Sign in

Leyla Isik

@lisik.bsky.social
2.2K followers 449 following 47 posts

Associate Prof of Cog Sci at JHU studying vision and social cognition: isiklab.org Co-EiC Minds, Machines & Brains: direct.mit.edu/mmb she/her

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Rhodri Cusack @rhodricusack.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
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
16651
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
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:
34023
Reposted by Leyla Isik
kriegeskorte.bsky.social @kriegeskorte.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
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.
cnclgithub.github.io
Yale AI Workshop · Toward AI with Human-Level Efficiency
092
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
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...
direct.mit.edu
Editorial Information | Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press
Editorial Information | Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press Editorial Information All inquiries should be directed to mindsmachinesandbrains@gmail.com Co-Editors in Chief Leyla Isik ...
05013
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Looking forward to #CCN2026 - check out the presentations from our lab!
0164
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) @mmb-journal.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
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
direct.mit.edu
Minds, Machines, and Brains | MIT Press
223793
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Yingtian (David) Tang @davidtyt.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
🚨 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)
13010
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
📢 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/...
hiring.jhu.edu
Research Assistant (KSAS - Cognitive Science) | Johns Hopkins University
We are seeking a Research Assistant who will work jointly in the Isik and Bedny labs on projects involving neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG), behavioral testing, and computational approaches. The position is p...
0119
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Heading to #vss2026? Check out the presentations from our lab @vssmtg.bsky.social
14210
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kamila Maria Jozwik @kamilajozwik.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
postdoc and PhD positions in visual cognitive computational neuroscience in my lab at the University of Cambridge kamilajozwik.com/join_lab.html
kamilajozwik.com
Kamila Jozwik - Join lab
12712
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
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
22213
Reposted by Leyla Isik
SP Arun @sparuniisc.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
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
11017
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Anna (Anya) Ivanova @neuranna.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
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...
forms.gle
02321
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
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 👇
biorxiv.org
0336
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Manasi Malik @manasimalik.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
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...
15217
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
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.
15041
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kelsey Han @chihyehan.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
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...
cell.com
High-dimensional structure underlying individual differences in naturalistic visual experience
Han and Bonner reveal that individual visual experience arises from high-dimensional neural geometry distributed across multiple representational scales. By characterizing the full dimensional spectru...
26016
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Mick Bonner @mickbonner.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Hopkins Cog Sci is hiring! We have two open faculty positions: one in vision, and one language. Please repost!
03134
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Mick Bonner @mickbonner.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
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...
722165
Reposted by Leyla Isik
tyler bonnen @tylerbonnen.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
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 😊
a red building on UPENN's campus photographed during the fallthe Philadelphia skyline, with clear skies and autumn trees
2522745
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Shari Liu @shariliu.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
New perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
How physical information is used to make sense of the psychological world - Nature Reviews Psychology
Reasoning about minds and reasoning about physical objects are governed by two distinct systems. In this Perspective, Liu et al. review research from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscienc...
15925
Reposted by Leyla Isik
JHU Cognitive Science @jhucogsci.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
✨🔦✨ 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...
cogsci.jhu.edu
Student Spotlight: Yash Mehta on Summer Opportunities | Cognitive Science
Cognitive Science PhD student Yash Mehta had quite a busy summer. Yash, a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience & Deep Learning Group here at JHU, led by Professor Mick Bonner, spent the summer far fro...
041
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Wenshuo Qin @qinwenshuo.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
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
arxiv.org
Simple 3D Pose Features Support Human and Machine Social Scene Understanding
Humans can quickly and effortlessly extract a variety of information about others' social interactions from visual input, ranging from visuospatial cues like whether two people are facing each other t...
1203
Reposted by Leyla Isik
racheldenison.bsky.social @racheldenison.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
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
02612
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Dr Anna Leshinskaya @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
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.
relcoglab.org
Relational Cognition Lab
13127
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Jennifer Hu @jennhu.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
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 👇
02815
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
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...
View from your office onto Giessen and surrounding villages.
18098
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
@jhucogsci.bsky.social is now on bluesky 🦋 Give us a follow and check out the info about our PhD program
081
Reposted by Leyla Isik
JHU Cognitive Science @jhucogsci.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
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
Call for applications to cognitive science PhD program with QR code to the link above
0129
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
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
0141
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kathy Garcia @gkathy.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
🚨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
1215
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
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%...
33814
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
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.
912474
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Heather L Kosakowski @kosakowski.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
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/
14227
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
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 👇
060
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kempner Institute at Harvard University @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
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
0103
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Ella Striem-Amit @striemamit.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
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... )
pnas.org
Action-type mapping principles extend beyond evolutionarily conserved actions, even in people born without hands | PNAS
How are actions represented in the motor system? Although the sensorimotor system is broadly organized somatotopically, higher-level sensorimotor a...
12714
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
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
0612
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
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
1323
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Abdul-Rahim Deeb @ardeeb.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
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
1167
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
If you're heading to @cogscisociety.bsky.social check out the presentations from our lab And congratulations again to @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social on her Glushko dissertation prize 🥳
1343
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Kiley Hamlin @jkileyhamlin.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
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
rdcu.be
Human newborns spontaneously attend to prosocial interactions
Nature Communications - Abilities to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial actions are crucial for sustaining cooperative systems. Here, the authors show that human newborns with just 5 days...
25122
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
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....
royalsocietypublishing.org
Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little is known about the developmental and evolutionary roots ...
25818
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
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
By Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender
May 22, 2025
Updated 2:17 p.m. ET
The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation's oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration's efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president's agenda.
361471355
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
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
35214
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
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 👇
1193
Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Humans are sensitive to many different types of social interactions, but it has been difficult to isolate these differences in the human brain In this new preprint @yuanfangzhao.bsky.social w/ @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social applied data-driven methods to two fMRI video datasets to address this 1/n
1215
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Emily Finn @esfinn.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Despite everything going on, I may have funds to hire a postdoc this year 😬🤞🧑‍🔬 Open to a wide variety of possible projects in social and cognitive neuroscience. Get in touch if you are interested! Reposts appreciated.
3129102
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Denis Wirtz @deniswirtz.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
We just announced the PIVOT and BRIDGE award funds, as well as enhanced university services to help researchers at Hopkins in these difficult times. On and forward! Read about these here: research.jhu.edu/jhu-research...
05613
Reposted by Leyla Isik
Johns Hopkins Arts & Sciences @jhuartssciences.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Anytime you want an AI system to interact with humans, you want to be able to know what those humans are doing and what groups of humans are doing with each other,” says @lisik.bsky.social. “This really highlights how a lot of these models fall short on those tasks.” www.popsci.com/technology/a...
popsci.com
AI still can't beat humans at reading social cues
Despite rapid advancement, AI models still struggle at identifying how people interact with each other.
042