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Dongyan Lin

@dongyanl1n.bsky.social
2.4K followers 285 following 38 posts

Postdoc at Meta FAIR, Comp Neuro PhD @McGill / Mila. Looking at the representation in brains and machines 🔬 dongyanl1n.github.io

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Reposted by Dongyan Lin
Jordan Lei @jordanlei.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Our paper is out in Nature Communications! In our messy, noisy world, do you find planning difficult/less worthwhile? It's not just you. As we increased the stochasticity in a planning environment, we found that people spent less effort planning: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #cogsci #planning
nature.com
Environmental stochasticity reduces human planning effort - Nature Communications
The real world is stochastic, making it difficult to know when planning is worthwhile. Here the authors show that as stochasticity increases, people spend less effort planning and adopt simpler, less ...
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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference is starting soon! And we're back in NYC, celebrating 10-ish years of conferencing. Let us know your reflections on CCN's past for our special Back2NY event And remember to share the work your presenting and learning about with the #CCN2026 hashtag
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Anna (Anya) Ivanova @neuranna.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Excited to participate in a GAC discussion at #CCN2026 on Aug 4th! Is NeuroAI on the right track? What are the most glaring issues? Comment below and help us prepare for our panel discussion! sites.google.com/ccneuro.org/...
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Heading to #ICML2026! Let's chat autonomous AI, RL, CogSci & neuro. 🧠 Our team (DevAI) is looking for an intern starting ~Oct/Nov in NYC (speech/multimodal, meta-learning) to build AI that mirrors human learning trajectories! Find me at the Meta booth or apply: www.metacareers.com/profile/job_...
metacareers.com
Research Scientist Intern, FAIR - Language & Multimodal Foundations (PhD)
Meta is seeking Research Interns to join Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) Multimodal Foundations teams. These teams are committed to advancing the field o...
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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Help us craft some productive conversation for the Generative Adversarial Collaboration we are hosting at @cogcompneuro.bsky.social in New York this year!
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
(1/n) Thrilled to share my first paper at Meta FAIR! "EgoBabyVLM: Benchmarking Cross-Modal Learning from Naturalistic Egocentric Video Data" 👶 Human infants learn language from sparse, noisy multimodal input. Today's VLMs can't. We built a benchmark + challenge to close that gap. 🧵
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Check out our new work: how do humans and LLMs explore causal structures differently?
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Mandana Samiei @mandanas.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
We recently investigated how humans and AI reason through causal rules: arxiv.org/abs/2606.06464 Accepted at #CogSci2026. We gave adults and LLMs agency to actively experiment using a Blicket causal game, breaking down their process into the iterative loop shown in the following figure:
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
The community feedback period for GAC workshops at CCN has now started - let us know what you think!
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Naomi Saphra @nsaphra.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Goodfire released a megapost of all the random feature geometry stuff they're finding, and it's worth a read
goodfire.ai
The World Inside Neural Networks
How neural geometry will unlock understanding and control of AI
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allen institute @alleninstitute.org · 01/04/2026
The Orange Cat Brain Atlas is here. 🧠🐈 Today, we published the first comprehensive cellular map of the orange cat brain. The new atlas reveals a single, specialized neuron responsible for behaviors like staring at walls, knocking objects off tables, and the 3am "zoomies."
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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Use this picture of the iconic Washington Square Park in the summer to motivate you to get to CCN at NYU.
fountain at washington square park with the arch in the background
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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Where are you on your abstract submission timeline? Slowly and steadily preparing your two-pager, or prepping to be up late on the 2nd like me 😅?
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
New position paper from Emmanuel Dupoux, Yann LeCun, Jitendra Malik: arxiv.org/pdf/2603.15381 CogSci insights, especially from evolution and early development, can be critical for a new AI paradigm that focuses on learning autonomously from a stream of interactive, multimodal data.
arxiv.org
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Renato Duarte @rcfduarte.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I tracked every keyword in 22 years of Cosyne abstracts to map how computational neuroscience evolved — from Bayesian brains to neural manifolds to LLMs — and where it's heading next.
