Hi, this sounds really interesting, would love to read these papers :) could you please share the link to them?

🚨 Preprint alert 🚨 After 4 years of work, our new research on the Sense of Reality is finally out! Using Virtual Reality, we investigate our response to Virtual Hallucinations across different reality domains! Discover how our minds and bodies react when reality isn't quite what it seems...

Finally, if you are an academic and want to read the publication, "The impact of aphantasia on mental healthcare experiences" by Mawtus et al, 2024:
online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

Sensory representations in primary visual cortex are not sufficient for subjective imagery Cabbai et al. test whether sensory representations in primary visual cortex (V1) can be dissociated from subjective mental imagery. They find that V1 representations can occur without subjective exper...

Really interesting work! As you didn't ask them to imagine while reading, your results suggest to me they generated spontaneous visual representation and, together with the contrast fixation dur/subj experience, they seem in line with our spontaneous imagery condition in www.cell.com/current-biol...

Severance — Music To Refine To feat. ODESZA | Apple TV+ YouTube video by Apple TV

The music is mysterious and important

youtu.be/JRnDYB28bL8