Vlad Ayzenberg
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vayzenb.bsky.social
Vlad Ayzenberg
@vayzenb.bsky.social
Director of the Vision Learning and Development Lab at Temple University.

Interested in cognition, computation, neuroscience, and development.

https://vlad-lab.com/
Pinned
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...
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
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
🚨New Preprint!
How can we model natural scene representations in visual cortex? A solution is in active vision: predict the features of the next glimpse! arxiv.org/abs/2511.12715

+ @adriendoerig.bsky.social , @alexanderkroner.bsky.social , @carmenamme.bsky.social , @timkietzmann.bsky.social
🧵 1/14
Predicting upcoming visual features during eye movements yields scene representations aligned with human visual cortex
Scenes are complex, yet structured collections of parts, including objects and surfaces, that exhibit spatial and semantic relations to one another. An effective visual system therefore needs unified ...
arxiv.org
November 18, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Happy to share our review "Investigating hierarchical critical periods in human neurodevelopment” in @npp-journal.bsky.social! We examine neurobiological, environmental & behavioral evidence for human critical periods in sensory and association cortex +discuss new research directions rdcu.be/eMkVU 🧵
November 11, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.

Caveats:
-*-*-*-*


> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees

> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026.

The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.

Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
November 4, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Pennsylvania has an important Supreme Court race coming up on Tuesday, November 4. If you live in the Keystone State, or know someone who does, vote YES to retain three justices who will protect your fundamental rights and freedoms.
October 29, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
It's FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS FALL 🍁🎃🍂

Check out our free, upcoming talks and register here: fitng.org/fitng-togeth...
October 28, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
We wrote an article explaining why you shouldn't put several variables into a regression model and report which are statistically significant - even as exploratory research. bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/.... How did we do?
October 27, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
🚨Preprint: Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe

1/8: How do human neurons encode meaning?
In this work, led by Katharina Karkowski, we recorded hundreds of human MTL neurons to study semantic coding in the human brain:

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe
The Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is key to human cognition, supporting memory, emotional processing, navigation, and semantic coding. Rare direct human MTL recordings revealed concept cells, which were ...
doi.org
October 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Seeking applications from recent PhDs in neuro, psych, ling, philo, comp sci, or other cog sci discipline, for our MindCORE Fellowship.

MindCORE is an interdisciplinary effort at Penn to understand human intelligence and behavior.

Apply by Dec 1: mindcore.sas.upenn.edu/post-doctora...
October 27, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Delighted to share our new paper, now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"Hierarchical dynamic coding coordinates speech comprehension in the brain"

with dream team @alecmarantz.bsky.social, @davidpoeppel.bsky.social, @jeanremiking.bsky.social

Summary 👇

1/8
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
October 22, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
So what explains the rest of the variance? If it's not genes, it must be environment, right?
a cat is laying down on a table with the words `` no '' written on its face .
ALT: a cat is laying down on a table with the words `` no '' written on its face .
media.tenor.com
October 16, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.
October 7, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Thrilled to see this paper out! It's the culmination of a project begun in the depths of the pandemic with Sabrina Karjack and @zoengo.bsky.social . We continue our exploration of how children generalize when their episodic memory is not yet mature.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The dependence of children’s generalization on episodic memory varies with age and level of abstraction - Nature Communications
Children’s ability to generalize from episodic memories varies by both age and the level of abstraction. Here, the authors show that lower level generalization increasingly depends on episodic memory with age, whereas higher level generalization shows no such relationship.
www.nature.com
October 7, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
We’re recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to join our team! 🎉

I’m happy to share that I’ve opened back up the search for this position (it was temporarily closed due to funding uncertainty).

See lab page and doc below for details!
The Visual Learning Lab at UC San Diego is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join our lab!

Read more about our lab at www.vislearnlab.org
Home | The Visual Learning Lab at UCSD
Lab webpage for the Visual Learning Lab at UCSD, lead by Dr. Bria Long, Ph.D. Launching in July 2024!
www.vislearnlab.org
October 7, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Ever wonder how habituation works? Here's our attempt to understand:

A stimulus-computable rational model of visual habituation in infants and adults doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is the thesis of two wonderful students: @anjiecao.bsky.social @galraz.bsky.social, w/ @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social
September 29, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Take a look at the logo! Then the thread!
🚨🚨New precision imaging study and open dataset 🚨🚨 Featuring almost 200 functional runs acquired in 3-4d intervals and behavioral manipulations focused on intraindividual study of the reward response - The Night Owls Scan Club (NOSC) With @dvsmith.bsky.social and @olinotom.bsky.social!
September 29, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
🚨🚨🚨 The Subjectivity Lab is looking for a lab manager! The position is available immediately. We want someone who can help coordinate our large sample fMRI study, plus other behavioral work. Because *gestures at everything* the job was approved only now (ends in June 2026). Great opportunity! 🧵 1/4
Laboratory Technician
About the Opportunity SUMMARY The Subjectivity Lab, directed by Jorge Morales, and housed in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University is excited to invite applications for a full-time L...
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
September 29, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
This is awesome. Drag and drop a brain MRI scan into the window and it does tissue segmentation in the browser (in about 8 seconds), then creates a 3D mesh suitable for 3D printing. This has been an hours-to-days long process for us in the past, all in a couple minutes. 🤯 brain2print.org
brain2print
brain2print.org
September 24, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Functional organization of the human visual system at birth and across late gestation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.22.677834v1
September 22, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out!

www.momentslab.org
Moments Lab
www.momentslab.org
September 19, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.

www.cogdevlab.org
PCDL @ OSU
www.cogdevlab.org
September 15, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
The cerebellum isn’t just about coordinating movement. It’s implicated in nearly every domain of cognition—from language to social behavior.

But how exactly does the cerebellum contribute to action and cognition? 🧵

Check out our new paper w/ Rich Ivry.
arxiv.org/abs/2509.09818
Cerebellar Contributions to Action and Cognition: Prediction, Timescale, and Continuity
The cerebellum is implicated in nearly every domain of human cognition, yet our understanding of how this subcortical structure contributes to cognition remains elusive. Efforts on this front have ten...
arxiv.org
September 15, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by Vlad Ayzenberg
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
September 4, 2025 at 7:21 PM