Chris Baker

What dimensions organize how we see social interactions? We learn them from 53,000+ human judgments of naturalistic social clips. They explain 2× the variance of pre-labeled annotations & better predict visual cortex, EBA, and pSTS New preprint w @lisik.bsky.social 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨Job alert: be my colleague!🚨 Barnard College is hiring someone at the intersection of Cognitive Science and Computer Science. Please share and reach out if you have questions! barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Facult...

We are hiring! Apply by Oct 31, decisions by Nov 15. Please circulate widely. sites.google.com/site/visionl...

Big thanks to @sjgotts.bsky.social for an excellent summary of what we’ve been up to. Using a multimodal (EEG+fMRI) approach to studying repetition effects on behavior and neural responses, we’ve found something novel to add to a familiar puzzle. For more info, see 👇👇!

I'm recruiting PhD students this cycle! We study how the brain perceives, remembers, and predicts naturalistic experiences like movies and games, using computational tools to analyze behavioral and neural data 🧠 App deadline is 12/2/26 - see our lab pubs on our website www.dpmlab.org/pubs.html

This work just published! jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx... To celebrate, a new Australian-rainbow-lorikeet-themed demonstration of colour constancy.

Join us in Amsterdam as an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience — One week left to apply! 🚨👇

New preprint! Are attentional lapses the result of disengagement or simply response failure? Using EEG, we tested how attention fluctuations impact visual representations in the brain. (1/5) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The latest PCI Webinar is now freely available online! Many thanks to Daniël Lakens for an insightful webinar entitled “Essential aspects of well-designed studies”. For those who couldn’t join us live, the recording is now available: peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-...

A new method for translating functional brain responses between species - Spatiotemporal Hyperalignment projects shared information into a common representational space Led by @kbraunlich.bsky.social Marianne Duyck with @bevilconway.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 The visual system tunes itself to the statistics of its input. How do individual experiences differently tune vision? In this work, @bjbalas.bsky.social and I examined how one individual difference—height—changes the visual diet and how this affects perception. 1/

New paper with @neurosteel.bsky.social and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social out now in @elife.bsky.social! We're really proud of this work exploring how internally and externally focused brain networks communicate through a shared visual code. Check it out!

Out today with @pangeli95.bsky.social (co-lead) & @carolinerobertson.bsky.social ! The brain integrates internal thoughts with sensory information. Yet the networks serving functions are viewed as independent. How does the brain integrate across these systems? elifesciences.org/articles/110...

Our 🧠lab is hiring a new RA to help study neural changes associated with chronic alcohol, start date ASAP. Ideal for recent college graduates looking for research experience. Please send me any recommendations or have them reach out to me, and please forward/share with your colleagues – thanks!

Now out in Current Biology! Object decoding and DNN–brain alignment dissociate: more object information ≠ more alignment. What neural networks share with the brain is mid-level image statistics. Free 50-day access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two weeks left to sign up for Re:vision! Let's figure out how well visual neuroscience findings replicate! Participants can: - become a coauthor on the paper - win cash prizes up to $2500 - use your replication to write a separate paper. Sign up now, it's super easy: re-vision-initiative.org

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your #fmri results? Have you been worried about potential reproducibility issues? Well, this new @natmethods.nature.com article with 40+ coauthors shows how the simple change to transparent thresholding helps both. Go Figure! rdcu.be/B4tikBETdQZa

Simultaneous EEG and fMRI recording suggests that repetition-related changes in behavior and neural activity may result from earlier, more rapid increases in synchronized neural activity in task-involved brain regions. PDF available: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

I have been meaning to write a post about a preprint that I'm pretty excited about: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... In neuroscience we often assume that we can learn something general about “the brain” using different species. But is this true? Do monkeys even see the world the way we do?

📢 Applications are now open for the NIH Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator Program! We're recruiting early-career scientists across all areas of biomedical research for tenure-track faculty positions in the NIH Intramural Research Program. Deadline: Sept 30, 2026. 🔗 tinyurl.com/stadtman26

Today is the only day you can experience Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” on the day it is set. Audio: archive.org/details/brad... PDF: thephilosopher.net/bredberi/wp-...

Recruiting grad students for Fall 2027!

Very excited to start my lab in NY this August as an Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience & Simons Empire Faculty Fellow at the University at Albany – SUNY. My lab will focus on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying real-world visual cognition (perception & memory).

This 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?

