New preprint as my first post! "Monosynaptic connections link functionally similar regions in human cortex." We use electrical stimulation + fMRI in epilepsy patients to map whole-brain monosynaptic connectivity at 42 cortical sites. doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n

woah look at this amazing line-up of speakers (and also Tomer Ullman), talking about Intuitive Physical Reasoning at #vss2026 tomorrow! I'd be there if I could, and I can, so I will. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* @nancykanwisher.bsky.social @rtpramod.bsky.social @shariliu.bsky.social SP Arun Kelsey Allen

At @vssmtg.bsky.social on Friday 8-10am, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and I are organizing a symposium on 'Intuitive Physical reasoning in brains, minds, and machines'. Speakers include @tomerullman.bsky.social, @shariliu.bsky.social, @sparuniisc.bsky.social, Kelsey Allen, and me! See you there!!

Preprint alert! We've done the first ever brain recording simultaneously from IT & PMv in two monkeys interacting socially in natural setting! Dynamic tracking of social variables in simultaneous brain recordings of socially interacting monkeys www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.

Part 1: How do LLMs work?

YouTube video by Andrew Perfors

youtube.com

The cerebellum supports high-level language?? Now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, we systematically examined language-responsive areas of the cerebellum using precision fMRI and identified a *cerebellar satellite* of the neocortical language network! authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUU83BtfH... 1/n 🧵👇

What does it mean to understand language? We argue that the brain’s core language system is limited, and that *deeply* understanding language requires EXPORTING info to other brain regions. w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757 1/n🧵👇

What does it mean to understand language?

Language understanding entails not just extracting the surface-level meaning of the linguistic input, but constructing rich mental models of the situation it describes. Here we propose that because pr...

arxiv.org

𝗔 𝗡𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗫 By Mars and Passingham "Understanding anthropoid foraging challenges may thus contribute to our understanding of human cognition" Going to the top of the reading list! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroskyence

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire. Our computational cognitive model explains why! Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7 News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu 🧵

Super excited to share our new article: “Dissociable cortical regions represent things and stuff in the human brain” with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social and @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social Video abstract: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0XR... Paper: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lWxv3QW8S...

Things and Stuff: How the brain distinguishes oozing fluids from solid objects

YouTube video by McGovern Institute

youtube.com

Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵 New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social 1/8

Evidence from Formal Logical Reasoning Reveals that the Language of Thought is not Natural Language

Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans al...

tinyurl.com

Can you tell if a tower will fall or if two objects will collide — just by looking? 🧠👀 Come check out my #CogSci2025‪ poster (P1-W-207) on July 31, 13:00–14:15 PT to learn how people do general-purpose physical reasoning from visual input!

Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)

Decoding predicted future states from the brain’s “physics engine”

Using fMRI in humans, this study provides evidence for future state prediction in brain regions involved in physical reasoning.

science.org

Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)

Decoding predicted future states from the brain’s “physics engine”

Using fMRI in humans, this study provides evidence for future state prediction in brain regions involved in physical reasoning.

science.org

When you see this image, does it make you wonder what that baby is thinking. Do you think the baby is merely perceiving a set of shapes or do you think that the baby is also inferring meaning from the face they are looking at? (1/5)

**ecstatic** to share our @iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to neural networks, with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and meenakshi khosla (openreview.net/forum?id=IqH...) 1/n

Sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to...

The ventral, dorsal, and lateral streams in high-level human visual cortex are implicated in distinct functional processes. Yet, deep neural networks (DNNs) trained on a single task model the...

openreview.net

In a study now out in @eLife, @GeorginJacob @PramodRT9 and I have some exciting results: a novel computation that helps the brain solve disparate visual tasks, a novel brain region that performs this computation....what's not to like?! Read on.... 1/n elifesciences.org/articles/93033

Visual homogeneity computations in the brain enable solving property-based visual tasks

Seemingly disparate property-based tasks (oddball search, same-different and symmetry) are solved by computing a novel image property, visual homogeneity, which is localized to the object selective co...

elifesciences.org

Academics - where are academic jobs posted for non-UK non-North American countries? If you were looking for jobs in, say, the Nordic countries, or Australia, where do you look? Asking for all the PhDs who are on the market this year. (Pls no April fools jokes, their nerves are frayed as it is)

I’m hiring a full-time lab tech for two years starting May/June. Strong coding skills required, ML a plus. Our research on the human brain uses fMRI, ANNs, intracranial recording, and behavior. A great stepping stone to grad school. Apply here: careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl... ......

Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab

MIT - Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab - Cambridge MA 02139

careers.peopleclick.com

My commentary on the do's and don'ts of cognitive evaluations in LLMs is now out in Nature Human Behavior: doi.org/10.1038/s415... posting here with a figure that didn't make it into the final draft and is now instead a boring table :P #CogSci #LLMs #AI

Come and work with us and do a PhD with on a very exciting project #neurojobs

FraserWSmith@fraserwsmith.bsky.social · 2y ago

PhD studentship available in cognitive computational neuroscience (neuroimaging and deep neural networks) investigating multimodal material perception. Working with myself, @stephanierossit.bsky.social @timkietzmann.bsky.social Funded by @leverhulme.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLL004/p...

My email is now closed until 2025. It’s been a tremendous year and I really could not wish for more. I got more this year than I ever dreamed off. Great collaborations (Sight team & @rtpramod.bsky.social & @nancykanwisher.bsky.social), students and researchers, cool papers, new data & funding.

a man in a sweater is dancing in front of a door with a christmas wreath .

ALT: a man in a sweater is dancing in front of a door with a christmas wreath .

media.tenor.com

New paper with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social, @jessica__chomik, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @evfedorenko.bsky.social on the representations that underlie our intuitive physical reasoning about the world. Thread 🧵about our new preprint 📄✨linked here: tinyurl.com/intphyslang 1/10

Intuitive physical reasoning is not mediated by linguistic nor exclusively domain-general abstract representations

The ability to reason about the physical world is a critical tool in the human cognitive toolbox, but the nature of the representations that mediate physical reasoning remains debated. Here, we use fM...

tinyurl.com