Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Nora Newcombe @noranewcombe.bsky.social · 1d

Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories

Longitudinal measurements of brain structure and function are critical for understanding how humans change over time. Traditional longitudinal approaches sample sparsely across large windows of time t...

www.cell.com

11 32

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 7d

Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt

22 280 850

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 7d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

1.3K 7.7K 29K

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Jorge Morales @jorge-morales.bsky.social · 8d

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

arxiv.org

5 36 110

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 10d

@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has written another tour de force, showing how efficient coding reshapes numerosity representations in parietal cortex.

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 13d

Distributed range adaptation in human parietal encoding of numbers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.25.675916v1

4 14

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Daniel Coppersmith @danielcoppersmith.bsky.social · 12d

I’m starting a suicide prevention research lab at UMass Amherst! I’ll be reviewing applications for our clinical psychology PhD program. Come to our virtual open house to learn more about the program and speak with faculty accepting students.
www.umass.edu/psychologica...

10 22

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 16d

Functional organization of the human visual system at birth and across late gestation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.22.677834v1

7 6

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · 23d

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.

www.cogdevlab.org

PCDL @ OSU

www.cogdevlab.org

17 30

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Casey terHorst @ecoevolab.bsky.social · Sep 8

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October)
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

www.nsf.gov

6 280 340

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Colette Delawalla @cdelawalla.bsky.social · Sep 3

Emory University just closed all our DEI offices and programs.

This is egregious.

I know Emory’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts have meant a great deal to many, not just as programs, but as a statement about who we are and what we believe in. As someone who has reaped the benefits of the needs these programs were meant to address, I know they were created with the best of intentions and staffed by talented, committed professionals.

We live in a time of changing expectations and new requirements, however. Federal laws and mandates have been implemented that require higher education institutions to alter fundamentally or even close offices and programs focused on DEI. The standards are clear, and we must act accordingly.

Guided by the Office of General Counsel and other appropriate campus officials, we will work promptly and carefully to discontinue current DEI offices and programs. We will also work closely with each impacted employee to provide appropriate support and assistance through the transition.

19 98 230

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · Aug 28

Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system.

In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension

In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguis…

www.sciencedirect.com

2 15 40

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Katie Buehler @bykatiebuehler.bsky.social · Aug 21

BREAKING: A divided Supreme Court ALLOWS the National Institutes of Health to withhold $783 million in funding for research related to "gender ideology," DEI & other disfavored topics with complicated reasoning. Roberts & liberals dissent. #SCOTUS
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

6 21 29

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

AAUP @aaup.org · Aug 21

Authoritarian madness.

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · Aug 21

In a divided decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration allowing it to eliminate NIH grants to any organization that doesn't follow administration priorities by not eliminating DEI or not eliminating recognition of trans people.

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

www.supremecourt.gov

1 14 25

Lauren Aulet @laurenaulet.bsky.social · Aug 21

I'm accepting a phd student for this upcoming cycle! Happy to chat with anyone interested in numerical cognition, spatial cognition, mental rotation, intuitive physics, etc. Behavior and/or fMRI. You can find my contact info and more info about the lab at www.auletlab.com

Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program : Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences : UMass Amherst

Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program

www.umass.edu

3 10

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

CantlonLab @cantlonlab.bsky.social · Aug 20

Children build math skills on a “cognitive bridge” between space & number. But where does it come from? Our new study finds monkeys transfer learning and abstractions across geometry & numerosity, revealing the evolutionary roots of basic math development. 🧪🧠

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cognitive bridge between geometric and numerical learning in monkeys | PNAS

Educational research highlights strong developmental links between numerical and spatial cognition in humans, often shaped by cultural tools like t...

www.pnas.org

6 24 69

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Nydia Vurdah @nydiavurdah.bsky.social · Aug 14

🚨 New postdoc alert with @dchyde.bsky.social! Come join us at the Brain and Cognitive Development lab to work on a fantastic project! @mclstrainee.bsky.social

Dan Hyde @dchyde.bsky.social · Jul 15

Looking for another postdoc to work on preschool longitudinal fNIRS and ERP data-details here: publish.illinois.edu/danielchyde/...

Postdoctoral Scholar – Brain and Cognitive Development Lab

publish.illinois.edu

2 6

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · Aug 13

Our position paper is now out: "Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE): A Global Framework for Measuring Children's Learning Variability Through Collaborative Data Sharing".

srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)

What is LEVANTE? 🧵

3 20 42

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Vlad Ayzenberg @vayzenb.bsky.social · Jul 31

Excited to be at my first @cogscisociety.bsky.social meeting!

Come check out my talk tomorrow morning on the organization of the human visual system at birth in @noranewcombe.bsky.social Rumelhart award symposium

#CogSci2025

6 30

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Brynn Sherman @brynnsherman.bsky.social · Jul 24

I'm recruiting a lab manager for my soon-to-be-launched lab at Ohio State! If you know of any recent grads who may be interested both in helping to build the lab and in developing skills in the cognitive neuroscience of memory, please share!

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OSUCar...

Research Associate

Screen reader users may encounter difficulty with this site. For assistance with applying, please contact [email protected]. If you have questions while submitting an application, pleas...

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

3 52 57

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Vlad Ayzenberg @vayzenb.bsky.social · Jul 2

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances!

We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children

The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

doi.org

2 36 110

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · Jun 18

it's a great thing that trans people exist. they make the world a better place for everyone.

attacks on trans people are attacks on everyone, and on the concept of human dignity and possibility.

4 52 150

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Nature @nature.com · Jun 12

Boys and girls receive similar maths scores at the start of school, but boys pull ahead of girls after just four months

https://go.nature.com/4kAk1Kz

When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment

Analysis of almost three million children captures when ‘mathematical gender gap’ first emerges and could help focus efforts to stop girls from falling behind.

go.nature.com

2 13 44

Reposted by Lauren Aulet

Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · Jun 10

wooo || Out now in JEP: General || wooo

"Resource Bounds on Mental Simulations: Evidence From a
Liquid-Reasoning Task" 🫗

(by Wang and me)

paper: doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

preprint: bit.ly/liquidSim25

2 10 41

Lauren Aulet @laurenaulet.bsky.social · Jun 7

Lastly, we found that number line behavior related to neural activity in a network of right hemisphere regions (IFG, ITG, IPS) in kids, but only to left IPS in adults, suggesting that lateralization differences may underlie the developmental changes in number line behavior

1

Lauren Aulet @laurenaulet.bsky.social · Jun 7

We also developed a novel in-scanner number line task, and found that children's number line activation overlapped with both number and space activation in kids but number activation only in adults

1 1