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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Donner Lab @donnerlab.bsky.social · Jun 27

1/ New paper by Hame Park, (@AraziAyelet), Bharath Talluri, Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker & Tobias Donner published in Nature Communications – “Confirmation Bias through Selective Readout of Information Encoded in Human Parietal Cortex”: rdcu.be/etlR7. Here is a summary:

Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex

Nature Communications - People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Kobe Desender @kobedesender.bsky.social · Jun 26

Performance feedback counterintuitively _increases_ overconfidence in young children. Great Collab @dsotob.bsky.social

David Soto @dsotob.bsky.social · Jun 25

Performance feedback triggers liberal detection andperceptual confidence biases inearly childhood: Implications formetacognitive training @kobedesender.bsky.social

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40555904/

Performance feedback triggers liberal detection and perceptual confidence biases in early childhood: Implications for metacognitive training - PubMed

Metacognition allows us to monitor our own mental processes and the quality of our decisions in order to promote adaptive behavior and learning across different domains. Despite its potential, the rol...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

14/ Needless to say, I am very happy that this is finally out there, and am super excited to share it with the world.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

13/ This project saw me write my PhD thesis, defend it, become a parent, move to a different country to start a postdoc, take on a new scientific adventure doing NHP electrophysiology, and many more all while trying to stay sane & alive during a pandemic.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

12/ Because information use is more susceptible to deliberative control, our results imply that confirmation bias may be malleable, contingent on appropriate feedback and incentives.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

11/ We conclude that confirmation bias originates from the way in which decision-makers utilize information encoded in the brain, which sheds new light on an important cognitive phenomenon that has occupied scholars for centuries.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

10/ By contrast, an information-theoretic measure of the use (“readout”) of encoded evidence for the final estimate (“intersection information”) in parietal and visual cortex was bigger for consistent than for inconsistent samples, in line with the selective use scenario.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

9/ We also used MEG to measure cortical population dynamics in participants’ brains during the task. The evidence samples were precisely encoded in population activity in visual and parietal cortex, irrespective of their consistency with the previous choice.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

8/ Interestingly, this consistency effect on behavioral evidence weighting was bigger when participants had to report their own categorical judgment of the evidence halfway through the trial, compared to when they instead received an external categorical cue.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

7/ Participants’ final estimation reports were more strongly affected by evidence samples in the second half of the trial that were consistent (compared to inconsistent) with the previous left/right choice: a behavioral signature of confirmation bias.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

6/ After viewing half of the samples, participants judged whether the mean of the source distribution was to the left or right from the vertical meridian. After viewing the rest of the samples, they reported a continuous estimation of the source with a joystick.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

5/ To arbitrate between these scenarios, we asked participants to evaluate sequences of 12 noisy visual evidence samples: small discs with varying angles to the vertical meridian. Each sample was drawn from a hidden source: a probability distribution with constant mean per trial.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

4/ We reasoned that such selective weighting of evidence could be brought about by two distinct neural mechanisms: (i) selective encoding of incoming evidence in the brain, or (ii) biased utilization of encoded evidence for reasoning and action.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

3/ In earlier work (www.cell.com/current-biol..., we showed that such biases are also present in simple perceptual decisions.

www.cell.com

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

2/ Human decision-makers often interpret information selectively, depending on whether that evidence aligns with the decision-maker’s previous beliefs and judgments: Consistent evidence is weighted more, and inconsistent evidence is weighted less. This is confirmation bias.

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · Jun 25

New paper in @natcomms.nature.com: “Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex” (rdcu.be/etlR7) from my work in Donner lab. Jointly lead by Hame Park, Ayelet Arazi, & me, together with Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker and Tobias Donner. 🧵👇🏽

Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex - Nature Communications

People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely encoded in the brain, but ...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Zero-Noise Lab @zeronoiselab.bsky.social · Jun 10

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com‬: Mice and monkeys spontaneously shift through comparable cognitive states - and it's written all over their faces! (1/7)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Inferring internal states across mice and monkeys using facial features - Nature Communications

Here, the authors created a virtual reality task for monkeys and mice to explore if internal states like attention are similar across species. Their facial expressions during the task were similar, su...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Silvia Lopez-Guzman @silvialogu.bsky.social · May 29

Preprint alert 🚨! Excited to share our new work on metacognition in value-based decision-making. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/.... We ask whether it is possible to derive a computational measure of metacognitive ability for economic preference choices.

Computational characterization of metacognitive ability in subjective decision-making

Metacognition is the process of reflecting on and controlling one's own thoughts and behaviors. Metacognitive ability is often measured through modeling the relationship between confidence reports and...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Cris Niell @crisniell.bsky.social · May 27

A very nice article about our research on the octopus visual system, by @callimcflurry.bsky.social @thetransmitter.bsky.social

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · May 27

The octopus brain has teased researchers since the 1960s, but recording from it seemed impossible. Cris Niell and his team’s calcium imaging experiments finally “showed that this brain could be studied,” says Sam Reiter.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/vision/cepha...

Cephalopods, vision’s next frontier

For decades, scientists have been teased by the strange but inaccessible cephalopod visual system. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough from a lab in Oregon, data are finally coming straight…

www.thetransmitter.org

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Bharath Talluri @bharathtalluri.bsky.social · May 17

Excited to be giving a talk at #VSS2025 on how activity in primate early visual cortex is modulated by internal state. We used ephys, latent variable models, pulse and respiration tracking and a whole bunch of controls to address this. Drop by in Talk room 1 this Sunday at 5.15 PM to know more.

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Daniel Kluger @danlikesbrains.bsky.social · Apr 11

Great and comprehensive review by Adriano Tort and colleagues on respiratory involvement in both rodent and human brain activity. Can't help but be intrigued by the complexities of time scales, mechanisms, and behavioural relevance. Long and exciting road ahead. 🧠🟦

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Synchrony between neuronal activity and the respiratory cycle has been observed in numerous brain regions and across many species. Tort et al. discuss the mechanisms by which brain activity is modulat...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Martin Vinck @martinavinck.bsky.social · Apr 10

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable

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

Great work by Boris Sotomayor and with @battaglialab.bsky.social

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable

Neural firing-rate responses to sensory stimuli show progressive changes both within and across sessions, raising the question of how the brain mainta…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Ken Miller @kenmiller.bsky.social · Feb 20

Why do sublinear response summation and quenching of shared variability tend to co-occur in cortex? We review phenomenological, normative, and circuit explanations. With Robbe Goris, Ruben Coen-Cagli, Nick Priebe, & Mate Lengyel. rdcu.be/dy1q5
🧪 #neuroskyence

Response sub-additivity and variability quenching in visual cortex

Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Sub-additive responses to simultaneously presented stimuli and quenching of variability in responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus are characteristics of...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Feb 20

Monkey studies throw wrench into decade-old idea about movement’s effect on visual cortex

By Angie Voyles Askham

www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

Monkey studies throw wrench into decade-old idea about movement’s effect on visual cortex

Movements that boost activity in the visual cortex of mice have the opposite or no effect in marmosets and macaques, prompting questions about whether mice are a suitable model for the primate visual…

www.thetransmitter.org

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Reposted by Bharath Talluri

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · Apr 1

Academics - where are academic jobs posted for non-UK non-North American countries? If you were looking for jobs in, say, the Nordic countries, or Australia, where do you look? Asking for all the PhDs who are on the market this year. (Pls no April fools jokes, their nerves are frayed as it is)

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