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Adam Steel

@neurosteel.bsky.social
542 followers 588 following 39 posts

Neuroscience. Memory, perception, action. Assistant professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign the-steel-lab.github.io @dartmouth + @Vassar + @UniofOxford alum. Views are mine. RTs, Likes, and flws ≠ endorsement

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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Amazing work - fascinating demonstration of experience dependence in the visual system!
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
New paper in eNeuro led by a fabulous undergraduate team in my lab in col. with Ed Silson! Navigation requires linking what you see with your memory. We asked how the functional organization of superior parietal cortex link scene perception with spatial memory. www.eneuro.org/content/13/9...
eneuro.org
Scene Perception–Memory Pairing Extends to the Superior Parietal Cortex
Visual scene analysis relies on a set of scene-selective regions in the posterior cerebral cortex (OPA, PPA, MPA), with a paired memory-responsive counterpart located in the anterior (LPMA, VPMA) or o...
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
since I'm getting many pokes about grad school applications, I wanted to re-up some previous public advice on grad school applications. looking back at it a year on, I still think all this is right, but let me update the 'research statement' part to include a bit on genAI:
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Out today with @pangeli95.bsky.social (co-lead) & @carolinerobertson.bsky.social ! The brain integrates internal thoughts with sensory information. Yet the networks serving functions are viewed as independent. How does the brain integrate across these systems? elifesciences.org/articles/110...
elifesciences.org
Retinotopic coding organizes the interaction between internally and externally oriented brain networks
Internally and externally oriented brain networks are functionally coupled at a voxel scale through a common visuospatial code.
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Charlotte Walker @charlottewalker.bsky.social · 28/10/2023
Someone sent me this meme about peer reviewer comments and it is 👌🏻 #PhDSky #AcademicSky
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Marco Barilari @marcobarilari.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
New preprint from the CPPlab - our first 7T MRI study How does sound reach the occipital cortex in early blind people? Using 7T VASO layer-fMRI, here the first functional sub-mm dataset in blind people to test if auditory motion engages hMT+/V5 layers via feedforward or feedback lnk.ua/kjYccwS9Y 🧵👇
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Context Lab @contextlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
In our latest study, led by @paxt0n4.bsky.social, we build a geometric framework to ask how our memories change with the passage of time ⏰ Title: Delayed recountings preserve but simplify the semantic geometry of earlier recountings Preprint: osf.io/mhxtd_v1 Code/data: github.com/ContextLab/m... 🧵
osf.io
OSF
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Dr. Jessie Stern @jessastern.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Please share widely: We're hiring!📣 The Departments of Psychological Science and Neuroscience at @pomonacollege.bsky.social are seeking candidates for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Psychological Science and Neuroscience. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32248
academicjobsonline.org
Pomona College, Psychology
Job #AJO32248, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science & Neuroscience, Psychology, Pomona College, Claremont, California, US
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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
How do we prevent memories from competing to guide attention? More distinct hippocampal representations for competing memories are linked to precise preparatory coding in visual cortex & more accurate eye movements to target locations. Thrilled to share this work by the incomparable Serra Favila!
nature.com
Hippocampal mechanisms underlying the resolution of competition in memory and perception - Nature Communications
Memory and perception both require selecting behaviorally relevant information. Here, the authors show that more distinct hippocampal memories are linked to precise anticipatory signals in visual cort...
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
An amazing opporunity!
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Caterina Gratton @caterinagratton.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
🚨Job Search announcement 🚨 @psychillinois.bsky.social is searching for an assistant prof in cognitive neuroscience. Come join us! Pls RT 🙏 Full ad: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #neuroimaging
illinois.csod.com
Assistant Professor- Psychology - College of LAS
Duties & Responsibilities
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Peter Angeli @pangeli95.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
New paper out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social with @neurosteel.bsky.social and @carolinerobertson.bsky.social! We use 7T data from the NSD to characterize a bivalent (positive and negative) retinotopic code in the hippocampus that patterns hippocampal activity even during rest. tinyurl.com/3pm43w6s
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 17/07/2026
Editor in Chief of Science: AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive.
doi.org
AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive
There’s a saying in the management world, popularized by NASA administrator Daniel Goldin in the 1990s, that the goal of technological improvements is to make products faster, better, and cheaper. Alt...
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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
