Melissa Franch, PhD
@mfranch.bsky.social
Postdoc in the Hayden lab at Baylor College of Medicine studying neural computations of natural language & communication in humans. Sister to someone with autism. F32 NIDCD Fellow | Autism Research Institute funded | she/her. melissafranch.com
Pinned
Melissa Franch, PhD
@mfranch.bsky.social
· Feb 27
I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
By the way, if you’re interested in working together on problems like this, I’m starting my lab at UCSF this summer. Get in touch if you’re interested in doing a postdoc! More info here: wj2.github.io/postdoc_ad (7/7)
W. Jeffrey Johnston - Postdoctoral position ad
wj2.github.io
January 9, 2026 at 7:06 PM
By the way, if you’re interested in working together on problems like this, I’m starting my lab at UCSF this summer. Get in touch if you’re interested in doing a postdoc! More info here: wj2.github.io/postdoc_ad (7/7)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
A standard response to people who say “everything is everywhere” is that we just haven’t found the right question yet. Our response is, we should care about explaining function, not finding areas, and if the functions we are interested in aren't arealized, that’s important to know.
December 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
A standard response to people who say “everything is everywhere” is that we just haven’t found the right question yet. Our response is, we should care about explaining function, not finding areas, and if the functions we are interested in aren't arealized, that’s important to know.
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization
Nature Neuroscience - Parcellation of the cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to neuroscience. Here, Hayden, Heilbronner and Yoo question the central status of brain areas...
rdcu.be
December 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
I’m thrilled to share the preprint with @sangkjyuson.bksy.social. It’s a fun example of applying dynamical systems approaches to social behavior, and the first two-author manuscript from Y-Lab.
Sangkyu has put together a well-written thread to walk you through the ideas (see below ⬇️)
Sangkyu has put together a well-written thread to walk you through the ideas (see below ⬇️)
New print 📄!
0/ I'm excited to share my preprint with @myoo.bsky.social on how #observation shapes #socialinference.
(Full paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)
🗓️ I'll also present this work at #CCN2025 on August 12, poster A26—come find me there!
0/ I'm excited to share my preprint with @myoo.bsky.social on how #observation shapes #socialinference.
(Full paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)
🗓️ I'll also present this work at #CCN2025 on August 12, poster A26—come find me there!
August 11, 2025 at 7:17 AM
I’m thrilled to share the preprint with @sangkjyuson.bksy.social. It’s a fun example of applying dynamical systems approaches to social behavior, and the first two-author manuscript from Y-Lab.
Sangkyu has put together a well-written thread to walk you through the ideas (see below ⬇️)
Sangkyu has put together a well-written thread to walk you through the ideas (see below ⬇️)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Excited to announce a new book telling the story of mathematical approaches to studying the mind, from the origins of cognitive science to modern AI! The Laws of Thought will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.
December 18, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Excited to announce a new book telling the story of mathematical approaches to studying the mind, from the origins of cognitive science to modern AI! The Laws of Thought will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
Reduced rank regression for neural communication: a tutorial for neuroscientists
Reduced rank regression (RRR) is a statistical method for finding a low-dimensional linear mapping between a set of high-dimensional inputs and outputs. In recent years, RRR has found numerous applica...
arxiv.org
December 17, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Our preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required.
It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required.
It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
FERAL: A Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping
Animal behavior unfolds continuously in time, yet quantitative analyses often require segmenting it into discrete, interpretable states. Although manual annotation can achieve this, it remains slow, s...
www.biorxiv.org
November 19, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Our preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required.
It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
Peter Skovorodnikov and I are excited to present FERAL: a new video-understanding toolkit that maps raw video directly to behavior, no pose estimation required.
