Action Prediction Lab / Patric Bach

Funded 4-year PhD in my lab at Aberdeen 🧠 How do we work out what someone else is feeling? We’ll test predictive processing accounts of emotion perception using EEG and computational modelling. EASTBIO DTP, Deadline 16 Nov – please get in touch before applying! tinyurl.com/2rs8uz7p

If you thought "everything is everywhere" in the brain: inactivations reveal a clear distinction of labor. Sensory areas sense, colliculus promotes eligible actions (!), and prefrontal cortex integrates. The role of superior colliculus in a logistic decision www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are currently running our Phd studentship competition (4 year PhD, fully funded -- for details see below), School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen. If you are interested in developing a PhD research proposal with me, please get in touch.

New preprint! 🧵🧪🧠 doi.org/10.64898/202... Upshot: somatosensory cortex contains both feedback *and* intended movement signals (a.k.a. corollary discharge). These two signals exist orthogonally in neural space, flexibly allowing both fast state estimation and external perturbation detection. 1/

We are currently running our Phd studentship competition (4 year PhD, fully funded -- for details see below), School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen. If you are interested in developing a PhD research proposal with me, please get in touch.

PhD opportunity 🚨 We’re recruiting 3 fully funded PhD studentships at @abdnpsych.bsky.social University of Aberdeen! Work on perception, social cognition & cognitive science in a supportive, interdisciplinary environment 🌍 Open to UK & international students Apply 👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/program...

✨ Hybrid Event Alert! The Smoky Mirrors Symposium: Self–Other Actions and Interactions in Real and Virtual Worlds at Aalto University is coming up on 12.12.25 👏 For more information, and to register, click the link below‼️ www.aalto.fi/en/events/sm...

Reminder about our project on fMRI/EEG on spatial/social cognition for the EastBio PhD studentship competition. fully-funded 4-year PhD, with Patric Bach and Rama Chakravarthi at @abdnpsych.bsky.social, and @moritzwurm.bsky.social at CIMeC, Italy. please share/get in touch Deadline: 15/12/2025

Are you curious how the brain creates a stable visual world? Check out our four year EastBio PhD competition project with @mauromanassi.bsky.social, Rama Chakravarthi and Brett Cochrane at @abdnpsych.bsky.social! Info: tinyurl.com/2s9d4ucw Deadline: 15 Dec #PsychSciSky #VisionScience #neuroskyence

Interested in a PhD in EEG/fMRI of spatial/social cognition? Check out our project for the EastBio competition: fully-funded 4-year PhD, with Patric Bach and Rama Chakravarthi at @abdnpsych.bsky.social, and @moritzwurm.bsky.social at CIMeC, Italy. tinyurl.com/ypcb4m2c Deadline: 15/12/2025

Interested in a PhD in EEG/fMRI of spatial/social cognition? Check out our project for the EastBio competition: fully-funded 4-year PhD, with Patric Bach and Rama Chakravarthi at @abdnpsych.bsky.social, and @moritzwurm.bsky.social at CIMeC, Italy. tinyurl.com/ypcb4m2c Deadline: 15/12/2025

I'm so excited to help bring this Computational Neuroscience workshop to life! Join a fantastic group of researchers in Denmark this August (11-14). We've designed it for PhDs & postdocs to connect with experts and build new skills. Hope to see you there! Please do share with your colleagues!

PhD position alert!!! Together with @predictivebrain.bsky.social and Sonja Kotz we are looking for a PhD candidate to join a great project on the biological foundations of perceptual decisions vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric... Happy to answer any question you may have!

Interesting new lesion meta-analysis of aphantasia, in line with the importance of a specific region in the fusiform gyrus, previously identified by @alfredospagna.bsky.social et al, for visual mental imagery 🧠 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

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 🧵

There’s much more in the paper! Steve and I look forward to your thoughts in the peer commentary that will come with the article (the call for commentaries will come out soon). You can find the paper here: doi.org/10.1017/S014... and preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps....

Happy to share our new paper exploring how the brain might represent decision confidence. A population representation of the confidence in a decision in the parietal cortex: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

A new study by 𝐃𝐫. 𝐊𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐋. 𝐌𝐜𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 (UEA, School of Psychology), provides evidence that when we know someone’s goal, we subconsciously shift our perception of their actions toward the most relevant outcome. This supports predictive coding theories in social perception and Theory of Mind.

New preprint “Monkey See, Model Knew: LLMs accurately predict visual responses in humans AND NHPs” Led by Colin Conwell with @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social Akshay Jagadeesh, Kasper Vinken @amrahs-inolas.bsky.social @jacob-prince.bsky.social George Alvarez @taliakonkle.bsky.social & Marge Livingstone 1/n

Always remember--this is not a case of Trump appeasing Putin--its actually him joining Putin. Its not Munich 1938, its the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.

I mean you don’t need to do this. Plenty of studies have been done before and conclusively shown there is no link. Don’t waste your money. www.theguardian.com/...

Exciting News!! 🌞🌊 Adriatica2025 Summer School on "Brain-Body Interactions and Wellbeing" is back with an impressive lineup of speakers in a stunning beachside setting! 🫀🫁🧠🧘 Save the dates: September 8-12, Pescara, Italy. Stay tuned for more details coming soon! #TEAMLab #MamboLab #Adriatica2025

I don’t know how I missed this. A group in Beijing have developed an effective brain-inspired vision chip for autonomous machines, robotics, and AI that was inspired by our perception/action account of ventral-dorsal visual processing in primate cerebral cortex.🧪🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We have an opening for a 12 month Research Assistant post, funded by an ERC grant. The postholder would help with several neuroimaging projects, including MEG and 7T fMRI. Please repost and share with anyone who may be interested. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... #neuroskyence #Neuroimaging

New paper! In this study, we identify a previously unreported level of representation in the action recognition hierarchy that is right-lateralized, perceptually highly invariant but not conceptual, and encodes the coarse structure of the effect induced by an action. elifesciences.org/articles/98521

BAMB! is happening again in 2025. Learn how to model your behavioural data, next to the beach in Barcelona! keynotes this year from @athenaakrami.bsky.social and Peter Dayan.

Cool finding, and consistent with EcoPsy expectations. But can we please stop inserting the phrase “specialized for” where the data do not support it (which is most everywhere)?

I am looking for a post-doc on neuroimaging analysis. Come & join my team at UEA (Norwich, UK). The post is for 32 months starting from April. Norwich is a wonderful & affordable city. ➡Apply: vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/13... ⏰Deadline: 13 February 2025 Questions: s.rossit@uea.ac.uk

How do our brains generate predictive models of unfolding events? We're seeking for a *postdoc* to address this question in my lab: sites.google.com/site/moritzf...

Spread the word! Another postdoc job in St Andrews-Arché, in the @leverhulme.bsky.social-funded WIKI project! Apply from here: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... Looking for a specialist of logic and/or the psychology of reasoning, ideally with expertise in hypothetical thought.

The Trust's Early Career Fellowships offer a three-year salaried post for researchers at the beginning of their academic career to undertake a significant piece of research. Interested? Apply: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career... Read about some of the projects: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/grants-in-fo...