Cameron Ellis
@camerontellis.bsky.social
Wannabe baby mind reader. Also, I'm from New Zealand.
Lab website: https://soc.stanford.edu/
Lab website: https://soc.stanford.edu/
We were impressed by Dr. Céline Spriet's fantastic work on the rate of visual processing during infancy. Understanding the speed of infant cognition needs more attention. Céline's data is compelling, and her perspective is thought-provoking! Check out her work!
November 10, 2025 at 10:01 PM
We were impressed by Dr. Céline Spriet's fantastic work on the rate of visual processing during infancy. Understanding the speed of infant cognition needs more attention. Céline's data is compelling, and her perspective is thought-provoking! Check out her work!
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Im very excited about this work out from our recent infant ssVEP study! Led by postdoc Maeve Boylan! After infants learn about objects while reading a book with a parent, their brains prioritize the processing of familiarity. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Competitive Cortical Prioritization Emerges for Trained Objects across the First Year of Life
Learning to detect and recognize a broad range of visual objects is a crucial developmental task during the first year of life. However, many of the neurophysiological changes underlying the emergence...
www.jneurosci.org
October 24, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Im very excited about this work out from our recent infant ssVEP study! Led by postdoc Maeve Boylan! After infants learn about objects while reading a book with a parent, their brains prioritize the processing of familiarity. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.
Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.
Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Here is our best thinking about how to make world models. I would apologize for it being a massive 40-page behemoth, but it's worth reading. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.09737
arxiv.org
September 15, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Here is our best thinking about how to make world models. I would apologize for it being a massive 40-page behemoth, but it's worth reading. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.09737
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
I still get chills
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
August 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM
I still get chills
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts
Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE
see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
1/11 Very excited to say that our preprint, Precision functional mapping reveals less inter-individual variability in the child vs. adult human brain, is up on biorxiv!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Precision functional mapping reveals less inter-individual variability in the child vs. adult human brain
Human brain organization shares a common underlying structure, though recent studies have shown that features of this organization also differ significantly across individual adults. Understanding the...
www.biorxiv.org
July 28, 2025 at 9:54 PM
1/11 Very excited to say that our preprint, Precision functional mapping reveals less inter-individual variability in the child vs. adult human brain, is up on biorxiv!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social is now out in Science Advances!
We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children
The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.
doi.org
July 2, 2025 at 7:38 PM
My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social is now out in Science Advances!
We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
New paper examining longitudinal #brain data over 7y & relation to #reading; implications for early intervention/policy @fitngin.bsky.social
Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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...
www.pnas.org
June 10, 2025 at 3:29 PM
New paper examining longitudinal #brain data over 7y & relation to #reading; implications for early intervention/policy @fitngin.bsky.social
Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com
May 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...
It was a pleasure to hear from @csavasegal.bsky.social about her impressive body of work. She demonstrates that movies are powerful tools to study individual differences in people's cognitive representations. Can't wait for her upcoming study on real-time manipulation of subjective interpretations!
May 19, 2025 at 4:19 PM
It was a pleasure to hear from @csavasegal.bsky.social about her impressive body of work. She demonstrates that movies are powerful tools to study individual differences in people's cognitive representations. Can't wait for her upcoming study on real-time manipulation of subjective interpretations!
Can you show movies to infants to study their visual system? Yes! Check out the paper showing how movies can be useful in awake infant fMRI. elifesciences.org/articles/92119. Summarized as a digest (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-PR), pod (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-pod), & thread (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-bsky)
Movies reveal the fine-grained organization of infant visual cortex
The visual system of infants has adult-like properties, and these properties can be revealed at an individual level by having infants watch movies during functional magnetic resonance imaging.
elifesciences.org
April 29, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Can you show movies to infants to study their visual system? Yes! Check out the paper showing how movies can be useful in awake infant fMRI. elifesciences.org/articles/92119. Summarized as a digest (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-PR), pod (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-pod), & thread (tinyurl.com/baby-fmri-bsky)
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
New preprint! Excited to share our latest work “Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry” ft. outstanding former undergraduate Chandra Fincke, @glajoie.bsky.social, @krishnaswamylab.bsky.social, and @wutsaiyale.bsky.social's Nick Turk-Browne 1/8
Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) promise to restore and enhance a wide range of human capabilities. However, a barrier to the adoption of BCIs is how long it can take users to learn to control them. W...
