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Mark Lescroart

@neuromdl.bsky.social
279 followers 310 following 176 posts

Computational cognitive neuroscientist at University of Nevada, Reno. Uses fMRI to study visual representations of objects, scenes, and bodies, and how attention affects them. Dad. Nerd since before it was cool. Likes pretty science pictures & puns. He/him

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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
This framing is correct and important to get right to have sensible conversations about AI.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Studying research ethics in my Experimental Psych class. Practice quiz question today, apropos of nothing:
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Finally got around to trying demo - this is really badass. Great work!
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Dr Anna Leshinskaya @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I am recruiting graduate students for UCI's PhD in Cognitive Sciences - www.cogsci.uci.edu/graduate/pro... The lab's focus is on how relational structure and combinatorial reasoning is implemented in human brains and large language models--and if they are similar.
cogsci.uci.edu
GRADUATE PROGRAM
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Josh de Leeuw @joshdeleeuw.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Trying out a live demo in the documentation site.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We just got a new play structure in our back yard. It’s big, with potential for injuries, so Rule #1 for kids is Don’t do dumb things. My lab is working more with AI. Same rule. My message to OpenAI (read in Dad voice): Are you breaking rule #1???
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This 👇👇👇
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altNOAA 🇺🇸 @altnoaa.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is a great thread. One tip: stop saying you "believe in" science. Science isn't the Easter Bunny. It's a process for understanding through evidence and testing. Say you "trust science". Meaning you trust the method and the evidence it produces. Let's get smarter about how we talk about science.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Tried to impress Italian girlfriend. Failed.
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Lili Loofbourow @lililoofbourow.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
hello! the day after yesterday seems like as good a time as any to introduce what I've been working on since getting laid off from the Washington Post (plus or minus a couple of decades). welcome to Some Personal News: confessions of an ex-pundit
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Read all of this. I could pull a dozen quotes, but it's all good and urgent. mathandai.org
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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jerrytang.bsky.social @jerrytang.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Our new study on cross-participant cortical mapping (with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social) is out in @imagingneurosci.bsky.social! direct.mit.edu/imag/article... 1/7
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Long standing question for me: who the hell was Jolene that Dolly Parton could not compete? Don’t really believe such a person could exist. RIP Dolly.
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Special bonus quote of the day The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Dolly Parton
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Strong disagree with the admin’s choice to hold classes tomorrow. A great many faculty (me included) live in currently mandatory wildfire evacuation zones and all k-12 schools are closed.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Counter question (maybe the same question): can you imagine ways that conspicuous consumption of cognition could become a status symbol?
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Stanislas Dehaene @standehaene.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
New paper from the lab: we use longitudinal fMRI over the first two years of school to test theories of conceptual development in the math domain. “Initial organization and progressive expansion of the math-responsive brain network during the first school years” PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
pnas.org
Initial organization and progressive expansion of the math-responsive brain network during the first school years | PNAS
The neural mechanisms by which the developing brain acquires higher mathematical concepts from elementary intuitions remain poorly understood. Thro...
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Phivos Phylactou @phivph.com · 01/07/2026
Publication alert 🚨 & mini thread 🧵: Modulating corticospinal excitability with transcranial ultrasound stimulation: meta-analytic evidence of online and offline effects With @eester.bsky.social, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, & @nkonstantinou.bsky.social 1/5 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Modulating corticospinal excitability with transcranial ultrasound stimulation: meta-analytic evidence of online and offline effects
Check access to the full text by signing in through your organization.
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Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
In-scanner thoughts contribute to resting-state functional connectivity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42365014/ I've long thought that this is the "elephant in the room" of resting state #fMRI esp. for comparing groups. If two groups think & feel differently in the scanner, of course rsfMRI will differ!
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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 04/06/2026
🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10
doi.org
The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy
Will democracy survive the internet? Do we need to choose between Facebook’s surveillance capitalism or democracy? Layered lines of evidence can inform questions like these. When considered together, the evidence gives rise to a concerning picture, as summarized in a recent report for the European Commission that I co-led.
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Michelle Greene @mgreenephd.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
🚨New dataset just dropped🚨 Introducing Places in the Wild: 67,000 RAW-format photographs (45 mpix) densely sampled from 810 places (260 basic-level categories). This is 11x the number of pixels in ImageNet! Preprint is here: arxiv.org/abs/2606.02481 1/
arxiv.org
Places in the Wild: A Large, High-Resolution RAW Photograph Dataset for Ecologically Valid Vision Research
Large image datasets have accelerated progress in cognitive neuroscience and computer vision. However, most datasets are low-resolution, internet-sourced JPEGs with unknown capture conditions and limi...
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 23/05/2026
If their goal is to choke off economic advantages from the US’s university system it’s hard to think of a more effective way. Scientists and other academics come to the US to study— then stay in the US often via green cards, to start companies, do unique work, and contribute to the US economy.
nytimes.com
Green Card Seekers Must Leave U.S. to Apply, Trump Administration Says
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
