⚠️New preprint out⚠️
Discrete episodes of conscious access revealed by the psychological refractory period
Together with @michaengesee.bsky.social , @standehaene.bsky.social and Lucia Melloni (@predictivebrainlab.bsky.social)
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
#Consciousness #CognitiveNeuroscience
Is it possible to fail visual metacog only in one sensory modality?
I only know it’s possible to lose subjective experience in one sensory modality.
If the answer to the former question is no, we already have a dissociation between metacog and C, or?
Super cool work Rony! Interesting results and very aesthetically pleasing figures:)
What did we find? Enough to build a website so people can explore the data! (ronyhirsch.github.io/minds-matter) To our question: despite a clear relationship between the two, consciousness doesn't seem to be perceived as necessary for moral status. And it doesn't appear to be sufficient either. 5/n
New preprint! with @niccolonegro.bsky.social and @liadmudrik.bsky.social
doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ve6c5_v1
Consciousness seems central to moral status debates, from AI to animal welfare.
But is consciousness necessary for moral status? Is it sufficient?
We surveyed >1000 people to find out. 🧵 1/n
New preprint: Confidence-accuracy dissociations in perceptual decision making. A review I was supposed to write 3 years ago for my VSS Young Investigator Award. Better late than never 😅 I tried to organize the literature and explore the likely mechanisms. Feedback welcome!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I wonder how many classic psychological phenomena mentioned in intro psych textbooks are still standing?
We're very happy to announce another consciousness workshop in the famed snowy mountain cabin of the Austrian Alps! ❄️🦇
This year's theme is computational neurophenomenology (broadly defined)
Applications are now open!
www.uni-bamberg.de/en/bamxi/res...
Our paper “Towards a neuroethological approach to consciousness” is out in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B.
Together with @talking-bat.bsky.social and Lucia Melloni, we suggest bringing Tinbergen’s framework into consciousness research.
👂🧠NCC in an auditory no-report fMRI study 🧠👂
now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social !
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Using inattentional deafness, we show that awareness of task-irrelevant sounds mainly activates stimulus-specific sensory brain areas.
A figure with 3 panels. Top: A plot of log-evidence for an experimental effect over peristimulus time, as inferred using vRSA. Bottom-left: a condition-by-condition matrix of regression parameters. Bottom-right: condition-by-condition matrix estimated by the vRSA model.
Do you like RSA analysis, M/EEG and Bayes? Then you'll love Variational RSA for M/EEG, by recently completed PhD student @alexlepauvre.bsky.social from Lucia Melloni's group. It's a method and SPM toolbox for multivariate analysis of M/EEG data. arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01784 . 🧵 [1/4]
This was a fabulous, once in a lifetime colloquium -- and now the videos are available in high quality on the College de France web site @college-de-france.fr
www.college-de-france.fr/fr/agenda/co...
With talks by Edvard Moser, Nancy Kanwisher, Liz Spelke, Manuela Piazza, Luca Bonatti and more!
Great work by @abitter.bsky.social @mariogollwitzer.bsky.social @kaisassenberg.bsky.social @t-1m.bsky.social et al. on FAIR data sharing in Psychology.
They also suggest 6 simple checks that can be implemented in the editorial process to improve data FAIRness.
Unconscious perception of ensembles, assessed with a bias-discouraging 2IFC task: osf.io/preprints/ps.... Great work by @patxelos.bsky.social, @dsotob.bsky.social et al.!
@earlkmiller.bsky.social @danieljamesyon.bsky.social @jdsitt.bsky.social @neddo.bsky.social @luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social @meganakpeters.bsky.social @hakwan.bsky.social @matthiasmichel.bsky.social @dobyrahnev.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social @axc.bsky.social
Comments welcomed:
@standehaene.bsky.social @annaeiserbeck.bsky.social @mesec-community.bsky.social @fahrenfort.bsky.social @johanneskleiner.bsky.social @predictivebrain.bsky.social @adriendoerig.bsky.social @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social @davidchalmers.bsky.social @svangaal.bsky.social
We argue that this might reflect recurrent interactions between the BU and TD networks, which lead to the behavioral interaction effects.
To summarize,
1 + 1 only equals 2 during unconscious processing.
If such behavioral interaction effects are indeed a good measure of recurrent interactions in the brain, these results imply the absence of feature binding during uncons. proc.: red color and apple shape of an apple are processed in respective networks without recurrent interactions inbetween.
Across four conditions of dual-variation tasks, when the prime is invisible, form and color incongruency yield additive effects on RT: (e.g., form incong effect = 24 ms, color incong effect = 22 ms, all incongruent effect = 44 ms). When prime visible, also underadditive (58 ms + 58 ms > 87 ms).
Surprisingly, one day after my paper was accepted. I came across this study: doi.org/10.1037/a001....
They embedded two features into prime and target under meta-contrast masking: Form and Color.
Therefore, prime and target can also be in 2*2= 4 congruency (cong) conditions.
We also argue that behavioral interaction of this kind could be a measure of recurrent interactions between different networks in the brain. If two representations emerge from two distinct networks that do not communicate, they should influence follow-up processing in an additive fashion.
This observation aligns with some postulates of Global Neuronal Workspace theory (GNW): the long-lasting simultaneous and reciprocal interaction between TD decision network and BU input network is preserved during conscious processing (T1 green) and disabled during unconscious processing (T3 red).
In contrast, when prime is partially visible, BU and TD congruency yield under-additive effect. (if only BU-incongruent effect is 30 ms and only TD-incongruent effect is 40 ms, both incongruent effect will be lower than their addition: 30 + 40 > 45 ms).
1 + 1 > 2 during conscious processing!
Across two Exp we found that when the prime is invisible, BU and TD congruency yield additive effect. (if only BU-incongruent effect is 20 ms and only TD-incongruent effect is 30 ms, both incongruent effect will be their addition: 20 + 30 =50 ms).
1 + 1 =2 during unconscious processing!
Here, I term the objective prime identity as a bottom-up (BU) representation of prime, whereas the subjective prime identity as a top-down (TD) representation of prime. The former is a BU input. The latter a TD guess. Both influence RT to target. This distinction yields 2*2=4 congruency conditions.
A few years ago, Sand and Nilsson rendered the prime invisible. They surprisingly found that participant's guess of the prime identity also influences RT. That means if they guess the prime is GREEN, but target is red, RT is also slower. doi.org/10.1177/0956...
Left is incongruent condition and right one is congruent. RT to the green target is slower than to the red target.
In the classic Stroop priming paradigm, if a color word (prime) is incongruent with the target color, response time (RT) to target is delayed compared to when they are congruent.
