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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی

@alirezakr.bsky.social
520 followers 789 following 87 posts

Cognitive neuroscientist | AI 🤖 × Neuroscience 🧠 | NeuroSpin • CIMeC • SUT linktr.ee/alirezakr

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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
BRAIN PEOPLE! 🧠 Activating my network! My unbelievably excellent postdoc, @aliekhlasi.bsky.social will finish with me next August (grant runs out). He's a brilliant expert in all things neuroimaging & computational analysis, ...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Chris Baker @cibaker.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
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...
biorxiv.org
Translating functional brain activity between humans and monkeys
Comparing brain responses across species is essential for identifying models of human cognition and testing theories of brain evolution, but differences in brain size, measurement techniques, and sign...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Tijl Grootswagers @tgro.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🌏 Come and spend some time with us in Sydney! 🇦🇺 The @marcsinstitute.bsky.social is offering International Visiting Scholarships for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers for 2027. If you're in cogneuro and motivated, get in touch via DM or email. Apps due: 1 Nov 2026 Please share widely!
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
📖 New review out today in @natrevneuro.nature.com: Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition 🧠🧪 Full-text link to the paper is here: rdcu.be/9YK3mF7dYhFa
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
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.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Jake Quilty-Dunn @quiltydunn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
New paper, co-authored with Justin Wood, in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social: The Nativist-Empiricist Debate Is Broken We argue that radical nativism and radical empiricism are compatible and, in some cases, both plausibly true. So something is wrong. 🧵 Author share link here, valid til Oct 31:
authors.elsevier.com
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All content on this site: Copyright © 2026 Elsevier B.V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. For all open access content, the relevant licensing terms apply.
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Ali Shiravand @alishiravand.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Graduate students enter cognitive science from diverse disciplines, bringing different levels of mathematical training. 🧶 This semester, we built a #Maths_Training course website for cognitive science students, with Basic and Advanced tracks: 💡 maths-training-dec.github.io/cogmaster-ma...
Graduate students enter cognitive science from diverse disciplines, bringing different levels of mathematical training. 🧶

I’m very happy to share a new #Maths_Training website for cognitive science students that we developed this semester, designed to help bridge different mathematical starting points and covering probability, statistics, linear algebra, calculus, differential equations, and more.

The material is organized into two tracks: 1) Basic Track that builds the foundations progressively, especially for students from humanities and social sciences, and 2) Advanced Track for students who already have more mathematical training. Each session includes 📊 slides, ✏️ exercises, and ✅ solutions.

This semester, I’m teaching the Maths Training Crash Course at the Département d'Études Cognitives, Ecole normale supérieure, together with Sara Moussaoui and Prof. Amaury Lambert as the supervisor. We designed the website as a practical resource for learning, reviewing, or simply coming back to the mathematical concepts that appear again and again across cognitive science.

