Ev Fedorenko
@evfedorenko.bsky.social
I study language using tools from cognitive science and neuroscience. I also like snuggles.
I may be a *little* biased but this 📘 is GREAT! If you ever found language structure interesting, but were turned off by implausible and overly complicated accounts, this book is 4U: a simple and empirically grounded account of the syntax of natural lgs. A must-read for lang researchers+aficionados!
New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
tedlab.mit.edu
December 24, 2025 at 8:42 PM
I may be a *little* biased but this 📘 is GREAT! If you ever found language structure interesting, but were turned off by implausible and overly complicated accounts, this book is 4U: a simple and empirically grounded account of the syntax of natural lgs. A must-read for lang researchers+aficionados!
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
tedlab.mit.edu
December 24, 2025 at 7:55 PM
New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science or neuroscience? Starting a substack (infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/why-isnt-m...) by writing down my thoughts on that question: as part of a first series of posts giving my current thoughts on the relation between these fields. 1/3
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science?
First post in a series on cognitive science and AI
infinitefaculty.substack.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science or neuroscience? Starting a substack (infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/why-isnt-m...) by writing down my thoughts on that question: as part of a first series of posts giving my current thoughts on the relation between these fields. 1/3
Go @tamaregev! Tamar systematically characterized prosody-processing🧠areas using precision fMRI.
The overlap between the prosody and language areas connects beautifully with her computational findings of high mutual information between words and prosodic features! Such a cool research program. :)
The overlap between the prosody and language areas connects beautifully with her computational findings of high mutual information between words and prosodic features! Such a cool research program. :)
New preprint on prosody in the brain!
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
A distinct set of brain areas process prosody--the melody of speech
Human speech carries information beyond the words themselves: pitch, loudness, duration, and pauses--jointly referred to as 'prosody'--emphasize critical words, help group words into phrases, and conv...
tinyurl.com
December 16, 2025 at 2:41 AM
Go @tamaregev! Tamar systematically characterized prosody-processing🧠areas using precision fMRI.
The overlap between the prosody and language areas connects beautifully with her computational findings of high mutual information between words and prosodic features! Such a cool research program. :)
The overlap between the prosody and language areas connects beautifully with her computational findings of high mutual information between words and prosodic features! Such a cool research program. :)
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
New preprint on prosody in the brain!
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
A distinct set of brain areas process prosody--the melody of speech
Human speech carries information beyond the words themselves: pitch, loudness, duration, and pauses--jointly referred to as 'prosody'--emphasize critical words, help group words into phrases, and conv...
tinyurl.com
December 15, 2025 at 7:28 PM
New preprint on prosody in the brain!
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social
Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Hopkins Cog Sci is hiring! We have two open faculty positions: one in vision, and one language. Please repost!
December 12, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Hopkins Cog Sci is hiring! We have two open faculty positions: one in vision, and one language. Please repost!
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Yup I realized that when one of his New Yorker articles discussed his great idea that the brain might have a special region for face recognition, all presented as his idea long after this had been widely published.
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
www.newyorker.com
December 12, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Yup I realized that when one of his New Yorker articles discussed his great idea that the brain might have a special region for face recognition, all presented as his idea long after this had been widely published.
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
www.newyorker.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
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...
December 11, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
How does cortisol tune brain networks to form strong emotional memories? Excited to share new work led by amazing former RA Flory Huang w collabs Rajita Sinha and @toddc.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Dynamic brain mechanisms supporting salient memories under cortisol
The stress-related hormone cortisol alters dynamic brain networks predicting memory and arousal to promote emotional memories.
www.science.org
December 11, 2025 at 4:42 PM
How does cortisol tune brain networks to form strong emotional memories? Excited to share new work led by amazing former RA Flory Huang w collabs Rajita Sinha and @toddc.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
@neuranna.bsky.social and
@evfedorenko.bsky.social tackle with neuroimaging a phenomenon identified in the 1970s by the pioneering work of the great Molly Potter: conceptual information processing common to pictorial and verbal input. Thrilled to have played a small part in this exciting work.
@evfedorenko.bsky.social tackle with neuroimaging a phenomenon identified in the 1970s by the pioneering work of the great Molly Potter: conceptual information processing common to pictorial and verbal input. Thrilled to have played a small part in this exciting work.
The last chapter of my PhD (expanded) is finally out as a preprint!
