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MIT Kids Brains

@kidsbrains.bsky.social

1.5K followers 110 following 2 posts

We are neuroscientists and psychologists at MIT who love to learn about kids' brains and help kids learn about their own brains! PI: Rebecca Saxe Lab: https://saxelab.mit.edu/

saxelab.mit.edu

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Chris Bourg @mchris4duke.bsky.social · May 22

Beliefs about Social Dynamics and Open Science, w/ @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social - royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
While perceptions of social dynamics of your field don't predict open science attitudes, we did find high levels of support for open science (YAY) ..

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Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · May 15

Please help: Do you know a baby, less than 12 months old, who can walk? We are trying to complete a project, 7 years in the works. And all we need are 3 infants who are less than a year old and can walk, to do a short online looking-time study.
🆘

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Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · May 5

In case you missed CDS last week, here is the preprint for Young-Eun Lee's presentation:,
"Children learn what is right or wrong selectively from a legitimate authority’s punishment"
osf.io/preprints/os...

OSF

osf.io

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Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · Apr 24

The question we ask: when do face responses arise in human infant cortex?

Neuroscientists and developmental psychologists (my two disciplines) have different intuitions.

Graphic showing two alternative theories of the sequence and timing of development of cortical face responses: slow and sequential, or early and parallel.

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Heather L Kosakowski @kosakowski.bsky.social · Apr 22

And if you have an extra minute, read the story @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social wrote about making a modern Mother and Child image in an MRI machine. (5/5) www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

MRI image of a parent kissing a baby's forehead.

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Ashley Thomas @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social · Apr 9

Yay for replication! I'm thrilled that scholars I admire so much put the time and effort into replicating our work!

Jonathan F. Kominsky @jfkominsky.bsky.social · Apr 9

I am delighted to announce my student Beyza Cifti's first publication, with me and Gergely Csibra, out today in Royal Society Open Science! (1/6)

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....

#CogSci #PsychSci #DevPsych

Do infants use cues of saliva-sharing to infer close relationships? A replication of Thomas et al. (2022)

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royalsocietypublishing.org

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Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · Mar 7

So proud to Stand up for science with these amazing scientists @kidsbrains.bsky.social

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Melissa Kline Struhl @mekline.bsky.social · Mar 10

The platform I run, Children Helping Science, is supported almost entirely by US government science funding, both directly and in collaboration with CHS researchers.

Here's the note we sent to users today - we need help gathering your stories and citations! Submit here: forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZ...

I'm writing today with a big request during a difficult time for all of us. Together, we've grown Children Helping Science into a cornerstone for online developmental research. Researchers from roughly 150 institutions have conducted remote studies with over 15,000 families since 2020, with many of those families returning to participate in multiple studies across labs.
The CHS team and infrastructure is currently supported almost entirely by the United States government (NSF and NIH). Like many US researchers, we're facing substantial uncertainty about what this means for our financial stability over the coming months and years, and we are hard at work pursuing every angle to keep this platform available to the community. This includes exploring new funding strategies we have previously not considered, like possibly allowing some carefully vetted companies to display ads to families.
Researchers will continue to be able to use the CHS platform for free, but your support right now is critical. At the same time, we know that many of you, especially those of you in the United States, are facing the same instability to present and future funding as we are.
Today, we are asking for three FREE actions from all of you to support our immediate fundraising efforts:

**Send us your citations.**
If you have publications that collected data or advertised studies through CHS or Lookit, please share those references. These citations are essential for demonstrating CHS’s impact to funders. A list of all the citations we're aware of is linked here, in case you're not sure whether we have your recent articles.
**Send us publicly shareable materials and press coverage.**
If you have cute study designs, engaging visuals, or images of adorable kids (with the necessary permissions) we’d love to use them in presentations to potential funders. Similarly, if your research has been covered in any public media (university publications, podcasts, news articles), please send these to us.
**Share your funding applications and ideas.**
If you are preparing a grant proposal (to any funding source), please reach out to discuss how you can include a budget line to support CHS. If you have ideas for joint projects, or even of funders you think we should reach out to - we're all ears! And if you have ever received funding to conduct studies using CHS/Lookit, please also make sure we know about it.

You can do all of these things right now at this link (https://forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZizMK8). Please also feel free to email us (best address: mekline@mit.edu) with any other questions or ideas.
We are committed to keeping CHS running and serving this community, and we will do everything in our power to keep the lights on. Thank you for helping to make CHS such a wonderful community resource and for helping us in whatever ways you can!
With appreciation,
Melissa Kline Struhl
Executive Director
Laura Schulz
Scientific Director

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Lillian Behm @lillianbehm.bsky.social · Feb 26

What factors impact the success of an awake infant fMRI scan? What can be done to maximize the data we collect from each infant?

In our new preprint, the Turk-Browne Lab and Saxe Lab combine our data from over 750 attempted scans to try to answer these questions:

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

Data retention in awake infant fMRI: Lessons from more than 750 scanning sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signific...

www.biorxiv.org

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MIT Kids Brains @kidsbrains.bsky.social · Mar 4

Correction: Job ID 24870, Technical Associate I - Saxe Lab

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Joe Barnby @joebarnby.com · Mar 3

Today is the day! Our workshop (sites.google.com/view/theory-...) on Theory of Mind in AI kicks off in Philadelphia, and we are lucky enough to have @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social opening the day with a comprehensive overview of how we (un)successfully measure Theory of Mind

@nitalon.bsky.social

Rebecca Saxe giving a talk on Theory of Mind

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MIT Kids Brains @kidsbrains.bsky.social · Mar 3

The Saxe Lab @ MIT is hiring! We seek one lab manager to start in summer 2025. Research in our lab focuses on social cognition (learn more on saxelab.mit.edu).

Please apply at: tinyurl.com/saxe2025 (Job ID 31993).

Review of applications starts on March 24, 2025.

Sharing appreciated. Thank you!

Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at MIT |

saxelab.mit.edu

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harvardwipsych.bsky.social @harvardwipsych.bsky.social · Jan 27

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS!!!
Harvard's graduate student organization, Women in Psychology, is super excited to host the 2025 Trends in Psychology Summit (TiPS) conference in May! Abstract submissions for poster presentations, blitz talks, and sketchpads closes Friday, February 14th at 12:00PM EST.

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