Brónagh McCoy
LightNews LightNews
banner
bronaghm.bsky.social
Brónagh McCoy
@bronaghm.bsky.social
91 followers 220 following 4 posts
Postdoc @ IoPPN, King's College London. Cognitive neuroscience, computational psychiatry, data science. Attention, learning, autism research. Scientist by day, luddite by night.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
wiringthebrain.bsky.social
New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism
Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential studies underpinning these...
www.cell.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
beckyneuro.bsky.social
First up, this paper led by Bronagh McCoy: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

When noise and volatility are independently manipulated people behave differently depending on their anxious traits.
The relationship between anxious traits and learning about changes in stochasticity and volatility
Author summary Adapting to changes in our environment is a daily endeavour. To do so, humans and animals alike make use of feedback to guide future actions. Uncertainty in the environment can arise fr...
journals.plos.org
November 13, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
goldenneurons.bsky.social
Thrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#blueprint 1/7
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning - Nature Neuroscience
Dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors naturally fluctuates over females’ reproductive cycles with estrogenic signaling due to reduced expression of dopamine reuptake proteins.
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
paperbackparadise.bsky.social
Back cover synopsis reads: Humans Dan and Sarah went to Planet Crab to see what was there. There they found huge crabs! It made them happy to see. They wanted to know how crabs become so powerful and the answer is familiar: Crabitalism - the new & exciting economic system. Human lives are ground to death and digested for the good of a select group of giant crabs! Everyone is running and smiling. The crabs are getting bigger! It is good to make powerful crabs more powerful. Humans Dan and Sarah want to tell their planet about Crabitalism now! Review blurb reads: Boy oh boy, i am a human doctor and lawyer and I must say this new and exciting economic system is something. United States should adopt immedi-ately! Humans will love. Dr. Lawyer Nxlyn Moklyx Crabitalism facts: • Humans love to serve powerful crabs - Giant and powerful crabs make planets better • Human suffering small price for giant crabs - Everyone smiles at crabs
September 20, 2024 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
freekvanede.bsky.social
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 Brónagh McCoy
naziajassim.bsky.social
This work is now out in Nature Communications! 🎉

Computational signatures of uncertainty are reflected in motor cortex excitatory neurochemistry: www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64702-6

Huge thanks to our amazing team! @beckyneuro.bsky.social @campsydept.bsky.social @camneuro.bsky.social
November 5, 2025 at 1:26 PM
bronaghm.bsky.social
I'm looking to create an advisory group for a project on Monotropism, an attention-based theory of autism and potentially ADHD. If you or anybody you know is interested, please fill out the form below. Thank you!

forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
Microsoft Forms
forms.office.com
October 30, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
spcialndsjungle.bsky.social
Parents of neurodivergent children in West Yorkshire seek support “They gave us a couple of sessions after the diagnosis, then some leaflets, then we were dropped from that service. It makes you feel unwanted." www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/...
Parents of neurodivergent children in West Yorkshire seek support
Parents in West Yorkshire say they are left with little help after their children are diagnosed.
www.bbc.co.uk
October 17, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
shannonrosa.bsky.social
"It’s essential that autistic people, regardless of age, have a way to communicate. Spoken words should not be valued above other methods, & AAC should never be taken away by parents, teachers, or caregivers. For many autistic people, using alternatives to speech is not a choice – it’s a lifeline."
October 16, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
sebastiaanmathot.bsky.social
@garymarcus.bsky.social argues for developing different, specialized AI tools for different domains, rather than hoping that one general artificial intelligence will be able to do everything. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/o... #AI
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Investing in the Wrong A.I.
www.nytimes.com
October 17, 2025 at 5:51 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
imagingneurosci.bsky.social
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Ammar I. Marvi, Nancy G. Kanwisher, et al:

An efficient multifunction fMRI localizer for high-level visual, auditory, and cognitive regions in humans

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
October 15, 2025 at 5:10 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
suereviews.bsky.social
happy to share this new article on reporting standards in autism intervention science: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41070555/

Autistic people deserve the highest standards of evidence based practice and reporting practices in this field fall woefully short. We offer recommendations to improve that.
Maximizing the Quality and Reporting Standards of Autism Intervention Science - PubMed
Although there are clear international standards for intervention science and reporting in healthcare, implementation and uptake have been limited within autism intervention research. To address this ...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
October 14, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
“Uncritical adoption of AI, will inevitably create people without critical thinking, and this may be a feature - not a bug, as it represents an attack on human agency itself.”

