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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 2d

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

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · 7d

@sulfaro.bsky.social literally what we were just talking about!

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

merrick giles @merrickgiles.bsky.social · 15d

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 Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 17d

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 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

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · 8d

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

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Emily A-Izzeddin @emilya-izzeddin.bsky.social · 9d

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...

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Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing

www.nature.com

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · 9d

Throw hands and then give hug. Good on ya, Will!

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Matthieu Chidharom @matthieu-mx.bsky.social · 10d

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.

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · 27d

Looking forward to this!

PsychoPy @psychopy.org · 27d

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

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · Sep 6

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 19

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.

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Aug 19

Thanks @bealebrains.bsky.social!

Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Aug 19

FYI I've published similar results previously :)
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

Redirecting

doi.org

Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Aug 19

🚨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

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Aug 17

I spoke yesterday with a lovely university student I know in Gaza who sent the message below.
His instagram page shows his beautiful English and charisma, and the dire situation he is in: www.instagram.com/jehadkmiri/
Please consider donating to his family here:
www.paypal.com/donate?hoste...

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Aug 16

It’s frankly absurd that we’re at the point where this critique needed to be written

Klaus Pforr @klauspforr.bsky.social · Aug 15

Paper on the problems of using LLMs as replacements for human participants
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Six Fallacies in Substituting Large Language Models for Human Participants - Zhicheng Lin, 2025

Can artificial-intelligence (AI) systems, such as large language models (LLMs), replace human participants in behavioral and psychological research? Here, I cri...

journals.sagepub.com

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Jul 15

I think a lot of people studying neural expectation have been skeptical of literal interpretations of PC for a while now. Again, this is not same as saying the brain doesn’t integrate prior knowledge with sensory input when resolving precepts.

I’m excited to see where the field goes next :)

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Jul 15

IMO (now that this canned of worms has been opened), I think the field would really benefit from moving away from evoked responses and towards pre-stimulus and/or state-based activity characterising how predictions themselves are signalled (rather their errors!)

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Jul 15

The envelope has been pushed forward and now we can think about what these data mean within the broader literature. It’s exciting!

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Jul 15

I really like this paper. I fear that people think the authors are claiming that the brain isn’t predictive though, which this study cannot (and does not) address. As the title says, the data purely show that evoked responses are not necessarily prediction errors, which makes sense!

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · Jul 11

1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.

But...

🧠📈 🧪

Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors

Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Will Turner @renrutmailliw.bsky.social · May 23

New paper out in @plosbiology.org w/ Charlie, @phil-johnson.bsky.social, Ella, and Hinze 🎉

We track moving stimuli via EEG, find evidence that motion is extrapolated across distinct stages of processing + show how this effect may emerge from a simple synaptic learning rule!

tinyurl.com/2szh6w5c

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Ariel Beccia @albeccia.bsky.social · Mar 21

my NIH grant was terminated today - the grant that pays my rent and my bills and my loans and my health insurance - because I study how to improve the lives and wellbeing of queer people #episky #medsky

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · Mar 10

Immigrants, trans people, palestinian rights activists, eventually it’s going to be your turn when the regime decides you are an enemy

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Jan Theeuwes @jthee.bsky.social · Feb 27

We used a brain "pinging" again and found that distractor suppression is reactive rather than proactive, meaning attention is first drawn to the distractor before being suppressed.

Neural mechanisms of learned suppression uncovered by probing the hidden attentional priority map

Learned suppression of distractor locations in visual search emerges through reactive mechanisms that involve initial spatial selection prior to suppression.

doi.org

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Benjamin Lowe @brainboyben.bsky.social · Feb 25

Climate science 👀

Neuromatch @neuromatch.bsky.social · Feb 24

🚨 Neuromatch Academy Course Applications are OPEN for 2025!! 🚨

Get your application in early to be a student or teaching assistant for this year’s courses!

Applications are due Sunday, March 23.

Apply & learn more: neuromatch.io/courses/

#mlsky #compneurosky #ai #climatesolutions #ScienceEdu 🧪

Applications are now open! 3-week courses: Comp Neuro and Deep Learning. 2-week courses: NeuroAI and Comp Tools for Climate Science.

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Reposted by Benjamin Lowe

Joe Melling @joemelling.bsky.social · Nov 16

Excited to share my first paper: a novel visual illusion discovered by my co-authors Will Turner and Hinze Hogendoorn which we call the "Split-Stimulus Effect", in which a single flashed stimulus is perceived to be in two different locations simultaneously jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx... [1/5]

Concurrent perception of competing predictions: A “split-stimulus effect” | JOV | ARVO Journals

jov.arvojournals.org

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