Sebastian Speer
@sebospeer.bsky.social
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab
Incoming Assistant Professor at Texas A&M - 2026
Incoming Assistant Professor at Texas A&M - 2026
Excellent new video on our recent work on the neural dynamics supporting good conversations. Check it out - if you speak German.
youtube.com/watch?si=XpW6ioXhz0E7z44w&v=zFMwFdTq-YI&feature=youtu.be
youtube.com/watch?si=XpW6ioXhz0E7z44w&v=zFMwFdTq-YI&feature=youtu.be
Die Wissenschaft hinter gelungenem Smalltalk
YouTube video by Menschen und Muster
youtube.com
October 30, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Excellent new video on our recent work on the neural dynamics supporting good conversations. Check it out - if you speak German.
youtube.com/watch?si=XpW6ioXhz0E7z44w&v=zFMwFdTq-YI&feature=youtu.be
youtube.com/watch?si=XpW6ioXhz0E7z44w&v=zFMwFdTq-YI&feature=youtu.be
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science arxiv.org/abs/2510.22254 - our latest, led by @ericwbridgeford.bsky.social
Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science
While AI coding tools have demonstrated potential to accelerate software development, their use in scientific computing raises critical questions about code quality and scientific validity. In this pa...
arxiv.org
October 28, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science arxiv.org/abs/2510.22254 - our latest, led by @ericwbridgeford.bsky.social
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Pleased to share new work with @sflippl.bsky.social @eberleoliver.bsky.social @thomasmcgee.bsky.social & undergrad interns at Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA.
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
October 27, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Pleased to share new work with @sflippl.bsky.social @eberleoliver.bsky.social @thomasmcgee.bsky.social & undergrad interns at Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA.
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
Recruiting PhD students for Fall 2026!
The Coupled Minds Lab at @tamu.bsky.social will use a multimodal approach combining fMRI hyperscanning, computational modeling, and natural language processing to study how conversations transform minds. Learn more: coupled-minds.github.io
Due Date Dec 1
The Coupled Minds Lab at @tamu.bsky.social will use a multimodal approach combining fMRI hyperscanning, computational modeling, and natural language processing to study how conversations transform minds. Learn more: coupled-minds.github.io
Due Date Dec 1
Coupled Minds Lab
Coupled Minds Lab — social neuroscience of conversation, negotiation, and human–AI interaction.
coupled-minds.github.io
October 20, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Recruiting PhD students for Fall 2026!
The Coupled Minds Lab at @tamu.bsky.social will use a multimodal approach combining fMRI hyperscanning, computational modeling, and natural language processing to study how conversations transform minds. Learn more: coupled-minds.github.io
Due Date Dec 1
The Coupled Minds Lab at @tamu.bsky.social will use a multimodal approach combining fMRI hyperscanning, computational modeling, and natural language processing to study how conversations transform minds. Learn more: coupled-minds.github.io
Due Date Dec 1
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
CogNeuroLanguage: new by @lauragwilliams.bsky.social & @jeanremiking.bsky.social (w Alec Marantz & me) shows how the brain maintains-updates continuously unfolding lang hierarchy during comprehension, anchoring ling theories to biological implementation
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #neuroskyence
Hierarchical dynamic coding coordinates speech comprehension in the human brain | PNAS
Speech comprehension involves transforming an acoustic waveform into meaning. To do
so, the human brain generates a hierarchy of features that conv...
www.pnas.org
October 18, 2025 at 1:36 PM
CogNeuroLanguage: new by @lauragwilliams.bsky.social & @jeanremiking.bsky.social (w Alec Marantz & me) shows how the brain maintains-updates continuously unfolding lang hierarchy during comprehension, anchoring ling theories to biological implementation
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #neuroskyence
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
October 15, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory
How does the brain access stored knowledge? It has been proposed that conceptual search engages neurocognitive processes similar to foraging in physical space. We tested this idea using intracranial E...
www.biorxiv.org
October 13, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
just finished steve levinson's new book! it's a beautifully articulated argument for social interaction as the evolutionary niche which made language possible, rather than the other way around. progress in linguistics depends on a stronger science of interaction.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
The Interaction Engine
Cambridge Core - Semantics and Pragmatics - The Interaction Engine
www.cambridge.org
October 12, 2025 at 8:20 PM
just finished steve levinson's new book! it's a beautifully articulated argument for social interaction as the evolutionary niche which made language possible, rather than the other way around. progress in linguistics depends on a stronger science of interaction.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
We're a month further into the job market - how are things looking? The good news is that the market does seem to have been delayed: ~150 new listings have appeared since my last post. The bad news is that the total is still substantially lower than what it was during the covid dip.
