Sensorimotor transformation of number in the primate parietal cortex www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience

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

I went to go look, and this time last year, NSF SBE had funded 216 awards. This year, they have funded 2.

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.

Functional dissociation of language and theory of mind in the developing superior temporal lobe www.nature.com/articles/s42...

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!

🚨 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.

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...

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

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...

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!!

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)

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...

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...

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...

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!).

Coordinated parieto-frontal neuronal communication is critical for abstract quantity judgments in primates www.cell.com/cell-reports... #neuroscience

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

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...

Found it: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

Cool demonstration that using multiple tasks (diversity is important) may be more informative than resting state for uncovering individual functional connectivity patterns

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

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...

Reassessing Number-Detector Units in Convolutional Neural Networks https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.07.710304v1

draft lab ai policy, feel free to use, modify, or discuss! todd.gureckislab.org/2026/03/06/g...

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...

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/...

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/...

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...

(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

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?

Breaking News: Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard as the university reviews his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

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

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

Very impressive visual reasoning benchmark. They found that most models still fall below the capacities of a 3-year-old unipat.ai/blog/BabyVis...

📚 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/%...

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/...

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...

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...

🚨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...

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

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:

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.

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

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

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