Sam Verschooren
samversc.bsky.social
Sam Verschooren
@samversc.bsky.social
Postdoctoral fellow at Artctic University of Norway; formerly MPI CBS, Humboldt, Ghent, and Duke University

External and internal attention; mind wandering; interoception and control over internal body

https://samverschooren.github.io
Pinned
Some great news to start the week: our paper on ideomotor theory and voluntary control over autonomic processes inside the body (“interoactions”) was accepted in Psych Review!🧠💓🥳

With @mgblr.bsky.social and Marcel Brass

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

#PsychSciSky #cogpsych #interoception
OSF
osf.io
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded.

Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.
“The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up their work in much the same way that chatbots are now embedded into popular programming editors.

It’s vibe coding, but for science.”
OpenAI’s latest product lets you vibe code science
Prism is a ChatGPT-powered text editor that automates much of the work involved in writing scientific papers.
www.technologyreview.com
January 27, 2026 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...
January 29, 2026 at 8:29 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Bayesian Workflow by
Andrew Gelman, Aki Vehtari, @rmcelreath.bsky.social with @danpsimpson.bsky.social, @charlesm993.bsky.social, @yulingy.bsky.social, Lauren Kennedy, Jonah Gabry, @paulbuerkner.com, @modrakm.bsky.social, @vianeylb.bsky.social

(in production, estimated copy-editing time 6 weeks)
January 26, 2026 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
University of Groningen: ⭐ no more big-tech by 2030 ⭐ Google Workplace 🚫 Windows 🚫 MS Office 🚫 ChatGPT 🚫 A huge challenge! Meeting culture won't get us there. Dedication and focus will. 💪🚀 Let's get to work.
ukrant.nl/magazine/we-... @rug.nl @rug-gmw.bsky.social #science
We can do without them: how the UG is cutting ties with Big Tech
By 2030, the university aims to be digitally independent. And that’s not a pipe dream, say proponents of the plan.
ukrant.nl
January 21, 2026 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
How the brain listens to the body matters.
Our new preprint investigates interoceptive processing in schizophrenia spectrum disorders across phenomenology, behavior, and heartbeat-evoked brain responses. 🧠🫀DOI: doi.org/10.64898/202...
From Body to Brain and Back: Multimodal Evidence for Interoceptive Alterations in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
When the brain and body misalign, emotional experience and sense of reality can be disrupted. Although such atypical experiences are central to schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), interoception, p...
doi.org
January 20, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
And if you want a list of the reasons that have been given for keeping Musk as FRS, there's this piece deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/02/seve...
January 10, 2026 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
January 9, 2026 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
The faster we move to value science for its practice (the critical thinking and search for knowledge, the various skills we apply) and not simply outputs via number of publications or journal prestige, the easier it will be to survive the onslaught of AI slop, probably de-funding of science too.
December 12, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Our new preprint is out!

Using a continuous-report paradigm, we show that divided attention reliably disrupts long-term memory retrieval by reducing accessibility—not precision.

Two experiments + mixture modeling + TCC.

Link: osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
December 9, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
New preprint: "Bodily Rhythms Gate Action–Perception Coupling"

Cardiorespiratory cycles gate when it's best to sense & act on the world, shaping when precision peaks

Active sensing + Interoception + Active inference 🧠

🔗 bit.ly/3MinQIi

w/ @micahgallen.com; Lucas Naranjo; @jameskilner.bsky.social
December 9, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
The @springernature.com book "The Bodily Self, Emotion, and Subjective Time: Exploring Interoception through the Contributions of A.D. (Bud) Craig" is out: 22 authors, 16 chapters. Neurobiology, Psychology, Psychiatry, Neuroimaging, Musicology, Philosophy, ... link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
December 6, 2025 at 4:34 PM
I can warmly recommend this Arctic MSCA program if you're considering applying for a Marie Curie fellowship, it definitely helped me to get my application funded. Feel free to get in touch if you want more info :)

uit.no/nyheter/arti...
Arctic MSCA Program 2026 is open! | UiT
The annual UiT support program for applicants to EUs career program for young research talents, the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) is now open for 2026.
uit.no
December 4, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
I'm happy to share my debut as first-author with the recent publication of our article in #JNeurosci:

www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Big thanks again to @tschreiner.bsky.social and the whole team who made this possible! 🧠🌬️
December 4, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Thread of French and Dutch research institutes slowly unsubscribing from web of science (and thence impact factors).
December 3, 2025 at 6:53 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Absolutely devastating account of the CSU's $17 million capitulation to ChatGPT, from a fellow faculty member watching it happen www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
www.currentaffairs.org
December 3, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
*13th MindBrainBody Symposium*

📆 Mar 9-11, 2026
🏠 #Berlin & virtual
(deadline: Jan 8, 2026)

Keynotes:
- @ulrikebingel.bsky.social
- Karl Friston (online)
- @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social
- Sonja Kotz
- Julian Thayer

...& so much more: prizes, posters, talks, food, drinks, encounters.

Let's meet!
December 1, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.
November 19, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Very excited to introduce InteroMap, a new bodily mapping tool designed to measure how we subjectively experience our bodily sensations, what we call interoceptive phenomenology 🧵👇
November 18, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
So happy this paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! We investigated whether fluctuations in MEPs can be explained by phasic influences from internal bodily rhythms, and whether this might happen independently per organ system.
#interoception #neuroskyence
How do internal bodily rhythms influence #brain activity & motor function? @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social &co show that #cardiac, #respiratory & #gastric rhythms independently modulate motor excitability, revealing distinct #interoceptive profiles across individuals @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4nMtpLT
November 13, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Now out in #ScienceAdvances: @baiweiliu.bsky.social and I ask how internal (goal) and external (sensory) selection are coordinated during visual search. The key insight: internal and external selection are not inherently serial, but may develop in parallel in the human brain: doi.org/10.1126/scia...
Concurrent selection of internal goals and external sensations during visual search
Internal and external selection processes can codevelop in time to yield efficient search behavior.
doi.org
November 10, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
📣 Out in TINS (@cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social):

Neural processing is often described as either externally or internally directed. In our new Forum article, we (@freekvanede.bsky.social & Kia Nobre) propose a multilevel framework for conceptualising external and internal continua of brain processes.
October 19, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Nice things for the

**13th #MindBrainBody Symposium 2026**

happening under the hood 😊

Save the date: 📆 March 9-11, 2026 (Berlin and virtual)

Stay tuned for the call and announcement!

(For info about the last 12 MBBSymposia: mindbrainbody.de)

#interoception #neuroskyence
October 17, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Reposted by Sam Verschooren
TIL that Dale invented the heartbeat counting task, not Schandry, and that it was known from the very first study that people underestimated their heart rate. It was orginally called a heart rate estimation task! journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2...
October 17, 2025 at 4:57 AM