Lauren Aulet
@laurenaulet.bsky.social
📤 2789
📥 813
📝 38
Assistant Professor at UMass Amherst www.auletlab.com she/her 🧠🏳️🌈
pinned post!
New paper with
@cantlonlab.bsky.social
out now in Dev Cog Neuro! We scanned 3-5yr olds with fMRI and found that number words activate regions of cortex also involved in visual numerosity perception, even at the earliest stages of counting acquisition
doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101717
about 2 months ago
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Earl K. Miller
5 days ago
Sensorimotor transformation of number in the primate parietal cortex
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience
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Sensorimotor transformation of number in the primate parietal cortex - Nature Communications
How the brain transforms perceived number into corresponding numbers of self-generated actions is unknown. Here, the authors show that neurons in primate ventral intraparietal area are tuned to the nu...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73037-9
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jane-yang.bsky.social
14 days ago
Children acquire object category representations from their everyday experiences in the first few years of life. What do the inputs to this learning process actually look like? New preprint!
arxiv.org/abs/2605.14990
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Characterizing the visual representation of objects from the child's view
Children acquire object category representations from their everyday experiences in the first few years of life. What do the inputs to this learning process look like? We analyzed first-person videos ...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14990
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Ryan Lei
17 days ago
I went to go look, and this time last year, NSF SBE had funded 216 awards. This year, they have funded 2.
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Dan Garisto
about 1 month ago
Breaking: Trump has fired the membership of the National Science Board, which is oversees NSF. I have confirmed separately with multiple now-former members of NSB.
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Ranking Member Lofgren Reacts to Latest Trump Scheme to Undermine Science | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
https://democrats-science.house.gov/news/press-releases/ranking-member-lofgren-reacts-to-latest-trump-scheme-to-undermine-science
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Elliot Murphy
about 1 month ago
Functional dissociation of language and theory of mind in the developing superior temporal lobe
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
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Functional dissociation of language and theory of mind in the developing superior temporal lobe - Communications Biology
Functional MRI in young children demonstrates that brain regions supporting language and theory of mind are functionally and spatially distinct within the superior temporal lobe, and these functions a...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-026-10040-2
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Jonathan Tsay
about 1 month ago
Dr. Matthew Warburton and I put together a guide on "how to conduct behavioural experiments online"—something we wish we had when we were getting started. Hopefully it’s useful, and we’d very much welcome any feedback!
add a skeleton here at some point
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Harrison Ritz
about 1 month ago
🚨 Tom Griffiths has a podcast where he interviews cognitive scientists
podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t...
This just went to the top of my list.
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Mike Frank
about 1 month ago
Just wrote a new blogpost trying to summarize my thoughts on the question of how and whether to use AI for research in psychology and cognitive science:
babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/04/usin...
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Using AI to improve (not automate away) academic research
Blog about fatherhood, langauge, developmental psychology, and cognitive science.
https://babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/04/using-ai-to-improve-not-automate-away.html
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statement we just received from UMass on the Hampshire college closing: UMass will takeover handling Hampshire student records, and Hampshire students can transfer in to UMass without fees
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about 2 months ago
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Hugo Spiers
about 2 months ago
This looks like a significant discovery from Doris Tao's lab: Rapid concerted switching of the neural code in the inferotemporal cortex
@nature.com
"..our findings indicate that there is a previously unknown mechanism for neural representation:.."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Rapid concerted switching of the neural code in the inferotemporal cortex - Nature
Face cells in the macaque inferotemporal cortex are initially able to detect faces and then rapidly switch to a face-specific neural code to discriminate between different face identities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10267-3
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Judy Fan
about 2 months ago
The Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford (
cogtoolslab.github.io
) is recruiting two new research staff members to join in AY 26-27. Full-Time Lab Manager:
forms.gle/UVwfx5wbY9Km...
. IRiSS Predoc Researcher:
iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-...
. Please share widely in your networks, thank you!!
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about the lab – cognitive tools lab
https://cogtoolslab.github.io/
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Mike Frank
about 2 months ago
Come join us! We have two research coordinator positions open with the Stanford IRISS predoctoral program, a program designed to mentor students for graduate study: LEVANTE:
careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/iriss-p...
BabyView:
careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/iriss-p...
