#cognition

[trees-expertise]

Science side of Tumblr PLEASE share your tips/advice/hacks for academic conferences!

Im attending my first academic conference in a couple weeks and I’d appreciate anything you’d like to share with a lil baby bio undergrad like me

[tumbler-polls]

When you picture yourself in your mind, do you imagine yourself precisely how you look in real life, or do you see something else (an alter ego, a person who looks differently, another being, etc.)? When you're visualizing from the first person's pov, whose hands are you seeing? If you have aphantasia, consider "seeing" as a metaphor for the way you think of the concept of yourself.

The main options (we put them here due to the character limit):

🪞: I only imagine myself the way I look like irl.

🪆: I imagine someone/something that represents me.

✨️: I imagine myself in multiple ways: the way I am, as another being, as an abstract concept, you name it.

Please reblog for a bigger sample size and feel free to expand on your answer in the comments / tags!

Credit to @anon (we added a few options).

[archiveofaffinities]

William J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture Design, Computation and Cognition, A Vocabulary of Stair Motifs (After Thiis Evensen, 1988)

[unbfacts]

[rage-emissions]

sometimes you just gotta make your tief sit the heck down

[blink-blank-bliss]

You need loops because your mind needs patterns. It’s a loopfinding machine. Blinking. The breath you just took. The loops are always there. Choosing one quiets the patternfinder in your head. All you have to do is let it be enough.

[geometrymatters]

A polynon is a conceptual geometric entity of which vertices are non-events and its edges holograms.

A polynon contains all the holograms of that which can be projected as a polytope, showing how consciousness can be fundamental.

In the Hexanon, shown above, the Observer O(n) is in superposition with the phenomenal p+, epiphenomenal p-, negative noumena n- and noumenal vertices n+ of the hexanon as a function for self-reflection of consciousness C.

The polynon is built on the lens mechanism of the wavefunction: each layer of the noumenal lens is a wavefunction in itself, providing mechanism for the observer as function of noumenal reflection.

The paper is now available on philpapers, as well: https://philarchive.org/rec/ROITPA

[bodyalive]

When you outsource thinking, your brain goes on vacation. "EEG analysis presented robust evidence that LLM, Search Engine and Brain-only groups had significantly different neural connectivity patterns, reflecting divergent cognitive strategies. Brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support: the Brain‑only group exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging networks, Search Engine group showed intermediate engagement, and LLM assistance elicited the weakest overall coupling." https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872

But also here's a fantastic essay on the subject: "Now, in the age of the internet—when the Library of Alexandria could fit on a medium-sized USB stick and the collected wisdom of humanity is available with a click—we’re engaged in a rather large, depressingly inept social experiment of downloading endless knowledge while offloading intelligence to machines. (Look around to see how it’s going). That’s why convincing students that intelligence is a skill they must cultivate through hard work—no shortcuts—has become one of the core functions of education." https://www.forkingpaths.co/.../the-death-of-the-student...

[Rebecca Solnit]  

[hexagr]

Your ability to describe the world affects how you think about it. If the language and idioms you know are constrained to a particular window, that window will act as a constraint in shaping not only how you see the world, but also how you experience the world.

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Reviews for Week 13, 2025

Neural circuits for goal-directed navigation across species. Basu, J., & Nagel, K. (2024). Trends in Neurosciences, 47(11), 904–917.

Neural Network Excitation/Inhibition: A Key to Empathy and Empathy Impairment. Tang, Y., Wang, C., Li, Q., Liu, G., Song, D., Quan, Z., Yan, Y., & Qing, H. (2024). The Neuroscientist, 30(6), 644–665.

Event perception and event memory in real-world experience. Bailey, H., & Smith, M. E. (2024). Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(11), 754–766.

Plasticity of Dendritic Spines Underlies Fear Memory. Choi, J. E., & Kaang, B.-K. (2024). The Neuroscientist, 30(6), 690–703.

[optimistic-tree]

Theory

Haven't finished Persona 5 Royal, but, grrr-the idea of Akechi as a cognition? Incredible.

He's not real, he's never been real to you, not to anyone probably. He's honest in the boiler room, tells you he hates you. He won't let you take him home. He kills himself-not like that, not ever like that. Too pedestrian, probably.

There has to be some part of him that liked you. You could tell he wanted to come home-but he died. Died and was gone, and you couldn't save him.

It's your dearest wish, to bring him back, for love, for his unrealized potential, for being the one person you couldn't save-give or take a few, but they don't matter. He's not happy in this world. He can't ever be happy. He was a tool, and he can't stand being a tool again. (That part sticks with you. You don't like remembering the things he said about you, about being alone.) Your team fights side-by-side with him, and it works, and nothing goes wrong. And it's the day before the infiltration, and Maruki comes to you, and says that Akechi's fake. Not like that, he's too tactful, but he wasn't real the whole time. Maybe you knew that, but you don't think so.

Akechi's a doll-made from your wishes-Maruki did it for you, maybe he took some things from your friends, maybe from his landlord-you're sure he didn't put anything from Shido (are you sure? Shido's known Akechi so much longer than you have-) It explains why his mother's not here. He's a puppet. Puppets don't get their own families, not just from wanting it. The only reason he's not happy is because you can't imagine him that way, not in a world like this. And you needed to save Sumire, but you couldn't have done it without Akechi. He was there to support you-he was your desires given flesh. Awfully unlucky of Maruki, huh? Your greatest desire was still to rebel, even when he had a face of his own. You couldn't leave reality the way it was, couldn't let Maruki destroy himself-the reasons spiral aroudn in your head again and again. But Akechi was the thing that made it possible, and he wasn't real.

Maybe it's your fault he couldn't be happy like this. Maybe if you listened to what he said in the engine room-you noticed he was different, but it's not like you ever knew him in the first place. Maybe if you'd held onto what he wanted from you-beneath him, groveling at his feet, maybe he would've been happy.

And it'd be wrong, but he'd be more than what you needed him to be. But he's dead, and you've never known him, not really, and you loved him and you can't get him back

I don't want Akechi alive. I want reality to bend around you. (I see so very many people write him as alive, as the same person he was before, but I don't love goro. He's interesting, but I don't love him-and the truth- that there never was an Akechi here at all, that you were struggling for a puppet who's strings you pulled yourself- It's incredible. )

[superxstarzz]

Can you do:

Anarchist of Cognition

Gatekeeper of Expression

Cleric of Sentience

Displacer of Exile

Hoarder of Grief [New Class]

here ya go!!! :3

[friendlydecapod]

Long-term cannabis users' IQs declined by 5.5 points on average from childhood, and there were deficits in learning and processing speed compared to people that did not use cannabis. The more frequently an individual used cannabis, the greater the resulting cognitive impairment, suggesting a potential causative link. The study also found that people who knew these long-term cannabis users well observed that they had developed memory and attention problems. The above findings persisted even when the study authors controlled for factors such as dependence on other drugs, childhood socioeconomic status, or baseline childhood intelligence.

[rage-emissions]

a little whump to vent

[tilbageidanmark]

A list of cognitive biases