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RT Pramod

@rtpramod.bsky.social
181 followers 282 following 15 posts

Postdoc at MIT. Cognitive Neuroscience.

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Cory Shain @coryshain.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Now out in @natcomms.nature.com w/ @evfedorenko.bsky.social: across many people (>1k) and tasks (>300), the the brain's language network reliably shows up in the functional connectome (correlated activity in fMRI). 1/
Screen capture of abstract of published article.

Title: A language network in the individualized functional connectomes of 1199 human brains doing arbitrary tasks

Abstract: A century and a half of neuroscience has yielded many divergent theories of the neurobiology of language. Two factors that likely contribute to this situation include (a) conceptual disagreement about language and its component processes, and (b) intrinsic inter-individual variability in the topography of language areas. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of small numbers of intensively scanned individuals have argued that a language-selective brain network emerges bottom-up from correlations (individualized functional connectomics, iFC) in task-free (e.g., rest) or task-regressed activation timecourses. Here we tested this hypothesis at scale and evaluated its practical utility for task-agnostic language localization: we apply iFC separately to each of 1,957 (fMRI) scanning sessions (1...
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Rui Xu @rui-xu.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
New preprint as my first post! "Monosynaptic connections link functionally similar regions in human cortex." We use electrical stimulation + fMRI in epilepsy patients to map whole-brain monosynaptic connectivity at 42 cortical sites. doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
woah look at this amazing line-up of speakers (and also Tomer Ullman), talking about Intuitive Physical Reasoning at #vss2026 tomorrow! I'd be there if I could, and I can, so I will. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* @nancykanwisher.bsky.social @rtpramod.bsky.social @shariliu.bsky.social SP Arun Kelsey Allen
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
At @vssmtg.bsky.social on Friday 8-10am, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and I are organizing a symposium on 'Intuitive Physical reasoning in brains, minds, and machines'. Speakers include @tomerullman.bsky.social, @shariliu.bsky.social, @sparuniisc.bsky.social, Kelsey Allen, and me! See you there!!
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SP Arun @sparuniisc.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Preprint alert! We've done the first ever brain recording simultaneously from IT & PMv in two monkeys interacting socially in natural setting! Dynamic tracking of social variables in simultaneous brain recordings of socially interacting monkeys www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · 22/01/2026
I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.
youtube.com
Part 1: How do LLMs work?
YouTube video by Andrew Perfors
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Colton Casto @coltoncasto.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
The cerebellum supports high-level language?? Now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, we systematically examined language-responsive areas of the cerebellum using precision fMRI and identified a *cerebellar satellite* of the neocortical language network! authors.elsevier.com/a/1mUU83BtfH... 1/n 🧵👇
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Colton Casto @coltoncasto.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
What does it mean to understand language? We argue that the brain’s core language system is limited, and that *deeply* understanding language requires EXPORTING info to other brain regions. w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757 1/n🧵👇
arxiv.org
What does it mean to understand language?
Language understanding entails not just extracting the surface-level meaning of the linguistic input, but constructing rich mental models of the situation it describes. Here we propose that because pr...
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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
𝗔 𝗡𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗫 By Mars and Passingham "Understanding anthropoid foraging challenges may thus contribute to our understanding of human cognition" Going to the top of the reading list! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... #neuroskyence
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Setayesh Radkani @setayeshradkani.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
🚨Out in PNAS🚨 with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire. Our computational cognitive model explains why! Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7 News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu 🧵
tinyurl.com
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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Vivian Paulun @vivianpaulun.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Super excited to share our new article: “Dissociable cortical regions represent things and stuff in the human brain” with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social and @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social Video abstract: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0XR... Paper: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lWxv3QW8S...
youtube.com
Things and Stuff: How the brain distinguishes oozing fluids from solid objects
YouTube video by McGovern Institute
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Hope Kean @hopekean.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵 New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social 1/8
tinyurl.com
Evidence from Formal Logical Reasoning Reveals that the Language of Thought is not Natural Language
Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans al...
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Haoliang Wang @wanghaoliang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Can you tell if a tower will fall or if two objects will collide — just by looking? 🧠👀 Come check out my #CogSci2025‪ poster (P1-W-207) on July 31, 13:00–14:15 PT to learn how people do general-purpose physical reasoning from visual input!
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Good question! We haven't tested these cases you've mentioned but Jason Fischer's 2016 paper found that PN doesn't respond strongly to social prediction (on hieder and simmel-like displays)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
We have started to look in the cerebellum. It is still early days so keep an eye out for updates in the future!
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)
science.org
Decoding predicted future states from the brain’s “physics engine”
Using fMRI in humans, this study provides evidence for future state prediction in brain regions involved in physical reasoning.
