Jonathan Tsay
@tsay.bsky.social
1.2K followers 2.1K following 45 posts
Assistant Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University | Studying how we acquire, adapt, and retain skilled movements | Physical Intelligence Lab: www.tsaylab.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
tsay.bsky.social
The cerebellum isn’t just about coordinating movement. It’s implicated in nearly every domain of cognition—from language to social behavior.

But how exactly does the cerebellum contribute to action and cognition? 🧵

Check out our new paper w/ Rich Ivry.
arxiv.org/abs/2509.09818
Cerebellar Contributions to Action and Cognition: Prediction, Timescale, and Continuity
The cerebellum is implicated in nearly every domain of human cognition, yet our understanding of how this subcortical structure contributes to cognition remains elusive. Efforts on this front have ten...
arxiv.org
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
daweibai.bsky.social
Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
tsay.bsky.social
Huge congrats, Juan!!
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
juangallego.bsky.social
🚨Big news!🚨
The lab is relocating to Lisbon, joining a great team of experimental and theoretical neuroscientists, and the Neurotechnology Warehouse, a new initiative to bridge basic and translational research.

I'll be sharing postdoc openings soon. Come join us in this new incarnation of the lab!
champalimaudr.bsky.social
🧠🎼 What does it take to restore movement? Neuroscientist and engineer, @juangallego.bsky.social, joins the new Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology at the Champalimaud Foundation.

🔗 Find out more in this interview: www.fchampalimaud.org/news/juan-al...
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
hakwan.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2509.251...

"compositional ability generalizes [and]... transfers to a different target task... RL fundamentally changes the reasoning behaviors of the [LLMs]. In contrast, next-token training with the same data yields none of these findings."

🧠🤖 🧠📈
From $f(x)$ and $g(x)$ to $f(g(x))$: LLMs Learn New Skills in RL by Composing Old Ones
Does RL teach LLMs genuinely new skills, or does it merely activate existing ones? This question lies at the core of ongoing debates about the role of RL in LLM post-training. On one side, strong empi...
arxiv.org
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
jayvanbavel.bsky.social
Why do some ideas spread widely, while others fail to catch on?

Our new review paper on the PSYCHOLOGY OF VIRALITY is now out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social (it was led by @steverathje.bsky.social)

Read the full paper here: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
jonathanamichaels.bsky.social
The neural control & computation lab is recruiting!

If you're interested in using large-scale neural population recordings to study how the brain learns to produce complex and flexible behaviours, please get in touch.

www.ncclab.ca
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
jorge-morales.bsky.social
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models
This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...
arxiv.org
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
mcxfrank.bsky.social
Ever wonder how habituation works? Here's our attempt to understand:

A stimulus-computable rational model of visual habituation in infants and adults doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is the thesis of two wonderful students: @anjiecao.bsky.social @galraz.bsky.social, w/ @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social
infant data from experiment 1 conceptual schema for different habituation models title page results from experiment 2 with adults
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
mbeyeler.bsky.social
👁️🧠 New preprint: We demonstrate the first data-driven neural control framework for a visual cortical implant in a blind human!

TL;DR Deep learning lets us synthesize efficient stimulation patterns that reliably evoke percepts, outperforming conventional calibration.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Diagram showing three ways to control brain activity with a visual prosthesis. The goal is to match a desired pattern of brain responses. One method uses a simple one-to-one mapping, another uses an inverse neural network, and a third uses gradient optimization. Each method produces a stimulation pattern, which is tested in both computer simulations and in the brain of a blind participant with an implant. The figure shows that the neural network and gradient methods reproduce the target brain activity more accurately than the simple mapping.
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
matthieuboisgontier.com
Replicability and transparency in physical therapy research: Time to wake up! doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
neuromatch.bsky.social
Exciting news! 🎉 Our Computational Neuroscience course has been awarded NIH BRAIN Initiative funding! Students will get hands-on experience w real BRAIN Initiative datasets, helping them build computational skills that are essential for the future of neuroscience.

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
allisonharvey.bsky.social
Are you applying to a PhD in Clinical or Counseling Psychology? Here is a list of mentors who are taking students. Please circulate widely (and on X) so all applicants can benefit 😀. If you are mentoring please do add your name!
#clinicalpsychology @abctnow.bsky.social
Accepting Clinical or Counselling Psychology Grad Student?
docs.google.com
Reposted by Jonathan Tsay
psychopy.org
🤔 Preparing Undergraduate students for their final year projects?

💡 Why not start with the range of template experiments at Pavlovia.org?

pavlovia.org/explore/demo...

You can download the experiment files directly and adapt for your own experiment!

#openscience #teaching #psychology