Mariya Toneva
@mtoneva.bsky.social
270 followers 130 following 18 posts
Faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, working at the intersection of ML, language models, and cognitive neuroscience. Yogurt snob. https://mtoneva.com/
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
mtoneva.bsky.social
So excited and honored to receive an ERC Starting Grant for the project BrainAlign!! BrainAlign will bring LLMs closer to human understanding by directly aligning them with the human brain.

Stay tuned for our findings, and multiple postdoc and PhD openings in the coming years!
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
mpi-nl.bsky.social
We're seeking the next Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics! Lead cutting-edge research in language & cognition. Nominations (incl. self) due 19 Dec 2025.
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/nominations-and-self-nominations-sought-position-director-max
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
ellis.eu
ELLIS @ellis.eu · 12d
🚀 ELLIS partners with the newly launched 𝗠𝗮𝘅 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗸 𝗔𝗜 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 to expand doctoral opportunities across Europe.

Fully funded PhDs with dual supervision: one advisor in ML/AI, one in an application domain, with optional ELLIS co-advisors.

📅 Oct 1-31
🔗 ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...

@maxplanck.de
ELLIS Partners with New Max Planck AI Network to Expand Doctoral Opportunities
The ELLIS mission is to create a diverse European network that promotes research excellence and advances breakthroughs in AI, as well as a pan-European PhD program to educate the next generation of AI...
ellis.eu
mtoneva.bsky.social
So excited and honored to receive an ERC Starting Grant for the project BrainAlign!! BrainAlign will bring LLMs closer to human understanding by directly aligning them with the human brain.

Stay tuned for our findings, and multiple postdoc and PhD openings in the coming years!
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
jennhu.bsky.social
Excited to announce the first workshop on CogInterp: Interpreting Cognition in Deep Learning Models @ NeurIPS 2025! 📣

How can we interpret the algorithms and representations underlying complex behavior in deep learning models?

🌐 coginterp.github.io/neurips2025/

1/4
Home
First Workshop on Interpreting Cognition in Deep Learning Models (NeurIPS 2025)
coginterp.github.io
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
jayneuro.bsky.social
Music is an incredibly powerful retrieval cue. What is the neural basis of music-evoked memory reactivation? And how does this reactivation relate to later memory for the retrieved events? In our new study, we used Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to find out. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Music-evoked reactivation during continuous perception is associated with enhanced subsequent recall of naturalistic events
Music is a potent cue for recalling personal experiences, yet the neural basis of music-evoked memory remains elusive. We address this question by using the full-length film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to examine how repeated musical themes reactivate previously encoded events in cortex and shape next-day recall. Participants in an fMRI study viewed either the original film (with repeated musical themes) or a no-music version. By comparing neural activity patterns between these groups, we found that music-evoked reactivation of neural patterns linked to earlier scenes in the default mode network was associated with improved subsequent recall. This relationship was specific to the music condition and persisted when we controlled for a proxy measure of initial encoding strength (spatial intersubject correlation), suggesting that music-evoked reactivation may play a role in making event memories stick that is distinct from what happens at initial encoding. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Institutes of Health, https://ror.org/01cwqze88, F99 NS118740, R01 MH112357
www.biorxiv.org
mtoneva.bsky.social
Had a great time discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain with the UniReps community. Thank you for inviting me!

This is a new speaker series and there are already some very interesting speakers lined up -- excited for future discussions! Subscribing to stay up to date ✅
unireps.bsky.social
🎥 The recording of the 2nd ELLISxUniReps Speaker Series session with @mtoneva.bsky.social and @lenkatetkova.bsky.social is now available at: youtu.be/qXBT_-w3Mfs
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
tallinzen.bsky.social
I'm hiring at least one post-doc! We're interested in creating language models that process language more like humans than mainstream LLMs do, through architectural modifications and interpretability-style steering. Express interest here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
NYU LLM + cognitive science post-doc interest form
Tal Linzen's group at NYU is hiring a post-doc! We're interested in creating language models that process language more like humans than mainstream LLMs do, through architectural modifications and int...
docs.google.com
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
thecharleywu.bsky.social
🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀
I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales
👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....
mtoneva.bsky.social
Looking forward to discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain!
unireps.bsky.social
🎉 Get ready for our second @ellis.eu × UniReps Speaker Series session! 🔥

🗓️ When: June 20, 2025 – 16:00 CET
📍 Where: ethz.zoom.us/j/66426188160
🎙️ Speakers: Keynote by @mtoneva.bsky.social & Flash Talk by @lenkatetkova.bsky.social
👉 Join our Google group: groups.google.com/u/2/g/ellis-...
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
bogaertslab.bsky.social
NEUROCOG 2025 is taking place in Brussels Nov 17–18!

