Vlad Ayzenberg
@vayzenb.bsky.social
Director of the Vision Learning and Development Lab at Temple University. Interested in cognition, computation, neuroscience, and development. https://vlad-lab.com/
At long last, I’m excited to share our latest preprint on the cortical topography of mental imagery! Building on the tethering hypothesis of brain evolution, we examined the spatial layout of imagery-driven neural activities to know how visual, auditory, tactile & multisensory imagery is organised.
Excited for my lab's first @cogcompneuro.bsky.social ! We are presenting a mix of projects, ranging from infant modeling and neuroimaging to one-shot category learning #CCN2026
Shape perception in COWS. Love this work from @stellalourenco.bsky.social and Greg Berns Now we just need a egocentric model of COW vision and the story will be complete www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...
Global and local shape perception in cattle: Evidence from a novel dishabituation paradigm
Understanding how farmed animals perceive and differentiate objects in their environment has important implications for animal cognition and welfare. Previous studies in agricultural species have larg...
researchsquare.com
Excited to share our review in @cp-neuron.bsky.social with @lauriebayet.bsky.social and @mickbonner.bsky.social! We describe how implementing principles from child development can advance the mechanistic plausibility and capacities of AI models We packed A LOT into this review, here's a quick 🧵
Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 2w agoExcited to share our review in @cp-neuron.bsky.social with @lauriebayet.bsky.social and @mickbonner.bsky.social! We describe how implementing principles from child development can advance the mechanistic plausibility and capacities of AI models We packed A LOT into this review, here's a quick 🧵
Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 2w ago
New from me and Alan Leslie! We got the band back together to lay out our view on object representations in the infant mind: non-discursive indexes that operate within a language of thought, & which get development of a more complex object concept off the ground www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
New Preprint! We gave neural networks infant-like curiosity and let them free to explore. They grew brain-like architecture, followed human synaptic development, and even started to display compositional thought. So we think curiosity doesn't just come from a complex mind... it helps us build one 👇
Curiosity shapes brain-like architectures and functions
How does complex cognition emerge from simpler underlying processes? We show that two components are sufficient: infant-like curiosity and brain-like biophysical constraints jointly drive the emergenc...
biorxiv.org
🚨 HEADS UP: If you haven't submitted a comment on the OMB proposal yet, there's still time - but it's running out! There are only 3 days left to push back against Russell Vought's attempt to give political appointees unprecedented control over federal research funding. Take Action: zurl.co/J92d9
We should pay peer reviewers Paying reviewers led to faster decisions—an average of 5.5 working days vs 38 days for unpaid reviews And review quality improved (judged by handling editors) Reviewers who delivered a good peer review in 4 days were paid $290 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
🚨 Officially out at Child Development! A few years ago in Science, Ashley Thomas (ashleyjthomas.bsky.social) and colleagues argued that saliva could be a cue infants use to infer the strength of social relationships. academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...
An associative learning account of how saliva becomes a cue for comfort
Abstract. A recent study by Thomas et al. (2022) showed that 8.5- to 10-month-olds use saliva sharing as an indicator of relationship closeness: infants ex
academic.oup.com
www.photopea.com Is an objectively great alternative to both Photoshop and GIMP. It is nearly identical to Photoshop and runs in the browser. I have access to Photoshop and haven't used it in years.
Photopea | Online Photo Editor
Photopea Online Photo Editor lets you edit photos, apply effects, filters, add text, crop or resize pictures. Do Online Photo Editing in your browser for free!
photopea.com
Chris Person@papapishu.bsky.social · 2mo agoGIMP is objectively unintuitive and also can’t parse text layers of PSDs properly, it’s designed by FOSS people that have never created tools for professionals. Telling someone to use it for their job is like saying you can make a feature on iMovie. Technically true but not serious.
📢 We are recruiting a full-time lab manager/RA joint between our lab and @marinabedny.bsky.social 's lab. A great opportunity for a recent grad interested in gaining more research experience in cognitive neuroscience. Details and apply here: hiring.jhu.edu/careers/job/...