PSA for trainees cold emailing with interest in joining a lab: Be careful about your use of LLMs in writing these emails!! It is now *extremely* common to get emails with a bizarrely-detailed, clearly-LLM take on a paper finding or with specific phrases pulled from the lab website. Don’t do this!
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Susan Wardle @susanwardle.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Now out in #JNeurosci -- we found changes in medial parietal cortex after manual exploration of everyday real-world objects doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... with Beth Rispoli, Vinai Roopchansingh & @cibaker.bsky.social
photo of a human hand holding a tiny gold analog clock, two brain pictures showing fMRI results in medial parietal cortex on the inflated cortical surface (one brain map is thresholded, the other is not)
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Erica Busch @elbusch.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
🎉🎉🎉🎉 I'm thrilled and humbled to share some major updates! (A 🧵 but TLDR: graduated from Yale, joining Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea as an IBS Young Scientist Fellow this summer, and starting as an assistant professor in Vanderbilt's College of Connected Computing in Fall 2027!)
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Taraz Lee @tarazlee.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Super excited by this manuscript led by the amazing @brissend.bsky.social By combining fMRI, TMS, and modeling, we finally have causal evidence that the cerebellum is contributing to brain-wide working memory representations and recall performance! 1/n
Plot showing that the read-out of visual working memory information from cerebellum is degraded following stimulation to cerebellum, IPS, or FEF
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Zejin Lu @zejinlu.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Our new paper on brain networks engaged during imagining is out now in Neuron! Here is a download link (free for 50 days): authors.elsevier.com/c/1msNE3BtfH... Congratulations to Nate Anderson for leading this work @rementurus.bsky.social 🧵
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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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Lauren DiNicola @laurendinicola.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
** Recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher! ** We are seeking a postdoc to help examine how brain networks might change within individuals across transitional times, such as adolescence & pregnancy! Please share widely and apply at the link! #NeuroJobs uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UVAJobs/job/...
uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Research Associate in Psychology
The Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate position to work in the DiNicola Lab. The DiNicola lab uses a precision neuroscien...
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Courtney Weiss Smith @cweiss-smith.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
7year old this morning: Mama can I look up where brain rot came from? Me: Oh, sure—I think it’s an internet thing but look it up… 7: It says here it’s from some author, Henry David Thoreau?! Me: ?!?!?! Dying laughing—but the OED also cites Walden for the first usage of the word…
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Russell Epstein @russellepstein.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social shows different neural systems for integrating views into places--PPA integrates views *of* a location (e.g., views of a landmark), while RSC integrates views *from* a location (e.g., views of a panorama). Work by the bluesky-less Linfeng Tony Han.
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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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Jonathan Phillips @jsphillips.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
🚨Super excited that Dartmouth's Society of Fellows is hiring a postdoc with the Program in Cognitive Science 🚨 Specialization in computational and empirical approaches to artificial and natural intelligence, including perception, representation, and complex planning: apply.interfolio.com/176946
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Erica Busch @elbusch.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
To add further enticement to the coolness of VR and laser scanning microscopy -- Manuel is among the coolest scientists I know & a PhD working with him would be the coolest 😎
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Chris Baldassano @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Columbia Psych is hiring *two* junior faculty in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience this year! If you work on cognition (broadly defined), submit your application materials as soon as possible (review starts Nov 1). If you have questions you can reach out to me by email! apply.interfolio.com/175428
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Trapped O'Brien, Please Free Me From This Prison @radobrien.myatproto.social · 28/09/2025
ok this breakdown of AI writing indicators is incredible. Huge shout-out to the Wikipedia community for this
en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing - Wikipedia
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David V. Smith @dvsmith.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
New work led by @mattmattoni.bsky.social “Overall, results suggest that BOLD activation to reward tasks, and likely other fMRI tasks, is more appropriate for within-person study than between-person study, highlighting a need for intensive longitudinal neuroimaging designs.”
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Rich Holman @richholman.com · 12/09/2025
Every computer needs a "cleaning keyboard" mode where the keys would be inactive while you wipe them down

