Marieke van Vugt

Daily multivitamin slows signs of biological ageing The supplement’s anti-ageing effect was greater in people who were already biologically older than their years.

"Taking a multivitamin every day can slow certain markers of biological ageing, a new study suggests." But what was in the multivitamin? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My PhD student is stuck. How do I teach them perseverance and problem solving? A new principal investigator wants to help PhD students to develop resilience and creativity in the laboratory without hovering or doing the work for them.

My PhD student is stuck. How do I teach them perseverance and problem solving? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Interesting!

Eight common errors I see in PhD applications and interviews, and how to avoid them Convince a supervisor that you’re a great fit for their laboratory by preparing questions, honing your personal statement and showcasing strong team-player instincts.

Solid advice for PhD applications and interviews www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Key Deadlines graphic with a roadway to being a student or TA. March 15 - Applications close at midnight in your time zone.

Don’t wait! The 15 March deadline is coming fast for both students and Teaching Assistants.

Don’t miss your chance! Start your application today!

➡️ Apply now: portal.neuromatchacademy.org/sign-in

➡️ Learn more: neuromatch.io/courses/

#DeepLearning #CompNeuro #ClimateScience #NeuroAI

Excited to share that our MEG project is now out in Current Biology! We show how visual content codes relate to motor oscillations in telling time.

Huge thanks to Quirin Gehmacher, Peter Kok, Matt Davis and Clare Press (bsky links below).🧵

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Temporally-precise sensory encoding of predicted content, entraining motor oscillations to derive time. @akalt.bsky.social's first study out @currentbiology.bsky.social, testing parts of this idea (tinyurl.com/TiCSKaltenma...). Huge thanks @leverhulme.ac.uk ac.uk @erc.europa.eu, great work Aaron!

Curious about how psychological theories are built, tested, and refined in practice? This summer, the Theory Methods Society is launching the very first edition of the summer school Theory Building in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam (July 6–10, 2026).

theorymethodssociety.org

OpenAI announces ChatGPT is now at the level of real scientific reviewers, “It just tells you to do single-cell RNAseq in response to every query” says Sam Altman

A timely reminder that social progress doesn’t come easy. The idea of half the population not being allowed to vote might sound bizarre now but was reality until embarrassingly recently.

#BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! 🎺

This Friday, March 13th, the Brain Meeting speaker will be Leonie Koban giving a talk entitled "Social influences on drug and food craving: from behavior to brain signatures" In person or online.

Read more:
www.in.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/events

RECENSION: Bobo Stenson trio skapar mening på svindlande höjder När jazzimprovisation funkar som bäst är musicerande både spontant och mycket målmedvetet.

Never expected to be "cited' in a jazz concert review:

"Cognitive scientists Steve Torrance and Frank Schumann believe that at the core of an improviser's expertise is what they call "a higher-level meaning-making" that spontaneously.."

www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur/bobo-...

Chemical warfare....

#IWD2026 #InternationalWomensDay #HappyInternationalWomensDay #WomenInSTEM

Open PhD/Postdoc position (start: Oct 2026). Topic: AI/LLMs and child language/communicative/cognitive development. The exact project will be shaped with the candidate. Join our team @univ-amu.fr at the intersection of computer and cognitive science (& right next to the Calanques!). Send me your CV!

Every time you experience something new, your brain faces a decision: Should it update an existing memory or create a new one?

In our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social #JNeurosci, we isolate that exact decision, moment-by-moment during learning 🧵

Agreed!

I would argue that the incentive structure in academia is the root of all of our problems (failure to replicate, fraud, etc.)

very aspect of life in this country is designed so that people do not form bonds or relationships with other people, it's wild to watch in action. Never seen divide and conquer applied this rigorously to a domestic population that is not under foreign occupation

That is my main concern. The increasing dependence on immediate reward and the entitlement to achieve it effortlessly will reshape who we are, making us (future generations, of course) emotionally fragile to face problems (getting there already) and cognitively inept to come up with solutions.

Cracked, but still there: the glass ceiling persists for senior women in science To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Mangala Srinivas reminds junior colleagues that career success won’t protect you from gender-based bias.

"Labels such as ‘poor fit’ or ‘not a real scientist’ are clearly opinions, which can be wrong. I also suggest that everyone take the responsibility to call out slights or unfair behaviour." Unfortunately also quite familiar to me... Still work to do! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What a viral TikTok taught me about personal storytelling in science The success of a student’s educational video made me rethink the ways that teaching can create moments of wonder that technology can’t replace.

"maybe what we can offer as science educators is not information itself, but the excitement and meaning we derive from the topics we teach. And we can hope that our students will carry that wonder with them into the world" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Climate change is speeding up — the pace nearly doubled in ten years Earth is now warming at a rate of around 0.35 ºC per decade, fresh analysis finds.

"The rate of global warming has surged since 2015 and is now nearly double what it was in the 1970s, according to a study1 that tackles one of the hottest debates among climate scientists." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The missing pieces of menopause science Hormone therapy is back after decades in the shadows. But evidence gaps remain for treating perimenopause — often the most disruptive part of the menopause transition.

What do we know about hormone therapy for menopause and peri-menopause symptoms? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A reinforcement learning and sequential sampling model constrained by gaze data Author summary When people are deciding between options they have encountered in the past, their preferences are largely based on their memory of past experiences with those options. However, simply l...

"The present study shows how constraining an RL-SSM with eye gaze data can further enhance its predictive ability." dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Celebrate women in research and the networks that sustain them On International Women’s Day, we celebrate technology pioneers and recognize the mentorship that is necessary to inspire the current generation and those of the future.

Celebrate women in research and the networks that sustain them--but why is mentoring always emphasized when talking about women, but not when talking about men? I also find mentoring important, but it so much reinforces the stereotypes... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why we should look beyond grades to spot potential in STEM “I have long believed that genius is evenly distributed across society,” this professor writes

"I wish the system did a better job of looking beyond traditional academic metrics when assessing potential." www.science.org/content/arti...

Now out: "Mindfulness in Relationships: Eight-Week Mindfulness Intervention Associated with Decreased Negative Emotion and Increased Nonreactivity in Non-meditating Romantic Partners" rdcu.be/e7ch6

How AI is shaping the war in Iran — and what's next for future conflicts The conflict in Iran is highlighting the use of artificial intelligence in warfare.

“There is no evidence that AI lowers civilian deaths or wrongful targeting decisions and it may be that the opposite is true,” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The first ‘AI societies’ are taking shape: how human-like are they? Scientists are studying forms of ‘social’ interactions between artificial-intelligence agents. Will they find a fresh form of sociology, or merely a sophisticated mime act?

On AI agents as means for simulating societies: "Their sycophantic nature might mean that AI agents can’t “reflect the contradiction and disagreement and negative emotion that real people experience”," www.nature.com/articles/d41...