We initially built it for our CogMaster students, but we hope it will be useful to students and researchers elsewhere too. Feel free to explore it, share it, and send us feedback!
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Neural activity is often summarized as a small number of shared patterns (low-dimensional structure). sliceTCA offers a more complete and efficient way to uncover meaningful structure in large-scale brain recordings. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience
nature.com
Dimensionality reduction beyond neural subspaces with slice tensor component analysis - Nature Neuroscience
Neural activity does not always lie in a low-dimensional subspace. The authors extend this classic view to show that task-relevant information is distributed across multiple covariability classes and ...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Matthew Sparkes @sparkes.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Terence Tao says AI companies are harming mathematics by dropping new results without engaging with academia. “These companies are dumping carcasses of raw meat onto our table and saying ‘here you go, I solved your food problem’ and then they just leave." www.newscientist.com/article/2588...
newscientist.com
Terence Tao: AI companies are harming mathematics | New Scientist
AI companies are making new mathematical discoveries at a rapid pace but not sticking around to help unpick the new proofs. That is not the way to advance our understanding, says mathematician Terence...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 09/09/2026
If you thought "everything is everywhere" in the brain: inactivations reveal a clear distinction of labor. Sensory areas sense, colliculus promotes eligible actions (!), and prefrontal cortex integrates. The role of superior colliculus in a logistic decision www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
pyGCSS: a pure-Python implementation of the Group-Constrained Subject-Specific (GCSS) method for fMRI — define ROIs that are functionally consistent across subjects, no MATLAB/SPM needed. github.com/alireza-kr/p...
github.com
GitHub - alireza-kr/pyGCSS: A Python implementation of the Group-Constrained Subject-Specific (GCSS) method
A Python implementation of the Group-Constrained Subject-Specific (GCSS) method - alireza-kr/pyGCSS
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
A course on tmux linuxhandbook.com/courses/tmux/
linuxhandbook.com
Tmux Fundamentals: Free Course on Terminal Multiplexing
Never lose a terminal session again! Learn tmux sessions, panes, and windows in this free, beginner-friendly course. No signup required.
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Tom McCoy @rtommccoy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 (The result of an 8-year project!) LLMs seem very different from symbolic systems. Yet LLMs excel in symbolic domains (e.g., language/code/math). How do they do it? Our finding: LLM representations have implicit symbolic structure! Link in thread ⬇️ 1/n
Overview of the paper. 
Title: The Emergent Symbolic Structure of Artificial Neural Networks
Authors: Tom McCoy, Paul Soulos, Tal Linzen, Paul Smolensky
Left: Neural networks encode information in vectors (there is then an image of a vector), yet they excel at tasks long thought to require symbolic structure (there is then an image of a symbolic representation, specifically a syntax tree). How do LLMs do it?
Right: We find that LLM representations can be closely approximated with symbolic structures. This approximation lets us edit the structure of an LLM’s output by editing the structure of its internal representations, as shown. There is then an image of two edits to LLMs. In the first one, the original input is 3 + 6 * 8, with an answer of 51. But if we swap the positions of the 3 and the 6, the output becomes 30. In the second one, the original input is a Python command repeating the list [Z, U] three times, producing [Z, U, Z, U, Z, U]. But if we edit the input in a way that adds a Q at the end of the input, the output becomes [Z, U, Q, Z, U, Q, Z, U, Q].
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
CIMeC_UniTrento @cimecunitrento.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Only a few days left to apply for the 2nd call for the PhD Programme in Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Trento. ⏰Deadline: 2 September 2026 Full details: phd.unitn.it/drcimec/116/...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Tal Golan @talgolanneuro.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Come join our team!
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
New preprint just dropped! With the unstoppable @norabradford.bsky.social at the helm and support from Tomàs Ortega and Brian Maniscalco: osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has a new preprint with important results on a famous psychophysical law (Weber's law). It isn't, in fact, a law, because it can be broken. A more fundamental principle (efficient coding) shows when and why Weber's law holds true. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Efficient coding makes and breaks Weber's law
Weber's law is a rare quantitative regularity in psychology, yet its origins remain debated. Here we provide causal evidence that it arises from the more fundamental principle of efficient coding. Thi...
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Talia Lerner @talialerner.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
It has been painfully clear since Fall’24 that US science funding would tank, universities would be targeted, and any assertions about a new “gold standard” disingenuous. The question has not been “will it be that bad,” but “how bad will it be.”
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Taylor Webb @taylorwwebb.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I'm recruiting two postdocs (or potentially PhD students) to work on projects at the intersection of cognition, neuroscience, and AI (with a particular emphasis on mechanistic interpretability). Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... and please share!
docs.google.com
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Next in the Glushko Dissertation Prize Symposium, Alireza Karami @alirezakr.bsky.social explores ‘The Representation of Numerosity in the Human Brain and Machines’, comparing how humans and AI systems perceive and represent quantity. #CogSci2026
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
This does not contradict the MTL data. Their claim concerns process (a step-by-step procedure during thinking), whereas Zhu et al. concerns representation (operands are not arranged on a line, and linear coding does not aid decoding). A simplex-like representation can still be explored step by step.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Their view: multiplication relies on memorized facts, but addition keeps a spatial and procedural signature because it comes from counting strategies (e.g., finger counting). With practice, these steps become extremely fast and no longer noticeable. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Worth comparing with Prado & Thevenot (2026): they argue that adults do not replace counting with retrieval. Instead, counting becomes automatic, fast, and unconscious, remaining the main strategy for small additions.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
We tested the same stimuli in CNNs (CORnet-Z, trained and untrained, across datasets). No layer showed the IPS-like curve; all remained line-like, closer to early visual cortex. This suggests that the shift from a line to a curve does not emerge from hierarchy alone. openreview.net/forum?id=AJm...
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
So it is not a full simplex: in IPS, neural distance still tracks numerical distance, unlike their MTL data, where this relationship is absent. However, the direction is similar: from primary visual cortex to association cortex, the code becomes richer rather than flatter.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Specifically, the curved geometry emerges after ~220 ms, following an earlier linear stage (~70–115 ms) that resembles the V1–V3 pattern. The curved manifold still preserves the rank order of numbers, but an additional dimension separates extreme numbers from intermediate ones.
