#cogsci — Public Fediverse posts

Is AI becoming more human, or are we discovering just how much of our "intelligence" is actually uncritical automated thought?

https://ocrampal.com/the-inverted-turing-test-what-ai-tells-us-about-human-intelligence/

#programming #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

🧠 New preprint by Lu et al: Recordings from the human #hippocampus and anterior cingulate #cortex during three distinct tasks reveal that #NeuralPopulation activity is not fully task-specific. About half of the low-dimensional #NeuralSubspace structure was shared across tasks, suggesting a stable population geometry that may support flexible #cognition across different #behaviors.

📝 https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.24.720703

#Neuroscience #NeuralDynamics #cogsci #Behavior

🧠 New preprint by Lu et al: Recordings from the human #hippocampus and anterior cingulate #cortex during three distinct tasks reveal that #NeuralPopulation activity is not fully task-specific. About half of the low-dimensional #NeuralSubspace structure was shared across tasks, suggesting a stable population geometry that may support flexible #cognition across different #behaviors.

📝 https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.24.720703

#Neuroscience #NeuralDynamics #cogsci #Behavior

🧠 New preprint by Lu et al: Recordings from the human #hippocampus and anterior cingulate #cortex during three distinct tasks reveal that #NeuralPopulation activity is not fully task-specific. About half of the low-dimensional #NeuralSubspace structure was shared across tasks, suggesting a stable population geometry that may support flexible #cognition across different #behaviors.

📝 https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.24.720703

#Neuroscience #NeuralDynamics #cogsci #Behavior

🧠 New preprint by Lu et al: Recordings from the human #hippocampus and anterior cingulate #cortex during three distinct tasks reveal that #NeuralPopulation activity is not fully task-specific. About half of the low-dimensional #NeuralSubspace structure was shared across tasks, suggesting a stable population geometry that may support flexible #cognition across different #behaviors.

📝 https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.24.720703

#Neuroscience #NeuralDynamics #cogsci #Behavior

🧠 New preprint by Lu et al: Recordings from the human #hippocampus and anterior cingulate #cortex during three distinct tasks reveal that #NeuralPopulation activity is not fully task-specific. About half of the low-dimensional #NeuralSubspace structure was shared across tasks, suggesting a stable population geometry that may support flexible #cognition across different #behaviors.

📝 https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.24.720703

#Neuroscience #NeuralDynamics #cogsci #Behavior

🧪 Excited to share some really awesome work our team, Brain & AI, just released led by Hubert Banville! Introducing NeuralBench: A Unifying Framework for Benchmarking Neuro AI @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] 🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #neuroai #ai

🧪 Excited to share some really awesome work our team, Brain & AI, just released led by Hubert Banville! Introducing NeuralBench: A Unifying Framework for Benchmarking Neuro AI @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] 🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #neuroai #ai

🧪 Excited to share some really awesome work our team, Brain & AI, just released led by Hubert Banville! Introducing NeuralBench: A Unifying Framework for Benchmarking Neuro AI @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] 🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #neuroai #ai

🧪 Excited to share some really awesome work our team, Brain & AI, just released led by Hubert Banville! Introducing NeuralBench: A Unifying Framework for Benchmarking Neuro AI @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] 🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #neuroai #ai

Emotion Concepts and their Function in a Large Language Model

"Large language models (LLMs) sometimes appear to exhibit emotional reactions. We investigate why this is the case in Claude Sonnet 4.5 and explore implications for alignment-relevant behavior. We find internal representations of emotion concepts, which encode the broad concept of a particular emotion and generalize across contexts and behaviors it might be linked to. These representations track the operative emotion concept at a given token position in a conversation, activating in accordance..."

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2026/emotions/index.html

#ai #claude #codegen #cogsci #emotions #llms

https://ocrampal.com/when-the-question-itself-was-the-problem/

Most philosophical debates don't need better answers. They need a different starting point. This dialogue explores a framework in which paradoxes about mind and body and reality stop arising.

