Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · 15d

Jacinda Ardern is so fantastic. I love that she is out there pushing for the idea of compassionate leadership.

youtu.be/xJg1McSvgo8?...

Jacinda Ardern - “A Different Kind of Power” | The Daily Show

YouTube video by The Daily Show

youtu.be

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 27d

This is good 🧠🧪🐡

The “Blooming” Field of Neuroarts

Despite major federal funding cuts, researchers are dedicated to determining how engaging in the arts can improve our brain health.

www.brainfacts.org

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · 27d

APA Monitor article on what happens in the brain when we view art

www.apa.org/monitor/2025...

#neuroaesthetics

www.apa.org

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Psychonomic Society @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social · 29d

A new study uses AI-generated stimuli to uncover attention to complex scene features. Read more in a post by @ankosov.bsky.social on a new #psynomAPP paper by @songaeun.bsky.social, @drmack.bsky.social, and @dirkbwalther.bsky.social buff.ly/2So7ndD

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Christiane Büttner @chrbuettner.bsky.social · Sep 9

📣 Call for unpublished studies on discrimination of bisexual people!

⬇️ Please see the full call below

We are very grateful for all contributions!

#SocialPsych #PsychSciSky

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 29

Thanks John!

Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 29

I've been selected as a 2026 Osher Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy.bsky.social), for a project with Indre Viskontas (@indrevis.bsky.social) and Cal Academy. Thanks so much to Rhonda Rubenstein and for facilitating this opportunity!

www.calacademy.org/osher-fellows

Osher Fellows

Osher Fellows bring their world-renowned creative expertise to the Academy's science learning programs.

www.calacademy.org

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · Aug 27

Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇

Interoceptive Ability is Unrelated to Mental Health Symptoms: Evidence From a Large Scale Multi-Domain Psychophysical Investigation

Interoception-the sensing and perception of the internal viscera-is widely cast as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking brain-body interaction to mental illness. Prevailing models propose that altered ...

www.medrxiv.org

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 27

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

Opinion | Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Edward Vessel

Acid Rain @bearysweet.bsky.social · Aug 26

No brush, no pencil. Just a typewriter.

Artist James, using a 1930s Smith Premier typewriter, typed out this painting.

#art #printer #unique #typewriter #illustration

570 2.9K 15K

Reposted by Edward Vessel

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · Aug 26

This paper shows that some human "gestalt" style visual processing can emerge in purely feedforward deep nets with the right inductive biases and fine-tuning:

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

🧠📈 🧪 #NeuroAI

A feedforward mechanism for human-like contour integration

Author summary A central challenge in vision science is understanding how the visual system links fragmented local features into coherent object representations. One foundational process supporting th...

journals.plos.org

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Gemma Schino @gemmaschino.bsky.social · Aug 25

Huge thanks to the #VSAC2025 organizers for such an incredible conference! Special thanks to everyone who stopped by my poster "From preliminary findings to a large-scale diary study: Investigating aesthetic experience in everyday life" - loved the insightful discussions and exchanges! 🤓💡

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Jean-Rémi King @jeanremiking.bsky.social · Aug 25

Had a blast chatting with @neildegrassetyson.com on @startalkradio.bsky.social ’s podcast about how AI and neuroscience come together
startalkmedia.com/show/mindrea...

Mindreading with Jean Rémi-King - StarTalk Special Edition

What would it take to read someone’s mind? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, & Gary O’Reilly explore the science of decoding our thoughts w/ Jean-Rémi King.

startalkmedia.com

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · Aug 25

(link fixed) New theory: Categorization is Baked Into the Brain
It is not at the end of sensory processing but a core computation that begins at the earliest stages, occurring throughout the cortex as predictive feedback shapes feedforward processing. #neuroscience
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

OSF

doi.org

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Chris Baker @cibaker.bsky.social · Aug 25

Eye movements, vision and memory through the lens of Sherlock - awesome collaborative project led by @matthiasnau.bsky.social

Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · Aug 25

Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory!

