Leyla Isik

Excited about this new work led by @gkathy.bsky.social: Human similarity judgments reveal fine-grained representations of dynamic social scenes osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵👇

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...

When and how do newborns see a face? @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social and colleagues identify a serious problem in how a foundational newborn study has been interpreted. But the Bluesky victory lap is leaving out a rather important detail: neonates track FACE drawings! bsky.app/profile/nmwi...

We're hiring! 2 postdocs + 3 PhD students to join InfantNeuroAI at Trinity College Dublin: awake infant fMRI & OPM-MEG, plus computational models of how infants learn. Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵 www.cusacklab.org/vacancies

We’re recruiting a full-time lab manager to join the Shared Minds Lab at USC! This will be a great opportunity for someone who wants to get hands-on experience with research before starting a PhD program in psychology or neuroscience. More below:

Videos of amazing workshop "Toward AI with Human Level Efficiency" organized by Ilker Yildirim et al. ... cnclgithub.github.io/yale-ai-work... with T. Brooke-Wilson, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @lisik.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, @toddgureckis.bsky.social, McCoy, Lew, and Kaelbling.

Also if you're at #CCN2026 come chat with me about Minds, Machines, and Brains @mmb-journal.bsky.social A new journal we are launching with @mitpress.bsky.social with my co-EICs Kendrick Kay & Ellie Pavlick, and the rest of the wonderful editorial board: direct.mit.edu/mmb/pages/ed...

Looking forward to #CCN2026 - check out the presentations from our lab!

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

🚨 NEW PREPRINT Videos strongly shape activity across the visual cortex. But can we design videos that maximally drive specific brain regions? We present NEvo 🧬🧠 — a neural-guided evolutionary framework that synthesizes videos to maximally activate target visual ROIs. (1/10)

📢 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/...

Heading to #vss2026? Check out the presentations from our lab @vssmtg.bsky.social

postdoc and PhD positions in visual cognitive computational neuroscience in my lab at the University of Cambridge kamilajozwik.com/join_lab.html

We are still hiring for our computational focus lab coordinator position! If you have a computational / software engineering background and are looking for more research experience before applying to graduate school, this would be a great fit. Read more about our lab here! www.vislearnlab.org

Please circulate widely! Open positions at the Vision Lab, Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) sites.google.com/site/visionl... How to Apply: forms.gle/vWa1PwUrcpWf... Deadline : March 31 2026

Language, Intelligence & Thought lab is looking for a lab manager! This is a 2-year postbac position that will allow you to gain experience in human neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI research prior to applying to PhD programs. Express interest here: forms.gle/npXEGUjGUbp5...

So excited about this preprint: Bottom-up and generative computations uniquely explain neural responses across the social brain www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... An amazing colab led by @manasimalik.bsky.social with Minjae Kim, @tianminshu.bsky.social and @shariliu.bsky.social Manasi's thread 👇

Excited to share new work on how the brain makes social inferences from visual input! 🧠👯‍♂️ (With @lisik.bsky.social , @shariliu.bsky.social, @tianminshu.bsky.social , and Minjae Kim!) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Visual Learning Lab is hiring TWO lab coordinators! Both positions are ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school. Application deadline is Feb 10th (approaching fast!)—with flexible summer start dates.

Human visual cortex representations may be much higher-dimensional than earlier work suggested, but are these higher dimensions of cortical activity actually relevant to behavior? Our new paper tackles this by studying how different people experience the same movies. 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Hopkins Cog Sci is hiring! We have two open faculty positions: one in vision, and one language. Please repost!

Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

starting fall 2026 i'll be an assistant professor at @upenn.edu 🥳 my lab will develop scalable models/theories of human behavior, focused on memory and perception currently recruiting PhD students in psychology, neuroscience, & computer science! reach out if you're interested 😊

New perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...

✨🔦✨ This month's JHU Cog Sci Student Spotlight features PhD student Yash Mehta @yashsmehta.bsky.social Read about Yash's research and exciting summer🔗👇 cogsci.jhu.edu/2025/11/10/s...

Why do AI models struggle with social scenes? 🧐 Our new preprint with @lisik.bsky.social reveals a fundamental gap: most AI vision models lack explicit 3D pose information that humans rely on for social judgments. Read the full work: arxiv.org/abs/2511.03988

My lab at Boston University has open positions for a postdoc and PhD students. We study visual perception, attention, and decision making with a focus on temporal dynamics. Check out our recent work here sites.bu.edu/denisonlab/ and email me if you're interested in learning more

I am accepting graduate students for the UCI Cognitive Sciences PhD program for Fall 2026. Check out my lab website - www.relcoglab.org for our recent themes. Our funded work focuses on combinatorial reasoning, moral decision-making, and conceptual cognition in humans and large language models.

