Alexander Huth
@alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Interested in how & what the brain computes. Professor in Neuroscience & Statistics UC Berkeley
Reposted by Alexander Huth
📣 New preprint from the Braga Lab! 📣
The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network
Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results
Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning?
Thread 🧵 ⬇️
The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network
Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results
Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning?
Thread 🧵 ⬇️
October 7, 2025 at 9:51 PM
📣 New preprint from the Braga Lab! 📣
The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network
Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results
Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning?
Thread 🧵 ⬇️
The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network
Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results
Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning?
Thread 🧵 ⬇️
Happy and proud to see @rjantonello.bsky.social’s work awarded by SNL!
🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_...
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data
Abstract. Many recent studies have shown that representations drawn from neural network language models are extremely effective at predicting brain responses to natural language. But why do these…
doi.org
September 13, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Happy and proud to see @rjantonello.bsky.social’s work awarded by SNL!
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Our latest paper outlining our ecosystem of tools for mining the neuroimaging literature, is finally officially published in eLife! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Mining the neuroimaging literature
New tools for literature mining, such as automated analysis of the research literature, are accessible, scalable, and reliable.
doi.org
September 11, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Our latest paper outlining our ecosystem of tools for mining the neuroimaging literature, is finally officially published in eLife! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
September 4, 2025 at 7:21 PM
New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
New paper with @rjantonello.bsky.social @csinva.bsky.social, Suna Guo, Gavin Mischler, Jianfeng Gao, & Nima Mesgarani: We use LLMs to generate VERY interpretable embeddings where each dimension corresponds to a scientific theory, & then use these embeddings to predict fMRI and ECoG. It WORKS!
Evaluating scientific theories as predictive models in language neuroscience https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.12.669958v1
August 18, 2025 at 6:34 PM
New paper with @rjantonello.bsky.social @csinva.bsky.social, Suna Guo, Gavin Mischler, Jianfeng Gao, & Nima Mesgarani: We use LLMs to generate VERY interpretable embeddings where each dimension corresponds to a scientific theory, & then use these embeddings to predict fMRI and ECoG. It WORKS!
Reposted by Alexander Huth
In our new paper, we explore how we can build encoding models that are both powerful and understandable. Our model uses an LLM to answer 35 questions about a sentence's content. The answers linearly contribute to our prediction of how the brain will respond to that sentence. 1/6
August 18, 2025 at 9:42 AM
In our new paper, we explore how we can build encoding models that are both powerful and understandable. Our model uses an LLM to answer 35 questions about a sentence's content. The answers linearly contribute to our prediction of how the brain will respond to that sentence. 1/6
Reposted by Alexander Huth
The preprint of my 1st project in grad school is up 🙌 We propose a simple, information-theoretic model of how humans remember narratives. We tested it with the help of open-source LLMs. Plz check out this thread for details ➡️ Many thanks to my wonderful advisors! It's been a fun adventure!!
New paper with @mujianing.bsky.social & @prestonlab.bsky.social! We propose a simple model for human memory of narratives: we uniformly sample incoming information at a constant rate. This explains behavioral data much better than variable-rate sampling triggered by event segmentation or surprisal.
Efficient uniform sampling explains non-uniform memory of narrative stories https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667952v1
August 1, 2025 at 5:21 PM
The preprint of my 1st project in grad school is up 🙌 We propose a simple, information-theoretic model of how humans remember narratives. We tested it with the help of open-source LLMs. Plz check out this thread for details ➡️ Many thanks to my wonderful advisors! It's been a fun adventure!!
New paper with @mujianing.bsky.social & @prestonlab.bsky.social! We propose a simple model for human memory of narratives: we uniformly sample incoming information at a constant rate. This explains behavioral data much better than variable-rate sampling triggered by event segmentation or surprisal.
Efficient uniform sampling explains non-uniform memory of narrative stories https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667952v1
August 1, 2025 at 4:45 PM
New paper with @mujianing.bsky.social & @prestonlab.bsky.social! We propose a simple model for human memory of narratives: we uniformly sample incoming information at a constant rate. This explains behavioral data much better than variable-rate sampling triggered by event segmentation or surprisal.
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Hey, if you need a breather from the news, we have pretty brain pics to distract you! We made an interactive viewer showing images optimized to elicit responses from different places in the brain. Link to viewer in 🧵
In a new paper led by @matthewshinkle.bsky.social, we use a pre-trained deep neural network (DNN) to model brain activity and to make detailed visualizations of feature selectivity across many brain areas. In plain English: we make pretty pictures of what different parts of the brain like to see.