doi.org
April 3, 2025 at 11:04 PM
New preprint! Excited to share our latest work “Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry” ft. outstanding former undergraduate Chandra Fincke, @glajoie.bsky.social, @krishnaswamylab.bsky.social, and @wutsaiyale.bsky.social's Nick Turk-Browne 1/8
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Life update 🚨🧵 This job market season I got close, but no spaghetti 🍝, to landing an assistant professor job. I put in 52 customized applications, expending a level of effort on par w grad school qualifying exams & dissertation defense 😅. I gave it my all at campus interviews, & enjoyed meeting many
April 2, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Life update 🚨🧵 This job market season I got close, but no spaghetti 🍝, to landing an assistant professor job. I put in 52 customized applications, expending a level of effort on par w grad school qualifying exams & dissertation defense 😅. I gave it my all at campus interviews, & enjoyed meeting many
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
A brave (and patient) group of neuroscientists have figured out how to do task-based fMRI in babies and toddlers. They aim to uncover how the infant mind takes shape—and the method has already provided new insight into infantile amnesia. My latest www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne... #neuroskyence
What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind
Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape.
www.thetransmitter.org
March 20, 2025 at 6:55 PM
A brave (and patient) group of neuroscientists have figured out how to do task-based fMRI in babies and toddlers. They aim to uncover how the infant mind takes shape—and the method has already provided new insight into infantile amnesia. My latest www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne... #neuroskyence
Thrilled for @tristansyates.bsky.social that this is out. Don't miss this exciting result that, in alignment with animal findings, rules out many possible explanations for why we don't remember our infancy! Like all good science, it opens more questions: is retrieval or consolidation the culprit?
Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants
Humans lack memories for specific events from the first few years of life. We investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magne...
www.science.org
March 20, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Thrilled for @tristansyates.bsky.social that this is out. Don't miss this exciting result that, in alignment with animal findings, rules out many possible explanations for why we don't remember our infancy! Like all good science, it opens more questions: is retrieval or consolidation the culprit?
Last week we were wow'd by @jacob-prince.bsky.social who presented his incisive and compelling work on the emergence of category selectivity in computational models. Check out the paper here (www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...) and keep an eye out for this rising star!
March 18, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Last week we were wow'd by @jacob-prince.bsky.social who presented his incisive and compelling work on the emergence of category selectivity in computational models. Check out the paper here (www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...) and keep an eye out for this rising star!
Tristan is a superstar, with a "rewrite the textbooks" study out next week, plus a slew of transformative published papers. This is a tragedy, but I hope she persists. Still, this attack shakes the foundations of the US's leadership in science. Call your dean, your congressman, and your senator.
Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated.
March 11, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Tristan is a superstar, with a "rewrite the textbooks" study out next week, plus a slew of transformative published papers. This is a tragedy, but I hope she persists. Still, this attack shakes the foundations of the US's leadership in science. Call your dean, your congressman, and your senator.
We were delighted to host Kathy Garcia recently for her talk on how brains and computational models represent social dynamics. She leverages incredible data, cool methods, and exciting questions to tackle big topics in social cognition. Check out her work: garciakathy.github.io
Kathy Garcia
garciakathy.github.io
March 10, 2025 at 9:26 PM
We were delighted to host Kathy Garcia recently for her talk on how brains and computational models represent social dynamics. She leverages incredible data, cool methods, and exciting questions to tackle big topics in social cognition. Check out her work: garciakathy.github.io
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Our memories are not encoded with timestamps. How do we reconstruct the passage of time from our memories? In a new paper (accepted at Psych Science) @samiyousif.bsky.social and I demonstrate a powerful illusion of time that results from repeated experience osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
March 3, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Our memories are not encoded with timestamps. How do we reconstruct the passage of time from our memories? In a new paper (accepted at Psych Science) @samiyousif.bsky.social and I demonstrate a powerful illusion of time that results from repeated experience osf.io/preprints/ps...
