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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠

@nataliepeluso.com
4.2K followers 2.5K following 1.4K posts

Cognitive science PhD candidate in perceptual organisation of naturalistic faces across the lifespan, & former award-winning operatic soprano. Curious about embodied social intelligence, self-expression, & self-experience.

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Reposted by Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠
Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 14h
Time for this classic again.
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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 23h
I’ve been fully brainwormed by @anthonymoser.com’s observation that Altman only has three facial expressions, so now whenever I see a photo, I note which one it is (here: ‘processing bad news,’ with overtones of ‘saw a ghost’; the third is ‘jackass’).
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European Society for Cognitive Psychology @escop.bsky.social · 8h
Call for unpublished data: Holistic processing of same-race versus cross-race faces and its relationship to the cross-race recognition deficit
escop.eu
ESCOP - Call for unpublished data: Holistic processing of same-race versus cross-race faces and its relationship to the cross-race recognition deficit
ESCOP is a dynamic scientific society that provides a venue within which current research in cognitive psychology and neighboring disciplines can be presented, discussed and encouraged.
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Scott Juntti @scottjuntti.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This matters because visual input must be transformed into coordinated motor output, moment by moment. Comparing cichlids and zebrafish reveals that similar behavioral goals can be achieved through different movement strategies—linking evolutionary diversity to the organization of behavior.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 20h
I'm currently listening to Cory Doctorow's latest book 'Enshittification - Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It" and it's surprisingly hopeful!
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Alix Dunn @alixdunn.com · 29/09/2026
Who could have guessed.
Guardian headline "Trial of live facial recognition in London station ends with a false positive and no arrests"
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Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JoCN) @jocn.bsky.social · 21h
Abstract Property-selective Clusters Link Continuous Property Representations to Discrete Category-selective Regions in Human Higher Visual Cortex
direct.mit.edu
Abstract Property-selective Clusters Link Continuous Property Representations to Discrete Category-selective Regions in Human Higher Visual Cortex
Abstract. Object representations in the human higher visual cortex (HVC) support complex recognition behaviors early in development, yet the principles linking continuous dimensional representations…
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Reposted by Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠
Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
One reason to learn about things outside your major is so that you have something to talk about with people at parties and on dates. No amount of money will make up for you being a crushing bore. History majors learn this early but I guess it takes other people longer.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 28/09/2026
How observers decode pain from facial reactions. Distributed patterns of facial muscle contractions drive pain judgments in both naturalistic and synthetic expressions. osf.io/preprints/ps... #PsychSciSky
osf.io
OSF
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 28/09/2026
🖐️'Seeing hand gestures’ early beginnings improves predictions of upcoming utterance meaning' From Marlijn ter Bekke, Lina van Otterdijk, Linda Drijvers & @judithholler.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #PsychSciSky
tandfonline.com
Seeing hand gestures’ early beginnings improves predictions of upcoming utterance meaning
In face-to-face conversation, people convey meaning multimodally, including speech and hand gestures. Previous work showed that comprehenders can use gestures to predict utterance content, but it i...
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Reposted by Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠
Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Covert-attention studies challenge gaze-based accounts of choice and decision-making. Covert attention dynamically shapes decision making doi.org/10.7554/eLif... #neuroscience
doi.org
Covert attention dynamically shapes decision making
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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I’ve been reporting on the CDC for years, and have written about many of its troubles over the past year. I was still shocked by the extent of the staff losses and political interference I found when reporting this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/h...
nytimes.com
‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission (Gift Article)
The agency has lost its independence and nearly a third of its staff, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and associates have tightened control.
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Mikkel Wallentin @mikkelwallentin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
New PhD-opportunity at Aarhus University with a project investigating the cognitive correlates of having no inner speech. Supervised by Johanne Nedergaard and yours truly. Deadline 11 November. Starting date 1 February 2027. Get in touch if you want to know more. phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/o...
phd.arts.au.dk
Individual differences in inner speech: Measurement and modelling (5+3), 2026-14
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This, from Dennett, I wish I'd taken to heart earlier in my life. www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/28/d...
How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1 You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2 You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3 You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4 Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 26/09/2026
Conflict, not category: What the pupil tracks in face pareidolia osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026
Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 26/09/2026
OpenAI enabled their bots to attempt hacking federal websites and to use stolen credentials to access government websites.
nytimes.com
OpenAI’s A.I. Went Rogue and Meddled With U.S. Government Websites (Gift Article)
The company did not learn until recently that its technology had meddled with websites for the Education Department, Commerce Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.
