Han Zhang

reidjohnson.github.ioNeural Network Field Guide42 architectures and training schemes, from the perceptron (1958) to diffusion LLMs (2025).

reidjohnson.github.io/nn-field-gui... seems like a helpful resource!

journals.sagepub.comDoes Global Slowing Explain Age Effects in Inhibitory Control? - Jacob Sellers, Han Zhang, John Jonides, Taraz G. Lee, 2026A long-standing debate in the study of cognitive aging centers around the issue of whether aging results in a selective deficit in inhibitory control beyond gen...

Our recent work shows that age differences in response-conflict tasks are mostly due to slower processing speed, rather than anything specific to cognitive control. Check it out ⬇️

Jacob Sellers@jacobsellers.bsky.social

Out now in Psych Science! With @hanzhang.bsky.social John Jonides and @tarazlee.bsky.social We show that apparent age-related deficits in inhibitory control (often measured by RT congruency effects) can be explained by age differences in processing speed journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Jacob Sellers

@jacobsellers.bsky.social

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Kate Hong

@ykatehong.bsky.social

Carnegie Mellon is hiring an Assistant Professor in NeuroAI 🧠🤖 Work across ML/AI, robotics, systems & cognitive neuroscience, and neurotech, with joint and courtesy appointments common at the Neuroscience Institute. Details + apply: apply.interfolio.com/189268 #NeuroAI #AcademicSky #FacultyJobs

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tor

@torwager.bsky.social

Explore probability distributions and their relationships with interactive graphs! torwager.github.io/probability... Thread 👇

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Jonathan Z Simon

@jzsimon.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy

#NeuroJobs #ComputationalNeuroscience Faculty position in Computational Neuroscience, Assistant or Associate Professor, at the University of Maryland (please boost): “The Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), invites applications from individuals using […]

fediscience.orgOriginal post on fediscience.org

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Jason Tsukahara

@drjt.bsky.social

I will be accepting a Master’s or PhD student to join my lab at University of North Carolina Wilmington! If you know any students that may be interested, please share this post with them. My lab: calmlab.science Master’s: www.uncw.edu/academics/ma... PhD: www.uncw.edu/academics/ma...

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Doug Addleman

@dougaddleman.bsky.social

Gonzaga University is hiring (TT) in neuroscience for Fall 2027. Gonzaga is a great place focused on undergraduate education with strong support for research. Deadline Oct 26! employment.gonzaga.edu/jobs/assista...

employment.gonzaga.eduAssistant Professor, Psychology (Neuroscience) - Spokane, Washington, United StatesTitle: Assistant Professor, Psychology (Neuroscience) Area: College of Arts and Sciences Department: Psychology Telework Availability: On-campus Position Employee Classification: Tenure Track Faculty ...

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Catherine Rampell

@crampell.bsky.social

Trump admin's new rule adding prohibitively expensive new fees for "OPT"—temporary work authorization program for international students and new grads in the United States—is out. Would require colleges to pay $70,000 for year one. $30,000 for years two and three combined for STEM fields.

public-inspection.federalregister.govpublic-inspection.federalregister.gov

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Dan Garisto

@dangaristo.bsky.social

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

science.org‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences researchAgency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year

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Michael Hout

@michaelhout.bsky.social

Thanks to the generous funding support from the National Science Foundation, OPAM will again be hosting a "Lunch with an Expert" event. Applications are open until October 31st, and you can apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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Erin Westgate

@erinwestgate.bsky.social

🚨 TT Job Alert 🚨 Florida is hiring a new TT asst prof in developmental psychology! Area/age open, early/middle childhood preferred. Come for the gators, stay for the awesome colleagues 🐊 Apply here (deadline 10/15): explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/54...

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Heleen Slagter

@haslagter.bsky.social

🚨 Job alert 🚨 Our department @vuamsterdam.bsky.social is hiring an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience! Join our lovely community here in beautiful Amsterdam! 🧠🔥 Deadline: October 15 workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/as...

workingat.vu.nlVacancy — Assistant Professor in Cognitive NeuroscienceJoin the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) as Assistant Professor in cognitive neuroscience.

arxiv.orgFrom Visual Search to Movement Control: A Priority Field for Artificial AgentsHuman spatial attention is widely conceptualized as being guided by a priority map that integrates perceptual salience, current goals, and past experiences. Here, we extend priority-based computation ...

