Jan R. Wessel
@janw.bsky.social
Clement T. & Sylvia H. Hanson Chair, Professor #FirstGen
Cognitive Control Collaborative guy
wessellab.org | cognitivecontrol.net
Cognitive Control Collaborative guy
wessellab.org | cognitivecontrol.net
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
It won't actually exist for another month or so, but because it now 'exists' on amazon, I'll humbly observe that, after working through this book, your student/trainee would be able to read and understand all but two or three papers in this week's J. Neurosci. Check it out:
January 16, 2026 at 10:38 PM
It won't actually exist for another month or so, but because it now 'exists' on amazon, I'll humbly observe that, after working through this book, your student/trainee would be able to read and understand all but two or three papers in this week's J. Neurosci. Check it out:
I don't know who Shapiro is (I'm guessing that refers to who runs this thing for computer boy) but I agree that the BRAIN initiative was a wonderful demonstration of what can happen when gov't funds are distributed towards non-profit science that benefits everyone instead of private enterprise.
January 16, 2026 at 1:37 AM
I don't know who Shapiro is (I'm guessing that refers to who runs this thing for computer boy) but I agree that the BRAIN initiative was a wonderful demonstration of what can happen when gov't funds are distributed towards non-profit science that benefits everyone instead of private enterprise.
Ooh boy, another great opportunity for a bunch of incurious failed academics to gain well-numerated employment with one of today's most notably hollow quasi-people and achieve absolutely nothing at all. I sure hope we'll also get a chance to subsidize this with a bunch of tax dollars!!
January 16, 2026 at 12:45 AM
Ooh boy, another great opportunity for a bunch of incurious failed academics to gain well-numerated employment with one of today's most notably hollow quasi-people and achieve absolutely nothing at all. I sure hope we'll also get a chance to subsidize this with a bunch of tax dollars!!
Congratulations!! Huge loss for the US but stoked things are working out for you!
January 12, 2026 at 2:05 PM
Congratulations!! Huge loss for the US but stoked things are working out for you!
It is. Sorry, missed that you were looking for journal articles specifically. In terms of paywall, the Wayback Machine is your friend :)
January 6, 2026 at 2:28 PM
It is. Sorry, missed that you were looking for journal articles specifically. In terms of paywall, the Wayback Machine is your friend :)
One of the best we have.
January 6, 2026 at 2:12 PM
One of the best we have.
The classic: www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/o...
Opinion | You Love Your iPhone. Literally. (Published 2011)
www.nytimes.com
January 6, 2026 at 1:27 PM
The classic: www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/o...
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions:
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.
Subjective functions
Where do objective functions come from? How do we select what goals to pursue? Human intelligence is adept at synthesizing new objective functions on the fly. How does this work, and can we endow arti...
arxiv.org
December 19, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions:
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
Our group has been looking at beta bursts for the last 5 years, but we do it a little differently than most - we group into types them based on their waveforms. In this open access article we lay out why and what we think this might mean
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#neuroskyence
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#neuroskyence
December 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Our group has been looking at beta bursts for the last 5 years, but we do it a little differently than most - we group into types them based on their waveforms. In this open access article we lay out why and what we think this might mean
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#neuroskyence
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#neuroskyence
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
New paper from Steph. Watch out, she has many more coming.
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Frontoparietal Hubs Leverage Probabilistic Representations and Integrated Uncertainty to Guide Cognitive Flexibility
Adaptive behavior requires integrating information from multiple sources. These sources can originate from distinct channels, such as internally maintained latent cognitive representations or external...
www.jneurosci.org
December 10, 2025 at 10:34 PM
New paper from Steph. Watch out, she has many more coming.
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
new paper in TICS officially out today. great learning from and writing with Anastasia, and super cool cover art from Prof. Pinar Yoldas.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory
A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations
of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to
occur in part by recruiting early...
www.cell.com
December 4, 2025 at 1:21 AM
new paper in TICS officially out today. great learning from and writing with Anastasia, and super cool cover art from Prof. Pinar Yoldas.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Brave of you to publicly admit to using MATLAB. You're lucky the most vocal proponents of "you have to convert your entire codebase to a free and open language instead of MATLAB" have since moved to lucrative jobs making commercial software products
November 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM
Brave of you to publicly admit to using MATLAB. You're lucky the most vocal proponents of "you have to convert your entire codebase to a free and open language instead of MATLAB" have since moved to lucrative jobs making commercial software products
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7
Unfolding event structure distorts subjective time
Our experience of time is often distorted in striking ways. Although prior work has shown that boundaries between events can shape temporal perception…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7
The amount of neuro PhDs I know that went to work for neuro-junk companies with the explicit attitude of 'yeah of course what they're claiming will never work' is still baffling to me.
Like if the idea is to make a bunch of money while doing nothing of value, just do Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
Like if the idea is to make a bunch of money while doing nothing of value, just do Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
October 27, 2025 at 2:45 PM
The amount of neuro PhDs I know that went to work for neuro-junk companies with the explicit attitude of 'yeah of course what they're claiming will never work' is still baffling to me.
Like if the idea is to make a bunch of money while doing nothing of value, just do Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
Like if the idea is to make a bunch of money while doing nothing of value, just do Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
One of my two last (ever) papers on tDCS:
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is one of the most widely used noninvasive neuromodulation methods. Despite its popularity, some recent studies highlighted issues about the r...
www.medrxiv.org
October 11, 2025 at 9:35 AM
One of my two last (ever) papers on tDCS:
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
"What if I showed you a way in which AI could not only suck up all societal resources and research funds in the sole service of enriching the dumbest, most annoying motherfuckers of all time, but it also made YOUR WORK specifically actively worse?"
