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Elliot Murphy

@elliot-murphy.bsky.social

1.7K followers 200 following 250 posts

• Postdoc, Dept of Neurosurgery, UTHealth • Compositionality in neural and artificial systems Website: https://elliot-murphy.com/

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · Jul 14

New paper out today in Cognitive Neuroscience!
Proposing an explicit, causal-mechanistic, falsifiable and empirically grounded neural code for natural language syntax, and its innate basis.

ROSE: A Universal Neural Grammar

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ROSE: A Universal Neural Grammar

Processing natural language syntax requires a negotiation between symbolic and subsymbolic representations. Building on the recent representation, operation, structure, encoding (ROSE) neurocomputa...

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Hannes Mehrer @hannesmehrer.bsky.social · 1d

🧠 New preprint: we show that model-guided microstimulation can steer monkey visual behavior.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.03684

🧵

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Taylor Webb @taylorwwebb.bsky.social · 2d

Very excited to share that our work (together with co-first author Shanka Subhra Mondal and @neuroai.bsky.social ) on a brain-inspired architecture for planning with LLMs is now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41... (thread below)

A brain-inspired agentic architecture to improve planning with LLMs - Nature Communications

Multi-step planning is a challenge for LLMs. Here, the authors introduce a brain-inspired Modular Agentic Planner that decomposes planning into specialized LLM modules, improving performance across tasks and highlighting the value of cognitive neuroscience for LLM design.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Greg Hickok @gregoryhickok.bsky.social · 4d

My attempt to depict the neural architecture of language as motivated in my forthcoming book, Wired for Words. Like colors represent functional connectivity. Main insight: linguistic levels are all organized with a sensorimotor-like architecture. pbs.twimg.com/media/G2cwsM...

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 4d

🧡

Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 4d

🌟 New preprint 🌟, by @olivia.science and me:

📝 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025). *Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists*. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧪

Table 1

Core reasoning issues (first column), which we name after the relevant numbered section, are characterised using a plausible quote. In the second column are responses per row; also see the named section for further reading, context, and explanations.

See paper for full details: ** Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 7d

New intracranial work from our lab!

Transfer learning via distributed brain recordings enables reliable speech decoding

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transfer learning via distributed brain recordings enables reliable speech decoding - Nature Communications

Speech brain-computer interfaces face challenges scaling across individuals with different brain organization. Using minimally invasive recordings from 25 patients, the authors developed transfer learning methods that enable robust speech decoding even with incomplete brain coverage.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Nature Computational Science @natcomputsci.nature.com · 12d

📢Out now! Olesia Dogonasheva and colleagues from @neurospeech.bsky.social present a predictive model for speech processing in the auditory cortex. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #compneurosky

🔓 rdcu.be/eImit

Rhythm-based hierarchical predictive computations support acoustic−semantic transformation in speech processing - Nature Computational Science

This study presents a brain rhythm-based inference model (BRyBI) for speech processing in the auditory cortex. BRyBI shows how rhythmic neural activity enables robust speech processing by dynamically predicting context and elucidates mechanistic principles that allow robust speech parsing in the brain.

www.nature.com

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 11d

Independent contributions of language activations in left and right temporal cortex to aphasia outcomes after stroke

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Independent contributions of language activations in left and right temporal cortex to aphasia outcomes after stroke

Recovery from aphasia after stroke is thought to depend on functional reorganization of language processing in surviving brain regions. Many studies have investigated this process, but progress has be...

www.medrxiv.org

Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 13d

Invasive neurophysiology and whole brain connectomics for neural decoding in patients with brain implants

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Invasive neurophysiology and whole brain connectomics for neural decoding in patients with brain implants - Nature Biomedical Engineering

A modularized open-source pipeline for invasive brain signal decoding bridges the gap between closed-loop neuromodulation and clinical brain–computer interface approaches in a large patient cohort.

www.nature.com

Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 13d

Pre-stimulus Brain States Predict and Control Variability in Stimulation Responses

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

Pre-stimulus Brain States Predict and Control Variability in Stimulation Responses

Does the ongoing brain state determine how it responds to localized electrical stimulation? This fundamental question has major implications for neuroscience and medicine, as stimulation outcomes rema...

www.biorxiv.org

Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 13d

Elegant and thoughtful as always 😎

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Jake Quilty-Dunn @quiltydunn.bsky.social · 16d

New publication forthcoming in BBS, co-authored with John Krakauer: a commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social & @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's groundbreaking target article.

We critique widespread assumptions in cognitive neuroscience about the role of internal models in implicit cognition. (1/7)

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 15d

Yep, acronyms are consistently hallucinated and a very clear indicator of plagiarism

Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 15d

I am happy to announce my new model, the "Really Original Super Electric-field" account of language

Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 15d

Nice to see that some researchers have definitely not used ChatGPT to write their papers...

www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/15...

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Cory Inman @brainscout.bsky.social · 16d

Excited to share our new eLife paper from our lab's first Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Justin Campbell! In this paper, Justin explored the effects of direct electrical stimulation to the human amygdala on single-unit activity throughout the brain. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Human single-neuron activity is modulated by intracranial theta burst stimulation of the basolateral amygdala

Firing rate analyses revealed neurons throughout the hippocampus, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex in humans that exhibited heterogeneous responses to intracranial theta b...

elifesciences.org

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Ben Hayden @benhayden.bsky.social · 16d

New manuscript from the lab!

"Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening"

Led by superstar grad student Anilu Chavez (not on Bluesky)!

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

Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening

Participants in conversations need to associate words their speakers but also retain those words general meanings. For example, someone talking about their hand is not referring to the other speakers ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 17d

Large Language Model probabilities cannot distinguish between possible and impossible language

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15114

Large Language Model probabilities cannot distinguish between possible and impossible language

A controversial test for Large Language Models concerns the ability to discern possible from impossible language. While some evidence attests to the models' sensitivity to what crosses the limits of g...

arxiv.org

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 17d

Insular Traveling Waves Link Distributed Neural Dynamics to Human Memory Performance

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

Insular Traveling Waves Link Distributed Neural Dynamics to Human Memory Performance

The insula is a critical brain region that plays a foundational role in adaptive human behaviors, with diverse subregions performing distinct functional roles. However, explaining how these insular su...

www.biorxiv.org

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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 20d

My conversation with Michael Levin on causality and complexity in neural theories of language.

youtu.be/Rl7B6P_uC6s?...

Discussion between Elliot Murphy and Michael Levin 1

YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content

youtu.be

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Reposted by Elliot Murphy

Thomas Luo @thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social · 21d

How does the brain decide? 🧠

Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.

After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.

rdcu.be/eGUrv