Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Gregor Thut @gregorthut.bsky.social · 11d

Open postdoc position👈
We have an open position, starting early 2026, to work on an exciting project aiming at better understanding the role of thalamo-cortical brain oscillations in perception with a comparative, cross-species (animal-human) component based on electrophysiology (incl. scalp EEG).

5 26 32

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Tessa Dekker @tessamdekker.bsky.social · 11d

We’re hiring! We’re looking for two RAs to study neuroplasticity in sight loss, sight rescue and development in children and adults @ucl.ac.uk using a wide range of neuroimaging and behavioral methods. Please help spread the word! Apply by 16 Oct! t.ly/q3aYe #neurojobs #NeuroSkyence

Research Assistant at UCL

Recruiting now: Research Assistant on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

t.ly

1 42 59

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Martin Wiener @martinwiener.bsky.social · Aug 26

Thanks to NSF and BSF, we've received a CRCNS grant!! 🎉

I'll be working with the amazing @ayeletlandau.bsky.social and Yuval Benjamini to explore and understand how our sense of time and image memorability are linked. ⌛🧠

We have 2(!) post-doc opportunities available - details coming soon!

2 10

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

10/10
Congrats to Maya Inbar on the publication of her final PhD paper! If you are at Cambridge bsky.app/profile/mrcc... take a moment to welcome her as she starts another exciting journey as a postdoc in the Woolgar lab! www.woolgarlab.org

bsky.app

1 1 4

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

9/10
Sometimes timings coincide… If you happen to be attending SLE, I will be giving a talk about this study in the seriously timely & interesting “Taking time seriously” workshop (WS18), Thursday Aug 28th, 12:30 CET.

societaslinguistica.eu/sle2025/

58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea - SLE 2025

58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea26 – 29 August 2025 Université Bordeaux Montaigne The Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) and Université Bordeaux Montaigne are pleased to annou...

societaslinguistica.eu

1 3

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

8/10
This work highlights a global temporal regularity in speech and its link to neural dynamics, suggesting that prosodic structure reflects shared cognitive constraints. Thank you for reading ‘till here, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

1 3

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

7/10
All this would not have been possible without DoReCo, a wonderful resource curating spoken language corpora on a world-wide sample of over 50 languages. We extend our thanks to the creators, language documenters and all recorded people.

doreco.huma-num.fr

DoReCo - Homepage

doreco.huma-num.fr

1 5

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

6/10
We also examined a faster speech rhythm—the syllable rate—and found that variation in syllable timing explains relatively little about the timing of intonation units. This supports the hypothesis that speech operates at multiple, functionally distinct temporal scales.

1 4

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

5/10
Previously, we (w/ @anatperry.bsky.social and Shir Genzer) showed that neural tracking of these rhythms is closely time-locked to the boundaries of IUs. The present study provides compelling evidence that this rhythm is a global property of speech production.
www.jneurosci.org/content/43/4...

Intonation Units in Spontaneous Speech Evoke a Neural Response

Spontaneous speech is produced in chunks called intonation units (IUs). IUs are defined by a set of prosodic cues and presumably occur in all human languages. Recent work has shown that across differe...

www.jneurosci.org

1 4

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

4/10
The rhythm we observed parallels well-established low-frequency neural activity patterns, particularly delta-band activity, which has been linked to attention, memory encoding, and goal-directed action.

1 2

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

3/10
Intonation units have been widely discussed in linguistics as central to discourse organization. They help listeners follow conversational flow, allocate attention, and anticipate turns. They may also offer salient cues for children acquiring language.

1 2

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

2/10
We found that speakers in the entire sample produce intonation units at a rate of about one every 1.6 seconds.
This slow rhythm is strikingly stable across languages, speakers, and ages, suggesting it reflects a shared cognitive constraint rather than language-specific structure.

1 5

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 26

📣new and exciting paper alert! 📣
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ever wonder what's the rhythm of speech -- across languages?

1/10
W/ Maya Inbar and Eitan Grossman, we analyzed over 650 recordings from 48 languages, focusing on intonation units—short prosodic phrases that structure speech in time.

