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

This review began with the great Peter Hagoort asking after one of my talks: "What have we actually learned about the brain from brain–DNN comparisons?" 🔥 So eye-opening to survey NeuroAI work across vision and language--many questions have been answered in one field but remain open in the other!

Dota Tianai Dong@dotadotadota.bsky.social · 2w ago

1/5 Over a decade of comparing deep neural networks to the human brain—but what have we actually learned? Our new @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social Feature Review synthesizes a decade of brain–DNN comparisons, asking what they reveal about brain function across vision and language.

Just landed in Barcelona for #FENS2026! On Wed, I’ll be moderating a panel on AI in neuroscience, 9:45am in Hall B with Mathew Abrams, @wakesleep.bsky.social @rachelparkinson.bsky.social and @mtoneva.bsky.social @satra.bsky.social,

Check out our #ACL2026 Oral paper 🗣️🤖 How do MLMs ground word usage through interactions with the physical and social world? Taking a classical human communication paradigm, we compare 7 MLMs with humans. doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.84

Using Perspectival Words Is Harder Than Vocabulary Words for Humans —and Even More So for Multimodal Language Models

Dota Tianai Dong, Yifan Luo, Po-Ya Angela Wang, Asli Ozyurek, Paula Rubio-Fernandez. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 20...

doi.org

It was a lot of fun to write this piece! Makes me so excited for the symposium about The Modern Neuroscience Lab in the Age of AI at FENS in a little more than 2 weeks 🧠🤖

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · last mo.

These models were not built to explain the brain. But treating them as model organisms that we can perturb and evolve will move us closer to truly understanding the brain’s mechanics, writes @mtoneva.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...

Really excited to take part in this important discussion!

Happy to announce the 3rd iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), which will take place in Osnabrück September 14th-15th 2026. NEAT is a (deliberately small scale) NeuroAI workshop that brings together researchers from neuroscience and AI. www.kietzmannlab.org/neat2026/ More information below 👇

NEAT 2026

kietzmannlab.org

We're excited to share our new study on decoding brain activity in participants with post-stroke aphasia! We think this is an important step towards cognitive brain-computer interfaces for patients with language disorders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/8

The Cowley Group at CSHL has an opening for a bioAI PhD student to start Fall 2026 to work on closed-loop AI models for visual processing (see below). You *must* have a Master's degree in a quant/eng/cs field. www.cshl.edu/phd-program/... Please reach out to me if interested! I'll be at Cosyne.

Benjamin Cowley@benjocowley.bsky.social · 5mo ago

DNN models of the brain are getting bigger. Are we replacing one complicated system in vivo with another in silico? In new work, we seek the *smallest* DNN models of visual cortex, balancing prediction with parsimony. It turns out these compact models are surprisingly small! rdcu.be/e5H8G

📢 PhD position in the NeuroAI of Language Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging Deadline March 20 Please RT 🙏 👇 mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language

Submit an article to our SI "Studying Language Processing in the Era of LLMs" We're interested in papers using cognitive priors to improve LLM, using LLMs to understand the brain’s processing of language, or using theories/methods/tests inspired by cognitive science to understand LLMs, and more!

🏆 Saarbrücken now houses 11 ACM Fellows — about 1/3 of all ACM Fellows in Germany — highest of any location nationwide. This year, only 3 new Fellows in Germany were named, and Saarland University software engineering professor Sven Apel was one! Congrats, Prof. Apel! 👏 🔗 Read more: sic.link/apel

🔬 We're hiring a Junior Group Leader for Data-Driven Digital Twins/System Models in medicine/life sciences at @uni_goettingen! Perfect opportunity for early-career researchers who want to: - Lead their own research group - Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine

🤖🧠I'll be considering applications for PhD students & postdocs to start at Yale in Fall 2026! If you are interested in the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, & AI, I encourage you to apply! PhD link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_... Postdoc link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...

We're seeking the next Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics! Lead cutting-edge research in language & cognition. Nominations (incl. self) due 19 Dec 2025. mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/nominations-and-self-nominations-sought-position-director-max

🚀 ELLIS partners with the newly launched 𝗠𝗮𝘅 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗸 𝗔𝗜 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 to expand doctoral opportunities across Europe. Fully funded PhDs with dual supervision: one advisor in ML/AI, one in an application domain, with optional ELLIS co-advisors. 📅 Oct 1-31 🔗 ellis.eu/news/ellis-p... @maxplanck.de

ELLIS Partners with New Max Planck AI Network to Expand Doctoral Opportunities

The ELLIS mission is to create a diverse European network that promotes research excellence and advances breakthroughs in AI, as well as a pan-European PhD program to educate the next generation of AI...

ellis.eu

Happy and proud to see @rjantonello.bsky.social’s work awarded by SNL!

