Matthias Michel
@MatthiasMichel_
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Philosophy of science and cognitive science of consciousness. Assistant professor at MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Joined April 2017
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Can we use confidence ratings to assess conscious perception? I address this question in a new paper, forthcoming in WIREs Cognitive Science (). My answer is "Yes", but it’s not straightforward! A thread.
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Very happy to announce that I will soon join the MIT linguistics and philosophy department as an assistant professor!
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A debate on scientific realism vs. anti-realism on Fox News.
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I am proud to announce that our opinion paper on the current state of consciousness science is out in Nature Human Behaviour! We (56 co-authors!) discuss the challenges faced by the field, and the opportunities for the future of consciousness science.
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Very happy to receive the "Young researcher in Philosophy of science" 2020 prize of the
@SPSphiloscience
for my article "Consciousness Science Underdetermined" (Open access: ).
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I succesfully defended my thesis yesterday, so I’m a doctor now (not a real doctor, but still). Heading to NY in a few days. Thanks to all of you for your support throughout these years.
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New paper by Edouard Machery reviewing replication failures in Embodied Cognition research: "these failures suggest treating the empirical literature with caution." .
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Two of my historical articles were published today! The first is about the early consciousness science, in the 19th century: . The other one, with
@theamygdaloid
/
@hakwanlau
, is about the study of consciousness in the 20th century:
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New paper: we're getting close to showing unconscious perception with a non-biased (2IFC) visibility task, using both metacontrast masking and super fast presentations (980 micro(!!)-seconds) using a modern-day tachistoscope (showed here). Preprint here:
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New paper in Nature Reviews Psychology! Some of the ideas in there are still somewhat speculative for now, but it was great to work with
@hakwanlau
@theamygdaloid
and
@smfleming
on developing them.
'The mnemonic basis of subjective experience', a Perspective by Hakwan Lau, Matthias Michel, Joseph E. LeDoux & Stephen M. Fleming
@hakwanlau
@theamygdaloid
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My article "Consciousness Science Underdetermined: A short history of endless debates", is forthcoming in Ergo! I argue that the same debates keep coming back (and explain why) with an analysis of the history of consciousness science. Pre-print here:
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It was fantastic to collaborate with
@Vincent_T_D
,
@theamygdaloid
,
@hakwanlau
and Stefan Hofmann on this paper: . Available in open access. Here's a short thread. 🧵
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I'm running my first lab experiment. May Nature and the Gods of psychophysics rule in my favor.
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Very happy to be part of this: . Thanks
@rgblong
and
@patrickbutlin
for leading this project. Great way to think more about implementation details for the perceptual reality monitoring theory.
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"Is a science of consciousness possible?" Yes! My interview with
@keithfrankish
&
@Philip_Goff
. .
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Spontaneous eye movements reflect the representational geometries of conceptual spaces
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Joseph LeDoux has a new paper on consciousness! He presents his higher-order view, as well as some of the evidence that supports it, from his early studies with split-brain patients, to the study of emotions. Here: .
@theamygdaloid
@hakwanlau
@onemorebrown
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New paper coming out in
@TheBJPS
: "Validity drifts in psychiatric research". The paper is about measurement validity. I develop the notion of 'validity drift' and apply it to psychiatric research on depression, and fear and anxiety disorders.
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(1/9) Consciousness feels rich in the periphery and outside the focus of attention. Multiple experiments indicate that we might be wrong about that. So what’s going on? We hypothesize that ”subjective inflation” could be involved: .
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Hi all, I'm starting a blog called "Yet another blog on consciousness": . My first blog post is about Jake Quilty-Dunn's article "Is Iconic Memory Iconic?": . I hope you'll like it!
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Good to finally have a printed version of my dissertation! Thanks to all of you for your support throughout these years.
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What's coming next for me: starting in September, a post-doc at NYU, with Ned Block (
@De_dicto
) and David Chalmers! Then, starting in January 2020, a post-doc with
@axelcleeremans
in Bruxelles! I'm very excited!
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Applications are open for the first summer school on Consciousness and Metacognition! 28-30 June 2021. With
@StanDehaene
,
@meganakpeters
, Pascal Mamassian, Lucia Melloni,
@marion_rouault
,
@PatrickHaggard
, Claudia Lunghi, and
@smfleming
!
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(1/2) I have a new paper related to the problem of objectively determining what people consciously experience. It's here: . Published in a book coming out soon on 'Conscious and Unconscious Mentality'. The book looks really great!
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(1/4) New paper forthcoming in Mind & Language! "How (not) to underestimate unconscious perception". Here: . I hold that unconscious perception (if it exists) could be routinely underestimated in consciousness research.