A universal of speech timing: Intonation units form low-frequency rhythms | PNAS

Intonation units (IUs) are a hypothesized universal building block of human speech [W. Chafe, Discourse, Consciousness and Time: The Flow and Displ...

www.pnas.org

2 16 59

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Aug 18

The call closed a couple of months ago. But stay tuned for more opportunities in the future!

1

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Einstein Center Chronoi @ecchronoi.bsky.social · Jul 16

Interdisciplinary aspects of time will be the focus of our two-day workshop starting tomorrow, July 17–18, at 9:30 am, at the @bbaw.bsky.social (Einstein Saal). Join us to explore ideas about time across art, literature, natural science, social theory, politics, and theology.

shorturl.at/weCqq

Workshop: “Time Revolution: Contemporary Thought and the Struggle Against Scientific Necessity”

Join us on July 17th and 18th for a workshop organized by Amir Engel

www.ec-chronoi.de

2 3

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Jul 9

4/4 ...Sure, it’s about sampling—but just as much, it’s a gentle push for doing psychophysics with one eye on the brain’s big wiring diagram. We didn’t shout it, but it’s there. This approach, to us, is an exciting way forward in studying neural mechanisms w/ behaviour.

2

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Jul 9

3/4 Like any mechanistic account, this framework still stands to gain from more evidence—across different measurement modalities and test cases. Happily, that’s underway in our group and in labs across the field.

1 1

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Jul 9

2/4 The core idea is simple: wherever there’s competition among neuronal populations, you’ll find sampling. ‪@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social‬ provided the space to lay out and contextualize this notion, which we’ve explored tirelessly over a good part of the last decade.

1 1

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · Jul 9

Thrilled to share our new opinion piece—hot off the press—on attentional sampling, co-authored with the magnificent Flor Kusnir and Daniele Re. It captures where our thinking has landed on this topic after years of work.

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Attentional sampling resolves competition along the visual hierarchy

Navigating the environment involves engaging with multiple objects, each activating specific neuronal populations. When objects appear together, these populations compete. Classical attention theories...

www.cell.com

2 8 20

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com · Jul 1

In this study, @anatperry.bsky.social @desmond-ong.bsky.social et al show that human-attributed responses are rated as more empathic than AI-attributed ones, especially when conveying shared experience and care.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Comparing the value of perceived human versus AI-generated empathy - Nature Human Behaviour

AI mimics empathy well, but does its empathy feel different? The authors show human empathy has unique value: human-attributed responses are rated as more empathic than AI-attributed ones, especially ...

www.nature.com

3 13

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

Hebrew University @hebrewuniversity.bsky.social · Jul 2

Even when AI gets it exactly right, people still prefer empathy they believe came from a human.
A new study led by #HUJI Prof. @anatperry.bsky.social, in collaboration with @harvard.edu and @utaustin.bsky.social, shows the human touch still matters.

Read more: neurosciencenews.com/ai-human-emp...

People Prefer Human Empathy, Even When AI Says the Same Thing - Neuroscience News

A new study shows that people rate empathic responses as more supportive and emotionally satisfying when they believe they come from a human—even if the same response is AI-generated.

neurosciencenews.com

2 5

Reposted by Ayelet Landau

UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences @uclbrainscience.bsky.social · Jun 13

How do you tell if something is real or imaginary? 💭
Dr @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social‬ (@uclqsion.bsky.social‬) speaks to the New Scientist about how brain regions seem to work together to determine whether we can believe what we're seeing.
buff.ly/k2Cs2OD

We've figured out how our brains sort imagination from reality

Two brain regions seem to work together to determine whether we are seeing something real, or merely a product of our imaginations - and understanding them further may help treat visual hallucinations

www.newscientist.com

9 27

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · May 28

📣cog neuro postdoc opportunity! Interested in studying attention & exploration w/ cutting edge M/EEG? 🧠care about making vision science a bit more naturalistic? 🌱LandauLab is hiring! We seek resourceful, curious and creative researchers who can join the newly forming London-based [email protected]!

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · May 28

✨Deadline approaching, June 1st!✨

Apply if you want to investigate brain orchestration in visual (free!) exploration. You will learn a bunch of cool cog neuro techniques, and get to work with a great team of scientists within and beyond the lab.

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk

1 3 4

Ayelet Landau @ayeletlandau.bsky.social · May 16

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

...and now w/ the most up to date HR link :)

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk