Payam Piray
@payampiray.bsky.social
1.5K followers 290 following 23 posts
Computational neuroscientist. Assistant professor @USC psychology. Previously @Princeton and @Donders www.piraylab.com
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payampiray.bsky.social
New paper with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social in Nature Communications: an RL model that builds a successor map compositionally. The new model plans as well as the best models, and it links components of the map used for planning to neural codes in the medial entorhinal cortex.
rdcu.be/eAofi
Reconciling flexibility and efficiency: medial entorhinal cortex represents a compositional cognitive map
Nature Communications - How the brain creates compositional cognitive maps that support both flexible and efficient planning remains poorly understood. Here, authors propose a...
rdcu.be
payampiray.bsky.social
More generally, we link MEC coding to planning-ready compositional representations, with invariant and modular responses in ubiquitous MEC object vector cells. These cells provide the building blocks of compositionality in the model.
payampiray.bsky.social
Neurally, influential work proposed grid cells encode eigenvectors of the successor map. Nice idea, but it struggles when barriers or goals change. Our model ties grid code to the compositional map, keeping them useful even as the world changes, consistent with empirical findings on local remapping.
payampiray.bsky.social
Computationally, the model builds a successor map piece by piece, by putting together representations related to barriers and goals. We propose translation/rotation-invariant code for representation of task components (objects/goals) that plans near-optimally in complicated navigation tasks.
payampiray.bsky.social
New paper with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social in Nature Communications: an RL model that builds a successor map compositionally. The new model plans as well as the best models, and it links components of the map used for planning to neural codes in the medial entorhinal cortex.
rdcu.be/eAofi
Reconciling flexibility and efficiency: medial entorhinal cortex represents a compositional cognitive map
Nature Communications - How the brain creates compositional cognitive maps that support both flexible and efficient planning remains poorly understood. Here, authors propose a...
rdcu.be
Reposted by Payam Piray
samnastase.bsky.social
Check out Zaid's open "Podcast" ECoG dataset for natural language comprehension (w/ Hasson Lab). The paper is now out at Scientific Data (nature.com/articles/s41...) and the data are available on OpenNeuro (openneuro.org/datasets/ds0...).
Reposted by Payam Piray
marcelomattar.bsky.social
Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature
Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...
doi.org
payampiray.bsky.social
Great great work, congrats!
Reposted by Payam Piray
ninarouhani.bsky.social
new paper from a collaborative endeavor! (@co0p3r.bsky.social) we find & replicate food-reward biases in a reinforcement learning task (where food stim are incidental)

people with eating disorder symptoms show a low-calorie food bias while those without show a high-calorie food bias... (1/3)
Eating disorder symptoms and emotional arousal modulate food biases during reward learning in females - Nature Communications
Disordered eating can disrupt the rewarding value of food. Here, the authors show in a female sample that eating disorder symptoms, emotional arousal, and interoceptive awareness modulate goal-ir...
www.nature.com
payampiray.bsky.social
So happy for you, congratulations!
Reposted by Payam Piray
neuroprinciplist.bsky.social
Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
forms.gle
payampiray.bsky.social
So so sorry for you loss. That’s a beautiful piece!
Reposted by Payam Piray
mdehghani.bsky.social
Very cool work on the intersection of interpretability and multi-lingual LLMs, led by @elnaz-rahmati.bsky.social
Reposted by Payam Piray
mdehghani.bsky.social
Our new paper explores how to align LLMs with System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (analytical) thinking styles. This work challenges the idea that step-by-step reasoning (CoT) is always best and highlights the need for adapting reasoning strategies based on the task
arxiv.org/abs/2502.12470
Reposted by Payam Piray
nathanieldaw.bsky.social
hello world. we have an opening for a strong theory postdoc to work in my lab on a exciting collaboration with Josh Berke and Loren Frank labs modeling and analyzing data on rat hipp-pfc-bg-da involvement in spatial maze foraging, replay, value etc. apply here: www.princeton.edu/acad-positio...
Application for Postdoctoral Research Associate
www.princeton.edu
Reposted by Payam Piray
docqhuys.bsky.social
Poster submissions for the Computational Psychiatry Conference 2025 in Tübingen are now open. Deadline is 7th February. Symposium submissions are open until 15th January. www.cpconf.org. Please RB.
Computational Psychiatry Conference
Tübingen, Germany (July 14-16, 2025)
www.cpconf.org
Reposted by Payam Piray
mdehghani.bsky.social
(1/4) Our new JEP:G paper dives into how moral values and misinformation spread on social media: media.mola-lab.org/file/1737039...
media.mola-lab.org
Reposted by Payam Piray
katenuss.bsky.social
I'm hiring a full-time lab manager / research tech for my new psychology lab at Boston University, to start this summer (July 2025)!

The lab's research focuses on understanding developmental changes in learning, memory, and exploration.

More details here: cldlab.org/join/

🧠💻 #psychscisky
Detailed job description, which can also be found here: https://cldlab.org/join/
Reposted by Payam Piray
behrenstimb.bsky.social
OK If we are moving to Bluesky I am rescuing my favourite ever twitter thread (Jan 2019).

The renamed:

Bluesky-sized history of neuroscience (biased by my interests)
payampiray.bsky.social
Am I qualified as a cognitive controller?
Reposted by Payam Piray
Neuromatch is looking for a curriculum specialist for our #neuroAI course. Spread the word!

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