“Semantic reasoning takes place largely outside the language network” 🧠🧐
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
What is semantic reasoning? Read on! 🧵👇
“Semantic reasoning takes place largely outside the language network” 🧠🧐
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
What is semantic reasoning? Read on! 🧵👇
Semantic reasoning takes place largely outside the language network
The brain's language network is often implicated in the representation and manipulation of abstract semantic knowledge. However, this view is inconsistent with a large body of evidence suggesting that...
www.biorxiv.org
December 11, 2025 at 7:18 PM
@neuranna.bsky.social and
@evfedorenko.bsky.social tackle with neuroimaging a phenomenon identified in the 1970s by the pioneering work of the great Molly Potter: conceptual information processing common to pictorial and verbal input. Thrilled to have played a small part in this exciting work.
@evfedorenko.bsky.social tackle with neuroimaging a phenomenon identified in the 1970s by the pioneering work of the great Molly Potter: conceptual information processing common to pictorial and verbal input. Thrilled to have played a small part in this exciting work.
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
If you are an MRI researcher interested in moving to 🇨🇦 for $500k a year or $1M a year for 8 years with a possibility of renewal at a reduced rate, take a look at our equipment cfmm.uwo.ca and this program www.canada.ca/en/impact-pl... . MSK, neuroscience, cardiac, cancer applications all encouraged!
Canada Impact+ Research Chairs - Canada.ca
www.canada.ca
December 9, 2025 at 8:56 PM
If you are an MRI researcher interested in moving to 🇨🇦 for $500k a year or $1M a year for 8 years with a possibility of renewal at a reduced rate, take a look at our equipment cfmm.uwo.ca and this program www.canada.ca/en/impact-pl... . MSK, neuroscience, cardiac, cancer applications all encouraged!
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Great work led by Daria & Greta showing that diverse agreement types draw on shared units (even across languages)!
How do LLMs process syntax? Do different syntactic phenomena recruit the same model units, or do they recruit distinct model components? And do different languages rely on similar units to process the same syntactic phenomenon?
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Different types of syntactic agreement recruit the same units within large language models
Large language models (LLMs) can reliably distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sentences, but how grammatical knowledge is represented within the models remains an open question. We investigate ...
arxiv.org
December 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Great work led by Daria & Greta showing that diverse agreement types draw on shared units (even across languages)!
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
How do LLMs process syntax? Do different syntactic phenomena recruit the same model units, or do they recruit distinct model components? And do different languages rely on similar units to process the same syntactic phenomenon?
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Different types of syntactic agreement recruit the same units within large language models
Large language models (LLMs) can reliably distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sentences, but how grammatical knowledge is represented within the models remains an open question. We investigate ...
arxiv.org
December 9, 2025 at 6:54 PM
How do LLMs process syntax? Do different syntactic phenomena recruit the same model units, or do they recruit distinct model components? And do different languages rely on similar units to process the same syntactic phenomenon?
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Check out our new preprint (to appear at ACL 2026)!
shorturl.at/QWU81
Now out in @pnas.org: a tour de force co-led by Sammy Floyd and Olessia Jouravlev (also with @moshepoliak.bsky.social, Zach Mineroff and Ted Gibson): 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
December 9, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Now out in @pnas.org: a tour de force co-led by Sammy Floyd and Olessia Jouravlev (also with @moshepoliak.bsky.social, Zach Mineroff and Ted Gibson): www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Led by amazing MIT undergraduate
Daria Kryvosheieva and in collaboration with @andreadevarda.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social ! 💫
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03676
Code: github.com/dariakryvosh...
Daria Kryvosheieva and in collaboration with @andreadevarda.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social ! 💫
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03676
Code: github.com/dariakryvosh...
Different types of syntactic agreement recruit the same units within large language models
Large language models (LLMs) can reliably distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sentences, but how grammatical knowledge is represented within the models remains an open question. We investigate ...
arxiv.org
December 9, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Led by amazing MIT undergraduate
Daria Kryvosheieva and in collaboration with @andreadevarda.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social ! 💫
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03676
Code: github.com/dariakryvosh...
Daria Kryvosheieva and in collaboration with @andreadevarda.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social ! 💫
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03676
Code: github.com/dariakryvosh...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Thrilled to be among this fantastic cohort of AI2050 Fellows. This is a great recognition of the transformative potential of #NeuroAI and our lab’s work in this space 🧪🧠🤖. Many thanks to @schmidtsciences.bsky.social for the support!