(deadline 5/1)
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IRiSS Predoctoral Researcher in School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, California, United States
The Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) is seeking Predoctoral Researchers to participate in our 2026-2027 cohort. The...
https://careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/iriss-predoctoral-researcher-30349
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New paper with
@cantlonlab.bsky.social
out now in Dev Cog Neuro! We scanned 3-5yr olds with fMRI and found that number words activate regions of cortex also involved in visual numerosity perception, even at the earliest stages of counting acquisition
doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...
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Redirecting
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101717
about 2 months ago
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Hilary Barth
about 2 months ago
Postdoctoral fellowship in developmental science at Wesleyan University. Joint in H. Barth & R. T. Dubar labs. Particular focus on undergrad research mentoring. 1 year, extendable to 2 years. Share and apply!
wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/career...
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Applications are invited for a 1-year postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Psychology at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT). The position may be ren...
https://wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/careers/job/Postdoctoral-Research-Fellow_R101141
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New paper with
@cantlonlab.bsky.social
out now in Dev Cog Neuro! We scanned 3-5yr olds with fMRI and found that number words activate regions of cortex also involved in visual numerosity perception, even at the earliest stages of counting acquisition
doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101717
about 2 months ago
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We plan to hire a post doc to start in Fall 2026 (flexible), in the Aulet Lab at UMass Amherst, funded for two years. The postdoc will help establish our developmental fMRI research program studying symbolic number acquisition in 4-8 year old children (among other things!).
2 months ago
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Earl K. Miller
2 months ago
Coordinated parieto-frontal neuronal communication is critical for abstract quantity judgments in primates
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
#neuroscience
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Coordinated parieto-frontal neuronal communication is critical for abstract quantity judgments in primates
Using simultaneous population recordings and time-lagged canonical correlation analysis in macaques, Machts and Nieder show that numerosity-selective neurons mediate dynamic VIP-PFC communication. Ear...
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(26)00225-1
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Pascal Mamassian
3 months ago
A new Department of Cognitive Science is being created at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. Here is the call for a cluster hire (for around 10 faculty) in all areas of cognitive science, at both junior and senior levels:
www.unibocconi.it/en/faculty-a...
Deadline: May 4th, 2026
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Open Rank Faculty Cluster Hire Search for the New Department of Cognitive Science at Bocconi - Bocconi University
https://www.unibocconi.it/en/faculty-and-research/faculty/faculty-recruiting/open-rank-faculty-cluster-hire-search-new-department-cognitive-science-bocconi
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Dorsa Amir
3 months ago
What does it mean for culture to “shape” cognition? In our new TiCS paper,
@benjaminpitt.bsky.social
& I offer a typology of four possible effects: culture can Privilege one cognitive process over others, Prune out disfavored ones, Produce new ones, or have no effect.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
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Matthias Michel
3 months ago
Found it:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
.
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Human vision maintains a rich representation of objects moving behind an occluder
Vision may seem continuous, but it is frequently disrupted, by internal processes, such as blinks and fast eye-movements, and by external foreground c…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982226000710
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Jonathan Peelle
3 months ago
Cool demonstration that using multiple tasks (diversity is important) may be more informative than resting state for uncovering individual functional connectivity patterns
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Jim Wald
3 months ago
Anyone want to buy a used bookstore (so to speak)? Owners seek buyer to keep Amherst Books alive downtown. Longtime booksellers plan to sell store’s inventory and name while hoping a new owner stays in town center - Daily Hampshire Gazette
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Owners seek buyer to keep Amherst Books alive downtown - Daily Hampshire Gazette
AMHERST — Occupying a prominent storefront in the historic Cook’s Block on Main Street, just off the main intersection and steps from Town Hall, Amherst Books is the last brick-and-mortar retailer in downtown Amherst where readers can find the latest novel, romance or nonfiction work. While there has been a major shift in the commercial […]
https://gazettenet.com/2026/03/09/owners-seek-buyer-to-keep-amherst-books-alive-downtown/
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Deon T. Benton
3 months ago
Scratch two developmental scientists together, and I'd wager you get two different answers about what a mechanism is. Here's a paper I wrote a few years ago to propose and answer for what "developmental mechanisms" are and how one might test them.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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The elusive “Developmental Mechanism”: What they are and how to study and test them
Few issues have garnered as much attention as that of understanding mechanisms of developmental change. Understanding mechanisms of developmental chan…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273229722000247
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bioRxiv Neuroscience
3 months ago
Reassessing Number-Detector Units in Convolutional Neural Networks
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.07.710304v1
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todd gureckis
3 months ago
draft lab ai policy, feel free to use, modify, or discuss!
todd.gureckislab.org/2026/03/06/g...