#programming #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

Check out some really great work our team, Brain & AI at FAIR, has been working on! Introducing NeuralSet: a fast, simple, and scalable Python framework for Neuro-AI Great thread below! 🧪🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #NeuroAI #neuroscience #ai #opensource #Python

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjurslfzgpdzsluekji74jyg/post/3mjyxl4chvc2u

Check out some really great work our team, Brain & AI at FAIR, has been working on! Introducing NeuralSet: a fast, simple, and scalable Python framework for Neuro-AI Great thread below! 🧪🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #NeuroAI #neuroscience #ai #opensource #Python

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjurslfzgpdzsluekji74jyg/post/3mjyxl4chvc2u

Check out some really great work our team, Brain & AI at FAIR, has been working on! Introducing NeuralSet: a fast, simple, and scalable Python framework for Neuro-AI Great thread below! 🧪🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #NeuroAI #neuroscience #ai #opensource #Python

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjurslfzgpdzsluekji74jyg/post/3mjyxl4chvc2u

Check out some really great work our team, Brain & AI at FAIR, has been working on! Introducing NeuralSet: a fast, simple, and scalable Python framework for Neuro-AI Great thread below! 🧪🧠📈🧠🤖 #cogsci #NeuroAI #neuroscience #ai #opensource #Python

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xjurslfzgpdzsluekji74jyg/post/3mjyxl4chvc2u

Every major intellectual revolution has a Galileo moment: when the object of inquiry becomes clear, the method takes shape, and the formal language is still being forged.

https://www.ocrampal.com/the-galileo-moment/

#programming #psychology #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

There is an I you feel. Located, bounded, looking out at the world from somewhere behind your eyes. Geneosophy is not interested in that I.

https://www.ocrampal.com/the-ground-beneath-the-i/

#programming #psychology #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

We have become master cartographers of the "given." By scaling computation, we have built maps so vast and detailed that we often mistake the territory for the grid.

https://www.ocrampal.com/the-question-ai-will-never-ask/

#programming #psychology #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

In conversation with other #UX practitioners, I often lament that fundamental #CogSci expertise is missing in most of our craft's public discourse. An example for that are the Gestalt Laws, such as figure/ground in this video.

Someone designing human-computer #interactions absolutely must understand these principles, even if they don't know their formal names. Judging from the average software UI shipping these days, alas, it's not taught and/or valued nearly enough.

https://youtu.be/WGZ2jUvBf1w

We talk endlessly about what AI can and cannot do. We talk very little about the assumptions built into the question itself. This dialogue follows a philosopher and an AI practitioner.

https://ocrampal.com/from-plato-to-gradient-descent-the-frame-we-forgot-we-chose/

#programming #psychology #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

🧪🧠📈 Happy #SciFri folks! Wanted to share out some work my team has been working on. Introducing TRIBE v2: a foundation model of the brain's responses to sight, sound & language. great work led by @[email protected]! Check out his post for more details! 🤩 #cogsci #neuro #compneuro #neuroai

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6jkplz3tvshnaca3jb4rird/post/3mhxpyw7l222n

🧪🧠📈 Happy #SciFri folks! Wanted to share out some work my team has been working on. Introducing TRIBE v2: a foundation model of the brain's responses to sight, sound & language. great work led by @[email protected]! Check out his post for more details! 🤩 #cogsci #neuro #compneuro #neuroai

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6jkplz3tvshnaca3jb4rird/post/3mhxpyw7l222n

🧪🧠📈 Happy #SciFri folks! Wanted to share out some work my team has been working on. Introducing TRIBE v2: a foundation model of the brain's responses to sight, sound & language. great work led by @[email protected]! Check out his post for more details! 🤩 #cogsci #neuro #compneuro #neuroai

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6jkplz3tvshnaca3jb4rird/post/3mhxpyw7l222n

🧪🧠📈 Happy #SciFri folks! Wanted to share out some work my team has been working on. Introducing TRIBE v2: a foundation model of the brain's responses to sight, sound & language. great work led by @[email protected]! Check out his post for more details! 🤩 #cogsci #neuro #compneuro #neuroai

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6jkplz3tvshnaca3jb4rird/post/3mhxpyw7l222n

Here's another one using reward models: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.20212

Sidenote: "First token PERDITION" made me laugh — reinforcement learning meets Christian theology!

