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gelbanna.bsky.social
Gasser Elbanna
@gelbanna.bsky.social
170 followers 470 following 5 posts
PhD student in Speech and Hearing at Harvard/MIT. Building ANNs to study how humans perceive/produce speech and voice. Working with @joshhmcdermott.bsky.social https://gasserelbanna.github.io/ MSc. at EPFL BSc. at Cairo University ex Logitech and IDIAP
gasserelbanna.github.io
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samnastase.bsky.social
Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 10d
I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
lexidecker.bsky.social
Lexi Decker @lexidecker.bsky.social · 10d
Excited to share that I'm joining WashU in January as an Assistant Prof in Psych & Brain Sciences! 🧠✨!

I'm also recruiting grad students to start next September - come hang out with us! Details about our lab here: www.deckerlab.com

Reposts are very welcome! 🙌 Please help spread the word!
DeckerLab
www.deckerlab.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
jpeelle.bsky.social
Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · Aug 19
It has been "known" that musical experience improves auditory coding in the brainstem. But...a new multilab study concludes

"Our findings provide no evidence for associations between early auditory neural responses and either musical training or musical ability."

👀

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Large-scale multi-site study shows no association between musical training and early auditory neural sound encoding - Nature Communications
Widely cited studies have claimed that musical training is associated with enhanced neural encoding for sound at early stages of the auditory system. Results from this large-scale multisite study do n...
www.nature.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
sromeropinto.bsky.social
Sandra Romero Pinto @sromeropinto.bsky.social · Aug 13
My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf

TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .
Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model
Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...
rdcu.be
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
neuripsconf.bsky.social
NeurIPS Conference @neuripsconf.bsky.social · Jul 16
NeurIPS is endorsing EurIPS, an independently-organized meeting which will offer researchers an opportunity to additionally present NeurIPS work in Europe concurrently with NeurIPS.

Read more in our blog post and on the EurIPS website:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
eurips.cc
eurips.cc
A NeurIPS-endorsed conference in Europe held in Copenhagen, Denmark
eurips.cc
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
nblauch.bsky.social
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · Jun 16
What shapes the topography of high-level visual cortex?

Excited to share a new pre-print addressing this question with connectivity-constrained interactive topographic networks, titled "Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision", w/ Marlene Behrmann & David Plaut.

🧵 ↓ 1/n
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gelbanna.bsky.social
Gasser Elbanna @gelbanna.bsky.social · Jun 5
3. We manipulated the model’s access to past and future speech cues, revealing the importance of the acoustic context and its directionality in human speech recognition.

Come to our poster to learn more!

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gelbanna.bsky.social
Gasser Elbanna @gelbanna.bsky.social · Jun 5
2. These tasks allowed us to compute the first full phoneme confusion matrix in humans at scale. This enabled the first systematic comparison of human–model phoneme confusions, revealing that humans and models share not only similar response patterns but also similar patterns of confusions.

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gelbanna.bsky.social
Gasser Elbanna @gelbanna.bsky.social · Jun 5
This work has 3 main contributions:

1. We developed new models of continuous speech recognition alongside novel behavioral tasks to compare both models and humans on speech perception without conflating speech and language.

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gelbanna.bsky.social
Gasser Elbanna @gelbanna.bsky.social · Jun 5
At Frontiers in NeuroAI symposium @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social, I will be presenting a poster entitled "A Model of Continuous Phoneme Recognition Reveals the Role of Context in Human Speech Perception" (Poster #17).

Work done with @joshhmcdermott.bsky.social.

#NeuroAI2025

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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
eboyden3.bsky.social
Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Jun 2
Just posted, “Engineering Serendipity,” a lightly edited (to accommodate the transition from spoken to written form) version of the commencement speech I gave at my high school, the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, May 8, 2025: engineeringx.substack.com/p/engineerin...
Engineering Serendipity
Three Short Stories About How to Increase Luck Through Skill
engineeringx.substack.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
gunnarblohm.bsky.social
The Viking (Gunnar Blohm) @gunnarblohm.bsky.social · May 31
I have been teaching my trainees exactly this for years...
universityaffairs.ca/career-advic...
This is exactly why @kordinglab.bsky.social tells everyone to write abstracts and aims pages first before starting projects / writing grants
Teaching students the connection between writing and thinking  - University Affairs
Writing is an important skill because of its role in thinking processes. Instruction should be designed to reinforce this.
universityaffairs.ca
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
anayebi.bsky.social
Aran Nayebi @anayebi.bsky.social · May 28
Check out our new work on making robots process touch more like brains!

