Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 3h

After a few days of extensive discussions about curiosity at @rtg2906-curiosity.bsky.social's retreat, I realized—perhaps for the first time—that the word curiosity in Persian (کنجکاوی) literally means "exploring corners"! It's such a vivid way to express curiosity! so amusing to think about it!

1 1 10

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Elham Nourani @enourani.bsky.social · 2d

🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

Golden eagle on the nest in Finland (by O. Karlin)

1 73 100

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Jo Cutler @drjocutler.bsky.social · 5d

I had so much fun organising #CISE2025 conference on Curiosity, Information Seeking & Exploration with Romy Frömer, @hayleydorfman.bsky.social, Ohad Dan, Matt Nassar, Tali Sharot & Jacqueline Gottlieb at beautiful Brown University then hearing about all the amazing research from our speakers…

1 3 24

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Franziska Brändle @frabraendle.bsky.social · 6d

What influences whether people have fun with a task?

Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports!

rdcu.be/eI069

Paper summary below 1/4

Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

rdcu.be

1 16 56

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 7d

The neural control & computation lab is recruiting!

If you're interested in using large-scale neural population recordings to study how the brain learns to produce complex and flexible behaviours, please get in touch.

www.ncclab.ca

5 43 95

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 7d

Thank you! :)

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Colin Camerer @cfcamerer.bsky.social · 7d

Tour de force talk decomposing aspects of novelty, surprise, info gain in multi-state tasks by @modirshanechi.bsky.social

Novelty-seeking (visit new states) is common...even when its suboptimal
#CISE2025

1 3 10

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 7d

Wise cartoon posted outside a @princetonneuro.bsky.social PhD student office. Let’s all remember to enjoy the journey today (and all days).

Cartoon showing a stick figure looking toward an end goal w/ a bumpy path to it.

1 4 30

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Milena Rmus @milenamr7.bsky.social · 8d

Also happy to announce that our Automated scientific minimization of regret paper got accepted to the AI4Science workshop at #NeurIPS - arxiv.org/abs/2505.17661 with @marcelbinz.bsky.social, @akjagadish.bsky.social & @ericschulz.bsky.social

1 5

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Marcel Binz @marcelbinz.bsky.social · 8d

We are organizing a workshop on Metacognition in Generative AI at @euripsconf.bsky.social in Copenhagen later this year.
Submission deadline for short papers is on October 17th.

1 1 7

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Hayley Dorfman @hayleydorfman.bsky.social · 8d

Successful first CISE poster session at beautiful Brown! #CISE2025 🔭

4 19

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Dan Mirea @danmirea.bsky.social · 9d

🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨

We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health.

We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach.

With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social

Thread ⬇️

1 25 78

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Martin Schrimpf @mschrimpf.bsky.social · 9d

Come be our colleague at EPFL! Several open calls for positions 🧪🧠🤖

* Neuroscience www.epfl.ch/about/workin... (deadline Oct 1)

* Life Science Engineering www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

* CS general call www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

* Learning Sciences www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

Faculty Position in Neuroscience

The School of Life Sciences at EPFL invites applications for a Tenure Track Assistant Professor position in Neuroscience. At EPFL researchers develop and apply innovative technologies to understand br...

www.epfl.ch

1 10 31

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · 9d

Very much look forward to our workshop (co-organized with @armanbehrad.bsky.social) today with a great lineup of speakers who combine a wide spectrum of approaches and methods to have a joint definition of brain-behavior state!

bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co...

#BernsteinConference

6 28

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

Perfect! Thanks

1

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

I see. Then I'm looking forward to seeing what you find! :)

1

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Vinny Costa @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social · 10d

This is fantastic work.

Monkeys show the same pattern of “optimistic” exploration in multi-arm bandits www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1 13 27

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

Such a beautiful work! Thanks for sharing it. :)
I was wondering what you think about the neural mechanisms of this interplay between optimism and novelty-seeking. Inspired by works of @monosovlab.bsky.social, I feel there must be some sort of optimism-modulated, mixture-of-experts-like mechanism.

1 2

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Joao Barbosa @jbarbosa.org · 10d

Yeah, finally AI cracked the hallmark of human behavior: the noisy TV problem

Antonino Greco @agreco.bsky.social · 10d

Turns out humans are not better that simple RL agents guided by surprise/novelty-driven curiosity when facing noisy TV problems! 📺

AGI is closer than we think 😉

#NeuroAI #neuroskyence #compcogsci

2 11

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Antonino Greco @agreco.bsky.social · 10d

Turns out humans are not better that simple RL agents guided by surprise/novelty-driven curiosity when facing noisy TV problems! 📺

AGI is closer than we think 😉

#NeuroAI #neuroskyence #compcogsci

1 2 7

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

New in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We study how humans explore a 61-state environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.”

Results: Participants keep exploring the stochastic part even when it’s unhelpful, and novelty-seeking best explains this behavior.

#cogsci #neuroskyence

35 92

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

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 · 12d

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

4 14

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneurosci.bsky.social · Sep 5

Launched in 2023, Imaging Neuroscience is now firmly established, with full indexing (PubMed, etc.) and 700 papers to date.

We're very happy to announce that we are able to reduce the APC to $1400.

Huge thanks to all authors, reviewers, editorial team+board, and MIT Press.

2 79 230

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Laureline Logiaco @laurelinelogiaco.bsky.social · 11d

Interested in doing a Ph.D. to work on building models of the brain/behavior? Consider applying to graduate schools at CU Anschutz:
1. Neuroscience www.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-pro...
2. Bioengineering engineering.ucdenver.edu/bioengineeri...

You could work with several comp neuro PIs, including me.

1 30 51

Reposted by Alireza Modirshanechi

Laurence Hunt @lhuntneuro.bsky.social · 12d

Looking for a PhD next year? Want to come and work on the next generation of OPM-MEG/EEG biomarkers in computational psychiatry?

Apply for our MRC iCase studentship with @mkflugge.bsky.social, collabs with @lilweb.bsky.social + industrial placement at P1Vital:
www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/gradua...

Development of robust, single-subject markers of predictive inference for computational psychiatry

www.medsci.ox.ac.uk

1 29 32