Cool, yeah, I'd LOVE to know more.
Cool, yeah, I'd LOVE to know more.
October 1, 2025 at 10:20 PM
"What if I showed you a way in which AI could not only suck up all societal resources and research funds in the sole service of enriching the dumbest, most annoying motherfuckers of all time, but it also made YOUR WORK specifically actively worse?"
Cool, yeah, I'd LOVE to know more.
Cool, yeah, I'd LOVE to know more.
Sometimes I learn a new concept online - like "AI-generated participants in Psych experiments" - and I wonder whether the purpose of the whole internet is just is finding ever more bespoke pieces of information that make me specifically as angry as humanly possible.
AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds
Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings
www.science.org
October 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Sometimes I learn a new concept online - like "AI-generated participants in Psych experiments" - and I wonder whether the purpose of the whole internet is just is finding ever more bespoke pieces of information that make me specifically as angry as humanly possible.
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
If you’re a @cogneuronews.bsky.social member, check out and vote on the great lineup of symposia for 2026, and plz consider our symposium “Non-invasive meso-scale dynamics of perception and cognition”, organized by @adykstra.bsky.social including James Bonauito and @lonikefaes.bsky.social!
September 29, 2025 at 3:32 PM
If you’re a @cogneuronews.bsky.social member, check out and vote on the great lineup of symposia for 2026, and plz consider our symposium “Non-invasive meso-scale dynamics of perception and cognition”, organized by @adykstra.bsky.social including James Bonauito and @lonikefaes.bsky.social!
Big day in the household as my wife Kristi Hendrickson won the Dean's Scholar Award for outstanding tenure package, and I was named Clement T. and Sylvia H. Hanson Family Chair of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Many thanks to the University of Iowa for continuing to support both of us!
September 25, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Big day in the household as my wife Kristi Hendrickson won the Dean's Scholar Award for outstanding tenure package, and I was named Clement T. and Sylvia H. Hanson Family Chair of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Many thanks to the University of Iowa for continuing to support both of us!
Reposted by Jan R. Wessel
🚨Postdoc job offer🚨
Are you interested in beta bursts? Want to help drive methods for laminar inference with MEG? Now hiring a postdoc: run head-cast MEG experiments, help build our laMEG toolbox, and collaborate across Lyon–Marseille–Strasbourg. emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...
Please repost! 🧠📈
Are you interested in beta bursts? Want to help drive methods for laminar inference with MEG? Now hiring a postdoc: run head-cast MEG experiments, help build our laMEG toolbox, and collaborate across Lyon–Marseille–Strasbourg. emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...
Please repost! 🧠📈
Portail Emploi CNRS - Offre d'emploi - Post-doctorate - Beta bursts & laminar MEG (M/F)
emploi.cnrs.fr
September 18, 2025 at 6:58 AM
🚨Postdoc job offer🚨
Are you interested in beta bursts? Want to help drive methods for laminar inference with MEG? Now hiring a postdoc: run head-cast MEG experiments, help build our laMEG toolbox, and collaborate across Lyon–Marseille–Strasbourg. emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...
Please repost! 🧠📈
Are you interested in beta bursts? Want to help drive methods for laminar inference with MEG? Now hiring a postdoc: run head-cast MEG experiments, help build our laMEG toolbox, and collaborate across Lyon–Marseille–Strasbourg. emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...
Please repost! 🧠📈
The NoA of one of our R01s finally came through.
You know what they say: Better six months too late and cut by 25% than never.
You know what they say: Better six months too late and cut by 25% than never.
September 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
The NoA of one of our R01s finally came through.
You know what they say: Better six months too late and cut by 25% than never.
You know what they say: Better six months too late and cut by 25% than never.
Back from vacay. Reading recommendations:
Harvey - Orbital (Deserves all accolades)
Akbar - Martyr! (Strong debut by an IC local)
Murakami - The City & Its Uncertain Walls (The boy is back on form)
Harp - The Fort Bragg Cartel (Amazing in-depth research)
Don't bother:
Stegner - Crossing to safety.
Harvey - Orbital (Deserves all accolades)
Akbar - Martyr! (Strong debut by an IC local)
Murakami - The City & Its Uncertain Walls (The boy is back on form)
Harp - The Fort Bragg Cartel (Amazing in-depth research)
Don't bother:
Stegner - Crossing to safety.
August 18, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Back from vacay. Reading recommendations:
Harvey - Orbital (Deserves all accolades)
Akbar - Martyr! (Strong debut by an IC local)
Murakami - The City & Its Uncertain Walls (The boy is back on form)
Harp - The Fort Bragg Cartel (Amazing in-depth research)
Don't bother:
Stegner - Crossing to safety.
Harvey - Orbital (Deserves all accolades)
Akbar - Martyr! (Strong debut by an IC local)
Murakami - The City & Its Uncertain Walls (The boy is back on form)
Harp - The Fort Bragg Cartel (Amazing in-depth research)
Don't bother:
Stegner - Crossing to safety.
I would stay in 1980s Beirut before I stayed in a Casino in Reno
August 11, 2025 at 3:41 PM
I would stay in 1980s Beirut before I stayed in a Casino in Reno
Love to field “Why would you live in Iowa?!” questions while paying 30 bucks for 3 coffees in America’s Shittiest City™, the 100 square mile strip mall parking lot that is Reno, Nevada.
August 11, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Love to field “Why would you live in Iowa?!” questions while paying 30 bucks for 3 coffees in America’s Shittiest City™, the 100 square mile strip mall parking lot that is Reno, Nevada.