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Lab AI Policy | Todd Gureckis
Clear expectations for how every member of our lab should use generative AI tools responsibly, transparently, and in a way that upholds rigorous, reproducible, open science.
https://todd.gureckislab.org/2026/03/06/genaipolicy
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Lisa Messeri
3 months ago
Nice timing for
@mjcrockett.bsky.social
and my article on AI Surrogates and Illusions of Generalizability to be officially published.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
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1/7 Academics are facing an April deadline for making our course materials accessible. One big part of this is pdfs of journal articles. Editing them individually+manually in adobe acrobat pro looked painful, so I tried automating it.
github.com/laurenaulet/...
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GitHub - laurenaulet/accesspdf: PDF accessibility remediation tool (WCAG 2.1 AA / PDF/UA)
PDF accessibility remediation tool (WCAG 2.1 AA / PDF/UA) - laurenaulet/accesspdf
https://github.com/laurenaulet/accesspdf
3 months ago
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1/7 Academics are facing an April deadline for making our course materials accessible. One big part of this is pdfs of journal articles. Editing them individually+manually in adobe acrobat pro looked painful, so I tried automating it.
github.com/laurenaulet/...
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GitHub - laurenaulet/accesspdf: PDF accessibility remediation tool (WCAG 2.1 AA / PDF/UA)
PDF accessibility remediation tool (WCAG 2.1 AA / PDF/UA) - laurenaulet/accesspdf
https://github.com/laurenaulet/accesspdf
3 months ago
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Zsuzsa Kaldy
3 months ago
The Developmental and Brain Sciences program at UMass Boston is looking for a half-time Program Coordinator. This colleague will be working directly with me (the Director of the program). Feel free to DM me with any questions!
employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...
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Page Up - UMass Boston
https://employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us/job/529592/program-coordinator-psychology
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Sami Yousif
3 months ago
(Perceptual) space and time are warped by the gravity of objects and events in their vicinity. There's been a flurry of work recently documenting examples of this gravity, all resulting in some really neat illusions.
@brynnsherman.bsky.social
and I discuss all of those, here:
rdcu.be/e5SWo
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Distortions of space and time in and around objects and events
https://rdcu.be/e5SWo
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Natalie Brito
3 months ago
Neuroscience undergrad abducted at 6:30am. No judicial warrant. ICE lied to gain entry into the residence. State-sanctioned kidnapping. And I’m supposed to somehow teach class this afternoon?
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The New York Times
3 months ago
Breaking News: Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard as the university reviews his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
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Larry Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Jeffrey Epstein Revelations
Mr. Summers, former president of the school, had stepped back from teaching after documents showed a closer relationship to Jeffrey Epstein than previously known. He will leave at the end of the academic year.
https://nyti.ms/4b8ubjc
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Orion Rummler
3 months ago
In 2018, an elite group of academics and scientists planned an exclusive retreat. The guests were picked by prominent New York literary agent John Brockman. The problem? Brockman added two women to the list, and his biggest funder — Jeffrey Epstein — wanted them out.
@jkutzie.bsky.social
reports
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The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
https://19thnews.org/2026/02/epstein-files-academic-research-women-scientists/
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Jessica Kutz
3 months ago
I wrote about the Epstein files and what they tell us about men in academia. In a field where climbing the career ladder is only possible through a combination of luck, mentorship and networking — the files show the ways sexism and misogyny still hold women back.
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
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The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
https://19thnews.org/2026/02/epstein-files-academic-research-women-scientists/
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Jake Quilty-Dunn
3 months ago
A new preprint, co-authored with
@johnwkrakauer.bsky.social
: The Deliberation Taboo Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/
osf.io/preprints/ps...
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OSF
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ryzqd_v1
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CantlonLab
3 months ago
Good to see journalists scrutinizing “The Edge Network,” an intellectual circle of academic men who think that women are inherently inferior to men. (and great interview by
@laurenaulet.bsky.social
)
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
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The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
https://19thnews.org/2026/02/epstein-files-academic-research-women-scientists/
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Tom Costello
3 months ago
I'm hiring a postdoc at
@cmu.edu
(w/
far.ai
&
@dgrand.bsky.social
+
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
)! How do LLMs shape human beliefs — and what do we do about it? AI safety meets behavioral science. Open to technical and social science backgrounds.
