Steve Fleming
LightNews LightNews
banner
smfleming.bsky.social
Steve Fleming
@smfleming.bsky.social
6.1K followers 1.1K following 260 posts
Psychologist and neuroscientist at UCL https://metacoglab.org
Author, Know Thyself (2021) https://metacoglab.org/book
Dad and assistant to the Diplomat
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Steve Fleming
matildevaghi.bsky.social
🚀 We're hiring !

🕵️ Seeking a postdoc to study the development & individual-level organization of brain circuits supporting (in)flexible behavior in psychiatric populations.

🧠 Precision functional mapping, fMRI, normative modelling

Details 👉 tinyurl.com/3h8tcv2e

🗓️ Apply by Dec 10! Please RT 🙌
Postdoctoral Researcher (2288) - Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck
cis7.bbk.ac.uk
November 6, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
scibri.com
Canada makes pitch for US researchers to relocate with $1.7bn in new funding. My story for @science.org 🧪
www.science.org/content/arti...
Canada’s new budget aims to lure U.S. researchers to relocate
Spending plan also calls for smaller research spending cut than feared
www.science.org
November 5, 2025 at 6:19 PM
smfleming.bsky.social
Today! 👇
smfleming.bsky.social Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 6d
Join us for tomorrow’s Consciousness Club - Yair Pinto (www.uva.nl/en/profile/p...) on “No easy solutions for the Hard Problem of consciousness”. Should be fun!

Wednesday Nov 5th, 11am-1230pm UK time

For more info and how to join see metacoglab.org/consciousnes...
November 5, 2025 at 8:58 AM
smfleming.bsky.social
Join us for tomorrow’s Consciousness Club - Yair Pinto (www.uva.nl/en/profile/p...) on “No easy solutions for the Hard Problem of consciousness”. Should be fun!

Wednesday Nov 5th, 11am-1230pm UK time

For more info and how to join see metacoglab.org/consciousnes...
November 4, 2025 at 5:47 PM
smfleming.bsky.social
Clever behavioural experiment exposing how confidence is formed in visual perception

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41138620/
Perceptual confidence has near perfect access to the existence of discrete representations, but only weak access to precision - PubMed
Perceptual confidence describes the degree to which we believe our internal perceptual representations reflect the external stimuli that caused them. How confidence is derived from internal representations is currently debated, but answering this question is made difficult because the nature of inte …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
October 28, 2025 at 7:05 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
Could SWC be the place where you launch your career in #neuroscience? 🧠

Don’t miss your chance! Apply to our PhD Programme before 3 Nov: www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/content/...

#Career #PhD #London
Systems Neuroscience PhD Programme at SWC - Applications now open. Deadline 3 November 2025.
October 27, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
samgilbert.bsky.social
New preprint! What happens in the brain when people offload memories into external reminders? Using fMRI decoding, we found that the corresponding neural trace fades until it becomes statistically absent.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵...
OSF
osf.io
October 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
matthiasmichel.bsky.social
My commentary on @anilseth.bsky.social's BBS article: philpapers.org/rec/MICBOF. We should bet on functionalism.
Matthias Michel, Bet on functionalism - PhilPapers
I argue that there is currently no alternative to functionalism. Functionalism explains the differences between types of mental states. No biological theory does. Functionalist theories account for th...
philpapers.org
October 24, 2025 at 2:43 PM
smfleming.bsky.social
Today! 👇
smfleming.bsky.social Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 21d
UCL’s Consciousness Club series resumes tomorrow Wed 22nd Oct with Ken Paller @paller.bsky.social on “Two Sides of Sleep and Memory: Conscious and Unconscious”

3pm-430pm UK time

All welcome, for zoom details please see: metacoglab.org/consciousnes...
October 22, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
selinawray.bsky.social
New episode of @uclbrainstories.bsky.social is out! Me & @smfleming.bsky.social chat to our cohost @caswell.bsky.social & Lucy Unwin about their new book “Inside your Brain”. Have a listen & buy the book for any budding young neuroscientists in your life!

