Congratulations! Well deserved
06.03.2026 23:42
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Congratulations! Well deserved
Penn people can stop in anytime from 3-5 PM this Weds-Fri to make a sign/poster in our 200 Goddard Suite.
We will have cardstock and large markers available. You bring the smart arguments.
That is the box where I write “sorry this is late…”
and control mechanisms that manage uncertainty and cognitive dissonance.
The article is open access, so please check it out. Many thanks to the editor and two named reviewers for their helpful suggestions. www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....
activation in frontal and parietal regions including DLPFC and DMPFC. We think this suggests conflicts between incoming information and prior attitudes engage effortful, higher-order cognitive systems rather than affective processing. Resolving such conflicts appears to rely on decision-making 5/6
analyses on the pro-vax group. Based on prior misinformation fMRI studies, we hypothesized activation in amygdala & precuneus when Ss read vax misinfo. We didn't see that. Instead, when Ss made attitude incongruent judgments (i.e., endorsing misinformation or rejecting correct information) we saw4/6
in the 2022-23 academic year while the university had a vaccine requirement to be on campus (so all our subjects had rec'd COVID19 vaccinations). This is perhaps why we had a hard time recruiting anti-vax folks (so all analyses with that group should be considered preliminary) & we focused 3/6
This was first author Morgan McClellan's undergrad Sr. thesis where she wanted to characterize the neural response to pro- and anti-vaccine statements in people selected for their prior attitudes (both for and against COVID19 vaccination). For context, we recruited from the BYU community 2/6
New paper alert! Neural mechanisms of cognitive conflict: processing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... 🧵 1/6
Oh, and link to the original piece: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/o...
and it is really a thing that can be measured (and thus monetized). I do agree with the authors that our phones are making us less present in the moment, but I'd call that "attentiveness" rather than attention per se. I do find it ironic that the NYT gave such a clickbaity headline to this piece 🤷♂️
the authors contend that what gets called "attention" is not really real attention, which is more about being present in the moment. They support this assertion by tracing the history of research on attn in cognitive psychology. By objection is that cog psych does a good job defining attn ...
There was an Op-ed in the New York Times this weekend about how the "attention" in the attention economy isn't what you're told that it is. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I'm interested in cognitive processes like attention, so I read it. I have thoughts, shared here: brockkirwan.com/uncategorize...
I have attended/helped organize the Winter Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory for 25 years. It's one of the best for advancing scientific discussion in a relaxed setting, organized by volunteers dedicated to a low-cost quality experience. Consider supporting: gofund.me/a78e7ed78
Excited to be part of this event next month with @pennmindcore.bsky.social!
If you're at Penn, come learn about some possible career paths in behavioral & brain sciences outside of academia 🧠
mindcore.sas.upenn.edu/calendar_eve...
Overheard while boarding the red eye flight last night:
Toddler: what does “red eye mean”?
Dad: it means this is a flight in the middle of the night. We’re all going to sleep on the flight—mommy, daddy, you. We’ll all sleep.
Toddler: will the pilot sleep?
😂
Super interesting article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer about regular MRI screenings for brain tumors & other injuries. In my experience, we see an incidental finding in maybe 1/1000 cases, but I scan healthy young adults at low risk for these things. What do you think? share.inquirer.com/kHZkTn
Did the bot catch that this is already published?
I gleefully search and replace two spaces after a period in all collaborative manuscripts.
Seeking Works in Progress Presenters
MindCORE invites @upenn.edu grad students, postdocs & RAs to give short presentations on a current project followed by an informal discussion with students and fellow researchers.
We’ll provide a location, promotion, & snacks. You provide the science.
DM us.
This is rad. Eye tracking could be an early, low-cost tool for dementia detection
A vaccine for seasonal allergies? Yes, please! penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-me...
Update: for printing 1/4-scale brain models this is pretty good.
Glad it’s not more serious
Oh no! What happened to the bike?
paper describing the method here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40325035/
This is awesome. Drag and drop a brain MRI scan into the window and it does tissue segmentation in the browser (in about 8 seconds), then creates a 3D mesh suitable for 3D printing. This has been an hours-to-days long process for us in the past, all in a couple minutes. 🤯 brain2print.org
Do you know if registration is required for this?