Excited to share my first #preprint with @matthiasnau.bsky.social on how gaze behavior shapes brain activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Gaze-dependent activity was widespread even during sleep, including in many visual cortices, and altered brain-wide functional connectivity! 🧵 1/8

Thrilled to share our new #preprint, and super proud of @zednud.bsky.social and our work on eye–brain dynamics during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Also excited to share that Zach started his PhD with me recently! 🎉 Lots of ideas and cool work ahead. Follow him on Bluesky and check out his thread! 🧵

The 2026 fMRI Summer Course with @fmri-today.bsky.social has begun and the recordings and slides are shared here: fmrif.nimh.nih.gov/SummerCourse

In-scanner thoughts contribute to resting-state functional connectivity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42365014/ I've long thought that this is the "elephant in the room" of resting state #fMRI esp. for comparing groups. If two groups think & feel differently in the scanner, of course rsfMRI will differ!

I wanted to like QED's new 1% preprint ranking. I really did. But the more I looked at the data, the more uncomfortable it made me. Here is my full peer review. open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student, funded by a new ERC grant. The grant focuses on the role of the hippocampus in visual perception, using 7T fMRI (hippocampal subfields, cortical layers) and MEG+iEEG. The intended start dates for both positions are in early 2027. 🧠🟦 1/3

Finally out: my review in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social covering how my lab and others have been ‘Looking into working memory through micro eye movements’ over the years. What does the microsaccade bias buy us? A lot I argue. Go see for yourself at: doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Some findings from our national survey of U.S. population attitudes toward AI. First, feelings about AI are actually very similar across political parties (and many other demographics). They vary most by people's experience with AI tools. Explore the data: futurerealities.org/poll/2026/ 🧵

And if you are in the Washington DC area this coming weekend, feel free to come to our conference! futurerealities.org/FOR2026/

📢 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/...

Postdoc position available at postlab.psych.wisc.edu. Pls send cv to postle@wisc.edu

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/...

About to start my travel to #OHBM2026 Excited to help organize a full day ed course on multi-echo fMRI. Schedule is here: me-ica.github.io/ohbm-2026-mu... @enekourunuela.com @drjuliamoser.bsky.social @dowdlelt.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Job ad (2/2): data scientist in the AFNI group (SSCC, NIMH, NIH, USA). FMRI/MRI methods dev, software design, statistics, analysis, data viz, quality control, machine learning and more! Please see: discuss.afni.nimh.nih.gov/t/job-ad-dat... I am happy to chat at OHBM+Brainhack. Please share!

Job ad (1/2): Postdoc fellowship in the AFNI group (SSCC, NIMH, NIH, USA). FMRI/MRI methods dev, software design, statistics, analysis, data viz, quality control, machine learning and more! Please see: discuss.afni.nimh.nih.gov/t/job-ad-pos... I am happy to chat at OHBM+Brainhack. Please share!

🚨New dataset just dropped🚨 Introducing Places in the Wild: 67,000 RAW-format photographs (45 mpix) densely sampled from 810 places (260 basic-level categories). This is 11x the number of pixels in ImageNet! Preprint is here: arxiv.org/abs/2606.02481 1/

Last week, I had the chance to present our work at #VSS2026! This was my first time presenting a poster, and I was really excited! Special thanks to @maryamvaziri.bsky.social and all the collaborators for this opportunity. Looking forward to making new connections and attending future conferences.

Spencer and MJ’s project is now out! Let me say something about the study, why it is important to me personally, and why I think it is important given what is happening right now at NIH and how science there is being disrupted or suppressed. 1/N (N = 19) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Last weekend I received the Troland Research Award from the @nationalacademies.org. I’m so grateful to the communities who made this work possible. It's strange to receive this award at a time when much of the work being recognized is not eligible for federal funding. My remarks 👇 and a 🧵>>

VSS (@vssmtg.bsky.social) is coming up! Do you have an idea for a vision experiment but want to check you haven't missed anything? Looking for collaborators or relevant resources? Wanting to chat about a theory or model? Consider the pre-data poster session! www.visionsciences.org/pre-data-col...

Alex Martin talked about his "eclectic" career spanning over 4 decades, including 31 years in the Laboratory of Cognition (NIH), with some reflections on what makes a successful scientific career: "the right place at the right time", "it's good to be first", "controversy is helpful"

Second day of ‘Foundations and Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience’ in honor of Alex Martin

Great symposium in honor of Alex Martin at the NIMH