MIT Press@mitpress.bsky.social · 11mo ago

🏆 Best Paper — Predictive Coding or Just Feature Discovery? An Alternative Account of Why Language Models Fit Brain Data: doi.org/10.1162/nol_... Richard Antonello and @alexanderhuth.bsky.social

So excited and honored to receive an ERC Starting Grant for the project BrainAlign!! BrainAlign will bring LLMs closer to human understanding by directly aligning them with the human brain. Stay tuned for our findings, and multiple postdoc and PhD openings in the coming years!

Excited to announce the first workshop on CogInterp: Interpreting Cognition in Deep Learning Models @ NeurIPS 2025! 📣 How can we interpret the algorithms and representations underlying complex behavior in deep learning models? 🌐 coginterp.github.io/neurips2025/ 1/4

Music is an incredibly powerful retrieval cue. What is the neural basis of music-evoked memory reactivation? And how does this reactivation relate to later memory for the retrieved events? In our new study, we used Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to find out. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Had a great time discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain with the UniReps community. Thank you for inviting me! This is a new speaker series and there are already some very interesting speakers lined up -- excited for future discussions! Subscribing to stay up to date ✅

UniReps@unireps.bsky.social · last yr.

🎥 The recording of the 2nd ELLISxUniReps Speaker Series session with @mtoneva.bsky.social and @lenkatetkova.bsky.social is now available at: youtu.be/qXBT_-w3Mfs

I'm hiring at least one post-doc! We're interested in creating language models that process language more like humans than mainstream LLMs do, through architectural modifications and interpretability-style steering. Express interest here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

NYU LLM + cognitive science post-doc interest form

Tal Linzen's group at NYU is hiring a post-doc! We're interested in creating language models that process language more like humans than mainstream LLMs do, through architectural modifications and int...

docs.google.com

🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀 I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales 👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html 👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....

Looking forward to discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain!

UniReps@unireps.bsky.social · last yr.

🎉 Get ready for our second @ellis.eu × UniReps Speaker Series session! 🔥 🗓️ When: June 20, 2025 – 16:00 CET 📍 Where: ethz.zoom.us/j/66426188160 🎙️ Speakers: Keynote by @mtoneva.bsky.social & Flash Talk by @lenkatetkova.bsky.social 👉 Join our Google group: groups.google.com/u/2/g/ellis-...

NEUROCOG 2025 is taking place in Brussels Nov 17–18! The theme: AI and the Human Brain 🤖 🧠 We’re thrilled to welcome 6 amazing invited speakers: @evfedorenko.bsky.social, @nicoschuck.bsky.social, @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @jeffreybowers.bsky.social, @irisgroen.bsky.social & @mtoneva.bsky.social

Our ICLR poster is Saturday Morning (Hall 3 + Hall 2B #63)! We (myself with Cory Efird, Alex Murphy and Joel Zylberberg) are excited to share our work searching for Shared Decodable Concepts in the human brain. We used the Natural Scenes Dataset to find the concepts that most drive brain activity…

There is still time until tomorrow to apply for a 4-year Research Fellow post in the Language and Cognition Lab @ UCL!

Gabriella Vigliocco@gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social · last yr.

Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction. Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!

I am so happy—this is the first 1st author paper I have written, since the cancer diagnosis of my late wife seven years ago. 📑 PAPER ALERT: "Beyond binding: from modular to natural vision" in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2025) sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Together with @autreche.bsky.social, Adish Singla, Krishna Gummadi, Goran Radanovic and Nina Grgić-Hlača, we have multiple open positions postdocs in AI, Computing, and Society at the MPI for Software Systems! Apply by May 13 via the new Max Planck Postdoc Program! www.mpg.de/en/max-planc...

Max Planck Postdoc Program

Launching in April 2025, the Max Planck Postdoc Program features structured application calls and a comprehensive support system for researchers.

mpg.de

Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction. Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!

Research Fellow in Social Learning at UCL

Discover Research Fellow in Social Learning jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

jobs.ac.uk