We're excited to welcome 28 new AI2050 Fellows! This 4th cohort of researchers are pursuing projects that include building AI scientists, designing trustworthy models, and improving biological and medical research, among other areas.
Schmidt Sciences awards $18M to researchers working to ensure AI benefits society - Schmidt Sciences
Media Contact: Carlie Wiener; cwiener@schmidtsciences.org NEW YORK—Schmidt Sciences announced today that 28 scholars studying how to fulfill AI’s potential to dramatically benefit…
www.schmidtsciences.org
November 6, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Thrilled to be among this fantastic cohort of AI2050 Fellows. This is a great recognition of the transformative potential of #NeuroAI and our lab’s work in this space 🧪🧠🤖. Many thanks to @schmidtsciences.bsky.social for the support!
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Lindsay Lab - Postdoc Position
Artificial neural networks applied to psychology, neuroscience, and climate change
lindsay-lab.github.io
December 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
New preprint w/ @evfedorenko.bsky.social, @neuranna.bsky.social , Chandler Cheung, Matthew Siegelman, Alvincé Pongos, @hopekean.bsky.social , Alyx Tanner
December 8, 2025 at 7:36 PM
New preprint w/ @evfedorenko.bsky.social, @neuranna.bsky.social , Chandler Cheung, Matthew Siegelman, Alvincé Pongos, @hopekean.bsky.social , Alyx Tanner
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
fun pre-print for your start of week reading:
"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"
(by Hu, Sosa, and me)
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"
(by Hu, Sosa, and me)
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
December 8, 2025 at 2:18 PM
fun pre-print for your start of week reading:
"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"
(by Hu, Sosa, and me)
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"
(by Hu, Sosa, and me)
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
One week left to apply to the EPFL computer science PhD program www.epfl.ch/education/ph.... It's an amazing environment to do impactful research 🧪 (with unparalleled compute)! My NeuroAI group is hiring 🧠🤖. Consider this review service by our fantastic PhD students: www.linkedin.com/posts/spnesh...
December 8, 2025 at 2:20 PM
One week left to apply to the EPFL computer science PhD program www.epfl.ch/education/ph.... It's an amazing environment to do impactful research 🧪 (with unparalleled compute)! My NeuroAI group is hiring 🧠🤖. Consider this review service by our fantastic PhD students: www.linkedin.com/posts/spnesh...
Thanks @quantamagazine.bsky.social for covering our group’s work!❤️
In brain scans of around 1,400 people, the cognitive scientist Ev Fedorenko has identified a sort of digestive system for language. Fedorenko spoke with Quanta about the system’s workings and how they might be compared to an LLM or the digestive system. www.quantamagazine.org/the-polyglot...
The Polyglot Neuroscientist Resolving How the Brain Parses Language | Quanta Magazine
Is language core to thought, or a separate process? For 15 years, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko has gathered evidence of a language network in the human brain — and has found some similarities to LL...
www.quantamagazine.org
December 5, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Thanks @quantamagazine.bsky.social for covering our group’s work!❤️
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
🚨Job Alert plz RT!
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
December 2, 2025 at 2:54 AM
🚨Job Alert plz RT!
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
Imagine a brain decoding algorithm that could generalize across different subjects and tasks. Today, we’re one step closer to achieving that vision.
Introducing the flagship paper of our brain decoding program: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroAI #compneuro @utoronto.ca @uhn.ca
Introducing the flagship paper of our brain decoding program: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroAI #compneuro @utoronto.ca @uhn.ca
October 7, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Imagine a brain decoding algorithm that could generalize across different subjects and tasks. Today, we’re one step closer to achieving that vision.
Introducing the flagship paper of our brain decoding program: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroAI #compneuro @utoronto.ca @uhn.ca
Introducing the flagship paper of our brain decoding program: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroAI #compneuro @utoronto.ca @uhn.ca
Reposted by Ev Fedorenko
🚨I am looking for a POSTDOC, LAB MANAGER/TECH and GRAD STUDENTS to join my new lab in beautiful Madison, WI.
We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu
#VisionScience #NeuroSkyence
We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu
#VisionScience #NeuroSkyence
November 17, 2025 at 9:43 PM
🚨I am looking for a POSTDOC, LAB MANAGER/TECH and GRAD STUDENTS to join my new lab in beautiful Madison, WI.
We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu
#VisionScience #NeuroSkyence
We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu
#VisionScience #NeuroSkyence