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Sam Verschooren

@samversc.bsky.social
1.4K followers 608 following 51 posts

MSCA postdoctoral fellow at Artctic University of Norway and MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Attention; mind wandering; latent state transitions; interoception and autonomic control samverschooren.github.io

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Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Sebastian Watzl @sebastianwatzl.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
What is this ‘attention economy’? Is there really a market where people buy and sell human attention? If so, what’s wrong with that? New paper by Katharine Browne and me that argues: yes, there is an attention market and yes, there is something wrong with it. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
The attention market—and what is wrong with it - Philosophical Studies
Attention is described as a “scarce commodity” that is traded in “a marketplace.” This, it is further claimed, contributes to a “widespread sense of attentional crisis.” But is there really an attenti...
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Amitai Shenhav @ashenhav.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
2 yrs ago, I briefly laid out a new theory of how motivation works (AGH). Here, I expand on the problems AGH was trying to solve, why they are hard to solve, what my solution looks like, and how this should change our understanding of thoughts & actions. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵A few highlights:
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Gidon Frischkorn @gidon-frischkorn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
@cognition-zurich.bsky.social is searching for a PostDoc! Come work with us!
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
2023: 8,039 proposals 2024: 10,360 proposals 2025: 17,066 proposals 2026: 21,627 proposals Something's gotta give
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
New preprint! 🎉 I analysed 1660 papers from 4 psychology journals and found materials sharing went from 9% of papers in 2015 to 82% in 2025, and these materials *do* get downloaded — a median of 135 times each. BUT shared code is often hard to run. doi.org/10.31234/osf... Let's walk through it 🧵
Two-panel figure. Panel a is a flow diagram tracking 1,611 empirical psychology articles from publication year (545 in 2015, 552 in 2020, 514 in 2025) to repository-link type: 785 link an OSF project, 85 link another platform, and 741 link no repository. Of those with an OSF link, download counts were retrieved for 670 and not retrieved for 115. Panel b is a line chart of the share of empirical papers linking OSF across 2015, 2020 and 2025. The overall rate, shown as a dashed black line, rises from 9% to 57% to 82%. All four journals rise steeply and end close together: Psychological Science 92%, JESP 89%, JML 83%, Cognition 76%, with Psychological Science highest throughout.Three-panel figure. Panel a: ridgeline plot of downloads per file by material type on a log scale, with the percentage never downloaded labelled for each — archive 16% of 545 files, documents 20% of 2,970, code 12% of 3,471, other 17% of 1,646, data 21% of 10,051, media 35% of 2,120, images 35% of 4,102. Most files cluster between 1 and 10 downloads, with long right tails past 100. Panel b: ridgeline plot of downloads per paper by journal, log scale, with dashed median lines; Psychological Science is highest, then JESP, JML and Cognition. Panel c: stacked bars showing, for documents, data and code separately, the share of papers by download band (0, 1–10, 11–100, more than 100) in 2015, 2020 and 2025. The share exceeding 100 downloads falls sharply over time in all three types, from roughly two-thirds in 2015 to a quarter or less in 2025, as the 1–10 band grows.Four-panel figure. Panel a: statistical languages detected among 333 papers with retrievable code — R 88%, SPSS 12%, Stata 4%, SAS 1%. Panel b: code red flags among those 333 papers — 34% hard-code an absolute path, 40% reference a missing file — above documentation among 672 OSF-linked papers — 21% have a README, 30% are documented by README, description or wiki. Panel c: among 562 Elsevier papers with no repository link, 44% (245) host at least one journal supplementary file but only 14% (77) host data, code or an archive. Panel d: composition of those 448 hosted files — documents 52%, data 21%, media 9%, other 7%, archive 6%, code 3%, images 1%. The code panels are green, the journal-supplement panels blue.Coefficient plot (download predictors)

Dot-and-whisker plot of three standardised predictors of OSF download volume, each with a 95% confidence interval. Repository size (number of files) has the largest effect at about 0.76, citations about 0.38, and altmetric attention about 0.12. All three intervals sit entirely above zero, so each predicts more downloads, with repository size roughly twice the effect of citations and six times that of attention. X-axis: standardised effect, −0.2 to 1.0.
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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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Dani Gresch @danielagresch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
📣 Check out our latest preprint with @kianobre.bsky.social, spearheaded by the incredible @dxywei.bsky.social! Across four experiments, we compare the behavioural and neural signatures of selecting real-world objects in perception and working memory. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Searching across working memory and perception
Searching for objects of interest is an essential and pervasive activity in adaptive cognition. In everyday situations, we often search for relevant content in our surroundings and in mind at the same...