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I wrote a short introduction to the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness. Now available here: .
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I just published a review on the role of the prefrontal cortex for conscious perception in Journal of Consciousness Studies, as part of a debate with Rafi Malach (
@MalachLab
). You can read my review here: .
Matthias Michel, Conscious Perception and the Prefrontal Cortex A Review - PhilPapers
philpapers.org
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I was on that plane coming back from ESPP in Prague. I’m OK. Just a bit scary.
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This issue on "Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access" is awesome. It contains many good examples of the progress that has been made in consciousness science, both conceptually and empirically:
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I (finally) have a new blogpost: "If IIT is true, then IIT is false (The Unfolded-Tononi Paradox)". You can read it here: . I wrote this after reading Herzog et al.'s recent article responding to criticisms about the unfolding argument (
@AdrienDoerig
).
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(1/4) My article "How (not) to underestimate unconscious perception" is now published in Mind & Language. Here: . I think our current methods for assessing consciousness might often lead us to *underestimate* unconscious perception (if it exists).
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A group of scientists, except they're all Hasok Chang.
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Prior information differentially affects discrimination decisions and subjective confidence reports
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You can get a good model of visual working memory with *just* signal detection theory and psychophysical similarity scaling. Very impressed by how simple this is. Seems to explain working memory errors very well, and gives a good account of confidence too.
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My talk followed by
@PatrickHaggard
's talk this morning at the First Annual Summer School on Consciousness & Metacognition: . I talk about the (pre-)history of consciousness research. More about the summer school here: .
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Debate coming up:"Is Memory Continuous with Imagination?", organized by NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. With
@RosenbaumLab
,
@felipedebrigard
,
@SarahKRobins
, and Rob Hopkins. May 9th, 5:00-7:00pm (EDT). You can sign up here: .
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My commentary on Bridewell & Isaac's paper on computational modeling in consciousness research: . You can find all the posts here: . Thanks to the Brains Blog!
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My paper "The Mismeasure of Consciousness", presented a few days ago at PSA2018, will be published in Philosophy of Science! If you're interested, you can find a preprint version here:
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This is an excellent paper. Very nice explanation of different models of visual perception, and their implications for theories of consciousness. By
@rndenison
,
@De_dicto
and Jason Samaha.
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"Measurement is an estimation of mind-independent properties!" vs. "Measurement is just a set of operations that regulate the use of quantity-terms!"
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Because of visa issues, my appointment as a Bersoff Faculty Fellow at NYU will most likely be postponed until Spring semester 2021. This puts me in a messy situation. So, I'm searching for a small post-doc in the meantime for the fall semester 2020 (in Europe). Any ideas?
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Our article, "Minority Reports: Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex", w/
@jorgemlg
, is now published in Mind & Language! Available here: . The Brains Blog (
@philofbrains
) will also organize a symposium on this article in December. Can't wait!
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Our response to
@ibphillips
' view on blindsight is now out in Psychological Review (w/
@hakwanlau
)! Let's keep the debate going: I'm also currently working on a longer response to defend the orthodox view: blindsight is unconscious vision.
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Arrived at the Center for Mind, Brain & Consciousness office today and discovered I now have unlimited access to sparkling water.
@nyuconscious
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This might be my favorite split brain story from
@theamygdaloid
. The patient reports different aspirations from the left vs. right hemispheres.
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Our new paper (w/
@jorgemlg
) on consciousness, reports, and prefrontal cortex, is accepted in Mind & Language! We defend PFC theories of consciousness against the view that PFC activity relates to the requirement for reports, and not consciousness. Here:
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Happy to be one of the "(now marginally less) unsung heroes of the profession" according to BJPS! I think it's a funny award and more journals should have that.
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Our study shows some evidence of blindsight in healthy subjects using a non-biased task. As a bonus,
@PietroAmerio
did a fantastic job developing models of visibility! I got to play with the tachistoscope (sub-millisecond presentation speeds).
An important observation by
@MatthiasMichel_
about data from
@meganakpeters
and
@hakwanlau
got picked up by
@goerttler
after MM left my lab. After
@goerttler
also left, it is Pietro Amerio who heroically put it all together! Brussels t-scope ™ inside 😃
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New article forthcoming in Synthese, with
@meganakpeters
: "Confirmation bias without rhyme or reason". Why do we have a confirmation bias? As we're making progress on this question, it looks like it probably doesn't have much to do with reasoning...
