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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 5d

Check out this new preprint led by @gkathy.bsky.social showing how a new fine-tuning scheme using human similarity judgements can improve existing video models, making them more human-aligned on different social tasks!

arxiv.org/abs/2510.01502

Kathy Garcia @gkathy.bsky.social · 5d

🚨New preprint w/ @lisik.bsky.social!
Aligning Video Models with Human Social Judgments via Behavior-Guided Fine-Tuning

We introduce a ~49k triplet social video dataset, uncover a modality gap (language > video), and close via novel behavior-guided fine-tuning.
🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2510.01502

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Kathy Garcia @gkathy.bsky.social · 5d

🚨New preprint w/ @lisik.bsky.social!
Aligning Video Models with Human Social Judgments via Behavior-Guided Fine-Tuning

We introduce a ~49k triplet social video dataset, uncover a modality gap (language > video), and close via novel behavior-guided fine-tuning.
🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2510.01502

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 6d

Forget modeling every belief and goal! What if we represented people as following simple scripts instead (i.e "cross the crosswalk")?

Our new paper shows AI which models others’ minds as Python code 💻 can quickly and accurately predict human behavior!

shorturl.at/siUYI%F0%9F%...

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 7d

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Heather L Kosakowski @kosakowski.bsky.social · 10d

My lab at USC is recruiting!
1) research coordinator: perfect for a recent graduate looking for research experience before applying to PhD programs: usccareers.usc.edu REQ20167829
2) PhD students: see FAQs on lab website dornsife.usc.edu/hklab/faq/

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 13d

New preprint led by @hsmall.bsky.social with @hleemasson.bsky.social, Ericka Wodka and Stewart Mostofsky: Ubiquitous cortical sensitivity to visual information during naturalistic, audiovisual movie viewing

Check out the paper osf.io/b5p4n and Hannah's summary 👇

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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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Kempner Institute at Harvard University @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social · 27d

See the speakers for 2025-26 #KempnerInstitute Seminar Series!
bit.ly/46xphKq

@moiradillon.bsky.social @lisik.bsky.social @profsanjeevarora.bsky.social @kyunghyuncho.bsky.social @scychan.bsky.social @stellaathena.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social @engeltatiana.bsky.social @zdeborova.bsky.social

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Ella Striem-Amit @striemamit.bsky.social · Aug 20

Excited to share our (Flo Martinez Addiego @yuqiliu1179.bsky.social @culhamari-lab.bsky.social) paper, now published in PNAS!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
(or an easier read on medicine.georgetown.edu/news-release... )

Action-type mapping principles extend beyond evolutionarily conserved actions, even in people born without hands | PNAS

How are actions represented in the motor system? Although the sensorimotor system is broadly organized somatotopically, higher-level sensorimotor a...

www.pnas.org

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Aug 15

What fun to hang out in Amsterdam with former lab members, dear friends, and scientific rock stars @evfedorenko.bsky.social‬ @lisik.bsky.social‬ @apurvaratan.bsky.social‬ @carolinerobertson.bsky.social‬

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · Aug 11

Excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! If you're here, check out the presentations from our lab 👇@qinwenshuo.bsky.social @ziruichen.bsky.social @manasimalik.bsky.social

@cogcompneuro.bsky.social

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · Jul 29

@ardeeb.bsky.social @shenduqiubai.bsky.social

Reposted by Leyla Isik

Abdul-Rahim Deeb @ardeeb.bsky.social · Jul 29

If you're heading to @cogscisociety.bsky.social, come to our symposium “Perception as a Foundation for Common‑Sense Theories of the World”

📅 August 1 • 9 AM
📍 Salon 2

With
@thiskevinsmith.bsky.social
@shariliu.bsky.social
@judithfan.bsky.social
@ardeeb.bsky.social
— See you there! #CogSci2025

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · Jul 29

If you're heading to @cogscisociety.bsky.social check out the presentations from our lab

And congratulations again to @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social on her Glushko dissertation prize 🥳

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Kiley Hamlin @jkileyhamlin.bsky.social · Jul 8

New paper! Here (in Nature Communications) we (Ale Geraci, Luca Surian, Lucia Gabriella Tina, & I; work led/run by Ale) show that 5-day-old newborns selectively attend to two distinct forms of prosocial over antisocial action: approaching versus avoiding and helping versus hindering.
rdcu.be/evorW

Human newborns spontaneously attend to prosocial interactions

Nature Communications - Abilities to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial actions are crucial for sustaining cooperative systems. Here, the authors show that human newborns with just 5 days...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Jun 4

New paper from Laura Lewis and Jan Engelmann et al. (including me) with a clever new method. Chimps and kids will forgo reward to get a chance to look at social interactions
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little is known about the developmental and evolutionary roots ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 27

So good to see you @martinhebart.bsky.social thanks for coming and sharing all your awesome work with us!

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · May 22

This framing is all wrong

Our international students are not a “crucial funding source”

They are our STUDENTS

They are the reason we EXIST

We teach STUDENTS

By Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender
May 22, 2025
Updated 2:17 p.m. ET
The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation's oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration's efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president's agenda.

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 16

I’m happy to be at #VSS2025 and share what our lab has been up to this year!

I’m also honored to receive this year’s young investigator award and will give a short talk at the awards ceremony Monday

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · May 14

SO excited about this new paper by @talboger.bsky.social! How does your mind separate the *content* of an image from the *manner* in which it is depicted? And how can we study this using tools from perception research? Find out in Tal's new @nathumbehav.nature.com paper 👇

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · May 14

Looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night, we see not only its content (a French village beneath a night sky) but also its *style*. How does that work? How do we see style?

In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I take an experimental approach to style perception! osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 14

You can hear @yuanfangzhao.bsky.social present this work @vssmtg.bsky.social on Tuesday morning (poster 53.420) #VSS2025

osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 14

These results replicated across two separate datasets, appear specific to multi-person interactions, and are not due to overall motion   

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 14

We found distinct neural signatures for physical interactions (eg fighting, dancing) and communicative interactions along posterior to anterior regions of the recently proposed lateral pathway. A distinction that has been difficult to find with hypothesis-driven experiments

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voxelwise maps and video labels for two components

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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · May 14

Humans are sensitive to many different types of social interactions, but it has been difficult to isolate these differences in the human brain

In this new preprint @yuanfangzhao.bsky.social w/ @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social applied data-driven methods to two fMRI video datasets to address this

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Yuanfang Zhao @yuanfangzhao.bsky.social · May 14

New preprint out!

“Separate Neural Representations for Physical and Communicative Social Interactions: Evidence from Data-driven Voxel Decomposition” w/ @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social @lisik.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Emily Finn @esfinn.bsky.social · May 9

Despite everything going on, I may have funds to hire a postdoc this year 😬🤞🧑‍🔬 Open to a wide variety of possible projects in social and cognitive neuroscience. Get in touch if you are interested! Reposts appreciated.

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Reposted by Leyla Isik

Denis Wirtz @deniswirtz.bsky.social · Apr 28

We just announced the PIVOT and BRIDGE award funds, as well as enhanced university services to help researchers at Hopkins in these difficult times.

On and forward!

Read about these here: research.jhu.edu/jhu-research...

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