Benjamin Lowe
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brainboyben.bsky.social
Benjamin Lowe
@brainboyben.bsky.social
67 followers 56 following 36 posts
Cog neuro postdoc at Macquarie Uni, Sydney
Activist for a free Palestine 🇵🇸
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brainboyben.bsky.social
Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Dec 12
And it's out now in Cortex: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Summary below 🧵
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
'to treat peer review as a throughput problem is to misunderstand what is at stake. Review is not simply a production stage in the research pipeline; it is one of the few remaining spaces where the scientific community talks to itself.' 1/3
AI is not a peer, so it can’t do peer review
If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj
www.timeshighereducation.com
February 3, 2026 at 8:17 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
He’s simply a grifter
caitlingilbert.bsky.social Caitlin Gilbert @caitlingilbert.bsky.social · 14d
In response to announcement that he will be a new CBS contributor, Andrew Huberman tweeted “I’ve always gone issue-by-issue on health & science, spoken to experts w/a range of takes & presented where I see the center of (data) mass pointed. I’ll do the same with @CBSNews”. In Sept he posted this:
Screenshot of tweet from Huberman that reads: “The other is that dog breeds w/different shaped heads are predictive of their demeanor and intelligence. And while I don’t! believe in Phrenology I now do pay some attention to how the shapes of peoples heads relates to their intellect and steadiness, or lack thereof.”
January 28, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
dbrang.bsky.social
Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap.
dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-D...

Github page: github.com/dbrang/EEG-D...
January 20, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
manikyaalister.bsky.social
Most popular decision-making models assume that cognitive processes are static over time. In our new paper in Psych Review, we offer a simple extension to evidence accumulation models that lets researchers account for systematic changes in parameters across time 📈

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
January 20, 2026 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
williamngiam.github.io
Our publishing system does not prioritise or value the careful curation of research data to be FAIR nearly enough. I have been data editing for AP&P for a year now, and it is sad to see no reward for the clearly careful organisation of data and materials vs that which is thrown on OSF with no care!
a cartoon of donald duck says " and a bah humbug " to you
ALT: a cartoon of donald duck says " and a bah humbug " to you
media.tenor.com
January 18, 2026 at 2:33 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
And it's out now in Cortex: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Summary below 🧵
December 12, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
davidrichter.bsky.social
High-level visual surprise is rapidly integrated during perceptual inference!

🚨 New paper 🚨 out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social with @paulapena.bsky.social and @mruz.bsky.social

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Summary 🧵 below 👇
Rapid computation of high-level visual surprise
Health sciences
www.cell.com
December 5, 2025 at 2:37 PM
brainboyben.bsky.social
And it was an absolute treat to run! Thanks everyone who attended :)
#ACNS2025
November 26, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
williamngiam.github.io
Tim Cottier @tvcottier.bsky.social introduces a novel face triad task to explore whether super-recognisers decipher the identity, valence or gaze of faces. When asked which face is distinct out of the three, super-recognisers preference identity information more than controls! #ASPP2025
A presenting displaying a triplet task structure for face recognition.
November 24, 2025 at 4:37 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
Road trippin’ to ACNS 2025, Melbourne!

@matthewod.bsky.social
@tvcottier.bsky.social
(Plus Ella and Seri)
@acnsau.bsky.social
November 23, 2025 at 3:15 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
Maybe a bit of a downer, but I think this conversation may be of interest to a bunch of people on here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbK...
Decades of neoliberalism have broken our universities
YouTube video by The Australia Institute
www.youtube.com
November 11, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
perfors.net
Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.
Slide is titled: You don't need to use LLMs. Science is a process of collaborative meaning making, by which we try to understand the world Even if AI were perfect, we rely on it at our peril — it is not science if we (i.e., humanity as a whole) do not understand and cannot recapitulate all parts of it I very, very rarely use LLMs myself. You can give yourself permission not to. Don’t FOMO yourself into it Conclusion: Don't rely on something you don't understand and can't control If you must use LLMS: 1. Treat them like you would an intern: only use them for things you can easily and thoroughly check 2. Make your process as robust as possible 3. Be aware of your own (human) cognitive biases
November 6, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
earlkmiller.bsky.social
New paper! After a distraction, rotating traveling waves steer brain processing back to where it should be.
State–Space Trajectories and Traveling Waves Following Distraction
direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...
#neuroscience
State–Space Trajectories and Traveling Waves Following Distraction
Abstract. Cortical activity shows the ability to recover from distractions. We analyzed neural activity from the pFC of monkeys performing working memory tasks with mid-memory delay distractions (a cu...
direct.mit.edu
October 31, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
democracyactionnet.bsky.social
A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math." Stephanie Sy examines what’s behind a potential scientific brain drain.
Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending'
YouTube video by PBS NewsHour
www.youtube.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:52 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
A wonderful paper!
dotproduct.bsky.social dorottya hetenyi @dotproduct.bsky.social · Oct 21
Super happy to share my very first first-author paper out in
@sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show content-specific predictions are represented in an alpha rhythm. It’s been a beautiful, inspiring, yet challenging journey.
Huge thanks to everyone, especially @peterkok.bsky.social @jhaarsma.bsky.social
peterkok.bsky.social Peter Kok @peterkok.bsky.social · Oct 21
@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. 🧠🟦 🧠🤖
October 21, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
emilya-izzeddin.bsky.social
The final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!)

Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....

1/11
Low-level features predict perceived similarity for naturalistic images | JOV | ARVO Journals
doi.org
October 8, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
earlkmiller.bsky.social
For all the knucklehead reviewers out there.
Principles for proper peer review - Earl K. Miller
jocnf.pubpub.org/pub/qag76ip8...
#neuroscience
Principles for proper peer review
jocnf.pubpub.org
October 6, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
merrickgiles.bsky.social
One of the most depressing phd experiences is hearing of others' advisors (the ones that are supposed to train us into good scientists) encourage the use of chatbots in lieu of their students' development. thankfully mine don't.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 21
Getting close to 50k views and I'm wondering is it just everybody is scared to say this and pleased I did? Because if there's so many of us who agree, trust me I'd know if 1k people disagreed with me let alone 50k, why are we letting AI ruin our universities?

Together we can turn back the tide.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
September 23, 2025 at 1:04 PM
brainboyben.bsky.social
I feel seen—and heard: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
My petty gripe: not only am I losing my livelihood to AI – now it’s stealing my em dashes too
The humble em dash is being used as a tell that something is written by a large language model. But it’s James Shackell’s favourite piece of punctuation, and he’s not ready to lose it
www.theguardian.com
October 1, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
emilya-izzeddin.bsky.social
Just published some work at Scientific Reports! We investigated visual adaptation following free viewing of a film (Casablanca) that had its oriented contrast altered. To our surprise, we found adaptation effects to be pretty negligible…

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

1/10
Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing
www.nature.com
September 29, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
matthieu-mx.bsky.social
1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.
September 28, 2025 at 7:14 PM
brainboyben.bsky.social
Looking forward to this!
psychopy.org PsychoPy @psychopy.org · Sep 11
Shout out to Australian researchers! 🇦🇺 (and folks in the southern hemisphere) 🌏

We're excited that our Ambassador Ben Lowe (@brainboyben.bsky.social) will be hosting a pre-conference workshop at #ACNS2025 (@acnsau.bsky.social) on getting started with PsychoPy!

Sign up here👇
shorturl.at/gvnUU
ACNS 2025 Pre-Conference Workshops - Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Sorry, this product is unavailable. Please choose a different combination.
www.acns.org.au
September 11, 2025 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:
September 6, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Lowe
carlbergstrom.com
5. Today I read a paper by @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social and Alexander Mussgnug that I think illustrates this point perfectly.

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24891/1/Phil...
Convenience AI Sabina Leonelli & Alexander Martin Mussgnug12 Abstract: This paper considers the mundane ways in which AI is being incorporated into scientific practice today, and particularly the extent to which AI is used to automate tasks perceived to be boring, “mere routine” and inconvenient to researchers. We label such uses as instances of “Convenience AI” — that is situations where AI is applied with the primary intention to increase speed and minimize human effort. We outline how attributions of convenience to AI applications involve three key characteristics: (i) an emphasis on speed and ease of action, (ii) a comparative element, as well as (iii) a subject-dependent and subjective quality. Using examples from medical science and development economics, we highlight epistemic benefits, complications, and drawbacks of Convenience AI along these three dimensions. While the pursuit of convenience through AI can save precious time and resources as well as give rise to novel forms of inquiry, our analysis underscores how the uncritical adoption of Convenience AI for the sake of shortcutting human labour may also weaken the evidential foundations of science and generate inertia in how research is planned, set-up and conducted, with potentially damaging implications for the knowledge being produced. Critically, we argue that the consistent association of Convenience AI with the goals of productivity, efficiency, and ease, as often promoted also by companies targeting the research market for AI applications, can lower critical scrutiny of research processes and shift focus away from appreciating their broader epistemic and social implications.
August 19, 2025 at 5:11 AM
brainboyben.bsky.social
🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
The Latency of a Domain-General Visual Surprise Signal is Attribute Dependent
Predictions concerning upcoming visual input play a key role in resolving percepts. Sometimes input is surprising, under which circumstances the brain must calibrate erroneous predictions so that perc...
doi.org
August 19, 2025 at 12:30 AM