How can principles of human cognition be applied in artificial systems? Here, we present one such example: inspired by the idea of a "priority map" in visual attention, we built a "priority field" within an artificial agent. The results are quite interesting. 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.30704

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We could even produce a human-like, history-driven effect, where the agent anticipates the upcoming target location:

So, incorporating principles of human cognition makes artificial systems more efficient and robust. As much of the discussion around AI focuses on scaling up, perhaps cognitive science offers another approach to building better systems?

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Then, we built this model in an artificial agent, and evaluated its performance in a reach-avoid task: the agent must avoid obstacles to reach the goal:

Compared to MLP and transformers, the priority-based agent trained more efficiently and handled unseen, hazardous scenarios better, even from simple demonstrations. Below is the agent handling x4 speed at ease, even without being trained on it.

Deciding where to move is essentially a problem of behavioral prioritization. For eye movements, they are widely understood to be guided by a priority map that integrates salience, goals, and history. But this is a problem that any agent navigating a complex environment would face.

@anthonyzanesco.bsky.social

We propose a general model of movement based on the idea of a priority map, and argue that eye movements are really just one special case of it. We fit the model to human saccades, and it produces classic patterns of visual search, including distractor suppression and target-location priming.

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Anthony Zanesco

22 Sept

Pleased to announce that we are seeking two tenure-track Assistant or Associate professors in Cognitive Neuroscience and/or Clinical Neuroscience in the Psychology Department at the University of Kentucky. Full details here: ukjobs.uky.edu/postings/648...

ukjobs.uky.eduAssistant or Associate Professor of PsychologyThe Department of Psychology in the College of Arts Sciences at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY seeks to fill two tenure-eligible faculty positions at the Assistant or Associate Professor ...

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Tobias Egner

@tobiasegner.bsky.social

18 Sept

Job Alert: Our department is looking to recruit an eminent scholar for a distinguished, endowed professorship (full professor, tenured) in the domain of human neuroscience with high clinical relevance. Please broadcast widely! For application information, see academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32753

academicjobsonline.orgDuke University, Psychology and Neuroscience Job #AJO32753, Professor (tenured), Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, US

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Jenn Veilleux

@jenncveilleux.bsky.social

17 Sept

Come be my colleague!! We are hiring THREE tenure-track folks at the University of Arkansas this fall: (1) clinical, (2) social, and (3) cognitive. Clinical is looking ideally for a child/adolescent person but the area is technically open. All ads linked here: psychology.uark.edu

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Nanthia Suthana

@suthanalab.bsky.social

16 Sept

New tenure-track faculty position at Duke! The Neurobiology department is looking for a computational neuroscientist. Join a highly collaborative & interdisciplinary community. My time at Duke has been amazing so far & we would love the opportunity to collaborate with you! Applications due Dec 1.

academicjobsonline.orgDuke University, Neurobiology Job #AJO32697, Tenure Track Assistant Professor - AI/ML Neurobiology, Neurobiology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, US

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Michael Hout

@michaelhout.bsky.social

12 Sept

NMSU Psychology is hiring. Please consider applying and/or sharing. careers.nmsu.edu/jobs/assista...

careers.nmsu.eduAssistant Professor - Las Cruces, New Mexico, United StatesDepartment Contact: Dr. Justin MacDonald, 575-646-6223, jmacd@nmsu.edu Internal or External Search: External - Open to all applicants Advertising Summary: The Department of Psychology is seeking an ...

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Terence Tao

@teorth.bsky.social

11 Sept

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

mathandai.orgDeclaration — Math and AIRead the declaration and add your name.

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Aran Nayebi

@anayebi.bsky.social

11 Sept

CMU is hiring an Assistant Professor in NeuroAI! Come join our awesome NeuroAI community 🧠🤖: apply.interfolio.com/189268

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arxiv.orgEmergent Goal-Directed Attention in Large Vision-Language ModelsHuman observers prioritize visual information according to task goals. Most computational models of naturalistic viewing are gaze-trained for free viewing, leaving open whether goal-directed attention...

New preprint: Can large vision-language models show human-like goal-directed attention, without ever being trained on eye movements? I tested two off-the-shelf VLMs on 4,887 natural scenes under search vs. free-viewing goals. 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.05517

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This alignment also shows in decoder-layer attention and intermediate thinking traces. Search thinking is semantically close to the target (a [bottle] could be near the table, under the table, behind the dishes), whereas free-view thinking is close to visual prominence.

So, broad multimodal learning may acquire scene priors that support flexible attentional selection, even without direct gaze supervision. VLMs could become scalable models for where people look under different task goals. Feedback welcome!

A classic demonstration of human goal-directed attention is provided by Yarbus, where observers show distinct eye movement patterns depending on the goal.