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radioactivegorgon.bsky.social
Zhuāngzǐ's Tree
@radioactivegorgon.bsky.social
92 followers 270 following 140 posts
This account is used to post or re-post political and/or academic interests—mostly. Predictive processing enthusiast.

she/her
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mvugt.bsky.social
Better ways to measure cognitive exhaustion could point to treatments for long COVID and other debilitating disorders. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Is your brain tired? Researchers are discovering the roots of mental fatigue
Better ways to measure cognitive exhaustion could point to treatments for long COVID and other debilitating disorders.
www.nature.com
December 11, 2025 at 11:11 AM
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philcorlett.bsky.social
What a treat! @alisongopnik.bsky.social on the tension between exploration and exploitation across development, and the role of elders in care and transmission @wutsaiyale.bsky.social
December 11, 2025 at 3:34 PM
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corcerebrum.bsky.social
Your stomach called – your striatum picked up!

But does this actually happen in humans?

Using simultaneous dopamine PET/fMRI, we show that the gut hormone ghrelin helps the brain adjust motivation to current metabolic need.

Here’s what we found👇
Preprint: shorturl.at/pq4A3

#neuroskyence #🩺
Graphical visualization of the research question
December 9, 2025 at 7:27 PM
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lines.snail.skin
Dao Jones is this anything
December 11, 2025 at 9:10 AM
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pessoabrain.bsky.social
**How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited
for cognition?**
That goes to the top of the list!
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
December 5, 2025 at 6:51 PM
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neuroskeptic.bsky.social
Recovered memory theory is back! Now with psychedelics. "Therapeutic emergence of dissociated traumatic memories during psilocybin treatment for anorexia" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40420197/ n=2, no controls...
December 6, 2025 at 4:19 PM
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zachweinersmith.bsky.social
I do think I've observed in basically all creative fields that celebrity is dangerous, because really good craft takes time, and you just can't do it if you're doing nonstop interviews and articles and things. Like a lot of authors' second or third works feel generic/under-researched.
zachweinersmith.bsky.social Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 8d
Put another way: at some point comedians go from laugh lines to applause lines. Problem is applause lines are easy and boring. Laugh lines are very hard. To my mind an ideal life as a writer or researcher is you do that sort of hard when you're young and a different (sustained) sort of hard later.
December 6, 2025 at 2:19 PM
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direlog.bsky.social
idea: kuleshov tarot. every card is a black-and-white picture of a man staring at you. each card has an unique back design, but there is no indication of *which* card it is beyond this
a black and white image of a man with a receding hairline wearing a suit staring at you
November 24, 2025 at 8:56 PM
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veenadubal.bsky.social
BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!!

We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
November 14, 2025 at 11:55 PM
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lisafeldmanbarrett.com
What’s happening beneath the surface when you feel anxious? New podcast episode: "How #Anxiety Is Constructed In The #Brain: Insights from #Neuroscience." On The Anxious Truth podcast. theanxioustruth.com/how-anxiety-...
How Anxiety Is Constructed In The Brain (Ep 327)
How is anxiety constructed in the brain? What creates that difficult internal experience? Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett is here to talk about that.
theanxioustruth.com
October 10, 2025 at 11:45 AM
radioactivegorgon.bsky.social
The Cut did a good piece on IFS that counteracts some of the damage Katie Heaney has done with their platform: www.thecut.com/article/trut...

I find the phenomenon to be a powerful example of how suggestible humans can be and the harms arising from breaking apart someone's connection with reality.
The Truth About IFS, the Therapy That Can Break You
Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.
www.thecut.com
November 3, 2025 at 7:05 PM
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thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social
How does the brain decide? 🧠

Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.

After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.

rdcu.be/eGUrv
Transitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions - Nature
Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neura...
www.nature.com
September 17, 2025 at 8:12 PM
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hakwan.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"... observers perceive scene images achromatized in the peripheral region (chimera images) as full-color images... inattentional noise increases the occurrence of strong color signals that exceed the internal color detection criterion..."

Nishida lab

🧠📈
Inattentional noise leads to subjective color uniformity across the visual field
Humans perceive a vividly colored world coherently across the visual field, even though our peripheral vision has limited color sensitivity compared t…
www.sciencedirect.com
August 29, 2025 at 3:37 AM
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earlkmiller.bsky.social
(link fixed) New theory: Categorization is Baked Into the Brain
It is not at the end of sensory processing but a core computation that begins at the earliest stages, occurring throughout the cortex as predictive feedback shapes feedforward processing. #neuroscience
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
August 25, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Zhuāngzǐ's Tree
Our new study (Titled: Memory Loves Company) asks whether working memory hold more when objects belong together.