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With actual greebles from
@axelcleeremans
' lab.
in the late 90s, psychology researchers trained people to identify these things called "greebles" to see if the brain's facial recognition systems would work on things that weren't faces (they did). and I'm obsessed with these creepy little greeble guys
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I'm really glad to start working as a postdoctoral researcher on the Foundation of Animal Sentience Project (ASENT) for the next four months. Thanks
@birchlse
!
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I'm glad to see this special issue on the Neural Correlates of Consciousness now published. See here for the whole thing: . In particular, I can't wait to read
@mazormatan
&
@smfleming
's paper on awareness of absence!
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Leaving Amsterdam after a fantastic
@assc25
meeting. We'll work hard to make ASSC26 in NYC just as great! For now, I'm taking the plane to Milan to attend the
@E_SPPMilan2022
meeting.
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"The idea of the “Bayesian brain” has gained popularity perhaps not despite but because of the fact that it has never been clearly defined. This ambiguity shields it from criticism but it also robs it from any chance of contributing to scientific progress"
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Temporal multiplexing of perception and memory codes in IT cortex
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My review of Peter Carruthers' book "Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest" now published in Philosophical Review.
Available here:
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Once again: just because differences in X seem to correlate with differences in consciousness doesn't mean it's the universal basis of consciousness, and it doesn't mean that everything that has X is conscious.
#NotMyQualia
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Last day in the Consciousness, Cognition & Computation group. Here with the tachistocope, allowing us to present visual stimuli at the micro-second level, down to just 10 micro-seconds. Thanks so much
@axelcleeremans
for this opportunity! I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot.
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I just finished writing my paper on the history of the scientific study of consciousness. I'll probably put it on Phil-Sci archive soon. However, the article is 14.000 words. Any idea where I could submit the paper?
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This is meta-meta-metacognition.
Confidence at the limits of human nested cognition
by
@SamuelRecht
, Ljubica Jovanovic, Pascal Mamassian, &
@BalsdonTarryn
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Exciting news! We're organizing the ASSC26 meeting at NYU, June 22-25, with a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers. You can now submit a symposium or tutorial proposal (until October 15) to be part of this!
The next meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness will be held at New York University on June 22-25, 2023. Keynote speakers: Yoshua Bengio, Joseph LeDoux, May-Britt Moser, Thomas Nagel, Doris Tsao. Details:
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My paper "Calibration in Consciousness Science" is now in Erkenntnis. Here: . This is a response to skeptical claims about 'measurement' in consciousness science (e.g. Liz Irvine). I argue that there's nothing wrong with calibration in consciousness science
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(1/4) New paper forthcoming in Mind & Language, with
@AdrienDoerig
: "A new empirical challenge for local theories of consciousness". Available here: .
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New paper by Anna Giustina and Uriah Kriegel giving a new argument for the principle that a conscious state is a state one is aware of ()
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Our Salon/Discussion on the role of prefrontal cortex for consciousness was just accepted at
@24Assc
! With
@meganakpeters
,
@MmeJeanserre
,
@BrianOdegaard2
,
@omriraccah
,
@Liad_Mudrik
, and Michael Pitts. We'll discuss how we can move the debate forward!
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A dilemma for integrated information theory: it is either falsified, or unfalsifiable.
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For all those who enjoyed
@assc25
, you can now follow
@ASSC26nyc
to be up to date with more information about the next meeting!
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He's using the same hand gesture as Hasok Chang, the author of "*Inventing* Temperature". *INVENTING* = Making stuff up. Is this some kind of code? Is this all part of a secret coherentist plot? Can't be just a coincidence.
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A review of the evidence for the distinction between "active" working memory, implemented through persistent spiking activity, and "silent" working memory, which maintains information via short-term synaptic plasticity.
Reevaluating the Role of Persistent Neural Activity in Short-Term Memory,
by Nicolas Masse, Matthew Rosen, & David Freedman
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Creating something out of nothing: Symbolic and non-symbolic representations of numerical zero in the human brain
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Our latest paper, with
@hakwanlau
, on the neural correlates of consciousness and the integrated information theory, is available here: . See you at
#ASSC23
!
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This might be the strongest illusory motion I've experienced.
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My paper "The Mismeasure of Consciousness: A Problem of Coordination for the Perceptual Awareness Scale" is now available in Philosophy of Science. (See this thread for a quick summary of the paper)
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If you're interested in consciousness and cognitive science of consciousness, I highly recommand these conversations between
@onemorebrown
and some of the very best researchers in the field.
Been having lot's of fun with this series and some awesome guests including
@hakwanlau
,
@Dick_retired
,
@Philip_Goff
,
@jorgemlg
, Carlos Montemayor, and Jumana yahya, and more to come! Should I even bother with the solo recordings? Not sure, both are fun!