The theme: AI and the Human Brain 🤖 🧠

We’re thrilled to welcome 6 amazing invited speakers:
@evfedorenko.bsky.social, @nicoschuck.bsky.social, @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @jeffreybowers.bsky.social, @irisgroen.bsky.social & @mtoneva.bsky.social
NeuroCog » November 17-18, 2025
neurocog.be
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
alonaf.bsky.social
Our ICLR poster is Saturday Morning (Hall 3 + Hall 2B #63)! We (myself with Cory Efird, Alex Murphy and Joel Zylberberg) are excited to share our work searching for Shared Decodable Concepts in the human brain. We used the Natural Scenes Dataset to find the concepts that most drive brain activity…
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social
There is still time until tomorrow to apply for a 4-year Research Fellow post in the Language and Cognition Lab @ UCL!
gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social
Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction.
Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!
Research Fellow in Social Learning at UCL
Discover Research Fellow in Social Learning jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
www.jobs.ac.uk
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
neurosteven.bsky.social
I am so happy—this is the first 1st author paper I have written, since the cancer diagnosis of my late wife seven years ago.
📑 PAPER ALERT: "Beyond binding: from modular to natural vision" in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2025) sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
mtoneva.bsky.social
Together with @autreche.bsky.social, Adish Singla, Krishna Gummadi, Goran Radanovic and Nina Grgić-Hlača, we have multiple open positions postdocs in AI, Computing, and Society at the MPI for Software Systems!

Apply by May 13 via the new Max Planck Postdoc Program!
www.mpg.de/en/max-planc...
Max Planck Postdoc Program
Launching in April 2025, the Max Planck Postdoc Program features structured application calls and a comprehensive support system for researchers.
www.mpg.de
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social
Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction.
Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!
Research Fellow in Social Learning at UCL
Discover Research Fellow in Social Learning jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
www.jobs.ac.uk
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
arena-researchunit.bsky.social
Stay tuned for #ARENA Symposium
Abstract Representations in Neural Architectures:
From Human Cognition to Artificial Intelligence

at #teap2025 on 12 March @goetheuni.bsky.social

#CognitiveScience #Neuroscience #AI #DNNs #KnowledgeRepresentation #Psychology #ComputationalNeuroscience
mtoneva.bsky.social
One week left to apply!

We'll have so much exciting data for projects: for example, neuropixel data from humans while they listen to sentences courtesy of @shaileejain.bsky.social, Eddie Chang, and his group.
mtoneva.bsky.social
Really excited for this 3 week NeuroAI summer school in Lisbon!

We have course faculty from a range of neuro domains (language, vision, decision making, memory), and neuro levels (low level to cognitive). There will also be a project advised by our exciting lineup of course faculty!

Come join us!
cajal-training.bsky.social
🚀 Applications are OPEN for the CAJAL NeuroAI course!

Learn how AI & deep learning help us model brain activity & behavior. Work with experts, get hands-on training & join a global network!

📅 Apply by March 7
🔗 loom.ly/xg_uRKE

#NeuroAI #DeepLearning #Neuroscience
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social
Inaugural post on bsky: The ECOLANG Multimodal Corpus, providing audiovisual recordings and annotations of multimodal communicative behaviours by English-speaking adults in dyadic interaction with a child or another adult is now available rdcu.be/eblMF
The ECOLANG Multimodal Corpus of adult-child and adult-adult Language
Scientific Data - The ECOLANG Multimodal Corpus of adult-child and adult-adult Language
rdcu.be
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
vayzenb.bsky.social
I'm hiring a full-time research assistant to start this Summer!

The lab studies perception and cognition from infancy to adulthood using neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational approaches

For more details about the lab and the position, see: vlad-lab.com/join

#psychjobs #neurojobs
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
predictivebrain.bsky.social
🚨Job alert!🚨 Are you curious about curiosity, and looking for a post-doc position? Then please consider applying: www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Feel free to e-mail/DM me if you have questions.

Thanks very much for sharing/re-posting!
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
asliozyurek.bsky.social
Would you like to work at Max Planck Society tenured? A new round of the Lise Meitner Excellence Program for #tenuretrack group leaders opened today - pls consider applying! The program aims to recruit and promote exceptionally qualified female scientists. mpg.de/lise-meitner-e…#LiseMeitnerGroupsps
https://mpg.de/lise-meitner-e…
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
s-michelmann.bsky.social
Excited to share our preprint "Fast-timescale hippocampal processes bridge between slowly unfurling neocortical states during memory search" 🧠✨ We leverage iEEG to elucidate the fast neural mechanisms by which long multimodal narratives are unfurled in continuous memory-search tinyurl.com/wjkr3dvf
Fast-timescale hippocampal processes bridge between slowly unfurling neocortical states during memory search
Prior behavioral work showed that event structure plays a key role in our ability to mentally search through memories of continuous naturalistic experience. We hypothesized that, neurally, this memory...
tinyurl.com
Reposted by Mariya Toneva
evfedorenko.bsky.social
Our language neuroscience lab (evlab.mit.edu) is looking for a new lab manager/FT RA to start in the summer. Apply here: tinyurl.com/3r346k66 We'll start reviewing apps in early Mar. (Unfortunately, MIT does not sponsor visas for these positions, but OPT works.)
EvLab
Our research aims to understand how the language system works and how it fits into the broader landscape of the human mind and brain.
evlab.mit.edu