Research Assistant (KSAS - Cognitive Science) | Johns Hopkins University
We are seeking a Research Assistant who will work jointly in the Isik and Bedny labs on projects involving neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG), behavioral testing, and computational approaches. The position is p...
hiring.jhu.edu
What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Agreed, this is unsustainable. We are actively exploring alternatives. What's worse is that we collected data the day before and after the change with wildly different levels of data quality. Which would suggest @joinprolific.bsky.social is actively manipulating the audience for your study
Jorge Morales@jorgemorales.me · 2mo agoOk so they are definitely doing some kind dynamic pricing. This is from a different workspace our lab uses. Not sure if it’s the workspace or the filters. But either way, @joinprolific.bsky.social will basically eliminate psychological research from their platform with this nonsense.
After noticing another (significant!) drop in data quality this morning, I saw that Prolific is now recommending that participants be paid $48/hr
Sami Yousif@samiyousif.bsky.social · 4mo agoRecently, (recommended) prices at @joinprolific.bsky.social have doubled. Simultaneously, data quality and collection speed seem to have gone down noticeably (especially speed). Are others having this experience? These changes make the platform significantly less viable for our lab.
He's playing "putting babies in the MRI at work" My heart ❤️🔥
How do we predict what’s going to happen next? In a new paper, we @arikahn.bsky.social @licezhang.bsky.social @nathanieldaw.bsky.social @catehartley.bsky.social ask how kids, teens, and adults solve this problem. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Developmental Change in Structure Learning Reflects a Shift From Recency‐Based to Relational Prediction
Children are adept statistical learners, capable of parsing streams of structured input into meaningful units, but the cognitive processes they engage during learning may differ from those of adults...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Looks like geons are alive and well: this paper was rated among the top 1.8% of all papers at CVPR: bardofcodes.github.io/superfit/
Calling all Scientists! Research Administrators! Deans! Fans of Science! No one is coming to save us. Here is your assignment. I have written a step by step, easy to understand "how-to" document to help you comment on the proposed OMB rule. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...
What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB 2026-10817)
What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice
elizabethginexi.substack.com
In a meta-analysis of 210 biomedical AI studies that statistically compared models under cross-validation, 97% used invalid statistical tests. Here's our new preprint doi.org/10.64898/202... led by @tianchu.bsky.social @hetuli.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social @nichols.bsky.social 1/N
🚨🧪🧵URGENT INPUT NEEDED: NIH asks input for next strategic plan-including emphasis on non-animal models (NAMs) to replace animals. Per NIH insider, anti-animal responses now outnumber scientists 200-700x. Please please provide input. Deadline: May 26, 11:59 PM ET. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...
NIH Seeks Input on Framework for Next NIH-Wide Strategic Plan | Grants & Funding
grants.nih.gov
We are recruiting new students for our NSF-funded Bridge Program at University of Delaware this year. The positions are fully funded for 2 years and the summer bridging those years. To receive funding applicants must be residents of an NSF EPSCOR jurisdiction. Questions? email me tvickery@udel.edu
So excited about this new work—check it out and go see Jane’s talk on Sunday if you’re at #VSS2026!
jane-yang.bsky.social@jane-yang.bsky.social · 3mo agoChildren acquire object category representations from their everyday experiences in the first few years of life. What do the inputs to this learning process actually look like? New preprint! arxiv.org/abs/2605.14990
If you've ever sought NIH funding, do this now www.bioniclab.org/news/request...
B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab - Request for Information NIH
Subject: NIH Strategic Plan RFI (NOT-OD-26-047), deadline May 16. 5 minutes of your time matters. Colleagues, NIH is developing its Strategic Plan for FY 2027-2031 and has issued an RFI (NOT-OD-26-0...
bioniclab.org
GET IN, DORKS! It's a watershed moment and we need YOUR HELP. 1/x @standupforscience.net was asked by independent members of the National Academies to support their letter to Congress calling for the reinstatement of the National Science Board. #saveNSB 🔗 www.standupforscience.net/nasem-letter...
NASEM Open Letter to Congress demanding the restoration of the NSB — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE
Support NASEM's open letter to Congress by signing your endorsement now!
standupforscience.net
Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .
My paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of the visual system in newborn infants is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social !
Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 3mo agoMy paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of the visual system in newborn infants is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social !
Neuron@cp-neuron.bsky.social · 3mo ago