A few weeks back, we had the pleasure of hosting Lindsey Mooney, who spoke to us about her thrilling past and present work on infant/toddler memory. We were most excited to hear about her follow-up to her already brilliant 2024 paper. lindseymooney.github.io/files/Memory...
lindseymooney.github.io
March 3, 2025 at 9:14 PM
A few weeks back, we had the pleasure of hosting Lindsey Mooney, who spoke to us about her thrilling past and present work on infant/toddler memory. We were most excited to hear about her follow-up to her already brilliant 2024 paper. lindseymooney.github.io/files/Memory...
Incredible work by @lillianbehm.bsky.social to corral this paper. Lots of interesting insights, but it also puts into focus some mysteries: Why are females better than males at scanning? Successful scanning does not seem to be a personality trait, so what state predicts success?
What factors impact the success of an awake infant fMRI scan? What can be done to maximize the data we collect from each infant?
In our new preprint, the Turk-Browne Lab and Saxe Lab combine our data from over 750 attempted scans to try to answer these questions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
In our new preprint, the Turk-Browne Lab and Saxe Lab combine our data from over 750 attempted scans to try to answer these questions:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Data retention in awake infant fMRI: Lessons from more than 750 scanning sessions
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signific...
www.biorxiv.org
February 27, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Incredible work by @lillianbehm.bsky.social to corral this paper. Lots of interesting insights, but it also puts into focus some mysteries: Why are females better than males at scanning? Successful scanning does not seem to be a personality trait, so what state predicts success?
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Interested in understanding what brain activity during movies means from the perspective of the viewer? Then you absolutely need check out this amazing study by @ravenwallace.bsky.social from THinC Lab out now in @elife.bsky.social
A thread 🧵
elifesciences.org/articles/97731
A thread 🧵
elifesciences.org/articles/97731
Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching
Decoding brain activity using a novel paradigm unveils distinct neural signatures of subjective experiences during movie-watching.
elifesciences.org
January 24, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Interested in understanding what brain activity during movies means from the perspective of the viewer? Then you absolutely need check out this amazing study by @ravenwallace.bsky.social from THinC Lab out now in @elife.bsky.social
A thread 🧵
elifesciences.org/articles/97731
A thread 🧵
elifesciences.org/articles/97731
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
So excited to receive the Troland Award!! Huge congrats to the other winner—Nick Turk-Browne! And TY, as always, to my mentors&nominators, to my amazing labbies past&present, and to all the wonderful and supportive colleagues in our broader scientific community. <3 www.nasonline.org/award/trolan...
Troland Research Award – NAS
Two Troland Research Awards of $75,000 are given annually to recognize unusual achievement by early-career researchers (preferably 45 years of age or younger) and to further empirical research within ...
www.nasonline.org
January 23, 2025 at 5:50 PM
So excited to receive the Troland Award!! Huge congrats to the other winner—Nick Turk-Browne! And TY, as always, to my mentors&nominators, to my amazing labbies past&present, and to all the wonderful and supportive colleagues in our broader scientific community. <3 www.nasonline.org/award/trolan...
Emily presented this to our lab last year and we had a lot of fun chatting about it. Really great to see this out.
Excited to share my first first-author paper out now in PNAS! By comparing retinotopically-defined visual areas in macaques and humans, we found that evolutionary expansion is reflected in the size, not number, of visual areas. #neuroskyence #neuroscience
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
January 14, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Emily presented this to our lab last year and we had a lot of fun chatting about it. Really great to see this out.
Reposted by Cameron Ellis
Eleanor Maguire, who died 4 January at age 54, pioneered the famous London taxi-driver study and naturalistic approaches for studying spatial and episodic memory in people.
By @callimcflurry.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/memory/remem...
By @callimcflurry.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/memory/remem...
Remembering Eleanor Maguire, ‘trailblazer’ of human memory
Maguire, mastermind of the famous London taxi-driver study, broadened the field and championed the importance of spatial representations in memory.
www.thetransmitter.org
January 10, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Eleanor Maguire, who died 4 January at age 54, pioneered the famous London taxi-driver study and naturalistic approaches for studying spatial and episodic memory in people.
By @callimcflurry.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/memory/remem...
By @callimcflurry.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/memory/remem...