Henry Beale
PhD candidate researching brain rhythms in vision. Psychophys, comp modelling, & EEG. Brisbane, Australia.
www.henrybeale.com
- Reposted by Henry BealeVisual confidence accurately tracks increasing internal noise with eccentricity in peripheral vision biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Reposted by Henry BealeCheck out our new paper on Journal of Vision showing that both endogenous and exogenous attention enhance contrast sensitivity uniformly across meridians despite differential adaptation effects! jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx...
- Reposted by Henry BealeHow do people compute a sense of confidence? This question is usually addressed using very simple images because we don't know how complex stimuli are represented internally. In a new paper, we addressed this question using artificial neural networks (ANNs). journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
- Reposted by Henry BealeWith some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
- Reposted by Henry BealeAt the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
- Reposted by Henry Beale
We recently published a theoretical review about how compositional and generative mechanisms in working memory provide a flexible engine for creative perception and imagery. Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps... Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - Reposted by Henry BealeHappy to share this new paper from the lab led by Angus Chapman, now out in PLoS Biology! It presents an integrated spatiotemporal normalization model for continuous vision. @afchapman.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
- Reposted by Henry Beale🚨 new preprint alert! biorxiv.org/content/10.1... what is the architecture of an individual working memory? 1/n
- Reposted by Henry BealeInterested in how we make preference-driven decisions, and how this is implemented in the brain? We report that neural correlates of evidence accumulation (CPP, Mu/Beta) are also observed during value-based decisions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Led by @laurencf.bsky.social (Lauren Fong) 1/n
- Reposted by Henry BealeWhat is the representation underlying cognition? Formal models rely on multidimensional scaling of similarity judgments to derive the representation. In this preprint with @mdlbayes.bsky.social, we take an alternative approach; we build Bayesian generative models for three cognitive tasks. /1
- Similarity judgments and visual working memory do not share the same cognitive representation: osf.io/fm9vz
- Reposted by Henry Beale
- Reposted by Henry BealeHow does our brain excel at complex object recognition, yet get fooled by simple illusory contours? What unifying principle governs all Gestalt laws of perceptual organization? We may have an answer: integration of learned priors through feedback. New paper with @kenmiller.bsky.social! 🧵
- Reposted by Henry BealeSuper happy to share my very first first-author paper out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show content-specific predictions are represented in an alpha rhythm. It’s been a beautiful, inspiring, yet challenging journey. Huge thanks to everyone, especially @peterkok.bsky.social @jhaarsma.bsky.social
- Reposted by Henry Beale📜🎉 I'm happy to share that my review of clinical research investigating aperiodic neural activity is now published! It examines 177 reports of aperiodic activity in clinical disorders summarizing findings, discussion topics, & making some recommendations! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Henry BealeThe final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!) Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov.... 1/11
- Reposted by Henry BealeLong time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg: #psychskysci #neuroscience doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- Reposted by Henry BealeWe present our preprint on ViV1T, a transformer for dynamic mouse V1 response prediction. We reveal novel response properties and confirm them in vivo. With @wulfdewolf.bsky.social, Danai Katsanevaki, @arnoonken.bsky.social, @rochefortlab.bsky.social. Paper and code at the end of the thread! 🧵1/7
- Reposted by Henry BealeHappy to share a new preprint in which @paulbuerkner.com and I introduce a novel model-based approach for precisely estimating the onset and offset of M/EEG effects! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Henry Beale🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days! doi.org/10.1101/2025... ☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level? ✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
- Reposted by Henry BealeNew paper in Imaging Neuroscience, Generation of surrogate brain maps preserving spatial autocorrelation through random rotation of geometric eigenmodes direct.mit.edu/imag/article... Produces surrogates for null hypothesis testing of nonlinear effects within and correlations between brain maps
- Reposted by Henry BealeOut now @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, w/ @akalt.bsky.social & @drmattdavis.bsky.social. Are sensory sampling rhythms fixed by intrinsically-determined processes, or do they couple to external structure? Here we highlight the incompatibility between these accounts and propose a resolution [1/6]
- Reposted by Henry BealeNew preprint from the lab! We tested for effects of learning scene-object pairings on distributed patterns of EEG signals. We report clear effects on ERPs but not object decoding performance. Led by Morgan Kikkawa w/Marta Garrido www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Henry Beale"The finding of statistical significance is perhaps the least important attribute of a good experiment...." David Lykken (1968). Statistical significance in psychological research. Psychological Bulletin. doi.org/10.1037/h002...