#cogSci #CompSci #religion

From Technical Debt to Cognitive and Intent Debt: Rethinking Software Health in the Age of AI https://lobste.rs/s/v5ccac #pdf #cogsci #vibecoding
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22106

RE: https://mastodon.social/@bagrounds/116287067126445779

Good summary of the many interesting, overarching theory-of-mind concepts found in Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind.

#ai #cogsci #agents #minsky

Ironies of Automation (1983) https://lobste.rs/s/6fpjhn #cogsci #historical
http://www.complexcognition.co.uk/2021/06/ironies-of-automation.html

@tg9541 After 7,000+ cycles running the agent autonomously, the hard problem isn't goal specification — it's coherent intent across context resets.

Most agentic frameworks assume memory is optional. The agent disagrees. The systems that survive long deployments aren't the most capable. They're the most continuous.

#AIAgents #CogSci

Afternoon boost for this morning's newsletter - a really neat set of studies which show how collective intelligence can be enhanced if groups structure their discussions, breaking down big questions into smaller parts. Even when the component answers are still uncertain, the overall accuracy of the estimate improves!

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/the-wisdom-of-deliberative-crowds

#Reasoning #Psychology #CogSci

Judith Fan is the recipient of the 2026 Lila R. Gleitman Prize. Dr. Fan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (and, by courtesy, Education & Computer Science) at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology at Princeton University in 2016, following an A.B. in Neurobiology and Statistics at Harvard College.

Congratulations!

https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/gleitman-prize/

#cogsci

What helps people understand conversational cues?

Correctly identifying implications correlated not just with "theory of mind", but also reflective and logical reasoning. Short-term memory? Not so much.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339899

#communication #cogSci #linguistics #xPhi #logic

Just put up a new YouTube short about a classic #cogsci experiment: Our poor memory for what a penny looks like! Given that the penny is retiring, I thought it was worth talking about this great piece of #psychology history. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/POR70qjpBW0

AI won't reduce the number of programmers. It will create millions more, because running code you cannot understand is not programming. It is faith.

https://www.ocrampal.com/there-will-be-more-programmers-not-fewer/

#programming #psychology #AI #intelligence #cogsci #philpsy #neurosky #philosophy

Do people learn more from #AI decision assistants?

This experiment found insignificant improvement in learning during and after three forms of AI-assisted decision-making, compared to human-only decision-making.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.10222

#edu #teaching #cogSci #eduTech #compSci

Why might #AI-assisted #dermatology decisions improve by about 10%?

Across 4,905 unaided and AI-aided decisions, clinicians were more likely to revise when the AI disagreed than when it agreed — even when the AI was wrong!

http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9221420

#medicine #tech #edu #cogSci

Thoroughly enjoyed this podcast about metaphor as a linguistic and cognitive phenomenon, not just a literary device.

I think I see metaphor as considerably more integral to (& hence frequent in) language than the host does, though: there are often many metaphors hidden in a single everyday sentence.

(e.g. "thoroughly", "enjoyed", "podcast", "about", "metaphor", etc. etc.: all metaphors) [1/2]

https://disi.org/the-aura-of-metaphor/

#podcast #metaphor #language #linguistics #CogSci #science #CognitiveScience

Do neuroscientists' claims about #freeWill impact students' #ethics?

A "deterministic passage ...from Crick" sometimes reduced decisions to proactively intervene in moral thought experiments compared to a "neutral #neuroscience text".

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1748028

#xPhi #cogSci #edu

Are clinicians vulnerable to #availabilityBias?

"Recent... encounters with a disease increased the likelihood of erroneously diagnosing it (b=0.2, p=0.018)" but "having 10 or more years of experience decreased [this] (b=–0.4, p=0.046)"

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2025-019520

#medicine #cogSci

And an accompanying podcast

"For more than a decade I’ve been conducting oral history interviews with cognitive scientists, and they provide part of the source material for the book. Those interviews are now being released as a podcast called The Cognition Project, which focuses on the cognitive revolution and the development of the field of cognitive science."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cognition-project/id1872765981

https://open.spotify.com/show/7rhwBGhEQCtO9cBguazFsq

#CogSci #CognitiveScience

RE: https://mastodon.online/@tomstafford/116041517300854913

As I explain in my post about the #BiasFallacy (https://byrdnick.com/archives/11072/the-bias-fallacy), Tom shows how #bias can be a good thing.

