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Gabriel Fajardo

@gabefajardo.bsky.social

Computational social neuroscientist interested in person perception, emotion, and Neuro-AI | Graduate Student in the SCRAP Lab at Dartmouth

13 Posts136 Follower302 Folgt
Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · last mo.

Now in press at Cortex! "False discovery rate correction promotes confounded neuroimaging designs" Paper 🔓: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Effect of confound mass on true positive rates under test-wise FDR correction in completely arbitrary data. Confound mass represents how large a confound is in terms of the product of the number of tests it is present in, and its mean effect size across these tests. Results are shown at differing combinations of true effect size, number of tests with true (i.e., non-confound) effects, and sample size. Inflated surface maps of meta-analytic z-statistics from Neurosynth for low-level confounds (top) and high-level cognitive tasks (bottom). Red reflects positive activations, blue reflects negative (de)activations, and darker colors indicate larger z-statistics. Maps are thresholded at |z| = 1 for visualization purposes.The difference in integrated true positive rate between parcel-wise FDR and parcel-wise FWER (y-axis) is plotted as a function of confound effect size. Each point represents 1 out of 5000 studies simulated for each combination of task and confound. Smoothed loess lines are used to better show the overall trends.Effect of FDR-based publication bias on observed confound effects sizes. Simulated meta-analytic confound effect sizes are visualized through violin plots for each combination of task effect and confound effect examined in the neural data simulations. Meta-analyses featuring publication bias (orange) substantially inflate these effect size estimates in all cases, relative to meta-analyses featuring no publication bias (blue). Moreover, this bias was present – and in most cases larger – in the subset of studies that were included in the meta-analysis specifically when the publication bias was based on FDR instead of FWER integrated true positive rates (green).
Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 11mo ago

After 5 years, I finally carved out time to turn this blog post on FDR (markallenthornton.com/blog/fdr-pro...) into a manuscript. The preprint features a much broader range of simulations showing how FDR promotes confounds, and how this effect compounds with publication bias: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Effect of confound mass on true positive rates under FDR correction. Confound mass represents how large a confound is in terms of the product of its voxel extent and effect size. Results are shown at differing combinations of true effect size, true effect voxel extent, and sample size.
Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New preprint from Lindsey Tepfer (@ltjaql.bsky.social) and me! We silenced portions of internal monologues in two films to manipulate participants' access to characters' thoughts. Using ISC and RSA, we found that this aligned later neural processing of the narrative & encoding of trait impressions.

Figure 1. Experimental stimuli and paradigm. 1A. Manipulation timeline. Each video features a total of 12 IM moments, half of which were silenced in version 1, and the other half silenced in version 2. This produces two versions of each video where only half of the IMs are audible to the participant. 1B. Voice removal. Background sounds were preserved in both versions, regardless of IM presence. 1C. fMRI paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned a version and watched both videos in a counter-balanced order. 1D. Afterwards, they made trait ratings on each video’s main character in random order before rating them on subsequent traits. Figure 2. Scanner and online participant trait rating results. A. Scanner participants arrive at similar conclusions about characters across versions by the end of each video. B. Trait ratings at the end of the videos are correlated between online and scanner participants. C. The IM manipulation had a significant effect on the trait ratings across the duration of the videos, such that different versions led to different trait impressions. D. Participants who saw different versions changed their ratings for both clip types but changed to a greater degree after seeing the IM segments relative to the NIM. Figure 3. ISC results. Gaining access to the same mental state knowledge in earlier IM clips led to significantly (p < .05, corrected) more aligned neural activity in subsequent NIM clips across a wide swath of the temporal lobe, as well as the frontal pole and SPL. Figure 4. Representational similarity analysis results. 4A. RSA pipeline. Clip-specific patterns of brain activity were correlated across movies within segment type (NIM or IM) to create a correlation distance matrix for each participant. Corresponding trait ratings were partitioned into components specific to each of the two versions of each film or shared across both versions. RDMs based on those traits were used to predict the neural RDMs. The resulting coefficients were sorted into matched (version), unmatched (version), and shared across version, and inference was performed via t-tests across participants. See methods section for further details of this analysis. 4B. Prior trait rating results. 1. While watching IM clips of the same version, the prior trait ratings predict activity in the bilateral A1, STS, STG, and right VLPFC. 2. Prior trait rating predicts activity in these regions again in the same-version NIM clips. 3. Across the two versions, while watching the NIM clips, the prior trait ratings predicted activity in the right occipitotemporal cortex. 4C. Trait updating results. 1. While watching NIM clips, the right STS & MTG predict version-matched trait updating. 2. In the unmatched NIM clips, STS & MTG again predict trait updating. 3. Across the two versions, the precuneus and LOC show pattern similarity for trait updating in participants.
PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Access to others' internal monologues aligns neural processing of narratives and trait impressions: https://osf.io/7v9md

Científico Latino@cientificolatino.com · 8mo ago

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.