June 13, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Hey, if you need a breather from the news, we have pretty brain pics to distract you! We made an interactive viewer showing images optimized to elicit responses from different places in the brain. Link to viewer in 🧵
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Our latest brain-to-image decoding model is now available on HuggingFace:
"Dynadiff: Single-stage Decoding of Images from Continuously Evolving fMRI",
led by Marlène Careil and Yohann Benchetrit:
- Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.14556
- Github: github.com/facebookrese...
- Thread: 👇
"Dynadiff: Single-stage Decoding of Images from Continuously Evolving fMRI",
led by Marlène Careil and Yohann Benchetrit:
- Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.14556
- Github: github.com/facebookrese...
- Thread: 👇
May 22, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Our latest brain-to-image decoding model is now available on HuggingFace:
"Dynadiff: Single-stage Decoding of Images from Continuously Evolving fMRI",
led by Marlène Careil and Yohann Benchetrit:
- Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.14556
- Github: github.com/facebookrese...
- Thread: 👇
"Dynadiff: Single-stage Decoding of Images from Continuously Evolving fMRI",
led by Marlène Careil and Yohann Benchetrit:
- Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.14556
- Github: github.com/facebookrese...
- Thread: 👇
Reposted by Alexander Huth
people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future
May 18, 2025 at 3:31 AM
people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Tell Congress to protect crucial medical research funding #saveNIHresearch ucal.us/saveNIHresearch
@uofcalifornia.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social
@uofcalifornia.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social
April 1, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Tell Congress to protect crucial medical research funding #saveNIHresearch ucal.us/saveNIHresearch
@uofcalifornia.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social
@uofcalifornia.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Proud to be a signatory of this statement from 1900 members of NASEM:
We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Public Statement on Supporting Science for the Benefit of All Citizens
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE We all rely on science. Science gave us the smartphones in our pockets, the navigation systems in our cars, and life-saving medical care. We count on engineers when we drive acr...
docs.google.com
March 31, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Proud to be a signatory of this statement from 1900 members of NASEM:
We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Excited to share on my first post on Bluesky our new paper in NHB examine the innate and developing aspects of the wiring of the visual system. Congratulations to @emilykubota.bsky.social and the baby MRI team on this important work
The latest paper from my PhD is now out in Nature Human Behavior! rdcu.be/edRwQ
White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth
Nature Human Behaviour - Kubota et al. find that white matter connections of ventral temporal cortex are innately organized by cytoarchitecture, category and eccentricity from birth, and also...
rdcu.be
March 21, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Excited to share on my first post on Bluesky our new paper in NHB examine the innate and developing aspects of the wiring of the visual system. Congratulations to @emilykubota.bsky.social and the baby MRI team on this important work
Reposted by Alexander Huth
This was an interesting commentary to write on work by Binder et al. regarding impaired acoustic phonetic perception after unilateral left hemisphere stroke. academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...
Converging and conflicting evidence for left temporal lobe regions in acoustic-phonetic perception
This scientific commentary refers to ‘Lesion correlates of impaired acoustic-phonetic perception after unilateral left hemisphere stroke’ by Binder et al.
academic.oup.com
March 19, 2025 at 6:23 PM
This was an interesting commentary to write on work by Binder et al. regarding impaired acoustic phonetic perception after unilateral left hemisphere stroke. academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 27, 2025 at 8:17 PM
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
Traditionally considered a motor structure, the cerebellum has been shown to play
a key role in several cognitive functions. However, for decades, the cerebellum has
been largely overlooked and even d...
www.cell.com
February 18, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Our paper on how neural codes track prior events in a narrative and predict subsequent memory for details, led by @collinsilvy.bsky.social, is now out in Communications Psychology! rdcu.be/d93Vc #neuroskyence #psychscisky
Neural codes track prior events in a narrative and predict subsequent memory for details
Communications Psychology - Context-dependent temporal structures are represented in multiple ways in parallel in the human brain during processing of temporally extended events. The neural...
rdcu.be
February 17, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Our paper on how neural codes track prior events in a narrative and predict subsequent memory for details, led by @collinsilvy.bsky.social, is now out in Communications Psychology! rdcu.be/d93Vc #neuroskyence #psychscisky
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Many cognitive neuroscientists ignore the cerebellum but it's long past time to pay more attention to it (and fund more cerebellum grants).
