Check out this new cross-journal special Collection on Visual Imagery at Nature Communications, Communications Psychology and Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/collections/...! Get submitting!
@natcomms.nature.com, @commspsychol.nature.com
Graphical abstract showing four panels. Panel 1: a person in an MRI scanner with blue cognitive thought bubbles drifting from their head and pink body thought bubbles from their torso, with organs glowing inside. Panel 2: blue bubbles for cognitive items (Self, Words, Focus, Images, Future, Past) are larger than pink bubbles for body items (Breathing, Movement, Stomach, Heart, Skin, Bladder), with arrows showing body thoughts link to more negative and less positive emotion. Panel 3: physiological traces (EGG, ECG, respiratory) show higher arousal with body-wandering; a bar chart shows cognitive items (Past, Future, Repetitive, Vivid) correlate with more ADHD and depression symptoms while body items (Breath, Stomach, Skin, Heart) correlate with fewer. Panel 4: medial brain with thalamus, somatomotor cortex, and interoceptive regions highlighted, plus a chord diagram showing connectivity between these three regions.
New paper in PNAS! When the mind wanders, it often drifts to the body. We call this "body-wandering". These thoughts are often negative, but are associated with reduced ADHD & depression symptoms, driven by a distinct interoceptive-allostatic brain signature. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123
New paper (first from my PhD!) out in Visual Cognition ✨ @tandfresearch.bsky.social
With the wonderful Sage Boettcher @dynacog-lab.bsky.social & Kia Nobre @brognition.bsky.social
We ask how temporal expectations can help us find targets in dynamic, cluttered environments when location is unknown.
Just a few more days left to apply! Come join our lab!🥳
📍2003 marked the year in which the retro-cue paradigm was born. Fast forward, 23 years later, we adapt this logic to long-term memory and ask how does attention shape retrieval from long-term memory? 🤔
w/ @william-nm.bsky.social Kia Nobre, Nahid Zokaei and Nora Roüast
osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/n
Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Experimental task. Trials began with variable fixation (500–1,000 ms) and placeholder (500–1,000 ms) intervals, followed by two spatial cues (100 ms) on opposite sides of the visual field to indicate the likely locations of both a subsequent near-threshold target and a salient distractor (100 ms). Cue validity was 70% for both cue types. Targets and distractors were presented after a variable delay (500–1,600 ms). Stimulus displays could include (i) both a target and a distractor, (ii) a target only, (iii) a distractor only, or (iv) neither a target nor a distractor. The number pad on a computer keyboard was used to indicate the presence of a target at the cued location, a target at a non-cued location, or no target.
Attentional resources vary rhythmically, but what about susceptibility to #distractors?@fiebelkornian.bsky.social &co show that theta & alpha phases modulate sensitivity & distractor impact, revealing rhythm-specific mechanisms shaping #attention & distractability @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4tU0vh4
🎉 New preprint 🎉 with Olya Bulatova, @drmack.bsky.social & @keisukefukuda.bsky.social! We decode shapes in working memory from EEG and show that representations are task-dependent, flexibly integrating information about category and task during the memory delay
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...
We are officially in search of a PostDoc to join the Visual Attention Lab at BWH and affiliation with HMS under PI Dr. Jeremy Wolfe!
Please see attached link for more details and post around! We are excited to hear from you!
massgeneralbrigham.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/MGBExternal/...
Interested in studying Neurocognitive Psychology? The application period for this excellent Master's program at LMU Munich is starting NOW! Apply here: www.lmu.de/psy/de/studi...
Worth checking out this paper showing how we can use temporal expectations to shift between different search templates 🔎
🚀 New preprint alert 🚀
How easily can working memory create interference in long-term memories? Our new preprint, Interference Across Memory Systems: Disrupting Long-Term Memories Through Working Memory examines this
osf.io/preprints/ps...
w/ @sahcan.bsky.social Anna Lena Mantei, Daniel Schneider
Thrilled to say that we’re now officially led by a multi-award-winning PI – congratulations Sage on being awarded the Women in Neuroscience UK Rising Star Award for Early Group Leaders! #WiNUKAwards2025
Now out in #ScienceAdvances: @baiweiliu.bsky.social and I ask how internal (goal) and external (sensory) selection are coordinated during visual search. The key insight: internal and external selection are not inherently serial, but may develop in parallel in the human brain: doi.org/10.1126/scia...
🌟 We’re delighted to announce Dr Sage Boettcher (@ox.ac.uk) as the Rising Star: Early Group Leader winner at the #WiNUKAwards2025!
Sage leads the Dynamic Cognition Lab, studying how attention and memory interact to guide behaviour. A dedicated mentor, teacher, and advocate for inclusive science.
New preprint! What happens in the brain when people offload memories into external reminders? Using fMRI decoding, we found that the corresponding neural trace fades until it becomes statistically absent.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧵...
Open access until 7 December:
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lygsbotq7...
Lastly, we outline key questions prompted by the taxonomy we introduce. Overall, a key goal for future research is to clarify how external and internal brain processes interact - within and across dimensions - to shape experience and behaviour.
We believe that rather than endpoints on a single scale, “external” and “internal” reflect distinct dimensions - cognitive mode, attentional content, and sensory origin. In the article we further explain why these processes cannot be reduced to a single dimension of brain function.
📣 Out in TINS (@cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social):
Neural processing is often described as either externally or internally directed. In our new Forum article, we (@freekvanede.bsky.social & Kia Nobre) propose a multilevel framework for conceptualising external and internal continua of brain processes.
Spatial attention and working memory are popularly thought to be tightly coupled. Yet, distinct neural activity tracks attentional breadth and WM load.
In a new paper @jocn.bsky.social, we show that pupil size independently tracks breadth and load.
doi.org/10.1162/JOCN...
Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
New paper: the ‘Double Ring Illusion’!
Does the visual system integrate *intuitive physics*? This new illusion developed by Brent Strickland and I offers a straightforward demonstration – one that you can experience yourselves!
Demos in thread👇
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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.
Kohl et al. report that sensorimotor network dynamics can distinguish patients with Parkinson’s disease from controls and highlight the importance of network context of motor cortical activations.
buff.ly/489DYfB
#Parkinsons
How the brain shifts between external and internal attention
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
#neuroscience
Great perspective!👏
My thoughts:
- we should stop saying 'attention lapses', they are 'attention shifts'
- what % of motor imagery M\EEG signal is internal attention? what % of Libet's readiness potential is internal attention?🤔
- individual differences in shifts may be relevant for many tasks
This project has only been possible through a real team effort!
In the same spirit, we hope these resources continue to grow, and we really welcome any feedback or contributions to help us improve and expand what we've shared.
Out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social now! Kia and I argue that attention research would benefit from a stronger focus on how the brain shifts between external and internal attention. We outline competing hypotheses, review existing behavioral and neural findings, and highlight open questions.