Benjy Barnett
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benjyb.bsky.social
Benjy Barnett
@benjyb.bsky.social
Post doc in the Uncertainty Lab at Birkbeck University. Consciousness + everything that might mean.
Pinned
Very honoured to have written a little something for @aeon.co about zero, absence, and consciousness. It was a real pleasure to write, and very curious to know what people think!

0️⃣🧠

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #consci
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
super excited to say that the first paper from my PhD has been published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 🧠!!

“I could have done otherwise”: the neural bases of counterfactual representations -> doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Redirecting
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
🚨Preprint: Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe

1/8: How do human neurons encode meaning?
In this work, led by Katharina Karkowski, we recorded hundreds of human MTL neurons to study semantic coding in the human brain:

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe
The Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is key to human cognition, supporting memory, emotional processing, navigation, and semantic coding. Rare direct human MTL recordings revealed concept cells, which were ...
doi.org
October 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
@dotproduct.bsky.social's first first author paper is finally out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! Her findings show that content-specific predictions fluctuate with alpha frequencies, suggesting a more specific role for alpha oscillations than we may have thought. With @jhaarsma.bsky.social. 🧠🟦 🧠🤖
Contents of visual predictions oscillate at alpha frequencies
Predictions of future events have a major impact on how we process sensory signals. However, it remains unclear how the brain keeps predictions online in anticipation of future inputs. Here, we combin...
www.jneurosci.org
October 21, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
And as for writing, don't get me started. Most often, the process of writing is not a laborious business of transcription, but a process of thinking itself. I'm not about to outsource my thinking to a machine.
September 26, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
I know there's a risk of amplifying the fascist horror show, but I think we need to be aware of just how far things are going, especially as this man is a Republican candidate for governor of California. All the old safeguards are being deliberately torn down, and the unspeakable normalised.
July 28, 2025 at 10:22 AM
A ✨bittersweet✨ moment – after 5 years at UCL, my final first-author project with @smfleming.bsky.social is ready to read as a preprint! 🥲
Distinct neural representations of perceptual and numerical absence in the human brain: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zyrdk_v1
July 25, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Very proud to share this one🥹! We show that personalized signatures of brain activity are heritable and relate to the expression of specific genes. That means my brain-fingerprint is very similar to my twin brother's! #ResearchIsMeSearch🧠 🧬 ♊️
Genetic foundations of interindividual neurophysiological variability
Individual brain activity profiles are shaped by lifelong genetic influences.
www.science.org
July 24, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
After five years of confused staring at Greek letters, it is my absolute pleasure to finally share our (with @smfleming.bsky.social) computational model of mental imagery and reality monitoring: Perceptual Reality Monitoring as Higher-Order inference on Sensory Precision ✨
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
July 23, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Is vivid imagery reported faster than weak imagery?
YES. There is an inverse correlation between subjective vividness and RTs in imagery tasks (N=117).
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
July 23, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Always late to the party, but really excited to share this new preprint led by @benjyb.bsky.social where we find an intriguing link between vividness ratings and reaction times!🧠💭
🚨New preprint🚨 out with the dream team @matanmazor.bsky.social @giuliacabbai.bsky.social and @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social!

We report a novel and robust effect across five different datasets: vivid imagery is reported faster than weak imagery.

📝: osf.io/preprints/ps...
July 23, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Confidence in absence as confidence in counterfactual visibility: a CogSci proceedings paper with star MSc student Maya Schipper, is now out on PsyArXiv:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵👇
July 23, 2025 at 3:23 AM
🚨New preprint🚨 out with the dream team @matanmazor.bsky.social @giuliacabbai.bsky.social and @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social!

We report a novel and robust effect across five different datasets: vivid imagery is reported faster than weak imagery.

📝: osf.io/preprints/ps...
July 21, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
’Consciousness is the taste of a lemon, the blueness of the sky’ This approach to defining consciousness is intuitively compelling, but how exactly does it work? And what kind of insight into consciousness might it deliver?
How jazz and dolphins can help explain consciousness | Aeon Essays
Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?
buff.ly
July 17, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Hellohello again! Tomorrow at 5:15pm I’m giving a short talk on our latest MEG study about our very well-loved oscillating perceptual predictions @meguki2025.bsky.social. Come by and talk brains!
There are amazing talks and very cool science happening all around! MEGUKI 2025👌
Programme – MEG UKI
meguk.ac.uk
July 16, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
And the Being Normal olympics begin.
June 25, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Really nice study led by Claire Lancaster and supported by other brilliant Sussex colleagues - in particular former PhD student Jess Daly. Greebles task is sensitive to subtle perceptual deficits in APOE e4 carriers in mid-life (which get worse with age and number of e4 alleles).
June 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Looking for a PhD in #psychology or #cogneuro ? I’m recruiting a fully-funded @leverhulme.ac.uk PhD student to join my lab at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social. If you’re interested in metacognition, learning, social cognition and culture I’d love you to apply 🧠👇

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNJ330/p...
PhD Studentship: Public Communication and Private Confidence at Birkbeck, University of London
Find a PhD Studentship: Public Communication and Private Confidence on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board in higher education. Click to view more!
www.jobs.ac.uk
June 6, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
I’m in the Guardian today, arguing that we should stop them all-class mental health lessons in schools

I've thought very carefully about ‘going public’ with this, because it's a sensitive argument to make, especially in the face of so many young people struggling.

(cont 🧵)

tinyurl.com/vun92cz7
Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work | Lucy Foulkes
All-class therapy sessions don’t help, and may even make matters worse. The evidence shows we need different solutions, says Dr Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at Oxford University
www.theguardian.com
May 21, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Whenever you get a negative review back, remember, it can never be as bad as this annihilation of Robbie Williams’ art.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Robbie Williams: Radical Honesty review – ‘Tone deaf, self-important, incredibly bad art’
The former Take That singer’s show features line drawings filled with therapy speak, greeting-card banter and meaningless affirmations. Can this really be presented as art?
www.theguardian.com
May 6, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
🎺 #BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert!

Next Friday, May 2nd, our brain meeting speaker will be Ben Harvey. His talk is entitled “Human quantity processing, from sensory to cognitive systems”

You're welcome to join us in person or online. Details here:
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event/human-...
April 25, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
🚨 Preprint alert 🚨 After 4 years of work, our new research on the Sense of Reality is finally out! Using Virtual Reality, we investigate our response to Virtual Hallucinations across different reality domains! Discover how our minds and bodies react when reality isn't quite what it seems...
April 15, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Extract 9/18
April 1, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Benjy Barnett
Very exciting new paper in @nature.com exposing how human PFC supports basis functions for social decision-making - led by @uclpals.bsky.social colleague and MetaLab member @mkwittmann.bsky.social

Congratulations!
March 13, 2025 at 9:24 AM