October 3, 2025 at 5:26 PM
We're a month further into the job market - how are things looking? The good news is that the market does seem to have been delayed: ~150 new listings have appeared since my last post. The bad news is that the total is still substantially lower than what it was during the covid dip.
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Paper and R package for (more flexible) power analysis in multilevel: psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-...
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
October 3, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Paper and R package for (more flexible) power analysis in multilevel: psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
As our lab started to build encoding 🧠 models, we were trying to figure out best practices in the field. So @neurotaha.bsky.social
built a library to easily compare design choices & model features across datasets!
We hope it will be useful to the community & plan to keep expanding it!
1/
built a library to easily compare design choices & model features across datasets!
We hope it will be useful to the community & plan to keep expanding it!
1/
🚨 Paper alert:
To appear in the DBM Neurips Workshop
LITcoder: A General-Purpose Library for Building and Comparing Encoding Models
📄 arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2509.091...
🔗 project: litcoder-brain.github.io
To appear in the DBM Neurips Workshop
LITcoder: A General-Purpose Library for Building and Comparing Encoding Models
📄 arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2509.091...
🔗 project: litcoder-brain.github.io
September 29, 2025 at 5:33 PM
As our lab started to build encoding 🧠 models, we were trying to figure out best practices in the field. So @neurotaha.bsky.social
built a library to easily compare design choices & model features across datasets!
We hope it will be useful to the community & plan to keep expanding it!
1/
built a library to easily compare design choices & model features across datasets!
We hope it will be useful to the community & plan to keep expanding it!
1/
@falklab.bsky.social wrote a nice summary of our hyperscanning work on how people form social connection and find agreement through conversation: www.scientificamerican.com/article/good...
Good Conversations Don’t Require Everybody to Agree, Neuroscience Shows
Brain imaging is illuminating the patterns linked to productive, positive dialogue, and those insights could help people connect with others
www.scientificamerican.com
September 26, 2025 at 5:17 PM
@falklab.bsky.social wrote a nice summary of our hyperscanning work on how people form social connection and find agreement through conversation: www.scientificamerican.com/article/good...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Finally published:
“Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨
“Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨
Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition | PNAS
Our ability to understand and control complex systems of many interacting parts remains
limited. A key challenge is that we still do not know how b...
www.pnas.org
September 24, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Finally published:
“Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨
“Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
“As AI tools become more capable, funding agencies and institutions may question why labs need dedicated computational staff. But these examples suggest the roles will become more important, not less”
With LLMs, researchers can develop software entirely through natural language conversations. This shift is transforming how research gets done, offering new opportunities and new challenges, writes Benjamin Dichter.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...
Should neuroscientists ‘vibe code’?
Researchers are developing software entirely through natural language conversations with advanced large language models. The trend is transforming how research gets done—but it also presents new…
www.thetransmitter.org
September 24, 2025 at 6:04 AM
“As AI tools become more capable, funding agencies and institutions may question why labs need dedicated computational staff. But these examples suggest the roles will become more important, not less”
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
📢Out now! @jixingli.bsky.social, @lamb-cityuhk.bsky.social and colleagues assess whether instruction tuning can enhance LLM's ability to capture linguistic information in the human brain. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #compneuro #ArtificialIntelligence
Increasing alignment of large language models with language processing in the human brain - Nature Computational Science
Larger LLMs’ self-attention more accurately predicts readers’ regressive saccades and fMRI responses in language regions, whereas instruction tuning adds no benefit.
www.nature.com
September 16, 2025 at 1:35 PM
📢Out now! @jixingli.bsky.social, @lamb-cityuhk.bsky.social and colleagues assess whether instruction tuning can enhance LLM's ability to capture linguistic information in the human brain. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #compneuro #ArtificialIntelligence
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
September 4, 2025 at 7:21 PM
New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!
N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!
🧵below
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
How to compute surprisal (Shannon Information) for every word in your language sample. Then --- correlate surprisal with other major lexical-semantic variables (concreteness, semantic neighborhoods, freq). reilly-lab.github.io/Surprisal.html
Semantic Distance fMRI: Analyses, Psycholinguistic Correlations
reilly-lab.github.io
August 22, 2025 at 2:14 PM
How to compute surprisal (Shannon Information) for every word in your language sample. Then --- correlate surprisal with other major lexical-semantic variables (concreteness, semantic neighborhoods, freq). reilly-lab.github.io/Surprisal.html
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers.