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...
Brain Stories Episode 22 Caswell Barry and Lucy Unwin talk about the neuroscience behind their new children’s book – Inside Your Brain
Podcast Episode · Brain Stories · 15/10/2025 · 48m
podcasts.apple.com
October 22, 2025 at 6:35 AM
smfleming.bsky.social
UCL’s Consciousness Club series resumes tomorrow Wed 22nd Oct with Ken Paller @paller.bsky.social on “Two Sides of Sleep and Memory: Conscious and Unconscious”

3pm-430pm UK time

All welcome, for zoom details please see: metacoglab.org/consciousnes...
October 21, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
kevingoneill.github.io
one of the best parts about working in the MetaLab!
smfleming.bsky.social Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 21d
Philosophy-science collaborations as rare chances to adjust the normal focus of the lens- zooming in and out to examine different levels of analysis
expeditions.bsky.social EXPeditions @expeditions.bsky.social · 24d
🧠 Steve Fleming (@smfleming.bsky.social), professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London on why collaborating with philosophers helps science ask better questions—and find better answers.

#PLPEXPeditions
@ucl.ac.uk @uclpals.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social
October 21, 2025 at 6:46 AM
smfleming.bsky.social
Philosophy-science collaborations as rare chances to adjust the normal focus of the lens- zooming in and out to examine different levels of analysis
expeditions.bsky.social EXPeditions @expeditions.bsky.social · 24d
🧠 Steve Fleming (@smfleming.bsky.social), professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London on why collaborating with philosophers helps science ask better questions—and find better answers.

#PLPEXPeditions
@ucl.ac.uk @uclpals.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social
October 21, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
leverhulme.ac.uk
@smfleming.bsky.social, professor of cognitive neuroscience @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @uclpals.bsky.social on the surprising connections between music and science.
www.joinexpeditions.com/experts/4631
October 17, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
leverhulme.ac.uk
Psychologist and neuroscientist, Professor @smfleming.bsky.social, reflects on metacognition – thinking about thinking – and how outside perspectives shape human experience.
www.joinexpeditions.com/experts/4631 @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @uclpals.bsky.social
October 14, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
sophiebavard.bsky.social
🚨 New preprint! 🚨
Very happy to share our latest work on metacognition with M. Rouault, A. McWilliams, F. Chartier, @kndiaye.bsky.social and @smfleming.bsky.social where we identify contributors to self-performance estimates across memory and perception domains 👇
osf.io/preprints/ps...
October 13, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
matthiasmichel.bsky.social
The next session of the MIT Consciousness Club is on Thursday 16, 12pm-1:30pm. Rachel Denison will present “Attentional Distortions of Subjective Perception”. More information here: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....
MIT Consciousness Club
The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...
sites.google.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
matanmazor.bsky.social
Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations

my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 10, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
chazfirestone.bsky.social
This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
Screenshot of a paper abstract: “Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
jocnforum.bsky.social
New post in @jocnforum.bsky.social by Early Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social: "Principles for proper peer review"

doi.org/10.21428/8e6...
Principles for proper peer review
doi.org
October 6, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
cogscigroup.bsky.social
Our spotlight article on Goueytes et al. (2025) study is now online at Trends in Neurosciences: "Pre- and post-decision signals of certainty in changing minds", by P. Barttfeld, @ncomay.bsky.social, I. Embon & @guillermosolovey.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/neuro...
Pre- and post-decision signals of certainty in changing minds
In a recent study, Goueytes and colleagues combined computational modeling with intracranial recordings to dissect the neural basis of confidence and changes of mind. They reveal a temporally organize...
www.cell.com
October 9, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
chazfirestone.bsky.social
What a lovely 'spotlight' of @talboger.bsky.social's work on style perception! Written by @aennebrielmann.bsky.social in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social.

See Aenne's paper below, as well as Tal's original work here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 8, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
quining.bsky.social
It was a pleasure publishing with CommsPsychol in the RR format. Highly recommended! 🌟
October 8, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
pessoabrain.bsky.social
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺
Is consciousness tied to biological brains?
Neuro&Philo Salon present+discussion with @anilseth.bsky.social of his BBS target paper!
October 23, noon USA eastern
#neuroskyence
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
October 5, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Steve Fleming
ianbphillips.bsky.social
@neddo.bsky.social's very nice commentary on @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @smfleming.bsky.social's BBS target article also arguing that conscious perception may form fast even if postdiction suggests it only "vulcanizes" slowly.
October 5, 2025 at 1:11 PM