John Greenwood

Come join us in Dublin:

Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Neuroscience position available at UCD!

Let me know if you have any questions :)

full advert here: lnkd.in/dW_uFuab

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Re-visiting cognitive reserve: The importance of multiple brain measures
"‘cognitive reserve’ broadly refers to better-than-expected cognitive abilities in old age, presumed to reflect environmental/lifestyle factors earlier in life."
Nice review from Rik Henson:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Preach! Sad to say there are more training courses coming your way (no lockouts yet though that I’ve seen…)

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Why do children struggle to recognise objects in cluttered scenes more than adults? Our new paper looks at the development of visual acuity and crowding across childhood, and the way the visual system fine tunes our ability to see detail: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Millenials got the last childhood before social media, the last dating before the apps, and the last white collar careers before AI.

If you think the boomer resentment is bad, lots worse coming.

UKRI AI Research and Innovation Strategic Framework

Good👏to👏see👏UK👏research👏funding👏 keeping👏a👏critical👏and👏rigorous👏academic distance👏from👏AI👏hype👏and 👏AI-pilled👏government 👏policy
www.ukri.org/publications...

@francescafardo.bsky.social, Camilla E. Krænge & colleagues on evidence accumulation in temperature perception. Distinct roles for spatial summation and lateral inhibition. Really nice work, great collab: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ghislaine Maxwell's father made a fucktonne of money off academic publishing. He owned Pergamon Press, profiting off decades of dizzying growth and profit margins before selling to Elsevier for 100s of millions and falling off his yacht.

I think this should be way more common knowledge than it is.

Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.

Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Yes I could see that being the case! Steven did some work on schizophrenia a while back where they found reduced crowding, so it can happen: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

The Rise of Eyes Began With Just One

Vision Science makes the front page of NYT!!
featuring work from @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social with comments from Berkeley's own @karthikshekhar.bsky.social
#visionscience

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/s...

Thanks Tim!

Not that I’ve seen, interestingly. Jan Freyberg found the same levels of crowding for people with autism: jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx...

So doesn’t seem to be just any kind of atypical development that elevates crowding levels.

You mean it’s not scattered everywhere in the house?? You’re living the dream, friend

The development of visual acuity and crowding reveals the slow fine-tuning of foveal vision - Scientific Reports The adult visual system is characterised by high-resolution foveal vision and a peripheral field limited by crowding, the disruption to object recognition in clutter that gives a summary ‘gist’ over f...

Check it out here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The prolonged development of foveal crowding suggests a slow fine-tuning of central vision, with early processing prioritising “gist” over fine detail. This may also explain why elevated foveal crowding is so commonly observed in clinical disorders of vision, such as amblyopia and nystagmus.

We show that visual acuity reaches adult-like levels by ~5–6 years, but crowding (the disruptive influence of clutter) remains elevated until ~7–8 years. The "scaling" approach that we use also allows comparison to prior datasets - our meta-analysis across 14 studies shows the same trajectory.

Using child-friendly tests, optimised to measure crowding effects, we had children (3-13 years) and adults judge the orientation of a central "VacMan" (Visual Acuity Man, heyo) target with vs. without surrounding flanker "ghost" elements. We examine both acuity and crowding/interference effects.

Why do children struggle to recognise objects in cluttered scenes more than adults? Our new paper looks at the development of visual acuity and crowding across childhood, and the way the visual system fine tunes our ability to see detail: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Schematic representation of the sequence of tasks in the benchmark.

We compared the TRACKPixx3 eye-tracker against the EyeLink 1000 Plus. Across 8 tasks, accuracy was similar. One key difference: TPx3 aggressively smooths sample data, which may affect sub-fixation phenomena and fixation onsets. Check the paper for the full results.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

A diagram of the evolution of whales, from land dwelling mammals to the ocean giants we know today.

Whale evolution makes me uncomfortable

Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com!

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

We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks.

@zuckermanbrain.bsky.social
@flatironinstitute.org
@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social

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It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”

Ever wondered how the Dalmatian Dog effect works?

The human brain can quickly learn from a single experience and generalize it to related experiences — an impressive feat so far not matched by AI.

Our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com reveals how this works.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Grumpy from Disney's Snow White and the 7 dwarves.

Let's talk about "grumpy lab person". Many labs have them. With an eye to keeping science at its most rigorous, they cross the line into criticism that's too harsh. They are the ones who risk killing your scientific spirit. They are reviewer 2. /1

Narration: Hallucinations are complex phenomena occurring involuntarily to individuals with a mental disorder. They are often feared and unwanted. Narration: But what if they can be controlled? What if we could intentionally induce them in a secure way, so we can better understand them? Narration: In order for an experimentally induced hallucination to form, the mind must be presented with something specific that is visually very different from what it is accustomed to seeing. Narration: Sensory deprivation: The lack of stimuli (specifically visual). Participants engaging in this method of hallucination induction can be completely blindfolded or left in a pitch black environment. Either way, their mind must not be exposed to light. Narration: Ganzfeld: A uniformly colored, luminary visual field (e.g. a clear blue sky or a singular color on a screen). Exposure to ganzfeld can induce slight visual hallucinations. (Figure laying on the grass, facing a clear blue sky.) Narration: Sensory deprivation can be an unreliable method for the intention of experiencing induced hallucinations. Visuals aren’t always guaranteed, and it can take hours or even days for imagery to start showing up. (Figure sitting on the ground, blindfolded. Cobwebs are on the figure, signifying a long time has passed. A little spider is next to the figure.) Narration: Ganzfeld is also not very reliable. Though most individuals experience visuals, they are not very complex. Most experience colors and simple geometric patterns after a while. (Side view of a head, a cloud forming from their head that contains simple geometric shapes.) Narration: But is there a way to induce complex and vivid hallucinations almost immediately and comfortably? There sure is! (Two figures, shoulders up, next to each other. Exclamation marks next to one, and a question mark next to the other. They are both looking at the text bubble.)

Welcome to the world of Ganzflicker... in comic form!?

Comic by the fabulous daltonkaygreta@gmail.com, Instagram: @Mr.dog.art
A MassArt initiative led by @hudrewthis.bsky.social

Hallucinations are often feared and unwanted... But what if we could induce them, so we can better understand them?

Investigating individual-specific topographic organization has traditionally been a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. But what if we could map visual cortex organization in thousands of brains? Here we offer the community with a toolbox that can do just that! tinyurl.com/deepretinotopy

Brenda Milner showed the world that memory isn’t one thing — the hippocampus supports our life stories, while other circuits let us keep learning skills.
Her research on patient H.M. built the foundation of cognitive neuroscience.
#WomenInScience #MemoryResearch #NeuroHistory