Don’t miss Clíona talking about our kinda massive dataset and her initial modeling results. We think this Is the best chance yet to build a model that is aligned to infant development. When we have that model, we can ask new and challenging questions about cognitive development!

Cliona O'Doherty@clionaod.bsky.social · yesterday

Super excited to be back @cogcompneuro.bsky.social in NYU - this year presenting new exciting work from Project Simsom with @camerontellis.bsky.social, Dan Yamins and the team. Are we ready to build an AI model of infant development? We think so ... come check it out Thursday 10:30 E39 👶🤖

New paper! We found basic scene selectivity arises across the scene network early in infancy (i.e., by ~3.5 months old), prior to independent navigation experience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience | PNAS

Sighted people rely on vision to recognize and navigate the local environment. By adulthood, human cortex contains at least three regions that resp...

pnas.org

And for our own contribution to the theme issue: Oliver Warrington and I show that the dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions. This finding complements our previous work showing a transition from errors to predictions during learning (Aitken & Kok 2022). 🧠🟦

Dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions

Abstract. The hippocampus is involved in learning predictive associations, responding to prediction errors as well as representing predictions of future in

royalsocietypublishing.org

Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · 4w ago

The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social

The global neuronal workspace (GNW) is currently the best documented neuroscience mechanism by which conscious processing arises in the human brain — and now Anthropic researchers have discovered a similar workspace inside their large language model ! www.anthropic.com/research/glo...

A global workspace in language models

Interpretability research on Claude's internal thoughts.

anthropic.com

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

Human learning of noninvasive brain–computer interfaces via manifold geometry - Nature Neuroscience

Busch et al. use nonlinear neural manifolds to help humans gain rapid control over a noninvasive brain–computer interface, allowing them to learn how to play a video game with real-time fMRI neurofeed...

nature.com

Excited to present with these stars at my first OHBM! Come check out my talk on precision mapping to study infant anatomical and functional development. We find striking evidence of both continuous AND discontinuous development

Julia Moser@drjuliamoser.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Working on your schedule for #OHBM2026? Save some energy for the last day to discuss the latest in precision imaging of the infant brain with @reznikdaniel.bsky.social, Jucha Willers Moore from @kingspfig.bsky.social and @camerontellis.bsky.social!

What are the real problems to be solved in continual learning? In my latest post, I tackle this question — reviewing where I think the field went astray in the past, how language models changed things, and where the real challenges remain. infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/what-are-t...

What are the real problems of continual learning?

Reflections on catastrophic interference, plasticity, and learning for the future in the era of large language models

infinitefaculty.substack.com

Excited to be on our way to VSS! Don’t miss Sarah Tung’s talk on Sunday afternoon in the development session. She will be presenting exciting results using awake infant fMRI to elucidate how and why we have category selective visual cortex! (Sitting together on the plane was a happy accident)

With so many eyes on Pittsburgh during the NFL Draft this weekend, it feels like a fitting moment to share some personal news — I'm excited to be joining the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Fall 2027!

This is so so cool

Context Lab@contextlab.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Curious what a representation of "everything" you know might look like? Wonder how you might fill it in? Check out our demo and paper (led by @paxt0n4.bsky.social and now out in @natcomms.nature.com ), or read on to learn more! Demo: context-lab.com/mapper/ Paper: www.doi.org/10.1038/s414...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We were dazzled by Jucha Willers Moore's research on ultra-high field fMRI in neonates. Combining bleeding-edge technology and analysis, her work has revealed the surprising specificity of function in the infant brain. I have such envy for the precision of her signal!

It was thrilling to host BOTH @marinv.bsky.social and @lukasvogelsang.bsky.social! They combine one-of-a-kind empirical data (kids with recovered sight) with developmentally-motivated computational modeling! I will be citing their AID theory many times in the future. Don't miss it!

~2 weeks til the #FITNG2026 submission deadline! We're taking both individual abstracts and symposia again this year. And we have an exciting lineup of invited speakers, including Drs. Takao Hensch (keynote), Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Victoria Southgate, and Jonathan O'Muircheartaigh. Join us in Panama!

Fetal, Infant, & Toddler Neuroimaging Group—FIT’NG@fitngin.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🚨 All abstract submissions are now open for the 2026 FIT'NG Annual Conference taking place July 10–11 in Panama City. 🗓️ Deadline for submissions: 23:59 PST on February 25, 2026 🌐 Submission website: fitng.org/poster-oral-...

It is so cool to see this paper out! An incredible effort from a superb team. Clíona and her colleagues opened as many questions as they answered! For instance, what is infant LO doing that is so different from adults and models? Don't miss this!

Cliona O'Doherty@clionaod.bsky.social · 6mo 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.

Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

We will start the review for this position in a couple of days!

Cameron Ellis@camerontellis.bsky.social · 9mo ago

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-...

Can we use VLMs to quantify multimodal alignment in children's experiences? We analyze a large corpus of headcam videos to find out! New preprint from our BabyView project, led by @alvinwmtan.bsky.social and Jane Yang: arxiv.org/abs/2511.18824

Last week, Sarah Power (@sarahdpower.bsky.social) dazzled us with her unique research. Her research program is one of a kind: she combines precise mouse neuroscience with bold toddler behavioral methods to study infantile amnesia. Hire her!

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-...

We were impressed by Dr. Céline Spriet's fantastic work on the rate of visual processing during infancy. Understanding the speed of infant cognition needs more attention. Céline's data is compelling, and her perspective is thought-provoking! Check out her work!

Im very excited about this work out from our recent infant ssVEP study! Led by postdoc Maeve Boylan! After infants learn about objects while reading a book with a parent, their brains prioritize the processing of familiarity. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Competitive Cortical Prioritization Emerges for Trained Objects across the First Year of Life

Learning to detect and recognize a broad range of visual objects is a crucial developmental task during the first year of life. However, many of the neurophysiological changes underlying the emergence...

jneurosci.org

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis. Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Dawei Bai@daweibai.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014... A short thread [1/5]👇

Here is our best thinking about how to make world models. I would apologize for it being a massive 40-page behemoth, but it's worth reading. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.09737

I still get chills Meet Mike *30+ years severe depression *first hospitalized @ 13y *20 meds *3 rounds of ECT *2 near-fatal suicide attempts Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE see videos, read paper, follow thread doi.org/10.31234/osf...

1/11 Very excited to say that our preprint, Precision functional mapping reveals less inter-individual variability in the child vs. adult human brain, is up on biorxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Precision functional mapping reveals less inter-individual variability in the child vs. adult human brain

Human brain organization shares a common underlying structure, though recent studies have shown that features of this organization also differ significantly across individual adults. Understanding the...

biorxiv.org

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...

Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children

The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

doi.org

New paper examining longitudinal #brain data over 7y & relation to #reading; implications for early intervention/policy @fitngin.bsky.social Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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...

It was a pleasure to hear from @csavasegal.bsky.social about her impressive body of work. She demonstrates that movies are powerful tools to study individual differences in people's cognitive representations. Can't wait for her upcoming study on real-time manipulation of subjective interpretations!