Ev Fedorenko
@evfedorenko.bsky.social
I study language using tools from cognitive science and neuroscience. I also like snuggles.
Version 2 of Theory of Contravariance w/ @dyamins.bsky.social is out! New material on contravariance for Transformers, and the theory of Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) and centered kernel analysis (CKA)/Procrustes.
Aran Nayebi@anayebi.bsky.social · 3w ago1/6 Why have deep neural networks aligned so strongly with brains for the past 15 years? What explains it? @dyamins.bsky.social & I make progress on this question in our new paper👇 In a nutshell, we *prove* that for sufficiently hard tasks, the choice of alignment metric does *not* matter.
Excited to be at #CCN2026 in NYC! I'll be presenting our spotlight poster, Topo-Omni, with @hannesmehrer.bsky.social 🧠 📍 Poster F14 — Session F 🗓️ Thursday, Aug 6 Come by if you're around, we'd love to talk about how our multimodal model can discover functionally selective brain regions!
Also if you're at #CCN2026 come chat with me about Minds, Machines, and Brains @mmb-journal.bsky.social A new journal we are launching with @mitpress.bsky.social with my co-EICs Kendrick Kay & Ellie Pavlick, and the rest of the wonderful editorial board: direct.mit.edu/mmb/pages/ed...
Editorial Information | Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press
Editorial Information | Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press Editorial Information All inquiries should be directed to mindsmachinesandbrains@gmail.com Co-Editors in Chief Leyla Isik ...
direct.mit.edu
Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB)@mmb-journal.bsky.social · 3d agoHello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb
Thrilled to be on the board of this new OA journal that fills a critical niche! Kudos to the co-Editors-in-Chief (@lisik.bsky.social,KendrickKay,ElliePavlick) and a big TY to @mitpress.bsky.social for supporting this important effort! JIT for @cogcompneuro.bsky.social :) Send us your stuff (soon!)
Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB)@mmb-journal.bsky.social · 3d agoHello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb
Hello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb
Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press
direct.mit.edu
Do language models know who did what to whom? Led by grad student @josephdenning.bsky.social, and Hannah Guo (when she was the first undergrad RA in the lab!)
Do Language Models Know Who Did What to Whom?
Abstract. Language models (LMs) are commonly criticized for not “understanding” language. However, many critiques focus on cognitive abilities that, in humans, are distinct from language processing. H...
direct.mit.edu
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
The Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference is starting soon! And we're back in NYC, celebrating 10-ish years of conferencing. Let us know your reflections on CCN's past for our special Back2NY event And remember to share the work your presenting and learning about with the #CCN2026 hashtag
Angela Radulescu@angelaradulescu.bsky.social · 4w agoSome things get better with age. Like CCN... and Knicks basketball. 🧠🏀 As we return to New York and celebrate 10 years of @cogcompneuro.bsky.social , we'd love to hear your thoughts on how CCN has evolved. Share them in our pre-conference survey: shorturl.at/c19lJ
First up in the Glushko Dissertation Prize Symposium: Andrea de Varda @andreadevarda.bsky.social examines what multilingual neural language models can reveal about language and cognition. #CogSci2026
How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....
The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene
Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...
science.org
The Fields Medal, awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40, was given to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang for their groundbreaking work. Wang is only the third woman to win.
For only third time ever, a woman shares math’s top prize
This year’s Fields Medal honors four mathematicians in their 30s who have made their mark in geometry and physics.
washingtonpost.com
What’s holding us back from developing a clinical BCI for mental health? My new review in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social outlines a roadmap to overcome the unique hurdles facing cognitive BCIs by integrating & expanding on existing neurotech methods. Read here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1nSLK4sIRv...
Exactly @gershbrain.bsky.social! But more importantly: these mice are overtrained on this one task. Maybe stuff gets more broadly distributed across the brain if it is the one thing you do all day every day. And, they are MICE with tiny brains! So, important study, but let's not over-generalize.
Sam Gershman@gershbrain.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is a really interesting and important study: www.nature.com/articles/s41... However, isn't it concerning that sweeping conclusions about functional organization of cortex are being reached on the basis of a single task?
