Marcelo Mattar
marcelomattar.bsky.social
Marcelo Mattar
@marcelomattar.bsky.social
Assistant professor at NYU.
Amazing opportunity!
If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date):
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868
An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
February 11, 2026 at 12:31 AM
Amazing postdoc opportunity!
Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻

Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.

See below for + details and retweet 🙏
January 27, 2026 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter.

How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need?

Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.
Episodic memory facilitates flexible decision-making via access to detailed events - Nature Human Behaviour
Nicholas and Mattar found that people use episodic memory to make decisions when it is unclear what will be needed in the future. These findings reveal how the rich representational capacity of episod...
www.nature.com
January 23, 2026 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
How terrific! Free in person summer school for future PhDs who want more quantitative training before grad school; happening at one of the best places in the world to pursue it (the Gatsby at UCL).
📢 Applications open on 19 Jan for the 7-week #Mathematics #SummerSchool in London. You will develop the maths skills and intuition necessary to enter the #TheoreticalNeuroscience / #MachineLearning field.

Find out more & register for the information webinar 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...
January 18, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
New preprint from the lab!
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions
Flexible behaviour requires transforming abstract cognitive representations, such as value preferences, into concrete motor actions. During economic decision-making, individuals evaluate options to gu...
www.biorxiv.org
December 14, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
Thrilled to start 2026 as faculty in Psych & CS
@ualberta.bsky.social + Amii.ca Fellow! 🥳 Recruiting students to develop theories of cognition in natural & artificial systems 🤖💭🧠. Find me at #NeurIPS2025 workshops (speaking coginterp.github.io/neurips2025 & organising @dataonbrainmind.bsky.social)
December 6, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
Tiny recurrent neural networks for discovering cognitive strategies — a Tools of the Trade article by Li Ji-An

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
December 5, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Great opportunity for PhD applicants this year!
December 3, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
Do you want to fund AI alignment research?

The AISI Alignment Team and I have reviewed >800 Alignment Project Applications from 42 countries, and we have ~100 that are very promising. Unfortunately, this means we have a £13-17M funding gap! Thread with details! 🧵
I am very excited that AISI is announcing over £15M in funding for AI alignment and control, in partnership with other governments, industry, VCs, and philanthropists!

Here is a 🧵 about why it is important to bring more independent ideas and expertise into this space.

alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
The Alignment Project by AISI — The AI Security Institute
The Alignment Project funds groundbreaking AI alignment research to address one of AI’s most urgent challenges: ensuring advanced systems act predictably, safely, and for society’s benefit.
alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
November 27, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
Task learning is compositional, so would behavior be!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces - Nature
The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.
www.nature.com
November 27, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
starting fall 2026 i'll be an assistant professor at @upenn.edu 🥳

my lab will develop scalable models/theories of human behavior, focused on memory and perception

currently recruiting PhD students in psychology, neuroscience, & computer science!

reach out if you're interested 😊
November 25, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Yay, congrats Tyler!
November 26, 2025 at 2:29 AM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
My paper is out!
Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets.
rdcu.be/eQjLN
A habit and working memory model as an alternative account of human reward-based learning
Nature Human Behaviour - In this study, Collins proposes an alternative dual-process (working memory and habit) model of reinforcement learning in humans.
rdcu.be
November 17, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...
Sydney Levine - Open Positions
Graduate Students (PhD program) I will be accepting PhD students through the NYU psychology department for the current application cycle (for admission in Fall 2026). My lab is joint between the Co...
sites.google.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com
Interactive Cognition Lab | USC
Interactive Cognition Lab at USC, led by principal investigator, Dr. Nina Rouhani.
rouhanilab.com
October 24, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Very cool! Looking forward to seeing what work will come out of this great team!
September 24, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Amazing! Congratulations, Luke!
September 17, 2025 at 12:30 PM
So happy to see this manuscript on biorxiv after so many years in the making! Thank you Matthieu for all your hard work, and @sreejan.bsky.social for all of the novel contributions and for pushing it through the finish line! And looking forward to comments from the community!
September 7, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
🚀Excited to share our project: Canonical Representational Mapping for Cognitive Neuroscience. @schottdorflab.bsky.social and I propose a novel multivariate method to isolate neural representations aligned with specific cognitive hypotheses 🧵https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.01.673485v1
September 5, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
What are your pros/cons of using AI in science?

Feel free to respond wrt use or harm in the design of experiments, coding experiments, coding analysis, brain storming analysis, summarizing literature, synthesis of ideas, modeling, novel model development, mathematical proofs, writing, editing.
September 3, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Thanks!
August 29, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
🚨We believe this is a major step forward in how we study hippocampus function in healthy humans.

Using novel behavioral tasks, fMRI, RL & RNN modeling, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), we demonstrate the causal role of hippocampus in relational structure learning.
August 28, 2025 at 2:00 PM
I'm honored to serve as Expert Advisor for "The Alignment Project", an international initiative dedicated to ensuring AI systems are safe and beneficial. They are providing significant funding, compute, and collaboration opportunities for researchers---including those in cogsci/neuro. Please apply!
I am very excited that AISI is announcing over £15M in funding for AI alignment and control, in partnership with other governments, industry, VCs, and philanthropists!

Here is a 🧵 about why it is important to bring more independent ideas and expertise into this space.

alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
The Alignment Project by AISI — The AI Security Institute
The Alignment Project funds groundbreaking AI alignment research to address one of AI’s most urgent challenges: ensuring advanced systems act predictably, safely, and for society’s benefit.
alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
August 20, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Marcelo Mattar
I am very excited that AISI is announcing over £15M in funding for AI alignment and control, in partnership with other governments, industry, VCs, and philanthropists!

Here is a 🧵 about why it is important to bring more independent ideas and expertise into this space.

alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
The Alignment Project by AISI — The AI Security Institute
The Alignment Project funds groundbreaking AI alignment research to address one of AI’s most urgent challenges: ensuring advanced systems act predictably, safely, and for society’s benefit.
alignmentproject.aisi.gov.uk
July 30, 2025 at 11:53 AM