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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
How do we prevent memories from competing to guide attention? More distinct hippocampal representations for competing memories are linked to precise preparatory coding in visual cortex & more accurate eye movements to target locations. Thrilled to share this work by the incomparable Serra Favila!
nature.com
Hippocampal mechanisms underlying the resolution of competition in memory and perception - Nature Communications
Memory and perception both require selecting behaviorally relevant information. Here, the authors show that more distinct hippocampal memories are linked to precise anticipatory signals in visual cort...
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Tahnée Engelen @tahnee-engelen.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Come join my team at @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social! I have an open PhD position (3 years fully funded) for a project investigating interoception and mental health, using lots of fun methods (EEG, EGG, tACs, TMS). More info and applications here: ats.talentadore.com/apply/doctor... #NeuroJobs
ats.talentadore.com
Doctoral Researcher, RCF project
Department of Psychology is seeking to recruit a Doctoral Researcher to work in the RCF project starting 1 November 2026, or as soon as possible after that for three years. The fixed-term position is ...
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Harrison Ritz @hritz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Our task-switching paper is now out at Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol... We find that that our brains reset to a task-neutral state between trials, providing flexibility when the upcoming task is uncertain. RNNs also learn this strategy, but only when trained to switch tasks.
schematic of how a brain might reset to a neutral state between trials
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Maëlle Lerebourg @maellelerebourg.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Good morning @ecvp.bsky.social! ☕If you are wondering how imagery and perception interact and compete, and how to quantify these competitive interactions in visual cortex with fMRI,🧠please drop by the poster session this afternoon and chat with me about my newest study (with @peelen.bsky.social)
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Ignacio Rebollo @brainandstomach.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Happy to share the first output of the Gut-Brain Interactions lab, an opinion piece titled "A two-timescale framework for gut–brain influences on arousal, motivation, and affect", now accepted on the Phil Trans Royal Soc B special issue "On the synergy of central and peripheral dynamics"
osf.io
OSF
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Veera Ruuskanen @veerahelmisofia.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Super excited to see our review out in TiCS! Here me & @cogsci.nl present the first comprehensive framework of the mechanisms driving relationships between spontaneous pupil-size fluctuations, neural activity, and behavior 👀🧠👩🏻‍💻 Spoiler: arousal is only one of at least four 😶‍🌫️ doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Heleen Slagter @haslagter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
PhD position (4 years, paid) on an NWO-funded project on the Role of Foveal Processing in Spatial Attention at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, supervised by Dr. Mieke Donk (main PI) and me! For more information: workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/ph...
workingat.vu.nl
Vacancy — PhD position (4 years) on the Role of Foveal Processing in Spatial Attention
Are you interested in understanding how attention shapes what we see? Would you like to combine behavioural experiments, psychophysics, and eye tracking to uncover how the brain selects and prioritise...
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Dani Gresch @danielagresch.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
🌈 New preprint! With Sage, Melissa, and Kia (@dynacog-lab.bsky.social, @scenegrammarlab.bsky.social, @kianobre.bsky.social), we explore how attention is divided across external perception and internal working memory - revealing a dynamic trade-off between these two domains. doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
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Atsushi Kikumoto @kikumotoatsushi.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Takuro Zama is presenting resenting at #CCN2026 (Poster B62 in Poster Session B)! Asymmetric Interruption Costs Reflect Transition Structure Shaped by Task-Neutral Attractors: 2026.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=7...
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Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
A deeply destructive and inexpert management consultancy class has emerged whose sole purpose is to shrink Anglosphere universities and to undermine their future - all the better to secure more work. democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-bri...
democracyforsale.substack.com
Inside Britain's university crisis
As teaching staff face job loss, their bosses have netted pay rises and bought advice from a “vampiric” management consultancy, writes Prof. John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter
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Mehdi Senoussi @cogsenoussi.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
📢 PhD opening in comp. cog. neuro. in Toulouse: thalamo-frontal model of cognitive control. Modelling/EEG experience is welcome but not required. Application deadline: 8 Sept. 2026 Details: sdrive.cnrs.fr/s/eDrkeXfjdW... #CognitiveScience #Neuroscience #EEG #neuroskyence #compneurosky
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Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience @ghentccn.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
doi.org
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates
Humans adapt learning rates on both a fast and a slow time scale, and the central orbitofrontal cortex may represent the slow time scale.