It was a banner year for UNR psych, we had eight PhDs and two masters this year! (Not pictured Dr @arnabiswas.bsky.social , who is busy post-doc-ing)
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
A big congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Yu (Joseph) Zhao. Feels great to have students graduate.
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Lisa Fazio @lkfazio.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
One year later - my reflections on what's happened to US science since the National Science Foundation grant terminations last year. The problem of misinformation isn't going away, but our ability to study and understand it is under attack. 1/ 🧪 www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...
tennessean.com
I researched misinformation, until the government stopped me | Opinion
A researcher's NSF grant termination reveals a broader attack on science funding and misinformation research, despite rising AI-generated falsehoods.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 07/05/2026
Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
insidehighered.com
“PAY OR LEAK”: Hackers Target Big Higher Ed Vendor
The criminal extortion group ShinyHunters breached Instructure last week. The hackers, who have also attacked individual universities, demanded the ed-tech giant pay up or face a data leak.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I’m in both boats, but my last download was a few weeks ago and my mechanism to turn in grades is through Canvas. This seems quite bad.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Yikes.
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Eddie Ester @eester.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Another new one from the lab in J Neurosci: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Evidence accumulation is a core principle by which brains convert information into decisions. But what happens when the evidence the brain needs can't be directly read from an external stimulus or memory? 1/N
jneurosci.org
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Very cool and inspiring! Progress toward a real application for brain decoding:
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
For example, could you start the video with a monocular animation of the same scene and fade it out as the autostereogram fades in? IDK if that would work, but there has to be something that can be done to make fusion easier...
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Awesome! I love this, I want to show it in class, but I have had a heck of a time getting naive subjects (i.e. students) to see autosterograms. Given that you seem to have lots of control here - Is there anything more to be done to help with fusion?
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Happy Critical Thinking Day to all who celebrate
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Did not have this in my radar.
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2
A line graph of the number of NSF awards in fiscal 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025. The fiscal year 2026 is well below the other curves and increasing only very slowly.
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Sean Escola @seanescola.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
We know about cosmological dark matter despite being unable to measure it because, without it, galaxies would fall apart. By analogy, let's talk about "cognitive dark matter" (CDM): brain functions that meaningfully shape behavior but are hard to infer from behavior alone. New paper! 🧵👇
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Catherine Chen @cathychen23.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Our work on bilingual language processing is now out in @pnas.org! Our fMRI study compares cortical representations btwn native and non-native languages. We find that representations are largely similar, but systematically modulated btwn languages www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Schematic of semantic tuning shifts from L2-English to L1-Chinese
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Also happy birthday =-)
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
And for 'semantic' features derived from DNNs of various flavors, the CLIP model (openai.com/index/clip/) is probably a good bet (per www.nature.com/articles/s42...)
nature.com
Better models of human high-level visual cortex emerge from natural language supervision with a large and diverse dataset - Nature Machine Intelligence
Prediction of high-level visual representations in the human brain may benefit from multimodal sources in network training and the incorporation of complex datasets. Wang and colleagues show that lang...
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
(DorsalNet: github.com/patrickminea...)
github.com
GitHub - patrickmineault/your-head-is-there-to-move-you-around: Task-driven models of the dorsal visual stream
Task-driven models of the dorsal visual stream. Contribute to patrickmineault/your-head-is-there-to-move-you-around development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Here are a couple tools for quantifying motion with python (github.com/gallantlab/p...) or matlab (github.com/gallantlab/m...) (same motion energy algorithm in both). I've found that this model predicts brain responses about as well as newer, fancier motion-quantifying DNNs e.g. DorsalNet
github.com
GitHub - gallantlab/pymoten: Motion energy features from video
Motion energy features from video. Contribute to gallantlab/pymoten development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Hey, sounds like a cool project! I have a long response, but first, check out this project: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... I don't have suggestions for automatic labeling of emotional content, but I do for other domains...
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
New work from the Gallant lab mapping representation of semantic relations (has-a, is-a, found-at, etc) across the brain - super interesting stuff! V. related to one of the first topics I studied (tried to study) in grad school! Find the paper here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
If you haven't yet changed how you teach and evaluate thanks to AI, you probably need to. This is not something that educators asked to happen, but it is worth noting what is out there - in this case an OpenClaw tool designed to cheat.
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Yes please.
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Alessandro Gifford @alessandrogifford.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
NSD-synthetic, the out-of-distribution companion dataset of NSD consisting of 7T fMRI responses to 284 artificial images, is now published. #NeuroAI #CompNeuro #neuroscience #AI doi.org/10.1038/s414...
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I finally got around to setting up a lab website! Have a look: the-steel-lab.github.io Just in time to start the new semester.
the-steel-lab.github.io
The Steel Lab | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The Steel Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigates how brain networks give rise to intelligent behavior
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Worth checking out: bsky.app/profile/alex... (see response from original author & Alex's response to that too)
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Alexander Huth @alexanderhuth.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
“Incantation” 💯
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