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Thanks to my co-authors and all the people who gave constructive feedback over the course of this project! Special shout out to Kris Brewer for shooting the videos used in Experiment 1 and @georginawooxy.bsky.social for her deep neural network expertise. (12/12)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Our findings show that PN has abstract object contact information and provide the strongest evidence yet that PN is engaged in predicting what will happen next. These results open many new avenues of investigation into how we understand, predict, and plan in the physical world (11/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Our main results are i) not present in the ventral temporal cortex, ii) not present in the primary visual cortex -- i.e, our stimuli were unlikely to have low-level visual confounds and iii) are replicable with different analysis criteria & methods. See paper for details. (10/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Short answer: Yes! Using MVPA we found that the PN has information about predicted contact events (i.e., collisions). This was true not only within a scenario (the ‘roll’ scene above), but also generalized across scenarios indicating the abstractness of representation. (9/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
That is, (8/n) When we see this: Does the PN predict this?
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
In our second pre-registered fMRI experiment, we tested the central tenet of the ‘physics engine’ hypothesis – that the PN runs forward simulations to predict what will happen next. If true, PN should contain information about predicted future states before they occur. (7/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Given their importance for prediction, we hypothesized that the PN would encode object contact. In our first pre-registered fMRI experiment, we used multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) and found that only PN carried scenario-invariant information about object contact. (6/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
If a container moves, then so does its containee, but the same is not true of an object that is merely occluded by the container without contacting it! (5/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
However, there was no evidence for such predicted future state information in the PN. We realized that object-object contact is an excellent way to test the Physics Engine hypothesis. When two objects are in contact, their fate is intertwined: (4/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
These results have led to the hypothesis that the Physics Network (PN) is our brain’s ‘Physics Engine’ – a generative model of the physical world (like those used in video games) capable of running simulations to predict what will happen next. (3/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
How do we understand, plan and predict in the physical world? Prior research has implicated fronto-parietal regions of the human brain (the ‘Physics Network’, PN) in physical judgement tasks, including in carrying representations of object mass & physical stability. (2/n)
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RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10.... (1/n)
science.org
Decoding predicted future states from the brain’s “physics engine”
Using fMRI in humans, this study provides evidence for future state prediction in brain regions involved in physical reasoning.
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Heather L Kosakowski @kosakowski.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
When you see this image, does it make you wonder what that baby is thinking. Do you think the baby is merely perceiving a set of shapes or do you think that the baby is also inferring meaning from the face they are looking at? (1/5)
Video of a baby on its parent's chest looking at the parent's face and smiling.
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ammar i marvi @aimarvi.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
**ecstatic** to share our @iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to neural networks, with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and meenakshi khosla (openreview.net/forum?id=IqH...) 1/n
openreview.net
Sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to...
The ventral, dorsal, and lateral streams in high-level human visual cortex are implicated in distinct functional processes. Yet, deep neural networks (DNNs) trained on a single task model the...
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SP Arun @sparuniisc.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
In a study now out in @eLife, @GeorginJacob @PramodRT9 and I have some exciting results: a novel computation that helps the brain solve disparate visual tasks, a novel brain region that performs this computation....what's not to like?! Read on.... 1/n elifesciences.org/articles/93033
elifesciences.org
Visual homogeneity computations in the brain enable solving property-based visual tasks
Seemingly disparate property-based tasks (oddball search, same-different and symmetry) are solved by computing a novel image property, visual homogeneity, which is localized to the object selective co...
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Academics - where are academic jobs posted for non-UK non-North American countries? If you were looking for jobs in, say, the Nordic countries, or Australia, where do you look? Asking for all the PhDs who are on the market this year. (Pls no April fools jokes, their nerves are frayed as it is)
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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
I’m hiring a full-time lab tech for two years starting May/June. Strong coding skills required, ML a plus. Our research on the human brain uses fMRI, ANNs, intracranial recording, and behavior. A great stepping stone to grad school. Apply here: careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl... ......
careers.peopleclick.com
Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab
MIT - Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab - Cambridge MA 02139
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Anna (Anya) Ivanova @neuranna.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
My commentary on the do's and don'ts of cognitive evaluations in LLMs is now out in Nature Human Behavior: doi.org/10.1038/s415... posting here with a figure that didn't make it into the final draft and is now instead a boring table :P #CogSci #LLMs #AI
(same content as the table in the paper)
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Stephanie Rossit @stephanierossit.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Come and work with us and do a PhD with on a very exciting project #neurojobs
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Stephanie Rossit @stephanierossit.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
My email is now closed until 2025. It’s been a tremendous year and I really could not wish for more. I got more this year than I ever dreamed off. Great collaborations (Sight team & @rtpramod.bsky.social & @nancykanwisher.bsky.social), students and researchers, cool papers, new data & funding.
media.tenor.com
a man in a sweater is dancing in front of a door with a christmas wreath .
ALT: a man in a sweater is dancing in front of a door with a christmas wreath .
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Hope Kean @hopekean.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
New paper with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, @rtpramod.bsky.social, @jessica__chomik, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @evfedorenko.bsky.social on the representations that underlie our intuitive physical reasoning about the world. Thread 🧵about our new preprint 📄✨linked here: tinyurl.com/intphyslang 1/10
tinyurl.com
Intuitive physical reasoning is not mediated by linguistic nor exclusively domain-general abstract representations
The ability to reason about the physical world is a critical tool in the human cognitive toolbox, but the nature of the representations that mediate physical reasoning remains debated. Here, we use fM...
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