open.substack.com
22 years of Brain Science: what CoSyNe tells us about the evolution of Neuroscience
Tracking the intellectual DNA of Computational and Systems Neuroscience through its flagship meeting
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willydorrell.bsky.social @willydorrell.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Cosyne Viewing Parties Visas, costs, care responsibilities, and environmental concerns all limit Cosyne attendance. Luckily, the talks are livestreamed; but watching alone is the high road to an aneurism. Hence: viewing parties! Gather regionally to watch Cosyne talks! More info: shorturl.at/3DHZX.
shorturl.at
Will's Wild Website
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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
In this piece for @thetransmitter.bsky.social, I argue that ecological neuroscience should leverage generative video and interactive models to simulate the world from animals' perspectives. The technological building blocks are almost here - we just need to align them for this application. 🧠🤖
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CogCompNeuro @cogcompneuro.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
We are excited to announce that the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting (CCN 2026) will be held at New York University from August 3–6, 2026. 2026.ccneuro.org
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 25/10/2025
Great piece by @natolambert.bsky.social on the current state of human exhaustion in the AI world. Makes this important point:
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Anthony GX-Chen @agx-chen.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
This work has been accepted to #COLM2025. If you are in Montreal this week for COLM and would like to chat about this (or anything related to discovery / exploration / RL), drop me a note! Poster session 2: Tuesday Oct 7, 4:30-6:30pm Poster number 68
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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Nice write-up on the top-performing models of Algonauts 2025 competition by @humanscotti.bsky.social paulscotti.substack.com/p/insights-f... None of the teams trained the models from scratch, mainly relied on pre-trained foundation models, and ensembling seemed to be the key ingredient. 🧠🤖
paulscotti.substack.com
Insights from the Algonauts 2025 Winners
What did we learn from a contest to predict fMRI brain activity to movie viewing?
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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Levine's take on the success of LLMs compared to video models is interesting, but I'll expand on how efforts toward AI could take two different paths, and why I think AI and NeuroAI could take different approaches moving forward. 🧵 🧠🤖 #MLSky
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Alona Fyshe @alonaf.bsky.social on the BabyLM Challenge, a competition that trains language models (LMs) on smaller datasets, more akin to how a baby learns, in search of solutions to some of the major challenges of today’s LLMs. #NeuroAI #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/the-...
thetransmitter.org
Can babies inspire more efficient learning algorithms?
A competition that trains language models on smaller datasets, more akin to how a baby learns, seeks solutions to some of LLM’s major challenges.
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
New work: AI agents learn from adult data, inheriting our biases when making decisions. What if we trained them to think like kids, who rigorously explore and make causal inferences?
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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Fascinating preprint from with our "blicket detector" paradigm from Chen et al at NYU& Mila. LLM's make the same causal inference mistakes that adults make but 4 year olds don't! Of course, models are trained on adult data, kids figure it out for themselves. im-ant.github.io/publications...
im-ant.github.io
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Hafez Ghaemi @hafezghm.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Preprint Alert 🚀 Can we simultaneously learn transformation-invariant and transformation-equivariant representations with self-supervised learning? TL;DR Yes! This is possible via simple predictive learning & architectural inductive biases – without extra loss terms and predictors! 🧵 (1/10)
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Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo @imbizo.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Want to spend 3 weeks in South Africa for an unforgettable summer school experience? Imbizo 2026 (imbizo.africa) student applications are OPEN! Lectures, new friends, and Noordhoek beach await. Apply by July 1! More info and apply: imbizo.africa/apply/ #Imbizo2026 #CompNeuro
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kyunghyuncho.bsky.social @kyunghyuncho.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
on my way back to NYC, i met wise Leon Bottou in the airport. we talked. then i told him "you should tweet that!" and, he delivered much more than a tweet: a blog post with thoughts and insights on AI research only he can deliver this clearly and succinctly. leon.bottou.org/news/two_les...