Where does cognition end & communication begin? 🧠 By mapping multi-region brain activity, we can see the complex circuitry behind speech and the thoughts that precede it. The next milestone? BCIs that restore cognition itself. Full video here: www.thetransmitter.org/brain-comput...
Huge congrats to Dr. Hiershe who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation 🥳 We @zlab.bsky.social will miss her but look forward to seeing her flourish as she joins @evfedorenko.bsky.social lab as a postdoc this year!
Today at ICML2026, Jack King presents our work with @evfedorenko.bsky.social, linking internal representation trajectories to LLM behavior. 📄 Representational Curvature Modulates Behavioral Uncertainty in LLMs 🔗https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23985 📍Hall A #1903 | ⏰ 10:30a-12:15p KST Come say hi!
Very excited to share this paper, led by @ajhaskins.bsky.social ! We find that how people look around the world is stable and idiosyncratic — and that these gaze patterns are shaped in part by the conceptual priorities each person brings to a scene. 1/3 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
MIT researchers are studying the brain's language network — and their recent findings are surprising. @evfedorenko.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social @benlipkin.bsky.social news.mit.edu/2026/brain-l...
The brain’s language network is more extensive than previously thought
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from more than 700 people, MIT researchers identified 17 brain regions outside of the canonical language-processing centers that are also involv...
news.mit.edu
I am so excited about this finding from @pengrui-han.bsky.social and @andreadevarda.bsky.social, also with Jacob Andreas! Perhaps modularity is inevitable in intelligent systems, biological or in silico. :)
pengrui-han.bsky.social@pengrui-han.bsky.social · last mo.The human brain is strikingly modular: distinct networks for language, formal reasoning, social reasoning, physical reasoning. Is this fundamental to intelligent systems, or an accident of evolution? In our new preprint, we find the same modular organization emerges in LLMs.
The human brain is strikingly modular: distinct networks for language, formal reasoning, social reasoning, physical reasoning. Is this fundamental to intelligent systems, or an accident of evolution? In our new preprint, we find the same modular organization emerges in LLMs.
And we're live! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16459. come be my postdoc! these positions will be primarily supported by my NIH R01 on infant word learning, with a bit of wiggle for some other projects/new ideas/collabs.
Postdoctoral Fellow in Language Development Research
Dr. Elika Bergelson and the Bergelson Lab in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University invite applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, with a focus on...
academicpositions.harvard.edu
bergelsonlab@bergelsonlab.bsky.social · last mo.official ad to follow soon but heads up: 1-2 postdocs slots in my lab, hopefully w/fall start! reposts welcome, details to follow. babies! word learning! cognitive & linguistic skills! #CogSciSky #DevPsychSky 🐦🐦 (lab info: bergelsonlab.fas.harvard.edu/prospectives) also recruiting grads this fall!
Studying how babies and young children understand and use language has broad impacts for medicine, education, and technology. @evfedorenko.bsky.social @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social mcgovern.mit.edu/2026/05/17/l...
Language development in the brain - MIT McGovern Institute
The brain’s capacity to use and understand language expands rapidly in the first years of life, as babies start to make sense of the words they hear and eventually begin to piece together sentences of...
mcgovern.mit.edu
Some stats comparing Open Mind to some competitor journals
A brief history of Open Mind 2013: Dick Aslin was disillusioned with Cognition (Elsevier). Nick Lindsay (MIT Press) wanted to create an open access cognitive science journal Nick contacted Dick, and Open Mind started. Editorial, February 2017, issue 1 of Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Editorial
I am extremely pleased that Open Mind has gone from concept to reality with this inaugural issue of our first volume. It has been a long road. Nick Lindsay at MIT Press had a vision for creating an op...
direct.mit.edu
It feels strange to share good news, but: I’m moving to UCSD in July!! 🥳 I'm very grateful for my time at Princeton and SO excited for what comes next. We're building multiplayer games to study how teams are shaped by the problems they solve. If that sounds fun to you, I'm accepting grad students!
Excited to share that my lab has been awarded an NSF Cognitive Neuroscience grant! We will use an optimized precision fMRI approach to study the functional organization of the anterior temporal lobe and its role in social cognition, language, and long-term memory.