Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 22h

📣 New preprint from the Braga Lab! 📣

The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network

Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results

Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning?

Thread 🧵 ⬇️

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23h

UT Austin Linguistics is hiring in computational linguistics!

Asst or Assoc.

We have a thriving group sites.utexas.edu/compling/ and a long proud history in the space. (For instance, fun fact, Jeff Elman was a UT Austin Linguistics Ph.D.)

faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793

🤘

UT Austin Computational Linguistics Research Group – Humans processing computers processing humans processing language

sites.utexas.edu

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Maria Ryskina @mryskina.bsky.social · 4d

🧠 This paper is a part of my first brain project, and I had a lot of fun working on it with the amazing @gretatuckute.bsky.social, @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Ashley Malkin, and @evfedorenko.bsky.social!

Paper link: arxiv.org/abs/2508.11536
Code+data: github.com/ryskina/conc...

Language models align with brain regions that represent concepts across modalities

Cognitive science and neuroscience have long faced the challenge of disentangling representations of language from representations of conceptual meaning. As the same problem arises in today's language...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Jessy Li @jessyjli.bsky.social · 8d

All of us (@kanishka.bsky.social @kmahowald.bsky.social and me) are looking for PhD students this cycle! If computational linguistics/NLP is your passion, join us at UT Austin!

For my areas see jessyli.com

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Anna (Anya) Ivanova @neuranna.bsky.social · 9d

As our lab started to build encoding 🧠 models, we were trying to figure out best practices in the field. So @neurotaha.bsky.social
built a library to easily compare design choices & model features across datasets!

We hope it will be useful to the community & plan to keep expanding it!
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neurotaha @neurotaha.bsky.social · 9d

🚨 Paper alert:
To appear in the DBM Neurips Workshop

LITcoder: A General-Purpose Library for Building and Comparing Encoding Models

📄 arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2509.091...
🔗 project: litcoder-brain.github.io

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Kanishka Misra 🌊 @kanishka.bsky.social · 8d

The compling group at UT Austin (sites.utexas.edu/compling/) is looking for PhD students!

Come join me, @kmahowald.bsky.social, and @jessyjli.bsky.social as we tackle interesting research questions at the intersection of ling, cogsci, and ai!

Some topics I am particularly interested in:

Picture of the UT Tower with "UT Austin Computational Linguistics" written in bigger font, and "Humans processing computers processing human processing language" in smaller font

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Hannah Small @hsmall.bsky.social · 14d

Excited to share new work with @hleemasson.bsky.social , Ericka Wodka, Stewart Mostofsky and @lisik.bsky.social! We investigated how simultaneous vision and language signals are combined in the brain using naturalistic+controlled fMRI. Read the paper here: osf.io/b5p4n
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Thomas Serre @thomasserre.bsky.social · 15d

Brown’s Department of Cognitive & Psychological Sciences is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor, working in the area of AI and the Mind (start July 1, 2026). Apply by Nov 8, 2025 👉 apply.interfolio.com/173939

#AI #CognitiveScience #AcademicJobs #BrownUniversity

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Ev Fedorenko @evfedorenko.bsky.social · 22d

A fantastic piece by two of my favorite linguists!

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

📣@futrell.bsky.social and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

📣@futrell.bsky.social and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Brokoslaw Laschowski @drlaschowski.bsky.social · Sep 5

Come join us at University of Toronto. We're hiring a Professor of computational cognitive neuroscience.

#neuroAI #compneuro jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Professor - Computational Cognitive Neuroscience

jobs.utoronto.ca

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Sep 5

‪@benhayden.bsky.social‬
@tyrellturing.bsky.social‬
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social‬
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Sep 3

Harvard University won a crucial legal victory in its clash with the Trump administration on Wednesday, when a federal judge said that the government had broken the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funds. Gift link: nyti.ms/41CEOWy

nyti.ms

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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · Aug 17

Let’s talk @storiesofwin.bsky.social. I’m flattered to be among their profiles (coming soon) & I want to elevate the team behind this terrific effort. /1

www.storiesofwin.org

Stories of WiN

www.storiesofwin.org

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Adele Goldberg @adelegoldberg.bsky.social · Aug 15

📌 👉 The 14th International Construction Grammar conference will be held at Princeton, June 4-7, 2026

Usage-based analyses and Empirical methods

Stay tuned for updates!

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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · Aug 15

The rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!

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Tom McCoy @rtommccoy.bsky.social · Aug 15

🤖 🧠 NEW PAPER ON COGSCI & AI 🧠 🤖

Recent neural networks capture properties long thought to require symbols: compositionality, productivity, rapid learning

So what role should symbols play in theories of the mind? For our answer...read on!

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2508.05776

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The top shows the title and authors of the paper: "Whither symbols in the era of advanced neural networks?" by Tom Griffiths, Brenden Lake, Tom McCoy, Ellie Pavlick, and Taylor Webb.

At the bottom is text saying "Modern neural networks display capacities traditionally believed to require symbolic systems. This motivates a re-assessment of the role of symbols in cognitive theories."

In the middle is a graphic illustrating this text by showing three capacities: compositionality, productivity, and inductive biases. For each one, there is an illustration of a neural network displaying it. For compositionality, the illustration is DALL-E 3 creating an image of a teddy bear skateboarding in Times Square. For productivity, the illustration is novel words produced by GPT-2: "IKEA-ness", "nonneotropical", "Brazilianisms", "quackdom", "Smurfverse". For inductive biases, the illustration is a graph showing that a meta-learned neural network can learn formal languages from a small number of examples.

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Ev Fedorenko @evfedorenko.bsky.social · Aug 12

I am just fooling around, you goof 😊

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Ev Fedorenko @evfedorenko.bsky.social · Aug 12

@awolna.bsky.social 😊

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 12

"The entire language network constitutes <1.5% of the brain volume and is about the size of a large strawberry." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The extended language network: Language selective brain areas whose contributions to language remain to be discovered

Although language neuroscience has largely focused on ‘core’ left frontal and temporal brain areas and their right-hemisphere homotopes, numerous other areas—cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar—have...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 12

"The entire language network constitutes <1.5% of the brain volume and is about the size of a large strawberry." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The extended language network: Language selective brain areas whose contributions to language remain to be discovered

Although language neuroscience has largely focused on ‘core’ left frontal and temporal brain areas and their right-hemisphere homotopes, numerous other areas—cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar—have...

www.biorxiv.org

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Ev Fedorenko @evfedorenko.bsky.social · Aug 12

Jamie, we are good for it! 😉

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Reposted by Ev Fedorenko

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 12

As of last month, there is no one left in the White House whose sole job is to keep the nation safe from biological threats. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

No One in the White House Knows How to Stop Ebola

We had a playbook for handling biothreats. Then Trump pushed out the people who knew how to use it.

www.theatlantic.com

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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · Aug 5

🚨 New Preprint 🚨

Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects

By Cyr et al.

***
Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES?

A: Yes!

🧵:

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David Sussillo @sussillodavid.bsky.social · Aug 4

Coming March 17, 2026!
Just got my advance copy of Emergence — a memoir about growing up in group homes and somehow ending up in neuroscience and AI. It’s personal, it’s scientific, and it’s been a wild thing to write. Grateful and excited to share it soon.

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Hope Kean @hopekean.bsky.social · Aug 3

Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵
New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social
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Evidence from Formal Logical Reasoning Reveals that the Language of Thought is not Natural Language

Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans al...

tinyurl.com

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