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Ilenna Jones @ilennaj.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
It feels so good to see Imbizo students doing great things! @imbizo.bsky.social #imbizo
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Mashbayar Tugsbayar @tmshbr.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Top-down feedback is ubiquitous in the brain and computationally distinct, but rarely modeled in deep neural networks. What happens when a DNN has biologically-inspired top-down feedback? 🧠📈 Our new paper explores this: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
elifesciences.org
Top-down feedback matters: Functional impact of brainlike connectivity motifs on audiovisual integration
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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
To my Canadian colleagues: you should know that a key component of what the US is doing right now involves purging scientists & research programs for ideological impurity & (illegally) reclaiming their funds. If you don’t want a repeat of what happened down south here in Canada, PP is not your guy
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Jon Brudvig @jonbrudvig.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Francis Crick called it “impossible” in 1979. Now it’s real. A 1 mm cube of mouse brain, 200k cells, 500M synapses, all mapped alongside neuronal activity. This new MICrONS dataset maps brain structure and function in a way that we've never seen🧪 🔗 www.microns-explorer.org 📄 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Pablo Samuel Castro @pcastr.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Can LLMs be used to discover interpretable models of human and animal behavior?🤔 Turns out: yes! Thrilled to share our latest preprint where we used FunSearch to automatically discover symbolic cognitive models of behavior. 1/12
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Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo @imbizo.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
🎉 Exciting day at #Imbizo2025! Dr. Dan Wetmore & Dr. Garrick Orchard from Meta’s Reality Labs shared their industrial insights on designing top-notch AI/ML experiments, including innovative BCI applications 🤖💡 Students showcased creative solutions for EMG, sleep, wind, epilepsy monitoring & more! 🌟
Dr. Dan Wetmore giving a lecture Students at Imbizo working hard on their presentationStudent presentation on designing ML solutions to understand cardiac rhythms Student presentation on designing ML solutions to sleep paralysis
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Christmas Eve, 1968: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close, with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
Photo of the planet Earth taken from Apollo 8 during the lunar sunrise. You can see the Moon and its grey, pockmarked surface curving in the foreground and a portion of the planet Earth emerging from the darkness of space in the background like a distant, precious blue and white gem.
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Jonathan Cornford @repromancer.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Delighted to be in Leeds joining the School of Computing! Fantastic first impressions — like a "less offensive London" (youtu.be/watch?v=_6_VVLgrgFI). Stay tuned for a PhD position starting next October. Meanwhile, drop me a message with your CV and research interests—I'd love to hear from you!
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Neuroscience is starting to grow past relying on single neuron selectivity to understand computations, now that we have more data and better analyses. This could have interesting implications for mechanistic interpretability in AI models as well!
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Guillaume Lajoie @glajoie.bsky.social · 16/10/2024
How continuous neural activity learns and support discrete, symbolic & compositional processes remains an important question for cog. sci. and AI. In this preprint we explore ways in which both symbolic and sub-symbolic processing could be achieved using attractor dynamics. arxiv.org/abs/2310.01807
arxiv.org
Discrete, compositional, and symbolic representations through attractor dynamics
Symbolic systems are powerful frameworks for modeling cognitive processes as they encapsulate the rules and relationships fundamental to many aspects of human reasoning and behavior. Central to these ...
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Olivier Codol @oliviercodol.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
The latest MotorNet release (v0.2.0) is live! This includes big changes, first and foremost, a COMPLETE SWAP from TensorFlow to PyTorch. As usual, you can install it via a pip command. motornet.org
motornet.org
MotorNet 0.2.0 documentationContentsMenuExpandLight modeDark modeAuto light/dark mode
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
Our new work “Temporal encoding in deep reinforcement learning agents” is now published! We zoomed in on the representation of time in brains and machines, and asked how it linked to behavior. w/ Ann Zixiang Huang, @tyrellturing.bsky.social nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵(0/10)
nature.com
Temporal encoding in deep reinforcement learning agents - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Temporal encoding in deep reinforcement learning agents
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Dongyan Lin @dongyanl1n.bsky.social · 25/11/2023
Check out our new work!
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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
In our lab's Journal Clubs, we decided to assign one of the trainees to create a very short summary for each paper we read, using a template (background / methods / key findings / implications). #AcademicSky #Neuroskyence (1/n)
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 22/09/2023
Very pleased to say that two of our recent preprints have been accepted at #NeurIPS2024! 🎉 1) ConSpec: honing in on critical steps for rapid learning and generalization in RL arxiv.org/abs/2210.05845 2) Learning better with Dale’s Law: A Spectral Perspective www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 22/09/2023
Why is there no #neuroAI feed yet? 🤔 ❤️ if you would follow 🔁 if you would follow twice
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