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UNSW Face Lab @unswfacelab.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
An integrative review chapter addressing whether ‘super-recognisers’ possess qualitatively different face processing expertise compared to the rest of us. Current evidence suggests not.
osf.io
White, D. (2025). What is special about super-recognisers? In From Super-Recognisers to the Face Blind: Why are some people better at recognising faces? p75–116, Lander, K. (Ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191986802.003.0003
An integrative review chapter addressing whether ‘super-recognisers’ possess qualitatively different face processing expertise compared to the rest of us. Current evidence suggests not.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 26/09/2026
Many-to-many mappings is exactly what faces do in the wild. Congratulations to @katiehoemann.bsky.social @lisafeldmanbarrett.com & team for helping to build a more veridical understanding of facial movements during development 👇
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Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What is the nature of universal representations in AI models, and what determines whether they emerge? Our paper accepted at #neurips2026 led by @florianmahner.bsky.social & @rothj.bsky.social addressed these questions comparing 162 vision models, with intriguing results. arxiv.org/abs/2605.13675 🧵
arxiv.org
Characterizing Universal Object Representations Across Vision Models
Deep neural networks trained with different architectures, objectives, and datasets have been reported to converge on similar visual representations. However, what remains unknown is which visual prop...
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Michelle Greene @mgreenephd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🚨New paper alert! 🚨 The visual system tunes itself to the statistics of its input. How do individual experiences differently tune vision? In this work, @bjbalas.bsky.social and I examined how one individual difference—height—changes the visual diet and how this affects perception. 1/
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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
People of Milan - don't miss this special screening of CONSCIOUS (www.theconsciousfilm.com) at the Fondazione Prada, October 29th. Suki Chan - the creative force behind the film - will be there to talk it, with Pr. Daniela Perani. Details here: www.fondazioneprada.org/project/huma...
theconsciousfilm.com
About – CONSCIOUS
Suki Chan's CONSCIOUS - Learn about the feature film
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 24/09/2026
Yes yes yes yes yes yes!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 24/09/2026
Jensen Huang, in the same interview: "One day, I had to pump gas - it was a few years ago. I couldn't remember my ZIP code." How can these men claim to steer the future when they don't even live on the same planet, makes my blood boil
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 24/09/2026
This is your daily reminder (courtesy of my daughter) that sometimes, work can wait.
Go TO BED 
Do your essay thing in the morning~ :( :(
Please :(
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 23/09/2026
**Please** make time to read or listen to "End Times Fascism" now we must resist the manic, aligned motivations driving those in power (financially, politically, religiously, militarily, technologically) to drive humanity over a cliff @naomiaklein.bsky.social @astra.bsky.social
The cover of the audiobook 'End Times Fascism' by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
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Andrew Tan @andrewtanyongyi.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"the author of one paper tried to describe the methods they used for analysis, but inadvertently ended up describing an entire p-hacking workflow." Asking Authors About Their Own Papers By Nihar B. Shah Interestingly, Prasad Jalepalli's comment below is also about AI for p-hacking.
medium.com
Asking Authors About Their Own Papers
By Nihar B. Shah
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Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 22/09/2026
“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” crazy how much Mamdani speaks my language
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 22/09/2026
The problem is research isn't the same as knowing through experience You can research everything there is to know about swimming but you'll never do it justice without ever having been in the water Writing what you've experienced is absolutely a clearer path to honest writing
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 22/09/2026
Interesting! If rhythmicity is important for managing temperature for a developing foetus, seems important to note that hot flashes are also somewhat rhythmic - super curious about what role estrogens have in thermoregulation during menopause
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 22/09/2026
When someone smiles, we don't perceive their eyes independently of their mouth, but as an integrated Gestalt. 😁 Here, changes in mouth shape increased the perceived brightness of the eyes (independent of higher level evaluations) 👀 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A smiling mouth expression modulates gaze appearance by enhancing how the eyes light up - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - A smiling mouth expression modulates gaze appearance by enhancing how the eyes light up
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 21/09/2026
21,627 applications. 😱 This is completely unsustainable.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 21/09/2026
🔥 Exposure to basic emotion labels primes people to respond with fewer unique labels when viewing faces. Here, a new study extends this to labelling face pareidolia in aging. TL:DR basic emotion labels need disentangling from task constraints www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
tandfonline.com
Emotion labelling varies with lexical complexity more than age in face pareidolia images
Forced choice paradigms constrain the emotion labels available to participants, limiting the range of lexical responses elicited by emotional stimuli. To characterise emotion labelling when this co...