Stefano Anzellotti@steanze.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Some new work from the lab: @yuzhu194.bsky.social and Aidas Aglinskas introduce a deep-learning based fMRI denoising method that outperforms CompCor by over 200%.

@yuzhu194.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Excited to share our new Nature Methods paper on DeepCor, a contrastive autoencoder for denoising fMRI. DeepCor separates neural signal from noise at the voxel level, works for single participants, and outperforms CompCor by up to 215% on real data. 1/7 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 10mo ago

We're a month further into the job market - how are things looking? The good news is that the market does seem to have been delayed: ~150 new listings have appeared since my last post. The bad news is that the total is still substantially lower than what it was during the covid dip.

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Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The psych job market may not be dead... but it is gravely injured 😬 So far it's looking like the Trump administration's attacks on higher ed/research are going to have more than 2x the impact on the job market as the covid-19 pandemic. #psychjobs #neurojobs #academicjobs

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Youngki Hong@youngkihong.bsky.social · 11mo ago

I’m admitting 1–2 Ph.D. students to join my lab in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU Boulder, starting Fall 2026. We study person perception, stereotyping and prejudice, and intervention science. Application info: www.colorado.edu/psych-neuro/... Lab info: www.svmlab.org

Colorado Social Vision & Mind Lab

The Social Vision & Mind Lab (Director: Youngki Hong, Ph.D.) at the University of Colorado Boulder explores how people perceive and make sense of the physica...

svmlab.org

Dan Oh (DongWon) | 오동원@ohdanieldw.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Six years in the making, a postdoc project with @freemanjb.bsky.social is finally now out in print. Many thanks to Jon and @hennavartiainen.bsky.social and everyone who made this important work possible.

Jon Freeman@freemanjb.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist. Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/6)

Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The psych job market may not be dead... but it is gravely injured 😬 So far it's looking like the Trump administration's attacks on higher ed/research are going to have more than 2x the impact on the job market as the covid-19 pandemic. #psychjobs #neurojobs #academicjobs

Bar plot showing the number of psychology jobs posted each year by area. There are major dips in 2020 due to covid, and in 2025 (now).
Jin X. Goh | 吴晋勋@jinxungoh.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The psych job market isn’t dead! Join us at UIC!!! We are looking for a clinical psychologist (assistant or associate level)!! Chicago is simply the best, and the department is incredibly lovely! I’m not on search committee, but as the “newest” hire, I’m happy to talk about my experience thus far!

Jon Freeman@freemanjb.bsky.social · last yr.

In a TiCS paper, @chujunlin.bsky.social & I propose a high-dimensional model of social impressions. Existing models focus on 2–4 latent dimensions (e.g. trustworthy/warm), but they often fall apart across different contexts, cultures, & perceivers. We need a paradigm shift. shorturl.at/7GD1n (1/8)

A high-dimensional model of social impressions

People form social impressions from visual cues such as faces, which are argued by various models to arise from some limited set of fixed dimensions (e.g., trustworthiness and dominance). We argue tha...

cell.com

Jon Freeman@freemanjb.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

Chujun Lin@chujunlin.bsky.social · last yr.

🥳Excited to share that I am joining Columbia July 2025 @columbiauniversity.bsky.social Looking for🚨lab managers🚨postdocs🚨grad students! Pls REPOST🙏 We study⭐️person perception⭐️social cognition using experimental, cross-cultural, & computational methods! App👉shorturl.at/5UVPl More👉shorturl.at/q18GM

Emily Finn@esfinn.bsky.social · last yr.

Despite everything going on, I may have funds to hire a postdoc this year 😬🤞🧑‍🔬 Open to a wide variety of possible projects in social and cognitive neuroscience. Get in touch if you are interested! Reposts appreciated.

Gabriel Fajardo@gabefajardo.bsky.social · last yr.

Now accepting applications! 🚨 As the current lab manager, I can confidently say this is an incredible opportunity to gain lots of hands-on research experience and prepare for grad school. You'll be part of a vibrant community (+ city) and work alongside many brilliant scientists - don't miss out!

Jon Freeman@freemanjb.bsky.social · last yr.

Job alert 🚨 We’re hiring a full-time research staff assistant at Columbia starting Fall 2025! The position will focus on several topics in the lab, including the cognitive & neural mechanisms underlying dynamic social perception using fMRI & natural language processing. Link: freemanlab.org/ra2025