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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Gabriel Fajardo @gabefajardo.bsky.social · 6d

I’m excited to share my 1st first-authored paper, “Distinct portions of superior temporal sulcus combine auditory representations with different visual streams” (with @mtfang.bsky.social and @steanze.bsky.social ), now out in The Journal of Neuroscience!
www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Fig. 1. a. Visual and auditory regions of interest (ROIs). b. Responses in a combination of visual (e.g., early dorsal visual stream; Fig. 1a, middle panel) and auditory regions were used to predict responses in the rest of the brain using MVPN. c. In order to identify brain regions that combine responses from auditory and visual regions, we identified voxels where predictions generated using the combined patterns from auditory regions and one set of visual regions jointly (as shown in Fig. 1b) are significantly more accurate than predictions generated using only auditory regions or only that set of visual regions.

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 15d

Refusing to release the requested data on how these questions performed undermines the Census Bureau’s scientific integrity and prevents accountability when LGBTQ+ communities are left invisible. (4/4)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 15d

Congress allocated $10 million, the Census Bureau tested nearly half a million households, and now the results are being unlawfully suppressed. (3/4)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 15d

Policymakers, researchers, and multiple federal agencies requested this testing to help enforce civil rights and better understand and address disparities in health, education, employment, and other areas affecting LGBTQ+ Americans. (2/4)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 15d

Democracy Forward & I filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Census Bureau, seeking the release of data from its testing of sexual orientation & gender identity questions in the nation's most important annual demographic survey, key to upholding LGBTQ+ rights.

democracyforward.org/updates/sogi...

(1/4)

Democracy Forward @democracyforward.org · 16d

We’re suing the Census Bureau to force the release of critical LGBTQ+ data.

Failing to release the data = failing to include LGBTQ+ people from policy decisions impacting health care, housing, employment, education, and more resources.

So we're demanding accountability.

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

The results open a path for new interventions that don’t just target stereotypes but also attempt to recalibrate biased visual perception directly, with the hopes of mitigating such high-stakes misjudgments under stress and uncertainty.

(6/6)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

While past work has generally assumed such weapon-identification biases involve an accurate perception of the object but then a racially biased impulse that is difficult to control, our findings suggest that part of the problem is a temporary visual distortion as well.

(5/6)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

These neural representational shifts predicted subjects' delays in recognizing these tools as tools, rather than weapons, suggesting an initial tendency to perceive them as weapons.

(4/6)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

Using neural decoding techniques, we find that when subjects saw a Black man’s face before an image of a tool, their brain’s object-processing regions shifted toward a weapon-like representation.

(3/6)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

Unarmed Black people in the US are 3X more likely than unarmed White people to be shot and killed by police. In many tragic cases, unarmed Black men were holding innocuous objects like a wrench, wallet, or cell phone when fatally shot by an officer.

(2/6)

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist.

Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(1/6)

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Franki Kung @frankikung.bsky.social · 29d

Three @spspnews.bsky.social members will discuss their grant terminations and next steps, followed by Q&A, story sharing, and community discussion.

Moderator: Cynthia L. Pickett, Professor; Past SPSP President
Speakers: @lkfazio.bsky.social, @freemanjb.bsky.social, and @frankikung.bsky.social

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Jeff Zacks @jzacks.bsky.social · Aug 15

The Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (@fabbs.org) is searching for a short-term technology policy fellow. Great opportunity for a new PhD interested in policy, maybe before a research postdoc or faculty position:
fabbs.org/news/2025/08...

We’re Hiring: Technology Policy Fellow – FABBS

Location: Washington, D.C. (hybrid) Salary: Approximately $7,000 per month Start Date: September 15, 2025 Duration: 3 months, with potential for longer Position

fabbs.org

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Chujun Lin @chujunlin.bsky.social · Jul 8

First paper from my lab out @commspsychol.nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00275-w

Latent factor models are popular for mental representation of people, e.g. warmth & competence

But we show in naturalistic contexts, more complex representations are needed: high-dimensional networks

www.nature.com

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · Jun 30

Congrats!

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · Jun 21

Paper in @pnas.org in which @d-melnikoff.bsky.social and I provide evidence for model-based effects on automatic evaluation. This was a super fun “adversarial” collaboration with 0 adversariality. It may have been nice to be right, but getting it right is nearly as nice: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · Jun 19

Curious for any reactions/feedback!