Yining Ding
@liliand.bsky.social
Psych PhD student in Dynamic Cognition Lab @WUSTL🧠
Reposted by Yining Ding
What makes some melodies feel "right" and others totally "off"? We have an intuitive affinity for some musical scales over others, like Bobby McFerrin shows here (youtu.be/ne6tB2KiZuk?...). Check out @omriraccah.bsky.social's paper - a clever collision of psychology and music - to learn more.
November 13, 2025 at 7:36 PM
What makes some melodies feel "right" and others totally "off"? We have an intuitive affinity for some musical scales over others, like Bobby McFerrin shows here (youtu.be/ne6tB2KiZuk?...). Check out @omriraccah.bsky.social's paper - a clever collision of psychology and music - to learn more.
Reposted by Yining Ding
Excited to share that our new paper, “Predictive Looking and Predictive Looking Errors in Everyday Activities,” is now out in JEP: General! 🧠
We examined how people’s eye movements reveal both their predictions and their prediction errors while they watch everyday actions.
👇
We examined how people’s eye movements reveal both their predictions and their prediction errors while they watch everyday actions.
👇
November 12, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Excited to share that our new paper, “Predictive Looking and Predictive Looking Errors in Everyday Activities,” is now out in JEP: General! 🧠
We examined how people’s eye movements reveal both their predictions and their prediction errors while they watch everyday actions.
👇
We examined how people’s eye movements reveal both their predictions and their prediction errors while they watch everyday actions.
👇
Reposted by Yining Ding
Here's an interesting new study exploring whether LLMs are able to understand the narrative sequencing of comics and... even the best AI models are *terrible* at it for pretty much all tasks that were analyzed aclanthology.org/2025.finding...
Beyond Single Frames: Can LMMs Comprehend Implicit Narratives in Comic Strip?
Xiaochen Wang, Heming Xia, Jialin Song, Longyu Guan, Qingxiu Dong, Rui Li, Yixin Yang, Yifan Pu, Weiyao Luo, Yiru Wang, Xiangdi Meng, Wenjie Li, Zhifang Sui. Findings of the Association for Computatio...
aclanthology.org
November 4, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Here's an interesting new study exploring whether LLMs are able to understand the narrative sequencing of comics and... even the best AI models are *terrible* at it for pretty much all tasks that were analyzed aclanthology.org/2025.finding...
Reposted by Yining Ding
Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language.
tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬
1/n
tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬
1/n
November 3, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language.
tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬
1/n
tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬
1/n
Reposted by Yining Ding
I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting.
A neural state space for episodic memories
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
A neural state space for episodic memories
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
A neural state space for episodic memories
Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 3, 2025 at 12:56 PM
I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting.
A neural state space for episodic memories
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
A neural state space for episodic memories
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
Reposted by Yining Ding
Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7
Unfolding event structure distorts subjective time
Our experience of time is often distorted in striking ways. Although prior work has shown that boundaries between events can shape temporal perception…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7
Reposted by Yining Ding
We’ve recently updated our collaborative open-access book, “Neural Networks in Cognitive Science”, adding a few new authors, chapters, and lots of content.
downloads.jeffyoshimi.net/NeuralNetwor...
downloads.jeffyoshimi.net/NeuralNetwor...
October 21, 2025 at 8:44 PM
We’ve recently updated our collaborative open-access book, “Neural Networks in Cognitive Science”, adding a few new authors, chapters, and lots of content.
downloads.jeffyoshimi.net/NeuralNetwor...
downloads.jeffyoshimi.net/NeuralNetwor...