My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.
We found 437 of them.
Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.
We found 437 of them.
Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
August 11, 2025 at 11:54 AM
These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers.
My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.
We found 437 of them.
Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.
We found 437 of them.
Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
My brilliant labmate, Keith Dodd, created this non-aggressive denoising pipeline for fMRI data for his dissertation! It has been super useful on some of our high-motion datasets, and I highly suggest folks check it out for their own studies 🧠📈🪲:
direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
CICADA: An automated and flexible tool for comprehensive fMRI noise reduction
Abstract. Independent component analysis (ICA) denoising methods can be highly effective for reducing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) noise. ICA denoising method success heavily depends, ...
direct.mit.edu
August 4, 2025 at 3:43 PM
My brilliant labmate, Keith Dodd, created this non-aggressive denoising pipeline for fMRI data for his dissertation! It has been super useful on some of our high-motion datasets, and I highly suggest folks check it out for their own studies 🧠📈🪲:
direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
🔖 NEW PAPER ALERT 🔖 Out in PNAS – we used equation discovery algorithms to improve models of human reinforcement learning.
Led by the wonderful Kyle Lafollette with an amazing team Yanni Yuval @roeyschurr.bsky.social and @d-melnikoff.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
Led by the wonderful Kyle Lafollette with an amazing team Yanni Yuval @roeyschurr.bsky.social and @d-melnikoff.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
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
August 1, 2025 at 7:20 AM
🔖 NEW PAPER ALERT 🔖 Out in PNAS – we used equation discovery algorithms to improve models of human reinforcement learning.
Led by the wonderful Kyle Lafollette with an amazing team Yanni Yuval @roeyschurr.bsky.social and @d-melnikoff.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
Led by the wonderful Kyle Lafollette with an amazing team Yanni Yuval @roeyschurr.bsky.social and @d-melnikoff.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
If you want to read more about the nuts and bolts of our reward learning account of social learning—the Social Feature Learning (SFL) model—check out our recent @nathumbehav.nature.com paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Feature-based reward learning shapes human social learning strategies - Nature Human Behaviour
This research advances a mechanistic reward learning account of social learning strategies. Through experiments and simulations, it shows how individuals learn to learn from others, dynamically shapin...
www.nature.com
July 28, 2025 at 8:24 AM
If you want to read more about the nuts and bolts of our reward learning account of social learning—the Social Feature Learning (SFL) model—check out our recent @nathumbehav.nature.com paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Our conversation analysis software is now on CRAN! Reach out with any questions. We hope it’s useful for all you language and social interaction folks out there.
New CRAN package ConversationAlign with initial version 0.2.0
#rstats
https://cran.r-project.org/package=ConversationAlign
#rstats
https://cran.r-project.org/package=ConversationAlign
CRAN: Package ConversationAlign
Imports conversation transcripts into R, concatenates them into a single dataframe appending event identifiers, cleans and formats the text, then yokes user-specified psycholinguistic database values to each word. 'ConversationAlign' then computes alignment indices between two interlocutors across each transcript for >40 possible semantic, lexical, and affective dimensions. In addition to alignment, 'ConversationAlign' also produces a table of analytics (e.g., token count, type-token-ratio) in a summary table describing your particular text corpus.
cran.r-project.org
July 22, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Our conversation analysis software is now on CRAN! Reach out with any questions. We hope it’s useful for all you language and social interaction folks out there.
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
"We propose a unified quantitative model that integrates decision-making and communication, revealing how verbal framing of probabilistic expression both reflects and shapes beliefs in speakers and listeners."
Read more here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Read more here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
July 22, 2025 at 5:53 PM
"We propose a unified quantitative model that integrates decision-making and communication, revealing how verbal framing of probabilistic expression both reflects and shapes beliefs in speakers and listeners."
Read more here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Read more here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"!
Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS
Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated
self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...
www.pnas.org
July 22, 2025 at 6:04 AM
Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"!
Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Sebastian Speer
Optimistic people have functional MRI commonality of neural processing for imagining the future (whereas pessimists have a diverse pattern)
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
July 21, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Optimistic people have functional MRI commonality of neural processing for imagining the future (whereas pessimists have a diverse pattern)
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....