What does it mean to understand language? We argue that the brain’s core language system is limited, and that *deeply* understanding language requires EXPORTING info to other brain regions. w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757 1/n🧵👇

𝗔 𝗡𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗫 By Mars and Passingham "Understanding anthropoid foraging challenges may thus contribute to our understanding of human cognition" Going to the top of the reading list! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroskyence

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire. Our computational cognitive model explains why! Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7 News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu 🧵

Super excited to share our new article: “Dissociable cortical regions represent things and stuff in the human brain” with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social and @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social Video abstract: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0XR... Paper: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lWxv3QW8S...

Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵 New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social 1/8

Can you tell if a tower will fall or if two objects will collide — just by looking? 🧠👀 Come check out my #CogSci2025‪ poster (P1-W-207) on July 31, 13:00–14:15 PT to learn how people do general-purpose physical reasoning from visual input!

Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)

Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)

I am excited to share our recent preprint and the last paper of my PhD! Here, @imelizabeth.bsky.social, @lisik.bsky.social, Mick Bonner, and I investigate the spatiotemporal hierarchy of social interactions in the lateral visual stream using EEG-fMRI. osf.io/preprints/ps... #CogSci #EEG

When you see this image, does it make you wonder what that baby is thinking. Do you think the baby is merely perceiving a set of shapes or do you think that the baby is also inferring meaning from the face they are looking at? (1/5)

**ecstatic** to share our @iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to neural networks, with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and meenakshi khosla (openreview.net/forum?id=IqH...) 1/n

In a study now out in @eLife, @GeorginJacob @PramodRT9 and I have some exciting results: a novel computation that helps the brain solve disparate visual tasks, a novel brain region that performs this computation....what's not to like?! Read on.... 1/n elifesciences.org/articles/93033

Academics - where are academic jobs posted for non-UK non-North American countries? If you were looking for jobs in, say, the Nordic countries, or Australia, where do you look? Asking for all the PhDs who are on the market this year. (Pls no April fools jokes, their nerves are frayed as it is)

I’m hiring a full-time lab tech for two years starting May/June. Strong coding skills required, ML a plus. Our research on the human brain uses fMRI, ANNs, intracranial recording, and behavior. A great stepping stone to grad school. Apply here: careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl... ......

My commentary on the do's and don'ts of cognitive evaluations in LLMs is now out in Nature Human Behavior: doi.org/10.1038/s415... posting here with a figure that didn't make it into the final draft and is now instead a boring table :P #CogSci #LLMs #AI

Come and work with us and do a PhD with on a very exciting project #neurojobs

My email is now closed until 2025. It’s been a tremendous year and I really could not wish for more. I got more this year than I ever dreamed off. Great collaborations (Sight team & @rtpramod.bsky.social & @nancykanwisher.bsky.social), students and researchers, cool papers, new data & funding.

New paper with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social, @jessica__chomik, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @evfedorenko.bsky.social on the representations that underlie our intuitive physical reasoning about the world. Thread 🧵about our new preprint 📄✨linked here: tinyurl.com/intphyslang 1/10