Surprisingly, ConvRNNs best matched mouse cortex—passing the NeuroAI Turing Test. We also developed tactile-specific SSL augmentations and an Encoder-Attender-Decoder framework unifying ConvRNNs, SSMs & Transformers.
trinityjchung.com
Trinity Chung @trinityjchung.com · May 27
1/ What if we make robots that process touch the way our brains do?
We found that Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks (ConvRNNs) pass the NeuroAI Turing Test in currently available mouse somatosensory cortex data.
New paper by @Yuchen @Nathan @anayebi.bsky.social and me!
Task-Optimized Convolutional Recurrent Networks Align with Tactile Processing in the Rodent Brain
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
nature.com
Nature @nature.com · May 21
If returns on science investment are shrinking, there are plenty of potential culprits

https://go.nature.com/4k9FVUQ
Are groundbreaking science discoveries becoming harder to find?
Researchers are arguing over whether ‘disruptive’ or ‘novel’ science is waning – and how to remedy the problem.
go.nature.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
samkirkham.bsky.social
Sam Kirkham @samkirkham.bsky.social · May 2
✨Discovering dynamical laws for speech gestures ✨

➡️ I’m delighted to announce my new article out today in Cognitive Science, where I discover simple mathematical laws that govern articulatory control in speech.

🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

@cogscisociety.bsky.social
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
coltoncasto.bsky.social
Colton Casto @coltoncasto.bsky.social · Apr 21
New paper! 🧠 **The cerebellar components of the human language network**

with: @hsmall.bsky.social @moshepoliak.bsky.social @gretatuckute.bsky.social @benlipkin.bsky.social @awolna.bsky.social @aniladmello.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/n 🧵
The cerebellar components of the human language network
The cerebellum's capacity for neural computation is arguably unmatched. Yet despite evidence of cerebellar contributions to cognition, including language, its precise role remains debated. Here, we sy...
www.biorxiv.org
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
earlkmiller.bsky.social
Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · Apr 11
Top-down prediction signals from the medial prefrontal cortex govern auditory cortex prediction errors
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
#neuroscience
Redirecting
doi.org
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
gunnarblohm.bsky.social
The Viking (Gunnar Blohm) @gunnarblohm.bsky.social · Apr 10
theconversation.com/changing-the...
Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science – why multiculturalism matters
The West’s Eurocentric version of scientific history omits some of the most important events that shaped modern thinking.
theconversation.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
muslimsinml.bsky.social
Muslims in ML Workshop @muslimsinml.bsky.social · Mar 30
Eid Mubarak to all!

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the 4th Muslims in Machine Learning (MusIML) Workshop, co-located with ICML 2025, on Sunday, July 13, 2025, in Vancouver, Canada.

🧵(1/5)
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
thetransmitter.bsky.social
The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Mar 20
A growing number of cognitive neuroscientists have taken on the challenge of performing task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. The method is poised to answer questions about how and when the infant mind takes shape.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne...
What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind
Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape.
www.thetransmitter.org
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
kavlifoundation.org
The Kavli Foundation @kavlifoundation.org · Mar 19
Applications are open for the summer school 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲.
compneuronrsn.org

Application deadline: March 31, 2025
Located in beautiful Eresfjord, Norway 🇳🇴

#Neuroscience #ComputationalNeuroscience #KavliNeuro
@kavlintnu.bsky.social
Mathematical Methods in Computational Neuroscience
Summer school in Eresfjord, Norway (July 8th - 26th, 2024)
compneuronrsn.org
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
himself.bsky.social
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · Mar 14
1. @alisongopnik.bsky.social, Cosma Shalizi, James Evans and myself have a new piece in Science on "AI" Large Models, pushing back against much of the collective wisdom about what they can and can't do. Official below, unpaywalled at henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod... . So why this now?
Large AI models are cultural and social technologies
Implications draw on the history of transformative information systems from the past
www.science.org
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
andykeller.bsky.social
T. Anderson Keller @andykeller.bsky.social · Mar 10
In the physical world, almost all information is transmitted through traveling waves -- why should it be any different in your neural network?

Super excited to share recent work with the brilliant @mozesjacobs.bsky.social: "Traveling Waves Integrate Spatial Information Through Time"

1/14
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
kordinglab.bsky.social
Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · Mar 7
Why Statistical Physics Can’t Give Us an ‘Ideal Gas Law’ for the Brain . medium.com/@kording/why...
Why Statistical Physics Can’t Give Us an ‘Ideal Gas Law’ for the Brain
I recall how, as a young physicist, I found statistical physics mesmerizing. Gases, for instance, are mind-bogglingly complicated. Yet…
medium.com
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Reposted by Gasser Elbanna
jfeather.bsky.social
Jenelle Feather @jfeather.bsky.social · Mar 6
Applications are open for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! A two-day workshop 7/10-7/11 in NYC for PhD students and postdocs. All travel paid. Apply by April 14th.🧠🗽🧑‍🔬http://jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org/
@flatironinstitute.org @simonsfoundation.org
JTN - 2025
JTN - 2025
jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org
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