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New blogpost about a recent paper by
@HesseJanis
&
@doristsao
: "Inferotemporal cells represent both conscious and unconscious percepts in binocular rivalry". Here: . You can find their paper here: .
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@FerryDanini
A dude breaking ethical rules and then complaining about these ethical rules - and also mathematics - quoting Foucault?
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I'm leaving New York tonight. I had a wondeful time at NYU! Thanks
@De_dicto
for this opportunity. And now I'm very excited to start a postdoc at ULB with
@axelcleeremans
!
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More on "no-cognition" paradigms in the scientific study of consciousness, following Ned Block's critique of "no-report" paradigms. Here's a comment by
@ibphillips
&
@jorgemlg
(). And
@De_dicto
's answer ().
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"Consciousness and Self-awareness—an Alternative Perspective". Essentially global workspace + higher-order theory by van Gulick.
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Making progress on my article on the early history of consciousness science. I believe it's the first time I'm satisfied with something I write. But now the article is 14.000 words...
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Lesions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex affect conscious perception of near-threshold stimuli:
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I'm preparing a talk for a tutorial on the history of consciousness science at the
@theASSC
, and I just discovered a striking resemblance between Thomas Laycock, an early neurophysiologist, and Hank McCoy, in the first X-Men movies.
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This is an amazing study: political radicalism correlates with a failure to revise beliefs in a perceptual discrimination task.
People holding radical political beliefs show a domain-general deficit in recognizing and revising own mistakes. Our new paper in
@CurrentBiology
with Dolan &
@smfleming
.
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Brogaard et al. argue that information integration is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness. Here: .
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Great piece on IIT by
@birchlse
. I especially agree with the claim that it could 'threaten to unravel' the progress made in trying to improve the reputation of consciousness research within mainstream cognitive (neuro)science.
Pt I of "Consciousness and the Overton window of science" traced how consciousness science has gradually entered the mainstream, due in part to the rise of computational theories. Now it's time for IIT:
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I'll be on my favorite podcast, Consciousness Live! in 30 minutes:
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Important result. "causal evidence of a double dissociation of ... networks orchestrating perceptual decision-making... V5/MT+-to-V1/V2, accounting for visual motion discrimination sensitivity, and IPS/LIP-to-V1/V2, accounting for accurate confidence."
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Nice interview with Bernard Baars, on how he started studying consciousness and developed the global workspace theory in 1982.
In this interview with the great
@BernardJBaars
, we discuss his latest thoughts on the scientific study of consciousness:
@sciam
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Good news: The Brains Blog (
@philofbrains
) will organize a symposium on our article "Minority Reports: Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex" (/w
@jorgemlg
); December 2-6. You can find the article here: . More on the brains blog:
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In about a week,
@MmeJeanserre
,
@omriraccah
,
@Liad_Mudrik
,
@BrianOdegaard2
and Michael Pitts will have a debate on the role of the PFC for consciousness (and how to move the debate forward). Register to our ASSC24 Salon here: .
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This is great. A new kind of dissociation between performance and subjective experiences. Not blindsight, but blindsense?
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Just a few days to submit an abstract for ASSC26 in New York! Deadline: February 15th. You can submit your abstract here: . To learn more about ASSC26, see:
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Announcement: Two-day conference "Measurement in the Science of Consciousness"; June 22-23, in Paris. Speakers: Axel Cleeremans, Liz Irvine, Hakwan Lau, Pascal Ludwig, Jérôme Sackur, Claire Sergent and Eran Tal. Program coming soon here:
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@meganakpeters
Does unconscious perception really exist? That's a true interdisciplinary debate, and so far I think it's been fruitful. Among many others:
@ibphillips
,
@De_dicto
,
@hakwanlau
,
@BalsdonTarryn
,
@realTimoStein
,
@jjfahrenfort
,
@VictorLamme
, and
@meganakpeters
of course.
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New blogpost on "The unconscious lag between reality and conscious perception". The results by Herzog, Drissi-Daoudi &
@AdrienDoerig
, summarized in their new TiCS paper, are absolutely fascinating. I hope you find them fascinating too. Here: .
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It was a pleasure to edit this issue with
@birchlse
,
@zoophilosophy
, and Andrew Crump! Very happy with the result (especially the common article "How Should We Study Animal Consciousness Scientifically?", which I think provides a lot of great insights).
My team has edited a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on "Animal Consciousness", and it's out today. Here is a thread introducing it. (1/13)
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New paper forthcoming in Erkenntnis: "Calibration in Consciousness Science". Available here: . I argue that there's nothing wrong with the calibration 'subjective measures' in consciousness science.
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