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Popper on 'best theories'. As opposed to what people often think, Popper is clear theories often have 'ad hoc' assumptions introduced to 'fix' a theory when original predictions do not pan out. He just prefers ad hoc assumptions to be testable and as few as possible. If your preregistered analysis seems like a bad idea afterwards, you can ad hoc your analysis. It is better if you don't have to, and you should not do it to escape falsification. But it can be fine (and future tests will tell us).

Internal attention is the only retroactive mechanism for controlling precision in working memory
link.springer.com/article/10.3

#neuroscience

Internal attention is the only retroactive mechanism for controlling precision in working memory - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

Recent research has suggested that humans can assert control over the precision of working memory (WM) items. However, the mechanisms that enable this control are unclear. While some studies suggest that internal attention improves precision, it may not be the only factor, as previous work also demonstrated that WM storage is disentangled from attention. To test whether there is a precision control mechanism beyond internal attention, we contrasted internal attention and precision requirements within the same trial in three experiments. In every trial, participants memorized two items briefly. Before the test, a retro-cue indicated which item would be tested first, thus should be attended. Importantly, we encouraged participants to store the unattended item with higher precision by testing it using more similar lure colors at the probe display. Accuracy was analyzed on a small proportion of trials where the target-lure similarity, hence the task difficulty, was equal for attended and unattended items. Experiments 2 and 3 controlled for output interference by the first test and involuntary precision boost by the retro-cue, respectively. In all experiments, the unattended item had lower accuracy than the attended item, suggesting that individuals were not able to remember it more precisely than the attended item. Thus, we conclude that there is no precision control mechanism beyond internal attention, highlighting the close relationship between attentional and qualitative prioritization within WM. We discuss the important implications of these findings for our understanding of the fundamentals of WM and WM-driven behaviors.

link.springer.com

RT @pgmid
Mariam @mariam_s_aly discusses the many faces of the hippocampus, and how memory and attention and perception shape each other.

We also talk about the mental health challenges she faced during graduate school. I'm grateful she shared her story.
braininspired.co/podcast/156/

Intolerance of uncertainty 😱

🚨📰 Very excited to have been a part of the editorial team of the special issue on 'Neural and physiological markers of intolerance of uncertainty'.

📕 Summarizing editorial paper: psyarxiv.com/kpbn2/

📗📙 📘Individual submissions: sciencedirect.com/journal/inte

RT @TheeuwesL
Preprint alert! In a study spearheaded by @DirkvMoorselaar and @Changrun_huang we find that the distractor specific PD, which has become a popular tool to study (learned) distractor suppression, is modulated by task relevant regularities.
biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/

RT @mitpress@twitter.com

Like many others, we were moved by @StokesNeuro@twitter.com's tweet on Sunday. Beyond his contributions to the field, Dr. Stokes' legacy will endure through the lives he's touched along the way.

In his honor, his students and mentees have compiled 10 rules for creating a supportive lab.

🧵

🐦🔗: twitter.com/mitpress/status/16

How do we balance paying attention to the external world around us vs. our internal thoughts and memories?

The hippocampus shows differential coupling with the cholinergic basal forebrain and the dorsal attention network for externally cued vs. memory-guided attention.

So proud of grad student Craig Poskanzer for leading this project!

biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

Switching between external and internal attention in hippocampal networks

Everyday experience requires processing external signals from the world around us and internal information retrieved from memory. To do both, the brain must fluctuate between states that are optimized for external vs. internal attention. Here, we focus on the hippocampus as a region that may serve at the interface between these forms of attention, and ask how it switches between prioritizing sensory signals from the external world vs. internal signals related to memories and thoughts. Pharmacological, computational, and animal studies have identified input from the cholinergic basal forebrain as important for biasing the hippocampus towards processing external information, whereas complementary research has suggested the dorsal attention network (DAN) may aid in allocating attentional resources towards accessing internal information. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the basal forebrain and DAN drive the hippocampus towards external and internal attention, respectively. We used data from 29 human participants (17 female) who completed 2 attention tasks during fMRI. One task primarily required external attention ("explicitly instructed" task); the other required switching between external and internal attention ("memory-guided" task). We discovered that background connectivity between the basal forebrain and hippocampus was stronger during the explicitly instructed vs. memory-guided task. In contrast, DAN-hippocampus background connectivity was stronger during the memory-guided vs. explicitly instructed task. Finally, the strength of DAN-hippocampus connectivity correlated with performance on the memory-guided but not explicitly instructed task. Together, these results provide evidence that the hippocampus may switch between external and internal states by preferentially communicating with the basal forebrain and DAN. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

www.biorxiv.org

Further developments on the blog.
I’ve added links to lecture by Florian Naudet on zombie trials, and blog by Peter Wilmshurst.
Please also see comments, including important point by someone who works as research integrity officer and notes pressures they are under.
deevybee.blogspot.com/2022/12/
The bread is rising, folks.

A general audience summary of our recent article in the Neuroscience oc Consciousness with Samuel Recht, Ljubica Jovanovic, and Pascal Mamassian:
Can you know that you know what you know? link.medium.com/IMEKuvacQub

A toot-summary of our recent article!

We often use our confidence to gauge the reliability of our perception.

But what about the confidence... in our confidence?
Sometimes, we can be certain we are uncertain.

With Samuel Recht, Ljubica Jovanovic, and Pascal Mamassian, we had fun testing the limits of meta-metacognition in a classic visual task.

We found surprising accuracy of confidence up to the fourth order (confidence in confidence in confidence, or meta-meta-meta-cognition).

Reminder: the Department of Cognitive Studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris is inviting applications for a *fully-funded* extended 3-year Masters program in Cognitive Science, which offers interdisciplinary training in Linguistics, Philosophy, Cognitive Social Science, Psychology, Neuroscience, Modeling and Cognitive engineering (cognition.ens.fr/en).
Deadline for applications: December 7

More information on the website: cognition.ens.fr/en/teaching/i

@cognition @linguistics @psycholinguistics

Salience memories formed by value, novelty and aversiveness jointly shape object responses in the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia
nature.com/articles/s41467-022

#neuroscience

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