Cliona O'Doherty

@clionaod.bsky.social

Postdoc at Stanford | Developmental NeuroAI

Delighted to share that I’ve been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for #InfantNeuroAI The project will investigate how human infants learn to understand the visual world, by combining awake infant neuroimaging (fMRI and OPM-MEG) with computational models from AI.

InfantNeuroAI

I am very excited to be presenting our work using awake infant fMRI and developmentally inspired deep neural networks to better understand the visual features that the developing brain encodes infants view objects at #CNS2026 in Vancouver this week!

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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

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.

Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language. tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬 1/n

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It's been a great FIT'NG so far 🧠👶🏻 I'm always excited to present the work from the amazing FOUNDCOG team, and chat all things developmental cog comp neuro. Feel free to reach out to me or find me on the last day tomorrow!

Fetal, Infant, & Toddler Neuroimaging Group—FIT’NG@fitngin.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Cliona O'Doherty present pioneering work relating awake infant fMRI data to adults and computational models of vision, with strong correspondence at 2 months of age!

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

Excited for CCN this year! The lineup is full of super interesting developmental work👶🏻🧠🤖 Looking forward to presenting my results as a contributed talk as well!

Rhodri Cusack@rhodricusack.bsky.social · last yr.

Not just one, but two fantastic chances to discuss how infant development can inform machine learning and vice-versa at CCN 2025 in Amsterdam!!! Satellite workshop sites.google.com/view/child2m... and Generative Adversarial Collaboration sites.google.com/ccneuro.org/...

Thinking about brain development is hard ... but modern computational models can hint towards potential learning mechanisms! Of course, these need to be contextualised within the findings from developmental psychology. Check out the discussion out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

Rhodri Cusack@rhodricusack.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to see our response published www.cell.com/trends/cogni... to Zettersten at al's thoughtful commentary www.cell.com/trends/cogni... on our TiCS perspective "Helpless infants are learning a foundation model" www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @trinityneuro.bsky.social @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

Please help: Do you know a baby, less than 12 months old, who can walk? We are trying to complete a project, 7 years in the works. And all we need are 3 infants who are less than a year old and can walk, to do a short online looking-time study. 🆘

A brave (and patient) group of neuroscientists have figured out how to do task-based fMRI in babies and toddlers. They aim to uncover how the infant mind takes shape—and the method has already provided new insight into infantile amnesia. My latest www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne... #neuroskyence

What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind

Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape.

thetransmitter.org