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Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
How about a jet-lagged live posting while I read? Trying to read this because I keep getting tagged in posts about it, but the first paragraph already contains synthetic text (a quote from Claude). I will skip that bit and persevere... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Could AI be conscious?
Experts believe it’s at least possible. We urgently need a plan to navigate the ethical implications
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Gavin Buckingham @drgbuckingham.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The Cognition Group in the Psychology dept at Exeter are at risk of redundancy because "basic cognitive psychology research does not align with the current priorities of funding bodies" If you think this is overtly wrong and misguided, please sign this open letter docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Open Letter in Support of the Cognition Group, University of Exeter
To Executive members of the University of Exeter, including Vice Chancellor Prof. Lisa Roberts, Senior Vice-President and Provost Prof. Dan Charman, Pro Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean Prof. Sallie...
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Tobias Egner @tobiasegner.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
New paper out: Led by super grad student Jim Zhang and in collaboration with Greg Cogan, we review and synthesize Insights into the neural mechanisms supporting cognitive stability and flexibility from human intracranial electroencephalography. For free access: authors.elsevier.com/a/1nRYWY3M3p...
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Nature Reviews Psychology @natrevpsychol.nature.com · 10/07/2026
📣The July issue is live! Cover: The psychology of eating requires social context Also in this issue: 🔹Adolescent identity development 🔹Resilience interventions 🔹Transition dynamics between attentional states Read the full issue: go.nature.com/4b5Sw9h #psychscisky #cogpsy #socialpsy #clinicalpsy
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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
How do we update our predictions when our environment changes? The hippocampus rapidly integrates previously distinct sequences to support updated predictions. New work w/ @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social – part of the theme issue on hippocampal predictions!
royalsocietypublishing.org
The hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictions
Abstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Every single humans rights org — including Israeli ones — have been telling the same story. Given that Israel still bars journalists entry to Gaza, which in itself is bonkers, how about we trust any or all human rights orgs. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 19/06/2026
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com The 2010 novel “Super Sad True Love Story” describes a world that feels very much like the one we live in today — hypervisual, looks-obsessed, post-literate. Our columnist Ezra Klein spoke to its author, Gary Shteyngart, about how he sees the world today.
nyti.ms
Opinion | I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novel
The 2010 novel “Super Sad True Love Story” foreshadowed our current world. So I asked its author, Gary Shteyngart, how he sees the world today and how we might find pleasure in it.
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
More evidence, from a large-scale study in China, that using AI hurts learning if it undermines mental effort. When homework time drops due to AI use, so do test scores. Across studies, there is a clear theme: AI tutoring in support of classes is good, using AI to "help" with homework is bad.
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Eren Günseli @erengunseli.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join my lab at Sabancı University in Istanbul for a 2-year TÜBİTAK-funded position, with possible extension. Interested candidates can email me with a CV and a brief note about their research interests. More details on gunselilab.com soon.
gunselilab.com
Memory, Attention, & Cognitive Control Lab | Istanbul | Sabanci Uni.
Memory, Attention, & Cognitive Control Lab at Sabancı University - Eren Günseli. We study how memory and attention interact, how humans control what to remember, what to forget, what to attend to, and...
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Thanks so much for visiting, it was great fun!
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Ladislas Nalborczyk @lnalborczyk.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Mental image vividness and aphantasia judgements are fundamentally compromised by overlooked definition problems link.springer.com/article/10.3...
link.springer.com
Mental image vividness and aphantasia judgements are fundamentally compromised by overlooked definition problems - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Vividness judgements are intended to capture variance in the axis that uniquely separates the experience of a mental image from other unambiguously sensory perceptual experiences, and from a completel...
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Last week we organized the Experimental Health Research Conference in Tromsø, bringing together researchers from across UiT's Faculty of Health Sciences (uit.no/tavla/artikk...). Very lucky with @epanlab.bsky.social and Arno Villringer as keynotes and we even caught some (almost) midnight sun!☀️🗻
Midnight sun over TromsøClimbing SherpatrappaA hike on KvaløyaKarin Roelofs presenting her keynote
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Nature Reviews Psychology @natrevpsychol.nature.com · 10/06/2026
You can access a read-only pdf of the article here: rdcu.be/fnzid
rdcu.be
Transition dynamics of external and internal attention across on-task and off-task states
Nature Reviews Psychology - Attention can be flexibly directed to information that is on- or off-task and internal or external to the individual. In this Perspective, Verschooren and colleagues...