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Sam Schwarzkopf @sampendu.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Happy to see @genetang.bsky.social's review article on Charles Bonnet Syndrom now available as early-online in Brain! #VisionScience #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky doi.org/10.1093/brai...
doi.org
The neural mechanisms of Charles Bonnet syndrome
Charles Bonnet syndrome is characterised by visual hallucinations that cannot be explained by any other cause in individuals with visual impairment. Tangta
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 20/09/2026
whenever I feel my brain hurts, and I can't face reading another paper or writing another word, this is my happy place
The first page of the first chapter of the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Which you MUST read if you haven't already ❤️
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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻’𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀? We find evidence of both smooth and sharp transitions; latter sharply altered brain dynamics in as few as 1 time step. Link below -->
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 18/09/2026
I love this slide. I really don't think the geopolitical implications of the clean energy transition have sunk in for most people.
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Jason Leopold @jasonleopold.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
HUGE EXCLUSIVE from @bloomberg.com Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School Pentagon investigators discovered that flawed intel, outdated imagery & overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab 🎁 www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
bloomberg.com
Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School
Pentagon investigators have discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 18/09/2026
This is why I hate "just a tool" so so so much. You can make a calculator without access to every calculation. You can make photoshop without access to all photos. Someone show me a genai tool that didn't require all of our labour in its production. It's plagiarism software.
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 18/09/2026
Our toasters are screaming into the void
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Noise and diversity can boost stability | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Noise and diversity can boost stability
Random noise can break symmetries and enhance the stability of collective behaviors
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 18/09/2026
Humaning.
A four-panel comic. In panel 1, a Northern Cardinal and American Goldfinch perch above a busy crowd in a city, looking down. The cardinal says "It's a nice day to go humaning." The goldfinch says "Just look at them. Majestic." In panel 2, a close-up of the two birds. The cardinal says "Nobody tells you that you'll reach a certain age and suddenly get into humaning. I hit 3 years old, and then bam."The birds are looking out over the crowd scene. In panel 3, the cardinal says "Their calls sound funny to us, but each one has a unique meaning." Below, people are saying various things: "I'm tired." "Where's my phone?" "I'd murder a burrito." In panel 4, the birds look down excitedly at a man walking by. The cardinal says "Wait, is that a guy who got dressed in the dark and put his shirt on inside out and backwards?" And the goldfinch exclaims, "Holy... that's a lifer!"
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
What if consciousness isn't real? By @timbayne.bsky.social in @sciam.bsky.social "we should ask whether bees, babies or bots are conscious. But in asking that question, we should be alive to the possibility that the question itself might need replacing." www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
scientificamerican.com
What if ‘consciousness’ isn’t real?
Our understanding of consciousness could be fundamentally wrong
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Michael Gaebler @michaelgaebler.com · 18/09/2026
Get ready! *MindBrainBody Symposium* 2027 Keynotes are confirmed 🥳 @hakwan.bsky.social (online) @maramather.bsky.social @camillanord.bsky.social Hyeongdong Park Asya Rolls 📆 March 17-19, 2027 📍Berlin & online 📬 Submit by Dec 10, 2026 (!) 🔗 mindbrainbody.de (official announcement soon)
Logo of the MindBrainBody Symposium
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Nathalie Maréchal, PhD @nathaliemarechal.net · 17/09/2026
So you just learned about the AI cult, huh? Here is the longform explainer you need to make sense of the very, very strange ideas driving tech policy in 2026. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride. www.techpolicy.press/what-policym...
techpolicy.press
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 18/09/2026
Can Australia join too? I mean if we can do Eurovision, then surely...
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hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Disturbances of conscious experience are central features of many psychiatric and mental health disorders. Experimental studies of conscious perception are therefore increasingly cited ....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Hitting and missing on consciousness
Disturbances of conscious experience are central features of many psychiatric and mental health disorders. Experimental studies of conscious perception are therefore increasingly cited in clinical an....
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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Maybe the most important political story of our time. People just want the bullshit to stop.
gizmodo.com
71% of Americans Say They're Completely Exhausted
A CDC report shows that people are not feeling relaxed and restful in the United States.
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Simon Schultz @simonschultz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New paper out in PLOS Comp Biology - collaboration with Simon Stringer and Dan Goodman Hierarchical feature binding in a spiking neural network model of the primate ventral visual pathway Brian Gardner et al journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org
Hierarchical feature binding in a spiking neural network model of the primate ventral visual pathway
Author summary How the brain pieces together visual details into coherent objects, known as the feature binding problem, remains an unresolved conceptual challenge in neuroscience. Existing theories e...
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