collectivefutures.blog/the-infrastr...
The infrastructure of meaninglessness
Listen, there are two realities that we should be aware of. AI exists to make your job obsolete because the alternative is that AI makes managers obsolete. Let me try to break down this theory, which...
collectivefutures.blog
October 10, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from Ireland's south coast. "Ardmore" is an exalted place for me, not because of the Round Tower, but because when I was small I stayed in a caravan and every day you'd jump over the dunes to the beach after first eating a bowl of Puffa Puffa Rice. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #TidesOutTuesday
Square format in acrylics on canvas. View from a height at, in the foreground, the ruined remains of an abbey and dominating the picture a stone 12th century Round Tower rendered mostly in warm tones with the right side being dark in shadow and the left side in sunlight having pale grey blue stones and some pink and red dotted among the earthen tones as it moves around to the dark brown and blue at the right side. Its pointed top reaches almost the top of the painting. Around its base are scattered headstones of a cemetery in various greys with some round green bushes. Just in front along the bottom edge is pale yellow-green grass, because the view is from across the road in a field which is higher than the graveyard. Behind the tower we see down onto the crescent-shaped strand stretching away to halfway up the painting where it bends right receiving the blues of the sea coming in from the right. Near the back of the beach is a broken line of pink, perhaps of seaweed at a tide line. Behind the beach at the left edge is a caravan park with dozens of mostly pale caravans in rows. Along the horizon, a third of the way down from the top edge and up past the beach are gentle hills of green patchwork fields, dotted with pale houses at the bottom closest to Ardmore and with a tree line along much of the distant top extending to the right over a headland which has violet and grey cliffs at the right edge. The sky is a very pale aqua blue. Signed top left, Liam Daly
September 23, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
thedailytism.com
“It could be because autistic people tend to have big, beautiful eyes, an air of mystique and a fathomless, unknowable heart… Oh. Oh, God. Er, excuse me for a minute.”
Rising autism diagnoses confirm that we totally fuck
A recent public health report has revealed that autism is more common than previously thought, confirming that autistic people are really good at sex. The government-commissioned report found a stagge...
thedailytism.com
September 23, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
newsthump.com
NEWS! Nation capable of spotting spurious link between paracetamol and autism still baffled by obvious link between guns and mass shootings
Nation capable of spotting spurious link between paracetamol and autism still baffled by obvious link between guns and mass shootings
The United States has once again demonstrated its unique talent for scientific deduction by confidently declaring there may be a link between pregnant women taking paracetamol and children developi…
buff.ly
September 23, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
camcan-2010.bsky.social
"CamCAN 15 years on" - a new preprint reviewing all findings about the cognitive neuroscience of ageing from sharing CamCAN data, led by @rhens.bsky.social : osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
September 17, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from the southwest of Ireland "Bandon II" came out of times I spent cycling in West Cork, the town being one I've always enjoyed visiting. And I'm very much overdue another visit. Maybe this is what happens when you get older. I wonder if it's still orange? #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #scape
Landscape format, in very loosely painted acrylics on mat board, in a sketchy effect. Looking down a street of mostly three-story retail buildings, from left in the foreground to right in the distance. The right-hand side is all in dark red, almost black, shadow and throws a darker triangle of shadow onto the street which in sunlight is orange. Buildings on the left are shops, with many having awnings of green or yellow over their dark windows and doors. Upper stories are mostly oranges and yellows with some white. Several cars are parked on the left side, starting with an orange and grey car, then a white one before they become indistinguishable. Footpath on the left is grey, and the one on the right is lost in very dark shadow. Power lines arc across the street. All over there are flecked details of yellow and dark orange. Lines are in dark blue. The sky is canary yellow with chimneys protruding up into it. Photo of the painting was taken before it was signed.
September 12, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
jjodx.bsky.social
The myth of optimality in human movement science

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The myth of optimality in human movement science
The concept of optimality dominates contemporary human movement science, with researchers across biomechanics, motor control, and neuroscience routine…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 13, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
. @olivia.science and I had the honour to speak with Kent Anderson and Joy Moore on @disruptedscience.bsky.social 🧪 💫

🎬 🍿 Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9w0...

🎶👂 Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/082h... 1/🧵
September 12, 2025 — Safeguarding Science from AI: An Interview with Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij
YouTube video by Disrupted Science
www.youtube.com
September 12, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
briannosek.bsky.social
We are about a month away from releasing a complete refresh of the OSF user interface. The team has been working on this for a very long time, and we are very excited to be able to share it soon. A preview picture:
September 4, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
profsimonfisher.bsky.social
Just one of two big @nature.com papers from @intlbrainlab.bsky.social out today. This companion article illustrates the value of large-scale brain-wide recordings from mice performing a standardized task, giving new insights at cellular resolution into neural representations of prior information. 🧠🧪
Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making - Nature
Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
profsimonfisher.bsky.social
Extraordinary resource! "Comprehensive recordings from 621,733 neurons in 297 brain areas of 139 mice (12 labs) performing a decision-making task with sensory, motor & cognitive components: a public dataset to understand how computations distributed across & within brain areas drive behaviour."👇🧪
A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature
The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Brónagh McCoy
gershbrain.bsky.social
I just finished reading this excellent paper, highly recommended.
matthiasmichel.bsky.social Matthias Michel @matthiasmichel.bsky.social · Apr 21
Very happy to announce that our paper “Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision” is now out as a target article in BBS!! @smfleming.bsky.social and I present a new theory of the evolution and functions of visual consciousness. Article here: doi.org/10.1017/S014.... A (long) thread 🧵
Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision
doi.org
September 1, 2025 at 1:37 AM