We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9

Neural and behavioral reinstatement jointly reflect retrieval of narrative events - Nature Communications

When people recall a movie, their eye movements and brain activity resemble those observed during the viewing. These behavioral and neural reactivations are linked through a common process, likely ref...

doi.org

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Nicole Ruta @nicoleruta.bsky.social · Aug 25

✨ Does our body resonate differently when an everyday object is reframed by an artist as ready-made art?
Full story & #OpenScience #Rcode are available in our latest publication Ruta, Schino, Wolfe & Iosifyan (2025) Scientific Reports ➡️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ready-made bodily sensations - Scientific Reports

Embodiment plays an important role in art engagement, yet it is unclear how expectations shape bodily sensations, especially when interacting with ready-made art. In this study, we investigated how ex...

www.nature.com

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 23

Eek. This is not good, and will definitely impact CCNY, which is an HSI.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/u...

Education Department Backs Away From Program for Hispanic-Serving Colleges

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Edward Vessel

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Aug 22

How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we see the world? Wonderful piece in @sciam.bsky.social by @norabradford.bsky.social, ft. an interview with @dorsaamir.bsky.social about our work on the 'cultural byproduct hypothesis'.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

Why a Classic Psychology Theory about Vision Has Fallen Apart

The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

www.scientificamerican.com

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

steven t. piantadosi @spiantado.bsky.social · Aug 20

Preschoolers Selectively Attend to Speech That They Can Learn More From by ‪@ruthefoushee.bsky.social‬ and colleagues
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Preschoolers Selectively Attend to Speech That They Can Learn More From

We introduce a novel method to test a classic idea in developmental science that children's attention to a stimulus is driven by how much they can learn from it. Preschoolers (4–6 years, M=4.6${\it M...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · Aug 20

This is such an insane statistic that it's hard to understand. 40% of what is shipped is fossil fuels -- not 40% of things are shipped *by* fossil fuels. 40% of *what is being carried* is the fossil fuels themselves.

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 20

We ship 11 billion tonnes of stuff around the world and 40% of that is fossil fuels.

Baltimore shipping channel reopened after explosion on cargo ship near site of 2024 bridge collapse

Authorities are investigating the cause of an explosion aboard a cargo ship that was leaving the Port of Baltimore when it issued a mayday call.

apnews.com

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 11

At #CCN2025? Check out these VisNALab posters Tues Aug 12:

A158: Testing a Learning Theory of Aesthetic Appeal Using Category Learning and Deep Neural Networks (Vessel et al.)

A144: Characterizing the temporal profile of meaning-making with visual art (Welke & Vessel)

@cogcompneuro.bsky.social

Join the CCN 2025 Discord Server!

Check out the CCN 2025 community on Discord – hang out with 273 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.gg

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Aug 5

Out today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Screenshot of the first page of Tal and Chaz's paper, "The psychophysics of style"

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Aug 5

Interested in Arts & Health? Read my response to a recent critique of the field in Physics of Life Reviews.

To Punch Down or to Build Up: Comment on "Can Arts-Based Interventions Improve Health? A Conceptual and Methodological Critique" by Skov & Nadal.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

To punch down or to build up: Comment on “Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique “ by Skov & Nadal

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Edward Vessel

Dean Buonomano @deanbuono.bsky.social · Aug 1

It looks like all NSF/NIH grants to UCLA (including mine and all fundamental neuroscience grants) have been suspended.

www.science.org/content/arti...

NSF and NIH suspend grants to UCLA

Move follows Trump administration finding that school didn’t effectively combat antisemitism

www.science.org

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Edward Vessel @edwardvessel.bsky.social · Jul 25

I'm quoted in this article about a recent paper on "The Beholder's Share" in abstract art.
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/....

Art’s Influence on the Brain Better Understood: New Data

Viewing art is good for us, but new research may now tell us why — and that therapeutic uses may be better than previously thought.

www.medscape.com

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