iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Check out the full paper for more on how mid-air haptics and #VR are helping us rethink multisensory integration. Read the preprint on OSF: osf.io/preprints/ps... #Neuroscience #Haptics #VirtualReality #OpenScience #UCL

osf.io

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

We also found that Visual Dominance is incredibly strong. Participants were consistently faster whenever the target was visual, regardless of the priming order. It seems our brains prioritize sight even when it contradicts our "ecological" expectations. (4/5)

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The big finding: Touch is a "stable" anchor. While vision is highly "malleable"—meaning it is easily influenced and speeded up by preceding stimuli—touch is significantly more resistant to these priming effects. (3/5)

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Is there an "ecological expectation" to see an object before we touch it? We hypothesized that Vision-then-Touch (VT) would be the fastest sequence because it's what we expect in the real world. Turns out, we were wrong. (2/5)

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Touch is "stable," but vision is "malleable." 🧵 We’re excited to share our new preprint: "Stable Touch and Malleable Vision: Differential Priming Magnitudes in Virtual Reality." We used #VR and ultrasound mid-air haptics to challenge what we know about how we see and feel. osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

We need to stop viewing VR as just a simulation and start using it as a critical tool for investigating the mechanisms of consciousness and disorders of reality. Read the full paper here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

This explains why VR is so effective for PTSD exposure therapy . Even though you know it’s a simulation (doxastic knowledge), your predictive brain reacts physiologically as if the threat is real. Presence is merely our reality mechanism at work.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

The evidence is in the errors. 📉 When sensory inputs conflict in the real world (e.g., incongruent touch/vision), it induces "unreality" or dissociation—symptoms of Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder (DPDR). The exact same mismatch breaks presence in VR.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

We view this through the lens of Predictive Processing. The brain minimizes prediction errors between internal models and incoming sensory data . When VR provides accurate sensorimotor contingencies, the brain processes it as "real" at the moment of perception.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

In this paper, we propose that Presence and Reality are conceptually, mechanistically, and phenomenologically continuous . Whether walking down a street or exploring a virtual world, your brain uses the same predictive architecture to construct "realness".

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Historically, science has treated these as distinct: 1️⃣ Sense of Reality = Recognizing the physical world is real. 2️⃣ Sense of Presence = The feeling of "being there" in a virtual one. We reviewed the literature and found definitions are inconsistent and overlapping.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Is the "Sense of Reality" in the physical world actually different from the "Sense of Presence" in VR? 🧠🥽 I’m thrilled to announce my first lead-author, theoretical paper is out now in Perspectives in Psychological Science! We argue: No. Presence IS Reality. A thread 🧵👇

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PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Discrepancies Between Felt and Judged Presence: The Role of Touch on Presence in Virtual Reality: osf.io/v7fdc

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Check out the full paper on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps... #Haptics #Neuroscience #OpenScience

osf.io

OSF

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

We used mid-air haptics (ultrasound) to provide tactile feedback without physical contact. This allowed us to test "Sense of Object Presence" (SOOP) in a naturalistic way, distinguishing between simple reaction time and metacognitive confidence.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

The results showed a trade-off: 👁️ Vision: Faster reaction times. The dominant sense for immediate action. ✋ Touch: Slower, BUT rated as feeling significantly more "real" retrospectively.

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Does Touch make VR feel more "real" than vision? 🖐️🥽 Our new preprint investigates the "Sense of Object Presence" using mid-air haptics. We found a fascinating disconnect between "felt" presence (immediate action) and "judged" presence (reflection). 🧵👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Not going to name names, but myself and a group of colleagues are part of what is meant to be an 'international' society. They haven't held a conference or symposium outside of the east coast of the US for the past three years, and none of us have felt comfortable enough to attend.

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Neil Renic @ncrenic.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy: - two academics start dating - discover they are each other's terrible reviewer - hijinks ensue Working title: Love is Double-Blind

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Denise Cadete @denisemcadete.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Out now @mitpress.bsky.social: The Invisible Hand by @mattlongo.bsky.social - our hands shaped evolution, but their real power lies in the brain. 🧠✋ Longo blends anatomy, neuroscience, archaeology & more into a unified story of how we sense, move, and even think of our hands.

mitpress.mit.edu

The Invisible Hand

The hand has a central role in both human evolution and cultural development—in our descent and in our ascent. It is, Immanuel Kant said, “the visible pa...

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

My neuroscience background would probably compel me to write something based on free-will and the various experimentation people have done to determine whether 'Tu dois' really is a fundamental, deterministic law of the universe.

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PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Presence is Reality: Rethinking Virtual and Real-World Consciousness: osf.io/7qvwu

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Taken further, this argument suggests that the perception of virtual worlds is not so different than the perception of the 'real' world, meaning that virtual environments are not mere simulation - they are reality at the moment of perception as far as the brain is concerned

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

If this is the case, then VR research provides a radical avenue by which researchers can investigate facets of perceptual consciousness, including psychiatric disorders involving reality perception such as DPDR 4/🧵

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

In this piece, we argue that mechanistically and conceptually, presence and reality are actually identical - relying on the same integrative theoretical models, psychophysical mechanisms and neural architecture. 3/🧵

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

'Presence' is a term used by researchers utilising VR methodologies to describe how present one feels within a virtual environment, whereas 'reality' used by researchers in cognitive science is a term used to describe our ability to discern real from false phenomena 2/🧵

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

🚨New preprint alert🚨 Presence is Reality: Rethinking Virtual and Real-World Consciousness In which we argue that 'presence' as defined and discussed in the field of computer science, is mechanistically and conceptually identical to 'reality' osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/🧵

osf.io

OSF

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Carolina Villegas @carolinavm.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

1/3 New preprint alert! 🚨 doi.org/10.31219/osf... Are you studying interoception in a developmental or parental context? We introduce the Parental Interoception Questionnaire (PIQ), a new tool to assess how parents perceive and respond to their child’s bodily signals.

doi.org

OSF

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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Just got a cold call from an energy company which was a chatbot- but a remarkably nuanced one. First time I’ve interrupted a phone conversation to say (with genuine curiosity) “excuse me are you an AI?” Reminds me of this from Dennett: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

theatlantic.com

The Problem With Counterfeit People

Companies using AI to generate fake people are committing an immoral act of vandalism, and should be held liable.

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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

We're recruiting for new postdoc and RA positions on our @erc.europa.eu project "ConsciousComputation" To apply and for more details, please see: RA: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... Postdoc: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... Very happy to chat to anyone interested! 🧠🧪

ucl.ac.uk

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

This makes sense. I hate comparing LLMs to the human mind, but I imagine this would be like attempting to create a human being who didn't have the capacity to hallucinate Predictive processing is foundational to how we operate, but also leaves room for unavoidable error (hallucinations)

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Matilda Martin @matildamartin.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

🚓Police sexual misconduct allegations soared 67% between 2023-24 in England & Wales @politicshome.bsky.social analysis reveals The number of allegations relating to sexual conduct –including assault & harassment – against police officers rose to 819 in 2024 www.politicshome.com/news/article...

politicshome.com

Police Sexual Misconduct Allegations Soar 67 Per Cent In One Year

Allegations relating to sexual conduct involving police officers have soared by more than two thirds last year, according to analysis of new govern...

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

I have passed my PhD Upgrade and now head into the second year of my PhD! We have covered passive touch and behavioural measures of reality, going on to investigate active touch, utilising EEG to determine whether neural signatures signal a person's surety that objects independently exist

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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

What are the prospects for AI that is, or irresistibly appears to be, conscious? Here’s a substantially revised version of my paper “Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism” - many thanks to many folks for super-helpful comments osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

Wow it's becoming more and more human-like by the day!

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

pokemon pocket friend code reveal when? 👉👈

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Griffiths Computational Cognitive Science Lab @cocoscilab.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

(1/5) Very excited to announce the publication of Bayesian Models of Cognition: Reverse Engineering the Mind. More than a decade in the making, it's a big (600+ pages) beautiful book covering both the basics and recent work: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204941...

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Carolina Villegas @carolinavm.bsky.social · 02/02/2024

➡️Parent-child half-term activity alert! This is an opportunity for children to be engaged in a science experiment AND learn about their body signals. Parents will complete a novel computer task about their own child's body signals! 🫀 Sign up here: qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_...

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Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 12/12/2023

Imagine our profession was built so that you could advance your career without moving all the time. Isn't this a huge piece of the equity and access problem? Yes, it is.

open.substack.com

Needing to move is a huge barrier to broadening representation in the sciences

Science will be more inclusive and equitable when we stop expecting people to uproot their lives every few years

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 14/12/2023

it's wild that R, the ubiquitous statistical computing language, was co-created by a Māori prof (Ross Ihaka) — and yet the vast majority of scientists who use R don't know this is like inventing the toaster. possibly the largest impact of a single member of an indigenous community on modern science

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Clare Press @clarepress.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

Aaron Kaltenmaier (also @jhaarsma.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social , @peterkok.bsky.social, Fri 2-3:45 pm) asks how expectations about stimulus presence and content differently affect perceptual inference [7/9]

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Matt Joro @dungeonglitch.com · 21/08/2023

You would never do this. Warn your friends to never do this. Never ever. The best ppl warn everybody.

Once again, I DO NOT recommend students go to libgen (dot) rs and download books for their upcoming courses. I am NOT advocating for getting and sharing free pdfs of required texts. DON'T DO IT.

Avoid them as much as possible, the links go:
libgen.is
pk1lib.org
ethos.bl.uk/SearchResults...
sabaq.pk
sci-hub.se
archive.org
lej4learning.com.pk
pdfdrive.com

You also definitely don't want to be installing the unpaywall.org chrome extension. After all, who needs a super handy #openaccess tool that allows you, with a click of a button, to access any closed article?

I also HATE this website archive.org, i do not recommend!! Definitely don't use email generators to "borrow books from there
9 2
17 203
© 1,765
Lazarus Long @LazarusLong13 • 7h
To clarify...because each email is linked to a set number of books, do NOT use
guerrillamail.com
to generate unlimited emails for unlimited books?

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 03/12/2023

From now on if I ever feel bad or down about my work, I'll take comfort in the fact that at least I wasn't the utter moron who let the UAE chair a climate summit www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 02/12/2023

How do you know what's real? How do you know that the screen you're reading this from is real, and not some advanced hallucination? Object existence is a field full of contradictions and pitfalls, but we're trying to find a way to untangle the thread. cogscicounter.substack.com/p/how-do-you...

cogscicounter.substack.com

How Do You Know What's Real?

What is the difference between an object that exists and an object which doesn't?

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Olly Singleton @oliversingleton.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

Wow it's becoming more and more human-like by the day!

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