Beautiful staircase at the The British Academy Photo by Camilla Gray

Encephalitis lethargica: the mysterious disease that inspired Awakenings is finally starting to give up some clues theconversation.com/encephalitis-l… Interesting piece from Jonathan Rogers

What's so special about the human brain? nature.com/immersive/d415… (nice video explainer from Nature)

60 years ago this month, Sir Solly Zuckerman became the 1st Government Chief Scientific Adviser. Since then, the role has evolved from being a single individual with limited staff to a large advisory office. A few thoughts as we celebrate the anniversary:

A nice explore-exploit paradigm for 3-7 year-olds by Kim, Berry & Carlson Should I Stay or Should I Go? Children's Persistence in the Context of Diminishing Rewards onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

An important update of 'Relevance' The Communicative Principle of Relevance - Thom Scott-Phillips, 2024 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

Excited to announce that this work has now been published in PNASNews pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… We propose a computational account of how humans decompose complex dynamical experiences into subprocesses and reuse these in an abstract, compositional manner in novel situations.

We are indescribably sad to announce the passing of our dear friend and colleague Kristian Tylén His presence at the IMC will be forever missed and his impact on us all is beyond words Our thoughts are with his wife and children in this difficult time arts.au.dk/en/news-and-ev…

Twenty years ago, at a nascent InstitutePhilosophy in Senate House @timcrane102 and I held the conference, ‘Wine & Philosophy: from science to subjectivity’ The 1st issue of World of Fine Wine had just appeared and the philosophy of wine had arrived. We should celebrate!

The Antipsychiatry Movement’s Long Shadow compactmag.com/article/the-an… Part of an increasingly critical approach to the 'academic mental health consensus' that's been bubbling for a while.

There's still time to express your interest to become the Royal Society's Artist in Residence, an opportunity for a creative individual to produce new work in response to our collections and the scientific research of our community. Find out more and register your interest by

I wrote an article about my dad's death, and how it affected my views on assisted dying, published in the Times Free version here

Brilliant paper on the power of institutions to transform weak reputation effects into strong incentives for cooperation | PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

A chat with brilliant scientist and dear colleague Vince Walsh about his career, from psychiatric nursing into neuroscience.

You da ant! Ants beat humans at cooperation when challenged to work together to solve a problem. Without effective communication, human cognitive complexity sometimes gets in the way. Sound familiar? pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

The lesser known history of autism. London as a crucible for autism in the 1950s thetransmitter.org/spectrum/guest…

The human brain has a remarkable ability to monitor and evaluate its own thinking, known as metacognition. Join Professor Stephen Fleming for this free lecture on 23 January 2025 as he explores metacognition and his team's work to discover the building blocks of this remarkable

Wonderful news!

Fantastic & fascinating set of Royal Institution (now on Bluesky) #XmasLectures by the superb Chris van Tulleken 🏳️‍🌈. Huge congratulations to Chris, his guests & the whole RI team. The lectures are now on BBC iplayer & Youtube.

Just occasionally one finds a really interesting article! The origin of color categories | PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…