And yes, when everyday objects are paired meaningfully (Bow-Arrow), people remember them better than when they’re unrelated (Glass-Arrow). (mini thread)
August 28, 2025 at 12:07 PM
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beijingpalmer.bsky.social
the fun thing with Mark Proksch is you can often just pretend that his characters in other things are just Colin Robinson doing a particularly elaborate drain
July 31, 2025 at 4:19 AM
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lastpositivist.bsky.social
Here's a poem by one of the old Chinese scholar bureaucrats that I think captures a certain Vibe very well
Dreams - Su Shi (trans. Arthur Waley) Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
July 24, 2025 at 2:12 PM
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fesshole.bsky.social
All my mates know the harrowing story of how I nearly drowned as a kid and had to be rescued by helicopter. The story came up at a birthday meal and my mum said that never happened. After a lot of arguing and Googling we've figured out I fell asleep watching a 999 TV reenactment
July 15, 2025 at 6:20 PM
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jamellebouie.net
it's a testament to how american political parties are less some set of structures and institutions than they are the totality of public perception, media coverage and casual impressions
July 8, 2025 at 1:39 PM
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philplait.bsky.social
Goddamn them all
July 3, 2025 at 7:40 PM
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mollyknight.bsky.social
Job Garcia’s kidnapping by the Trump administration is the top story on the LA Times website right now.

www.latimes.com/california/s...
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. "How many bodies did you guys grab today?" he said one agent asked. "Oh, we grabbed 31," the other replied. "That was a good day today," the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as Job Garcia sat on the asphalt under the sun, he said. Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officias sav some trave ilegaly 11:04 C •ll 5G+ 824) latimes.com "You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. "That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said. The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here." "You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?" He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. - 11:04 € • 5G+ 824) latimes.com "I f- speak English, you f- dumbass," he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. "They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview. The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van. CALIFORNIA Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge June 20, 2025 Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands hegan to swell. Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed. They were so tight, his hands began to swell. The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoelaces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 Freeway. "I smeared my blood in their seat," he said. And he thought, "They're going to remember me."
June 21, 2025 at 6:08 AM
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lastpositivist.bsky.social
Very cool forthcoming paper from @somayehtohidi.bsky.social and others! They argue that people end up rationally (in a certain technical sense) vaccine avoidant just by having various doubts made salient to them. It's a way one's media environment can harm.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/77a7u...
Unconvinced Yet Influenced: Vaccine Decision-Making in the Shadow of Misinformation ∗ Somayeh Tohidi † Ed Pertwee ‡ Mihaela Popa-Wyatt § June 18, 2025 Abstract This paper examines how misinformation may shape vaccine decision- making and lead to delay or refusal of vaccination, even in cases where individuals doubt its truth. We suggest that it can do this by subtly altering perceptions of vaccine risks and information source credibility. Under conditions of uncertainty, even relatively modest changes could be sufficient to lead an individual to delay or refuse vaccination. We use an expected utility framework to show that such behavioural changes, while shaped by misinformation, could still be considered an instrumentally ra- tional response under uncertainty rather than necessarily representing a cognitive failure. We identify three specific mechanisms through which misinformation might influence vaccine decision-making: (1) eroding the perceived credibility of authoritative information sources, (2) increasing the perceived undesirability of adverse effects from vaccination, and (3) a combination of relatively modest shifts in both credence and risk per- ception. Our model highlights the ‘stickiness’ of misinformation and un- -derscores the need for proactive interventions, such as ‘pre-bunking’ and media literacy, while cautioning that these are not necessarily panaceas
June 21, 2025 at 7:44 AM
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uebey.bsky.social
Back in April, the Trump Admin gave states a choice: comply with ICE, or lose funding for roads, bridges and public transit.

That ultimatum is completely illegal, a federal judge just ruled:
Trump administration barred from using transit funds to force states’ compliance with ICE
“Congress appropriated those funds for transportation purposes, not immigration enforcement purposes,” U.S. District Judge John McConnell said.
www.courthousenews.com
June 19, 2025 at 11:44 PM
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joshuajfriedman.com
JUST IN: Judge Charles Breyer finds that President Trump exceeded the scope of his authority and violated the 10th Amendment by federalizing the California National Guard and orders him to return control to Governor Newsom. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
On June 6, 2025, the federal government initiated immigration raids across the City of Los Angeles. Protests swiftly followed, and some individuals involved in those protests were unruly and even violent. State and local law enforcement responded. The following day, President Trump ordered that members of the California National Guard be federalized, and thereupon assumed control of those forces. At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not. His actions were illegal-both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.
June 13, 2025 at 1:02 AM
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otsumamiboy.bsky.social
Idk man but when the administration that tried to reject humanitarian aid for Los Angeles when it was burning tries to justify their illegal military occupation by saying they aren’t going to let LA burn it kinda sounds like bullshit
June 11, 2025 at 8:48 PM