It works across species, from lab to field, and even in collective systems. (🧵1/n)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
🎉 Our paper has been selected for a Neurips Spotlight:
“Scaling and Context Steer LLMs along the Same Computational Path as the Human Brain”
👥led by J Raugel, w/ S. Ascoli, Rapin & @valentinwyart.bsky.social
📄https://openreview.net/pdf?id=4YKlo58RcQ
📍 Hall C-E Poster #2006
🧵thread 👇
“Scaling and Context Steer LLMs along the Same Computational Path as the Human Brain”
👥led by J Raugel, w/ S. Ascoli, Rapin & @valentinwyart.bsky.social
📄https://openreview.net/pdf?id=4YKlo58RcQ
📍 Hall C-E Poster #2006
🧵thread 👇
December 3, 2025 at 8:37 AM
🎉 Our paper has been selected for a Neurips Spotlight:
“Scaling and Context Steer LLMs along the Same Computational Path as the Human Brain”
👥led by J Raugel, w/ S. Ascoli, Rapin & @valentinwyart.bsky.social
📄https://openreview.net/pdf?id=4YKlo58RcQ
📍 Hall C-E Poster #2006
🧵thread 👇
“Scaling and Context Steer LLMs along the Same Computational Path as the Human Brain”
👥led by J Raugel, w/ S. Ascoli, Rapin & @valentinwyart.bsky.social
📄https://openreview.net/pdf?id=4YKlo58RcQ
📍 Hall C-E Poster #2006
🧵thread 👇
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
New preprint!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
As you are silently reading this, you may experience a little voice in your head. How is it represented in the brain, and what purpose does it serve? Our new study answers the questions.
Together with @adriendoerig.bsky.social and Radek Cichy.(1/8)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
As you are silently reading this, you may experience a little voice in your head. How is it represented in the brain, and what purpose does it serve? Our new study answers the questions.
Together with @adriendoerig.bsky.social and Radek Cichy.(1/8)
Auditory representations of words during silent visual reading
Silent visual reading is accompanied by the phenomenological experience of an inner voice. However, the temporal dynamics and functional role of the underlying neural representations remain unclear. H...
www.biorxiv.org
December 15, 2025 at 3:10 PM
New preprint!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
As you are silently reading this, you may experience a little voice in your head. How is it represented in the brain, and what purpose does it serve? Our new study answers the questions.
Together with @adriendoerig.bsky.social and Radek Cichy.(1/8)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
As you are silently reading this, you may experience a little voice in your head. How is it represented in the brain, and what purpose does it serve? Our new study answers the questions.
Together with @adriendoerig.bsky.social and Radek Cichy.(1/8)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Automatic binding of basic sensory features requires consciousness https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.693567v1
December 15, 2025 at 4:15 AM
Automatic binding of basic sensory features requires consciousness https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.693567v1
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
December 12, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
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 Melissa Franch, PhD
In many brain areas, neuronal tuning is heterogeneous. But how does this diversity help behavior? We show how tuning diversity shapes representational geometry and boosts coding efficiency for perception in our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
(w/ @sueyeonchung.bsky.social&Tony Movshon)
(w/ @sueyeonchung.bsky.social&Tony Movshon)
Variations in neuronal selectivity create efficient representational geometries for perception
Our visual capabilities depend on neural response properties in visual areas of our brains. Neurons exhibit a wide variety of selective response properties, but the reasons for this diversity are unkn...
www.biorxiv.org
June 29, 2025 at 12:19 AM
In many brain areas, neuronal tuning is heterogeneous. But how does this diversity help behavior? We show how tuning diversity shapes representational geometry and boosts coding efficiency for perception in our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
(w/ @sueyeonchung.bsky.social&Tony Movshon)
(w/ @sueyeonchung.bsky.social&Tony Movshon)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.”
MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling
Next installment of American Science, Shattered:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...
MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling
Next installment of American Science, Shattered:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...
NIH shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs
Special Report: The NIH has shut out hundreds of young scientists from funding to start their own labs.
www.statnews.com
December 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.”
MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling
Next installment of American Science, Shattered:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...
MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling
Next installment of American Science, Shattered:
www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
When people, on occasion, DO careful lesions that spare white matter then tend to get VERY different results than classic lesion studies, for example, Broca's Area lesions sparing language, or this:
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Specialized Representations of Value in the Orbital and Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex: Desirability versus Availability of Outcomes
Rudebeck et al. show that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventrolateral prefrontal
cortex (VLPFC) make dissociable contributions to decision-making. The VLPFC, but not
the OFC, is critical for upda...
www.cell.com
December 4, 2025 at 8:58 PM
When people, on occasion, DO careful lesions that spare white matter then tend to get VERY different results than classic lesion studies, for example, Broca's Area lesions sparing language, or this:
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Lesions needs to be revisited because almost all lesions intrude on adjacent white matter. Lesions disrupt complex circuits, not areas. This problem was ignored until recently because it was believed, incorrectly, that white matter was largely composed of connections to adjacent gray matter.