Not just for basic science: the cerebellum is commonly affected by pediatric brain tumors, leading to lifelong motor AND cognitive deficits.
Must-read paper 👇🏼
Not just for basic science: the cerebellum is commonly affected by pediatric brain tumors, leading to lifelong motor AND cognitive deficits.
Must-read paper 👇🏼
Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience
Traditionally considered a motor structure, the cerebellum has been shown to play a key role in several cognitive functions. However, for decades, the…
www.sciencedirect.com
February 12, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Many cognitive neuroscientists ignore the cerebellum but it's long past time to pay more attention to it (and fund more cerebellum grants).
Not just for basic science: the cerebellum is commonly affected by pediatric brain tumors, leading to lifelong motor AND cognitive deficits.
Must-read paper 👇🏼
Not just for basic science: the cerebellum is commonly affected by pediatric brain tumors, leading to lifelong motor AND cognitive deficits.
Must-read paper 👇🏼
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Very pleased to share our recent work, in which we use LLMs for automated discovery of interpretable models of animal behavior 🪰🐀🕵️♀️ that take the form of Python programs 🐍
See below for a summary of key results by
@pcastr.bsky.social!
See below for a summary of key results by
@pcastr.bsky.social!
Can LLMs be used to discover interpretable models of human and animal behavior?🤔
Turns out: yes!
Thrilled to share our latest preprint where we used FunSearch to automatically discover symbolic cognitive models of behavior.
1/12
Turns out: yes!
Thrilled to share our latest preprint where we used FunSearch to automatically discover symbolic cognitive models of behavior.
1/12
February 11, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Very pleased to share our recent work, in which we use LLMs for automated discovery of interpretable models of animal behavior 🪰🐀🕵️♀️ that take the form of Python programs 🐍
See below for a summary of key results by
@pcastr.bsky.social!
See below for a summary of key results by
@pcastr.bsky.social!
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Two new studies from our team we're particularly happy about:
Study 1: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Study 2: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Blog 3: ai.meta.com/blog/brain-a...
Study 1: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Study 2: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Blog 3: ai.meta.com/blog/brain-a...
February 7, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Two new studies from our team we're particularly happy about:
Study 1: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Study 2: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Blog 3: ai.meta.com/blog/brain-a...
Study 1: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Study 2: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
Blog 3: ai.meta.com/blog/brain-a...
Reposted by Alexander Huth
I'm excited to share our new paper (with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social) on transferring language decoders across participants and modalities!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kZRD3QW8S...
1/5
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kZRD3QW8S...
1/5
authors.elsevier.com
February 6, 2025 at 5:39 PM
I'm excited to share our new paper (with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social) on transferring language decoders across participants and modalities!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kZRD3QW8S...
1/5
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kZRD3QW8S...
1/5
Reposted by Alexander Huth
looking forward to discussing the relationship between human language processing and LLMs at APS with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social and @neuranna.bsky.social ! 🧠🤖
December 17, 2024 at 5:52 PM
looking forward to discussing the relationship between human language processing and LLMs at APS with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social and @neuranna.bsky.social ! 🧠🤖
Reposted by Alexander Huth
Just so everyone is clear, the Governor of Texas announces he ordered the protestors at the public university arrested because he is discriminating against their viewpoint.
April 25, 2024 at 12:35 AM
Just so everyone is clear, the Governor of Texas announces he ordered the protestors at the public university arrested because he is discriminating against their viewpoint.
Reposted by Alexander Huth
New paper out in Nature Neuro, wherein we ask:
How do perceptual and mnemonic brain networks share information?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Massive work with Ed Silson, Brenda Garcia, and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social
How do perceptual and mnemonic brain networks share information?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Massive work with Ed Silson, Brenda Garcia, and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social
A retinotopic code structures the interaction between perception and memory systems - Nature Neurosc...
The authors show that functionally paired visual and memory brain areas share a common neural code, which structures their communication. This code is visual in nature and uses a push–pull dynamic t...
www.nature.com
January 2, 2024 at 2:12 PM
New paper out in Nature Neuro, wherein we ask:
How do perceptual and mnemonic brain networks share information?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Massive work with Ed Silson, Brenda Garcia, and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social
How do perceptual and mnemonic brain networks share information?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Massive work with Ed Silson, Brenda Garcia, and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social