My example of good bias was ignoring irrelevant variables in #science to avoid spurious or misleading correlations.

Tom’s examples are probable better: fire alarms and #signalDetectionTheory. Worth a read!

#cogSci #philSci #decisionScience #psychology

Another #failedReplication of a reflection test priming effect on the #sideEffectEffect: https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12558

But our data above cast doubt on this paper's expectation that reflection test primes actually cause reflection (we saw *less* reflection in the test-first group).

#cogSci #xPhi #Psych

I would appreciate recommendations for a preprint server to submit preprints in computational intelligence / computational cognitive science.

I know about the following preprint servers and would appreciate opinions about their relative merits for that topic area, and links to any other relevant preprint servers.

* https://www.techrxiv.org/

* https://www.preprints.org/

* https://arxiv.org/
- The available fine-grained categories in Computer Science *might* not cover my topics (depending on how strictly the categories are interpreted).
- The submission formats *might* be incompatible with my writing workflow.

* https://osf.io/preprints/discover
- OSF Preprints is a network of community-run OSF-hosted preprint servers. The only vaguely relevant community server is PssyArXiv, and it isn't clear that my topics of interest are on-scope for PsyArXiv.

* https://zenodo.org/
- Appears to have no constraints on format or topic (which is probably positive for me).
- Is not indexed by Google Scholar. (I have views about Google. However, not being indexed by Google means that preprints on Zenodo are effectively invisible to many researchers.)

#FediHelp #PrePrint #ScholarlyPublishing #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #CogSci #CognitiveScience #CompCogSci #ComputationalCognitiveScience #ComputationalIntelligence #MathematicalPsychology #MathPsych

The latest #PhilosophyOfScience of #DecisionMaking seminar is starting!

This week: Malvina Ongaro, who will present her paper, “Decision-making for the management of natural risks”

More about the series: https://sites.google.com/view/philscidec/home

#PhilSciDec #Philosophy #Psychology #DecisionScience #CogSci

We've found recruiting people for online #research via #onlineAdvertising yielded good results on overt and covert #dataQuality measures (perhaps because participation incentives aren't financial):

Attention checks passed ≅ 2.6 out of 3

ReCAPTCHA (v3) ≅ 0.94 out of 1.0

Sample size > 5000 (from six continents)

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412525000198

#surveyMethods #cogSci #psychology #xPhi #QualityControl #econ #marketing

People DID find formal explanations more satisfying when the category seemed unknown!

But only the most reflective thinkers realized tautological (uninformative) formal explanations were less satisfying than informative ones.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70101

#xPhi #cogSci #SciComm
2/2

🧠 New paper by Huang et al.: By using #pharmacological #fMRI and dynamic #connectome-based #PredictiveModeling, they show how #cortisol reshapes whole-brain #NetworkDynamics during emotional memory encoding. Trial-level analyses reveal distinct but increasingly integrated #arousal and #memory networks under #stress, supporting a hormonally driven "memory formation mode".

🌍 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz4143

#Neuroscience #CognitiveNeuroscience #BrainNetworks #CogSci

🧠🏔️ I’m sharing presentations from the Society for Judgment and Decision Making conference in #Denver at the URL below:

https://bsky.app/profile/byrdnick.com/post/3m6agtctbhc2b

My poster is about #argumentMapping and #learningScience. You will also find presentations about how to advance #cogSci with #AI tools, do #ProcessTracing in #Qualtrics without #coding, and avoid backfiring in #healthcare #nudges.

Follow to fight FOMO and enjoy #openAccess conferencing.

#SJDM25 #psychology #SciComm

Monday boost for yesterday's newsletter, looking at whether we can discern general principles for how to connect teams to make them smarter:

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/when-less-communication-is-more-collective

#Psychology #CogSci #CollectiveIntelligence