why not just clean it while the computer is shut down?

while the computer is what now
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Hunter Schone @hunterschone.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Now out in @natneuro.nature.com What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed? Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7 🧵1/18
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Erica Busch @elbusch.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! Come learn about a project combining many of my favorite interests - naturalistic neuroimaging, development, & manifold learning (of course). Catch me at poster C181 on Fri - “Intrinsic dimensionality of brain activity manifolds across tasks and development”
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Caterina Gratton @caterinagratton.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
The lateral prefrontal cortex 🧠— which we think of as critical for goal driven behavior + is a target for psychiatric treatments— is fundamentally different in individuals relative to the group averages we’ve often studied. 👇see preprint and thread, led by Zach Ladwig #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
Image of brain networks in a group average and individual LPFC. Individuals show:
1) smaller FP network
2) more interdigitation
3) conserved motifs
4) idiosyncratic features
This was validated with task and rest fMRI
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Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
🚨 New Preprint 🚨 Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects By Cyr et al. *** Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES? A: Yes! 🧵:
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Jason Climer @jrclimer.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
I’m excited to share my final co-first author paper from my postdoc in Dan Dombeck's lab! We explored how behavior, senses, and neurons influence how much information in the brain changes over time. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #science #research #neuroscience #hippocampus #placecells
nature.com
Hippocampal representations drift in stable multisensory environments - Nature
Tracking of individual place cells in mouse CA1 shows that representational drift is not influenced by changes in environment or behaviour, and is lower for more excitable place cells.
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Stories of WiN @storiesofwin.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
New profile! Dr. Sarah Heilbronner (@srheilbronner.bsky.social‬) uses cutting-edge neuroanatomical and neuroimaging techniques to decipher the wiring diagram of the primate brain. Follow the link below to learn more! www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202... #StoriesOfWiN #WomenInNeuroscience
storiesofwin.org
Dr. Sarah Heilbronner — Stories of WiN
uses cutting-edge neuroanatomical and neuroimaging techniques to decipher the wiring diagram of the primate brain
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Iris Groen @irisgroen.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
In these tumultuous times, still happy to report a scientific achievement: our preprint on affordance perception was just published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Using behavior, fMRI and deep network analyses, we report two key findings. To recapitulate (preprint 🧵lost on other place):
pnas.org
Representation of locomotive action affordances in human behavior, brains, and deep neural networks | PNAS
To decide how to move around the world, we must determine which locomotive actions (e.g., walking, swimming, or climbing) are afforded by the immed...
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Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
🚨Paper alert!🚨 TL;DR first: We used a pre-trained deep neural network to model fMRI data and to generate images predicted to elicit a large response for each many different parts of the brain. We aggregate these into an awesome interactive brain viewer: piecesofmind.psyc.unr.edu/activation_m...
piecesofmind.psyc.unr.edu
Cortex Feature Visualization
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Department of Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneuroucl.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
🎺 #BrainMeeting 🧠 Alert! This Friday, June 13th, the brain meeting speaker will be Adam Steel with a talk entitled “Mechanisms underlying perceptual and mnemonic interaction in the brain” This will be an online only meeting. All are welcome. Details here: www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/event/mechan...
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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
When you successfully anticipate future events, what happens to your ability to encode the present? 🤔 Successful prediction increases the likelihood of successful encoding. We speculate about how switching between distinct encoding & prediction states can produce this effect. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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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.
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Dr. David Miller 🏳️‍🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
🚨 Practical URGENT tip for NSF grantees: Out of an abundance of caution, I would right now go into Research.gov and… 1. Download your NSF award letters. 2. Print PDF your annual reports. 3. Screenshot the status table for annual reports. NSF is planning maintenance tomorrow to Research.gov
Due to maintenance, Research.gov (including access to NSF-PAR, GRFP, PES, and ETAP) will be unavailable from Fri., 4/25 at 10:00 PM ET to Sat., 4/26 at 1:00 PM ET. NSF apologizes for any inconvenience.
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
I'm very excited to speak at UBC next Thursday!
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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Likely hiring one postbac trainee for @fmri-today.bsky.social's Section on Functional Imaging Methods. Give the relatively later start time for the search, I'm not yet sure how quickly this search will happen. If you are interested, apply and reach out ASAP. fim.nimh.nih.gov
fim.nimh.nih.gov
Section on Functional Imaging Methods
This is the webpage for the Section on Functional Imaging Methods at the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Kate Jeffery @katejj.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
OK here it is, the moment you have all been waiting for! Our advert for 5 posts here at Glasgow: Cognitive neuroscience/psychology. Closing date May 12 - please spread the word www.nature.com/naturecareer...
nature.com
Professor, Senior Lecturer/Lecturer and Lecturer posts - Glasgow City (GB) job with University of Glasgow | 12838283
University of Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences  School of Psychology & Neuroscience Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience/Psy...
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Nome @nome.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
I have been doing entirely too much earnest posting about deep things recently, I need to do a proper thread about hippo testicles or something just to keep myself sane. Oh by the way hippos have migratory testicles.
media.tenor.com
a statue of a hippopotamus with its mouth open and teeth showing .
Alt: A hippo being tossed a watermelon, which it crushes in its massive jaws.
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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Reflective piece by Eve Marder – "What happened to the pursuit of truth" rupress.org/jgp/article/...
rupress.org
What happened to the pursuit of truth? | Journal of General Physiology | Rockefeller University Press
The knowledge in our brains, not in our phones, is necessary for creative thinking and the pursuit of truth.
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Peter Angeli @pangeli95.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
New paper out in @pnas.org with @laurendinicola.bsky.social, Noam Saadon-Grosman, Mark Eldaief and Randy Buckner! We revisited the functional specialization of the human hippocampal long axis across two independent datasets, with some surprising results. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Adam Steel @neurosteel.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Have you wondered where scene perception and memory intersect in the brain? Do you want to localize these areas? In a preprint, @carolinerobertson.bsky.social, Deepa Prasad, Brenda Garcia, and I detail this topography and release these parcels and our localizer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Joao Barbosa @jbarbosa.org · 10/12/2024
(recycled from X) My favorite take on LLM intelligence is by Paul Cisek on the connectionists mailing list: "We are like a bunch of professional magicians (...) wondering: 'Maybe there really is magic? I think it’s not that machines have passed the Turing Test, but rather that we failed it." 🔥
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