Happy to introduce our 25 2025 Alumni Scholarship Recipients!! This year we have launched our 2025 Alumni Scholarship Fund to support 1st year grad students, graduates of our GSMI program, to cover educational expenses in their 1st year of graduate school.

We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team! More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join... Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...

The Milgram experiment but the guy in the white coat is a chef and he's assuring me that it's ok to add more butter

The rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!

Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out! www.momentslab.org

I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share: phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo

I’ve been talking with the phenomenal NYTimes reporter @susandominus.bsky.social about my research since 2018, and her new book *The Family Dynamic* is finally out!

How is prefrontal neural activity refined as we age? Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com‬! This study, from Elizabeth Johnson, uncovers how subtle changes in neural 'noise' impact our attention, memory, and cognition through development. Proud to have contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

these are forks

New preprint!

 tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵 w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Children are often cast as passive vessels into which we pour culture. But children create cultures of their own—vibrant ones with special properties. Just one of the topics discussed in our recent episode with @dorsaamir.bsky.social & @sheinalew.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

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...

🎈 Out now: 🎈 "The capacity limits of moving objects in the imagination" (by Balaban & me) of interest to people thinking about the imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, capacity limits, and more www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances! We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Incredibly excited and grateful to share that I’ll be starting a lab at The Ohio State University this(!) fall! My lab will study human learning and memory, with related interests in sleep, stress, and time perception. More info soon, but do get in touch if you’re interested in joining!

How to cultivate collective intellectual humility Being smart is knowing what you don’t know. From work meetings to book clubs, use these tips to boost your group’s thinking psyche.co/guides/how-t... via Liz Krumrei-Mancuso & @markalfano.bsky.social

What about the social cerebellum during development we wondered? Here you find some cool insights on this awesome part of the brain! BIG thanks for the great work Katerina Manoli, and support from Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann and Frank van Overwalle 🧠🦋 rdcu.be/epKmZ

The first of many papers from the Memory and Forgiveness project is now out at the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Led by the indefatigable Gabriela Fernández Miranda, and with Matt Stanley, Sam Murray, and Leonard Faul, we systematically explored differences (1/n)

The clearest ever images of the Sun’s corona reveal “raindrops” of dancing plasma. Learn more: scim.ag/4jBtZKz

It’s out! Our article in Nature Human Behavior led by Yin Wang on the conceptual structure of human relationships across cultures and time. This work is breathtaking nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Researchers in #ScienceAdvances have uncovered a previously unknown genetic branch of ancient hunter-gatherers local to the Colombian land bridge. Learn more: scim.ag/4mEsGNL

New in Developmental Psychology, from Naoya Tani, @ingridsbrain.bsky.social, and @noranewcombe.bsky.social: The Limits of Agency: Young Children’s Memory May Not Benefit From Choice doi.org/10.1525/coll...

Check out my interview in the CNS newsletter about my graduate research on free recall in children 😊

New in Nature MentalHealth! with Vrizzi, Najar, Lemogne, and @mael-lebreton.bsky.social We tested whether behavioural and RL-based model parameters are test-retest reliable and predict mental health traits. The result? Not really. A cautionary tale for comp. psychiatry doi.org/10.1038/s442...

So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...

In one 24 hour period of time, I learned that a brain dead woman is being kept alive to incubate a fetus and there may a reality show for immigrants to compete for a path to citizenship. It’s hard to overstate how much trauma this country is inflicting on people. #MomSky

I've decided to start my own Substack, called Neural Strategies: russpoldrack.substack.com/p/introducin... - I will soon start releasing content from a new open-source book I'm developing, tentatively titled "Better Code, Better Science". Subscribe to receive each new section as soon as I post it!

Why are coffee stains darker at the edges? And why do they look like the salt stains from your winter boot tracks? Where others see banality, the physicist Sidney Nagel finds thrilling mystery.

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond. I hope you’ll read and share the piece. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

Today I gave my first-ever political speech at a walk-out organized by @aaup.bsky.social (I spoke after the magnificent @ruha9.bsky.social, which, it can only get easier from here 😂) Here is what I said 🧵

First-generation students have unique needs, which can be amplified when they enter graduate programmes. A Comment article in Nature Reviews Psychology argues that faculty members need to be aware of the needs of this population and how to support them. https://go.nature.com/3FkQDs1 #Academicsky 🧪

This will never stop blowing my mind.

In case you need a break from the awfulness, here's an embroidered jellyfish I finished last night--my latest project to avoid doomscrolling before bed.

born too late to get a two Western blot Nature paper, born too early to be a science TikTokker, born just in time to start a postdoc during a global pandemic and look for faculty positions during a historic hiring freeze

"The academic structure … makes planning for a family feel like an impossible luxury." In this #ScienceWorkingLife, two postdocs share how, as women in academia, having children can feel impossible—and how talking about it makes them feel less alone. scim.ag/3F60VMt #InternationalWomensDay

🚨 Neuromatch Academy Course Applications are OPEN for 2025!! 🚨 Get your application in early to be a student or teaching assistant for this year’s courses! Applications are due Sunday, March 23. Apply & learn more: neuromatch.io/courses/ #mlsky #compneurosky #ai #climatesolutions #ScienceEdu 🧪

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025! Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide! #scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

I am hiring a lab manager to start ~ July 1st. sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...

I escaped poverty because I am a scientist. And I am a scientist because of the National Science Foundation. A 🧵: