Dezső Németh

Why are younger children so good at learning new skills? One reason may be that they are better at a fundamental cognitive mechanism: statistical learning. We followed the same children from age 7 to 14 and found that this learning gradually decreases as they grow older. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Fantastic! I have become a cow fan. It is worth reading.

1/2 🎇 Good news! 🎇 The kind people at Behavioral and Brain Science have made the new collection on "Conscious AI and biological naturalism" #OpenAccess for a limited time: target article, all 50 commentaries, & my response. Go to the link and click 'save pdf': doi.org/10.1017/S014.... Do share!

Last Friday @nemeth.bsky.social visited our lab and gave a great talk, full with intriguing ideas and good science supporting them. Thanks so much Dezso! (The next one in Gran Canaria? 😁)

Today at 3:00 PM, I’ll be giving a talk at the SEPEX Conference in Valencia on the relationship between statistical learning and mind wandering. If you’re around, come by! 🙂

New paper! We developed a new experimental paradigm combining statistical learning with the Flanker task. Hidden predictability reduced conflict costs, while statistical learning was stronger under conflict. Learning and cognitive control interact in real time. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The very final version of our paper is out.

We have a long way to go before we understand consciousness. Why assume an explanatory gap exists before establishing that it does? The “hard problem” is just dualism in sheep’s clothing. www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-... #neuroscience

🔴 My TED talk “How to Protect Your Brain From Extremism” is finally out! And I’m so honoured it’s been selected as a Global TED Editor’s Pick — especially given the talk’s final minute, where I go against one of TED’s strictest rules 🤫 Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEa1...

Very excited to attend #CCN2026 this week and to present various projects from my lab! Here's a list of our posters and talks in case you'd like to see what we've been up to.

Yay, the field needs this! Excited to serve as an associate editor!

Here's where to find the Penn Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Cognitive Computational Neuroscience next week! See you in NYC!

🚨 Exciting new replication paper on neural predictions in humans using an open dataset! All details below 👇

A timely and must-read review on mindulness by @lcasedas.bsky.social, @mavadillo.bsky.social

An integrative framework for the mechanisms underlying mindfulness-induced cognitive change Perspective by Luis Cásedas, Jonathan W. Schooler, Miguel A. Vadillo & Juan Lupiáñez Web: go.nature.com/3Nuy8lH PDF: rdcu.be/dXhZu #psychology #psychscisky

Congratulation, @biankabrezoczki.bsky.social @teodoravekony.bsky.social @florahann.bsky.social

This one is finally published! Get a nice PDF copy from this link rdcu.be/fsEAn Massive congratulations to all authors, specially first author @antovami.bsky.social. Enhorabuena Antonio!!!

What a splendid piece of work!!! "Brain-wide properties of slow waves across vigilance states" academic.oup.com/sleepadvance...

A *super* exciting new paper from @lizsiefert.bsky.social!! Human hippocampal ripple rates track very closely with several indicators of low arousal, during both sleep and wake. This is probably the most compelling data I have ever been associated with.

In our study, implicit statistical learning and cognitive flexibility showed a trade-off, but this link weakened as obsessive–compulsive tendencies increased. OC traits may reshape the balance between automatic learning and flexible control. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... @florahann.bsky.social

Brenda Milner is a hero and 108!! She did a lot more than discover the hippocampus is linked to declarative memory, but that work is the most famous.

New paper out! We used MEG to catch the brain learning hidden patterns buried in noise and found two separate mechanisms at play: fast predictive activity (up to 500ms before a stimulus!) followed by slower representational change that tracks actual learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint! Children often beat adults at learning hidden patterns. Using eye-tracking and a method we built in eLife (Hann et al. 2026), we found the edge is not better error detection. It is flexibility: kids update their beliefs, adults cling to old predictions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Read the full article in Cognition: “Statistical learning and individual differences in language abilities…” by Ágnes Lukács, Bálint József Ugrin & Krisztina Sára Lukics. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Nobody needs convincing that a science of the Meaning of Life is the wrong project. I will argue that a science of phenomenal consciousness is wrong for exactly the same reason: neither is amenable to the third-person perspective science requires." by @profdata.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2606.00226

New preprint from our team! We tested whether early reaction time variability predicts later implicit learning. Across two datasets, moment-to-moment variability, especially ITRV and Sigma, was linked to better later learning. Noise may sometimes reflect exploration. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

You can still submit your presentation about data analysis and statistics in behavioral and related sciences to our local international symposium in Pécs, Hungary, in September 2026. www.cogstat.org/best_approac...

We built a gaze-based method that tracks how people form and revise predictions trial by trial. The key finding: people keep their model unchanged when an error just reflects random noise, but update it when the error signals their model is wrong. @orspesthy.bsky.social doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Mind wandering enhances the brain’s ability to learn hidden patterns, new study suggests

As already mentioned, I'm re-vampiong my youtube channel. Just dropped the first few R videos. I'll be doing SPSS and R throughout the rest of the year if all goes to plan. youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Come to our posters on VSS! Poster numbers: 467, 469. #VSS2026

Today, Teodóra Vékony will give a talk about our research on local sleep, mind wandering and implicit statistical learning at 18.45 in ROOM 1 at VSS (Vision Science Society). #VSS2026

Our article got a media coverage

How video game habits act as a window into cognitive health

¿Te gustaría hacer un doctorado financiado en España, en un centro de investigación de vanguardia? Buscamos candidatos en: • Neurociencia Cognitiva • Psicología de la Salud Únete a un equipo internacional y trabaja con metodologías de última generación. Más información: gccognitive.es

Want to do a funded PhD in Spain at a state-of-the-art research center? We’re recruiting in • Cognitive Neuroscience • Cognitive Psychology • Health Psychology Join an international team and work with cutting-edge methods. More info: gccognitive.es

Our new paper is out.

If childhood adversity is harmful, are its cognitive consequences always and only negative? Maybe we need to question deficit models. Greater childhood adversity was linked to faster implicit learning in our new study. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article... #neuroskyence

XV Conference of the SEPEX and II Joint Meeting of the SEPEX and the BAPS: CALL FOR POSTERS AND ORAL COMMUNICATIONS Dear colleagues, We are pleased to announce that the call for Oral Communications and Posters is now open. The submission deadline is April 22, 2026. For detailed information related…

Applications Open for the Psychology PhD Program at Universidad del Atlántico Medio (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) Os remitimos información relativa a la apertura de candidaturas para el programa de doctorado de la Universidad del Atlántico Medio, en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. La Junta…

Our new paper is out: ADHD-like traits were linked to weaker inhibitory control, but that was only part of the story. We found that ADHD-like traits also changed the usual trade-off between inhibition and statistical learning. #neuroskyence #medsky #ADHD journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...