December 4, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Lesions needs to be revisited because almost all lesions intrude on adjacent white matter. Lesions disrupt complex circuits, not areas. This problem was ignored until recently because it was believed, incorrectly, that white matter was largely composed of connections to adjacent gray matter.
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Both localized and distributed views on the functional organization of the brain have been put forward. In this Perspective, Rosen and Freedman examine the degree to which these two views account for ...
www.nature.com
December 4, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀?
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: NeuroPhilo Salon. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: NeuroPhilo Salon. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.
umd.zoom.us
November 29, 2025 at 5:14 PM
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀?
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
This is a really nice neural model for the Minimalist Program's central claim that the core language system (compositional syntax-semantics) provides instructions to distinct cognitive systems, and that these systems have their own unique 'interface conditions' for readouts.
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🧵👇
w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757
1/n🧵👇
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...
arxiv.org
November 26, 2025 at 7:16 PM
This is a really nice neural model for the Minimalist Program's central claim that the core language system (compositional syntax-semantics) provides instructions to distinct cognitive systems, and that these systems have their own unique 'interface conditions' for readouts.
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Y’all are reading this paper in the wrong way.
We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:
This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA
It’s quite the opposite!
(thread)
We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:
This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA
It’s quite the opposite!
(thread)
“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”
Neural dynamics outside task-coding dimensions drive decision trajectories through transient amplification
Most behaviors involve neural dynamics in high-dimensional activity spaces. A common approach is to extract dimensions that capture task-related variability, such as those separating stimuli or choice...
www.biorxiv.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Y’all are reading this paper in the wrong way.
We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:
This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA
It’s quite the opposite!
(thread)
We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:
This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA
It’s quite the opposite!
(thread)
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Research statement for postdoc positions.
Any good resources on this? Samples people would be willing to share?
@neural-reckoning.org @kordinglab.bsky.social @gunnarblohm.bsky.social
Any good resources on this? Samples people would be willing to share?
@neural-reckoning.org @kordinglab.bsky.social @gunnarblohm.bsky.social
November 22, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Research statement for postdoc positions.
Any good resources on this? Samples people would be willing to share?
@neural-reckoning.org @kordinglab.bsky.social @gunnarblohm.bsky.social
Any good resources on this? Samples people would be willing to share?
@neural-reckoning.org @kordinglab.bsky.social @gunnarblohm.bsky.social
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Another #CRAEwebinar booked in! February seems a long way away, but you might want to sign up now to hear from @natecaruana.bsky.social on how VR can help us understand and improve the social experiences of autistic people.
Virtual reality as a tool for supporting autistic people.
Exploring how VR can help us understand—and improve—the social experiences of autistic people.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 24, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Another #CRAEwebinar booked in! February seems a long way away, but you might want to sign up now to hear from @natecaruana.bsky.social on how VR can help us understand and improve the social experiences of autistic people.
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
Agreed! And I suspect we'll get there quicker if we all adopt an attitude of openness to heterodox ideas. Unfortunately, all too often in neuroscience whenever people have suggested ideas that are even a small step outside orthodoxy they're met with extreme hostility (I don't mean from you!).
November 24, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Agreed! And I suspect we'll get there quicker if we all adopt an attitude of openness to heterodox ideas. Unfortunately, all too often in neuroscience whenever people have suggested ideas that are even a small step outside orthodoxy they're met with extreme hostility (I don't mean from you!).
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
As I see it, we're facing similar problems in brain research, including the biggest mysteries like understanding depression. We have a sense of what depression is and some crude scales to measure it; the end goal is the equivalent of thermodynamics. How will we get there? Epistemic iteration! 🤞
November 24, 2025 at 4:04 PM
As I see it, we're facing similar problems in brain research, including the biggest mysteries like understanding depression. We have a sense of what depression is and some crude scales to measure it; the end goal is the equivalent of thermodynamics. How will we get there? Epistemic iteration! 🤞
Reposted by Melissa Franch, PhD
@hhmi.org Summer Undergraduate Research Experience - #CechFellows named in honor of Prof Tom Cech
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...
Summer Undergraduate Research Experience | HHMI
The Cech Fellows Program is a paid, nine-week summer research experience empowering the next generation of scientific leaders.
www.hhmi.org
November 22, 2025 at 4:15 PM
@hhmi.org Summer Undergraduate Research Experience - #CechFellows named in honor of Prof Tom Cech
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...