- Reposted by Henry BealeNew paper out in @plosbiology.org w/ Charlie, @phil-johnson.bsky.social, Ella, and Hinze 🎉 We track moving stimuli via EEG, find evidence that motion is extrapolated across distinct stages of processing + show how this effect may emerge from a simple synaptic learning rule! tinyurl.com/2szh6w5c
- Reposted by Henry BealeInfo theory offers powerful measures for capturing complexity & interaction among elements of a complex system, like the brain! 🧠 Here's our new unified reference for key info-theoretic time series measures ft. 📊 visuals, ➗equations, & 💬descriptions: arxiv.org/abs/2505.13080
- Reposted by Henry BealeExcited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
- Reposted by Henry Beale“Science is a smart, low cost investment. The costs of not investing in it are higher than the risk of doing so… talk to people about science.” - @kevinochsner.bsky.social makes his case to the field #sans2025
- Reposted by Henry BealeVery happy to see our work finally in print! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... TLDR: Tilt illusion is not a bug, but a feature of a well-designed visual system that maximizes information capacity adaptively based on spatial context. (1/6)
- Reposted by Henry Beale🚨New paper alert! 🚨 Can your brain teach a neural network how to see? We trained a convolutional neural net using EEG recordings to reveal how task goals shape visual processing in the human brain. 👇 [Link to paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415... 1/8
- Reposted by Henry BealeHot off the presses: big update to our work looking at how adaptive decoders influence neural representations. We added heroic analyses to show in both experiments & models that the structure of what the brain learns is altered by adaptive decoders. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- When we learn to ride a bike, we often use training wheels. Does that influence what we learn? We used brain-computer interfaces + RNN models to show that assistive algorithms change how the brain encodes task info. This has big implications for BCI therapies! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Henry BealeOur "I would have seen it if it were there" paper — a collaboration with @ranimo.bsky.social and @clarepress.bsky.social — is now out in Psych. Review. There’s a lot in this paper, but here are what I see as the 3 main takeaways: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
- Reposted by Henry BealeSpent another couple of hours this week responding to reviewers and defending our research studies that have - Shock! Horror! - 10 to 15 participants per experiment. In case anyone else was not listening during #stats classes: Small N ≠ Low power theerrorbar.com?e=37
- Reposted by Henry BealeOur new preprint is now on bioRxiv! 'Visual adaptation stronger at horizontal than vertical meridian: Linking performance with V1 cortical surface area' www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Henry BealeIn this thread, I introduce the ‘Blindfold Test’ — a new tool for deciding whether an experimental effect reflects perception, or higher-level judgment. Paper here: www.nssrperception.com/docs/van%20B...
- Reposted by Henry BealeWe show here that neural travelling waves may not indicate the direction of information flow - counter to the common interpretation. To recover information flow, the conventional phase-based methods should be supplemented by causal inference techniques like Granger causality 1/2
- Reposted by Henry BealeMany neuroscience students are steeped in an experiment-first style of thinking that leads to “random walk science.” Let’s not forget how theory can guide experiments towards deeper insights, writes @gershbrain.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
- Reposted by Henry BealeIncredible diversity of eyes and vision across animals! These reviews really make you appreciate the evolution of the eyes and their perfect adaptation to the animal's lifestyle. Mice don't have a fovea, Hawks have two! Review 1: doi.org/10.1146/annu... Review 2: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Henry BealeAn exciting idea in cognitive neuroscience is the brain approximates the Bayesian computations. Is it enough to ask if we follow Bayesian? Our new paper @PLOSCompBiol developed a novel measure to examine patterned deviations from Bayesian Decision Theory journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
- Reposted by Henry BealeAll right, this is the masterpiece after preregistering N=12 based on evidence threshold & then being asked to run 12 more observers. But fastest acceptance ever (a few hours). Soon to be out in Vision Research but final preprint available here: doi.org/10.1101/2024... #VisionScience #Neuroscience
- Reposted by Henry BealeHappy to have this published …https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr6698
- Reposted by Henry BealeIt's finally out! Visual experience orthogonalizes visual cortical responses Training in a visual task changes V1 tuning curves in odd ways. This effect is explained by a simple convex transformation. It orthogonalizes the population, making it easier to decode. 10.1016/j.celrep.2025.115235
- Reposted by Henry BealeAn image-computable model of speeded decision-making - our latest in @elife.bsky.social combining a CNN with a response time model. TL/DR: Training to reproduce human RTs results in different kinds of representations versus purely task-optimized training.
- Reposted by Henry BealeNew from my lab: "Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions" We used a natural image statistics approach to investigate the computations underlying perceptual confidence. 🧵 Article: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Henry BealeConscious #perception is modulated by brain oscillations & slow cortical potentials within the brain, but how? @luakoenig.bsky.social & @biyuhe.bsky.social show that oscillations & aperiodic brain activity influence perception independently of each other 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/42dxjGH
- Reposted by Henry BealeNow out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social : We discuss how the contents of visual perception, imagery, and prediction can be decoded from rhythmic brain activity and argue that such rhythmic representations offer new insights into neural information propagation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Henry BealeL receptor sensitivity is higher than M in the "violet" spectrum. There's a secondary shortwave peak. Thus you get a low M/L ratio both in the far shortwave and far longwave ends of the visible spectrum, not just the longwave end.
- Reposted by Henry BealeWhat if… spontaneous neural activity 🧠 reflects the baseline rumblings of a brainwide dynamical system initialized for learning? We find that the rumblings have macroscopic properties like those emerging from linear symmetric, critical systems 🧵 #neuroscience #neuroAI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Henry BealeHow can the brain make predictions, and signal prediction errors ? Together with Simone Ebert, Thomas Buffet, Bruno Cessac et al, we studied this question in the retina in this paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... A thread
- Reposted by Henry BealeNew paper out! 🚨 📰 With @batuhanerkat.bsky.social, John McClure, @hussainyk1.bsky.social, @polacklab.bsky.social we reveal how discretized representations in V1 predict suboptimal orientation discrimination. 🧪🧠🐭 This work reconciles neuro and psychometric curves www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Henry BealeOur review on the theoretical status of oscillations and field potentials is out! What are their effects, and what can electrophysiology signals reveal about how the brain works? w/ @dlevenstein.bsky.social @prokraustinator.bsky.social Bradley Voytek @rdgao.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