biorxiv.org
Numerosity Is Directly Sensed and Dynamically Transformed in the Human Brain: Evidence from MEG-MRI Fusion
Humans can estimate the number of objects in a scene within a fraction of a second, suggesting that numerosity is encoded rapidly and directly by the visual system. Yet how this encoding unfolds over ...
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
In early visual cortex (V1–V3), the MDS representation of numerosity is close to a straight line. However, in IPS (dorsal association cortex) and at later processing stages in MEG, the representation becomes curved. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
I think the following claim is consistent with what we found when studying numerosity across the visual hierarchy and over time. bsky.app/profile/benh...
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Very interesting work by @benhayden.bsky.social, @hanlin-zhu.bsky.social, and colleagues. Below are my thoughts on some of the findings and claims. 👇
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I am *thrilled* to share this review in @currentbiology.bsky.social out today, by yours truly, @myoo.bsky.social, @michalk.bsky.social, Taro Toyoizumi, @tyrellturing.bsky.social, @taylorwwebb.bsky.social, & @hakwan.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵👇
sciencedirect.com
Looking to the brain to improve energy efficiency of AI
Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems have achieved remarkable capabilities, but at an extraordinary energy cost. Training and running large-sca…
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Joao Barbosa @jbarbosa.org · 16/07/2026
Great paper! could someone please point me to a paper or two that has seriously pushed for ideas that would be in contradiction with this decoder? I know @benhayden.bsky.social, @pessoabrain.bsky.social et al have done that on bluesky but an actual research paper? Feels like a total straw man
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
UNICOG @unicog.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
🧠 Hiring! UNICOG/NeuroSpin (Paris-Saclay) seeks a Research Assistant for "Math-O-Meter," studying how kids (7–17) learn math across the school years, combining behavioral testing + fMRI. 2-year position, starts Oct–Dec 2026. Fluent French required. 🔗 unicog.org/we-are-hirin...
unicog.org
Research Assistant Open Position – the “Math-O-Meter” project – Unicog_2025
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
steven t. piantadosi @spiantado.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
"There won’t be more discoveries, and we’ll just stop at what we already know." @cantlonlab.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/c...
nytimes.com
She Studied Ways to Make People Smarter. Then Her Grant Was Cut.
Jessica Cantlon had a grant with the U.S. Navy to explore whether people could improve spatial problem-solving skills through training. Then the program was cut.
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Indicators -- especially theory-derived ones -- of consciousness simply aren't enough. Signatures aren't enough either. We need a whole new evidential and inferential framework. My group is building one. Sneak peak roadmap paper, currently in revision so stay tuned for v2: osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Ingmar de Vries @ingmardevries.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
❗3x scholar-at-risk positions (2 post MSc, 1 postdoc) at Uni Trento (several departments incl. CIMeC)❗ 1 year + possibility of 1 year extension. Must hold asylum seeker / refuge or SAR status. Please contact me for more info. Please share!
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This work would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my PI, @manpiazza.bsky.social . Many thanks also to my collaborators Evelyn Eger, Elisa Castaldi, @martinhebart.bsky.social, @tlmnhut.bsky.social, and the wonderful team at @cimecunitrento.bsky.social.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Related work 📄 Distinct neural representational geometries of numerosity in early visual and association regions across visual streams 📄 Numerosity Is Directly Sensed and Dynamically Transformed in the Human Brain 📄 Investigation of Numerosity Representation in Convolution Neural Networks
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Key findings: • Numerosity is represented independently of other visual features. • It emerges very early during visual processing. • Its representational geometry changes across time and cortical regions.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Comparing MEG and fMRI representational geometries showed that neural coding of number evolves dynamically. A curved geometry, similar to that observed in IPS, emerges later in time when MEG-fMRI similarity peaks.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Time-resolved RSA of MEG data revealed that numerosity is encoded beyond non-numerical visual features as early as ~135 ms after stimulus onset and remains represented during a sustained processing period.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Using multidimensional scaling (MDS), we found that representational geometry changes across regions. Early visual areas showed a linear structure, whereas parietal regions showed a curved geometry consistent with numerosity-tuned neural responses, consistent with @jacobmpaul.bsky.social et al.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Surface-based searchlight RSA revealed that numerosity-related information is widely distributed across cortex. Remarkably, its spatial organization closely matches the numerotopic maps previously reported by Harvey & @sergedumoulin.net .
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
RSA showed that numerosity is represented alongside visual features throughout the dorsal stream and becomes amplified from V7 to IPS. In the ventral stream, numerosity representations extend up to mid occipito-temporal cortex.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
To dissociate numerosity from correlated visual properties, we modeled the independent contributions of numerical and non-numerical features using semipartial correlation RSA.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Thirty adults underwent both fMRI and MEG while attending to dot numerosities. They maintained the number in memory and occasionally compared the current display with the previous one when the fixation cross changed color.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
How is numerosity represented in the brain, and how does its representational geometry change across regions (fMRI) and over time (MEG)? To address this question, we used a stimulus set inspired by Castaldi et al., designed to dissociate number from visual features.
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Missed my talk at #MCLS2026? Here's a brief thread on our work combining fMRI, MEG, and representational similarity analysis (RSA) to investigate how numerosity (the number of items in a set) is represented across space and time in the human brain. @mcls-official.bsky.social
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Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی @alirezakr.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Back in Italy after two years for my talk at @mcls-official.bsky.social , “How Our Brain Sees Number.” The first day was already inspiring, with fascinating talks by David Burr, @gvallortigara.bsky.social , and Marco Zorzi.
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Reposted by Alireza Karami | علیرضا کرمی
Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com · 09/06/2026
A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science
dlvr.it
A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science
Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 09 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02492-7Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve transparency, reproducibility and ethical accountability of large-language-model-based research in the behavioural sciences.
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