Reposted by Yining Ding
✨My first first-author paper is out✨
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation
Nature Communications - Eye movements during scene viewing are tied to grid-like codes in the entorhinal cortex. Grid signals are specific to later remembered scenes, covary with activity in...
rdcu.be
October 20, 2025 at 4:42 PM
✨My first first-author paper is out✨
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Reposted by Yining Ding
Want to make publication-ready figures come straight from Python without having to do any manual editing? Are you fed up with axes labels being unreadable during your presentations? Follow this short tutorial including code examples! 👇🧵
October 16, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Want to make publication-ready figures come straight from Python without having to do any manual editing? Are you fed up with axes labels being unreadable during your presentations? Follow this short tutorial including code examples! 👇🧵
✨✨
New eLife preprint from Tan Nguyen—Pattern-based functional MRI and computational modeling show evidence for multiple signals contributing to updating the brain's representations of events: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Multiple event segmentation mechanisms in the human brain
elifesciences.org
September 30, 2025 at 11:31 PM
✨✨
Reposted by Yining Ding
The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.
New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky
nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky
nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
Temporal dedifferentiation of neural states with age during naturalistic viewing - Communications Biology
Movie fMRI data reveals age-related lengthening of neural states in visual and prefrontal regions, reflecting reduced temporal differentiation while preserved alignment with perceived events suggests stable coarse event segmentation.
www.nature.com
September 30, 2025 at 4:03 PM
The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.
New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky
nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky
nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
Reposted by Yining Ding
New paper alert! Work by @cogirmak.bsky.social explores the motion events in 300+ comics from around the world, revealing subtle underlying features of different types of motion cues: "Whoosh! visual depictions of direction, speed, and temporality" www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
September 19, 2025 at 1:34 PM
New paper alert! Work by @cogirmak.bsky.social explores the motion events in 300+ comics from around the world, revealing subtle underlying features of different types of motion cues: "Whoosh! visual depictions of direction, speed, and temporality" www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
Reposted by Yining Ding
How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Spontaneous reinstatement of episodic memories in the developing human brain
The hippocampus supports episodic memories in development, and yet how the brain stabilizes these memories determines their long-term accessibility. This study examined how episodic memories formed in...
www.biorxiv.org
September 16, 2025 at 12:19 PM
How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Yining Ding
New blog post!
Ever wonder what geom_histogram is actually doing? How about geom_boxplot?
In celebration of the release of #ggplot2 4.0.0 (ggplot8?), I explore the relationships between the “geoms” and “stats” offered by the core {ggplot2} functions.
#rstats
Ever wonder what geom_histogram is actually doing? How about geom_boxplot?
In celebration of the release of #ggplot2 4.0.0 (ggplot8?), I explore the relationships between the “geoms” and “stats” offered by the core {ggplot2} functions.
#rstats
Exploring {ggplot2}’s Geoms and Stats – Stat’s What It’s All About
blog.msbstats.info
September 15, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Yining Ding
How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬?
We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!
Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇
We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!
Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇
A neural network with episodic memory learns causal relationships between narrative events
Humans reflect on past memories to make sense of an ongoing event. Past work has shown that people retrieve causally related past events during comprehension, but the exact process by which this causa...
www.biorxiv.org
September 5, 2025 at 12:26 PM
How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬?
We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!
Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇
We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!
Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇
Reposted by Yining Ding
ANSWER: 0 (yes, ZERO!)
This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313).
What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think.
(🧵 1/5)
This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313).
What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think.
(🧵 1/5)
Imagine you have Big 5 personality scores from over 300,000 people. You designate the scores in the "mean +/- 0.25 SDs" range for each trait (~20%) as the average range.
QUESTION: How many people in this >300K sample do you think fall in the average range for ALL 5 TRAITS?
What's your answer?
QUESTION: How many people in this >300K sample do you think fall in the average range for ALL 5 TRAITS?
What's your answer?
September 7, 2025 at 3:03 PM
ANSWER: 0 (yes, ZERO!)
This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313).
What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think.
(🧵 1/5)
This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313).
What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think.
(🧵 1/5)
Reposted by Yining Ding
Now on CRAN, ggdiagram is a #ggplot2 extension that draws diagrams programmatically in #Rstats. Allows for precise control in how objects, labels, and equations are placed in relation to each other.
wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
August 20, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Now on CRAN, ggdiagram is a #ggplot2 extension that draws diagrams programmatically in #Rstats. Allows for precise control in how objects, labels, and equations are placed in relation to each other.
wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
Reposted by Yining Ding
🚪🧠 Ever wondered if walking through doors really changes your memory? At #ESCOP25 today I’m at Board 19 showing how spatiotemporal boundaries impact recall in VR. Although time matters, it’s more to do with using it effectively!