Interested in doing a PhD at the intersection of human and machine cognition? ✨ I'm recruiting students for Fall 2026! ✨ Topics of interest include pragmatics, metacognition, reasoning, & interpretability (in humans and AI). Check out JHU's mentoring program (due 11/15) for help with your SoP 👇

Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026. The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social. Please apply here until Nov 25: www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...

@jhucogsci.bsky.social is now on bluesky 🦋 Give us a follow and check out the info about our PhD program

The department of Cognitive Science @jhu.edu is seeking motivated students interested in joining our interdisciplinary PhD program! Applications due 1 Dec Our PhD students also run an application mentoring program for prospective students. Mentoring requests due November 15. tinyurl.com/2nrn4jf9

Check out this new preprint led by @gkathy.bsky.social showing how a new fine-tuning scheme using human similarity judgements can improve existing video models, making them more human-aligned on different social tasks! arxiv.org/abs/2510.01502

🚨New preprint w/ @lisik.bsky.social! Aligning Video Models with Human Social Judgments via Behavior-Guided Fine-Tuning We introduce a ~49k triplet social video dataset, uncover a modality gap (language > video), and close via novel behavior-guided fine-tuning. 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2510.01502

Forget modeling every belief and goal! What if we represented people as following simple scripts instead (i.e "cross the crosswalk")? Our new paper shows AI which models others’ minds as Python code 💻 can quickly and accurately predict human behavior! shorturl.at/siUYI%F0%9F%...

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

My lab at USC is recruiting! 1) research coordinator: perfect for a recent graduate looking for research experience before applying to PhD programs: usccareers.usc.edu REQ20167829 2) PhD students: see FAQs on lab website dornsife.usc.edu/hklab/faq/

New preprint led by @hsmall.bsky.social with @hleemasson.bsky.social, Ericka Wodka and Stewart Mostofsky: Ubiquitous cortical sensitivity to visual information during naturalistic, audiovisual movie viewing Check out the paper osf.io/b5p4n and Hannah's summary 👇

See the speakers for 2025-26 #KempnerInstitute Seminar Series! bit.ly/46xphKq @moiradillon.bsky.social @lisik.bsky.social @profsanjeevarora.bsky.social @kyunghyuncho.bsky.social @scychan.bsky.social @stellaathena.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social @engeltatiana.bsky.social @zdeborova.bsky.social

Excited to share our (Flo Martinez Addiego @yuqiliu1179.bsky.social @culhamari-lab.bsky.social) paper, now published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (or an easier read on medicine.georgetown.edu/news-release... )

What fun to hang out in Amsterdam with former lab members, dear friends, and scientific rock stars @evfedorenko.bsky.social‬ @lisik.bsky.social‬ @apurvaratan.bsky.social‬ @carolinerobertson.bsky.social‬

Excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! If you're here, check out the presentations from our lab 👇@qinwenshuo.bsky.social @ziruichen.bsky.social @manasimalik.bsky.social @cogcompneuro.bsky.social

If you're heading to @cogscisociety.bsky.social, come to our symposium “Perception as a Foundation for Common‑Sense Theories of the World” 📅 August 1 • 9 AM 📍 Salon 2 With @thiskevinsmith.bsky.social @shariliu.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social @ardeeb.bsky.social — See you there! #CogSci2025

New paper! Here (in Nature Communications) we (Ale Geraci, Luca Surian, Lucia Gabriella Tina, & I; work led/run by Ale) show that 5-day-old newborns selectively attend to two distinct forms of prosocial over antisocial action: approaching versus avoiding and helping versus hindering. rdcu.be/evorW

New paper from Laura Lewis and Jan Engelmann et al. (including me) with a clever new method. Chimps and kids will forgo reward to get a chance to look at social interactions royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

This framing is all wrong Our international students are not a “crucial funding source” They are our STUDENTS They are the reason we EXIST We teach STUDENTS

I’m happy to be at #VSS2025 and share what our lab has been up to this year! I’m also honored to receive this year’s young investigator award and will give a short talk at the awards ceremony Monday

SO excited about this new paper by @talboger.bsky.social! How does your mind separate the *content* of an image from the *manner* in which it is depicted? And how can we study this using tools from perception research? Find out in Tal's new @nathumbehav.nature.com paper 👇