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Errin Haines
3 months ago
NEW reporting from
@19thnews.org
on the Epstein files shows how academic research funding intersected with women scientists and institutional power shaped by male influence. An important story about accountability, impact and who gets protected -- and who doesn't.
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
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The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
https://19thnews.org/2026/02/epstein-files-academic-research-women-scientists/
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Vlad Ayzenberg
3 months ago
Very impressive visual reasoning benchmark. They found that most models still fall below the capacities of a 3-year-old
unipat.ai/blog/BabyVis...
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BabyVision: Visual Reasoning Beyond Language
State-of-the-art MLLMs achieve PhD-level language reasoning but struggle with visual tasks that 3-year-olds solve effortlessly. We introduce BabyVision, a benchmark revealing the infancy of AI vision.
https://unipat.ai/blog/BabyVision
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Iris van Rooij 💭
3 months ago
📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚 “Recommendations for readings are welcome, especially in the history of cognitive science (prior to 1950s, and the older the better).”
irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...
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📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚
Occasionally, I make threads on social media about papers and books that I read. It helps me focus and process deeper when I share highlights and thoughts with others. In this blogpost, I compile a…
https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%f0%9f%93%9a-reading-women-in-cognitive-science-%f0%9f%93%9a/
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Dan Hyde
4 months ago
Again, I'm looking for a lab research coordinator to work on the developmental cognitive neuroscience of numeracy in preschoolers. Please pass on to those that might be interested
publish.illinois.edu/danielchyde/...
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Research Coordinator | Brain and Cognitive Development Lab | Illinois
https://publish.illinois.edu/danielchyde/research-coordinator/
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Sean Carroll
4 months ago
Mindscape 343 | Tom Griffiths
@cocoscilab.bsky.social
on The Laws of Thought. Everyone knows the laws of thermodynamics, but do you know the laws of thinking?
#MindscapePodcast
www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...
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Mara Breen
4 months ago
My dept - Psychology & Education at Mount Holyoke College - is searching for a 1-yr visitor in developmental psych. 3/2 teaching load with research support
mtholyoke.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
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Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology
Job no: R-0000003072 Position Title: Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology Work Type: Faculty Full time In-Person Start Date: 07/01/2026 Job Description: The Department of Psychology and Educatio...
https://mtholyoke.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job/Mount-Holyoke-College---Main-Campus/Visiting-Assistant-Professor-in-Psychology_R-0000003072-1
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Michelle Greene
4 months ago
🚨Job alert! I'm recruiting a postdoc! If you want to study the time course of task-driven visual perception, please reach out!
#neuroskyence
#VisionScience
#CogSci
barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Facult...
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cognitive/Computational Neuroscience
If you are a current Barnard College employee, please use the internal career site to apply for this position. Job: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cognitive/Computational Neuroscience The Barnard Visua...
https://barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Faculty/details/Postdoctoral-Research-Fellow--Cognitive-Computational-Neuroscience_JR5425
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Chris Krupenye
4 months ago
Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in
@science.org
We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative
youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko
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Apes Share Human Ability to Imagine
YouTube video by Johns Hopkins University
https://youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko
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first empirical paper from the Aulet lab! What does learning to count do to a brain? We trained neural networks on different tasks and only counting (i.e., predicting the number of dots in a dot array) reorganized representations around number. New preprint:
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
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Cliona O'Doherty
4 months ago
1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.
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I was curious about the fact that there were seemingly no women scientists mentioned, even of equivalent caliber, and came across what is, seemingly, beef between Epstein and Brockman debating whether "the women are all weak" or not
4 months ago
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Andrew Perfors
4 months ago
I am really angry about all of the scientists who cozied up to Epstein even after it was known who he was. I am nearly as angry at how many people are justifying this as "they had to, it's how academia works" NO IT FUCKING WELL ISN'T
add a skeleton here at some point
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD
4 months ago
It's disturbing to see many of the the major figures in moral cognition all over the Epstein files He was friendly with a huge number of the leading figures in the field, including giving millions to their labs, long after he pled guilty to sexually abusing young girls
www.justice.gov/epstein
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https://www.justice.gov/epstein
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