September 3, 2025 at 6:50 AM
🚪🧠 Ever wondered if walking through doors really changes your memory? At #ESCOP25 today I’m at Board 19 showing how spatiotemporal boundaries impact recall in VR. Although time matters, it’s more to do with using it effectively!
Reposted by Yining Ding
How do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience?
Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.
Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!
Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.
Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!
Repeated Viewing of a Narrative Movie Changes Event Timescales in The Brain
Many experiences occur repeatedly throughout our lives: we might watch the same movie more than once and listen to the same song on repeat. How does the brain modify its representations of events when...
www.biorxiv.org
September 2, 2025 at 1:37 PM
How do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience?
Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.
Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!
Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.
Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!
Reposted by Yining Ding
Need to control visual similarity in your experiments? A new open database by Robbins and colleagues @michaelhout.bsky.social @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, published in #psynomBRM, maps similarity among 1,200 objects in 20 categories using MDS—validated & ready to use.
Resources for Research
This section provides brief summaries of selected resources for research that have been published in journals of the Psychonomic Society, typically Behavior Research Methods. These resources consis…
wp.me
August 28, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Need to control visual similarity in your experiments? A new open database by Robbins and colleagues @michaelhout.bsky.social @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, published in #psynomBRM, maps similarity among 1,200 objects in 20 categories using MDS—validated & ready to use.
Reposted by Yining Ding
We make predictions based on general knowledge and/or specific memories. Different brain areas are active when these distinct predictions are violated – and hippocampus selectively responds to prediction errors based on episodic memory.
Cool work by @chrismbird.bsky.social @ayab.bsky.social et al!
Cool work by @chrismbird.bsky.social @ayab.bsky.social et al!
Hippocampal mismatch signals are based on episodic memories and not schematic knowledge | PNAS
Prediction errors drive learning by signaling mismatches between expectations and
reality, but the neural systems supporting these computations rem...
www.pnas.org
August 25, 2025 at 1:41 PM
We make predictions based on general knowledge and/or specific memories. Different brain areas are active when these distinct predictions are violated – and hippocampus selectively responds to prediction errors based on episodic memory.
Cool work by @chrismbird.bsky.social @ayab.bsky.social et al!
Cool work by @chrismbird.bsky.social @ayab.bsky.social et al!
Reposted by Yining Ding
Our new paper using transformers to understanding scene semantics has finally dropped in Open Mind. Fully open access. #cognition #percepton (If you follow me for music you can ignore this one.) direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
DeepMeaning: Estimating and Interpreting Scene Meaning for Attention Using a Vision-Language Transformer
Abstract. Humans rapidly process and understand real-world scenes with ease. Our stored semantic knowledge gained from experience is thought to be central to this ability by organizing perceptual info...
direct.mit.edu
August 25, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Our new paper using transformers to understanding scene semantics has finally dropped in Open Mind. Fully open access. #cognition #percepton (If you follow me for music you can ignore this one.) direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Reposted by Yining Ding
Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory!
We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9
We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9
Neural and behavioral reinstatement jointly reflect retrieval of narrative events - Nature Communications
When people recall a movie, their eye movements and brain activity resemble those observed during the viewing. These behavioral and neural reactivations are linked through a common process, likely ref...
doi.org
August 25, 2025 at 9:41 AM
Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory!
We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9
We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
🧵1/9
Reposted by Yining Ding
New preprint! 🧠
Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10).
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10).
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Ongoing thoughts at rest reflect functional brain organization and behavior
Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC)-brain connectivity observed when people rest with no external tasks-predicts individual differences in behavior. Yet, rest is not idle; it involves streams...
www.biorxiv.org
August 20, 2025 at 1:53 PM
New preprint! 🧠
Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10).
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10).
doi.org/10.1101/2025...