Mental Perturbance in Landmark Publication in Cognitive Science and AI

I’m pleased to report that this paper has now been selected for inclusion in the 2026 four-volume reference work Artificial Intelligence: Critical Concepts in Cognitive Science—a collection intended to map the intellectual development of AI as a field contributing to cognitive science.

You can read about mental perturbance, that paper, and a more recent paper on the same topic here: Why You Can’t Stop Thinking About Them.

As part of the learning from stories project, I also briefly explored Repetition As a Cognitive Device in Stories and Song, arguing that repetition in art (story, song, etc.) functions because it resembles mental perturbance. And mental perturbance is fundamental to human cognition and emotion.

Updated BSBM+ a New Meditation for Strengthening Attention, Executive Control, and Emotional Regulation

Having published a wildly popular meditation for inducing sleep called the “cognitive shuffle,” On my substack, I’ve published a new iteration of my BSBM+ meditation. This multi-anchor meditation intersperses Andrew Huberman’s “physiological sigh” technique in a body scan during which one controls one’s breathing and recites a mantra. In the “+” phase, this meditation is optionally followed by an open monitoring or focused attention meditation.

Have a look and let me know what you think on social media.

How Cognitive Science Helps Design Better Software

Our software company is called CogSci Apps for a reason: our software is designed with cognitive science in mind. Following Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner, we recognize that one cannot directly infer engineering (or psychotherapy) from science—but one can design better systems by using science as a guiding resource.

Continue reading How Cognitive Science Helps Design Better Software

How to update yourself — include productive practice in your workflows

We are constantly told that we can transform ourselves by reading more, listening more, watching more. We assume we will remember, understand, and apply what we take in. In educational psychology, these are called illusions of learning (discussed in Cognitive Productivity with macOS). Most people believe that re-reading is an effective learning strategy. In fact, research shows that the mind does not easily transform itself by re-reading.

I believe the key to taking control of one’s learning is to use productive practice. I explain that on substack.