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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 04/06/2026
🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10
doi.org
The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy
Will democracy survive the internet? Do we need to choose between Facebook’s surveillance capitalism or democracy? Layered lines of evidence can inform questions like these. When considered together, the evidence gives rise to a concerning picture, as summarized in a recent report for the European Commission that I co-led.
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Cool! I'm curious about the link to synaesthesia. Do you see it as a mix of external and internal?
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Reposted by Sam Verschooren
Marta Gerosa @martager.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
#PuG2026 comes to an end. One of my highlights was presenting our pilot study using autogenic training to teach voluntary control over interoceptive rhythms, led by @samversc.bsky.social with @niketag.bsky.social @toninfrc.bsky.social @michaelgaebler.com 🧘🫀 #interoception #neuroskyence [1/3]
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Thanks! Nature has a six-month embargo on self-archiving unfortunately. I'll probably still try uploading it somewhere at some point before, but for now I can send you the article over email
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
“A habitable, equal 21st century is materially possible,” the report concludes. “What stands in the way is not technical impossibility but political choice and the hard but crucial work of building a coalition behind it.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival
Global report provides an alternative to climate breakdown, political extremism and economic tensions
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
🎉New paper out today in Nature Reviews Psychology🎉 with @mjdahl.bsky.social, @mariamaly.bsky.social, and @thiasmittner.bsky.social. We've been working on a unified framework for attentional states and the dynamics of transitions between them. 🧵
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Thanks Mariam, I fully agree! Social media might not be all bad after all :)
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Full paper: www.nature.com/articles/s44... Grateful to my co-authors and to the many researchers whose work this builds on. Happy to discuss!
nature.com
Transition dynamics of external and internal attention across on-task and off-task states - Nature Reviews Psychology
Attention can be flexibly directed to information that is on- or off-task and internal or external to the individual. In this Perspective, Verschooren and colleagues bring together behavioural and neu...
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
These dynamics are refined by neuromodulatory influences: 🟡 Cholinergic systems constrain transitions along direction axis 🟢 Noradrenergic systems constrain transitions along goal-relevance axis This connects the cognitive and neurobiological levels of framework, but remains speculative for now
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
We propose three principles of transition dynamics: 1. An internal bias pulls attention inward 2. The goal value of the current state is compared against the opportunity cost of other states 3. An off-focus state temporarily releases attentional focus, facilitating spontaneous transitions
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
These literatures have rarely been integrated. We map attentional states along two orthogonal axes: ↔️ Direction: external vs. internal ⬆️ Goal-relevance: on-task vs. off-task This yields four states and we examine what governs the transitions between them.
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Recent work on transitions between external and internal attention has largely focused on the on-task domain, capturing how attention switches between them when cued. Separately, research on mind-wandering has studied on- to off-task transitions, with a focus on internally directed off-task states.
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
🎉New paper out today in Nature Reviews Psychology🎉 with @mjdahl.bsky.social, @mariamaly.bsky.social, and @thiasmittner.bsky.social. We've been working on a unified framework for attentional states and the dynamics of transitions between them. 🧵
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Mind-Body-Emotion Group @mbe-lab.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Morning #PuG2026 crowd! Mark your calendars for one of the first Mind-Body-Emotion talks by @martager.bsky.social today at 15:30
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Marta Gerosa @martager.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
This Thursday at 3:30pm (📍HS 15) at #PuG2026 come hear about our six-week pilot study using autogenic training to teach people how to voluntarily control cardiac signals, based on Verschooren et al. (2026) 🫀 with @samversc.bsky.social @niketag.bsky.social @toninfrc.bsky.social @michaelgaebler.com
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
For people attending PuG 2026, @martager.bsky.social (@mbe-lab.bsky.social) will present our recent empirical work where we apply ideomotor theory to autogenic training this Thursday (June 4, 3:30pm - 5:00pm) www.conftool.com/pug2026/inde...
conftool.com
PuG 2026 - ConfTool Pro - BrowseSessions
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
I suspect it hasn't really been picked up as we rely on a theoretical framework from cognitive psychology to explain an interoceptive phenomenon. I think this combination is actually part of its strength and it has relevance far beyond ideomotor theory, as we try to clarify in the article
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Sam Verschooren @samversc.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Great idea! I think my recent theoretical article with @michaelgaebler.com and Marcel Brass qualifies. We use ideomotor theory to understand how people can learn to voluntarily control interoceptive processes ("interoactions"), such as heart rate doi.org/10.1037/rev0...
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