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manushka sondhi 🪅

@whatsonian.bsky.social

interested in how causality and a lack thereof guide our understanding of films/TV 🎬 Communication PhD Student @ Michigan State

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Mark Thornton

@markthornton.bsky.social

New preprint from Lindsey Tepfer (@ltjaql.bsky.social) and me! We silenced portions of internal monologues in two films to manipulate participants' access to characters' thoughts. Using ISC and RSA, we found that this aligned later neural processing of the narrative & encoding of trait impressions.

Figure 1. Experimental stimuli and paradigm. 1A. Manipulation timeline. Each video features a total of 12 IM moments, half of which were silenced in version 1, and the other half silenced in version 2. This produces two versions of each video where only half of the IMs are audible to the participant. 1B. Voice removal. Background sounds were preserved in both versions, regardless of IM presence. 1C. fMRI paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned a version and watched both videos in a counter-balanced order. 1D. Afterwards, they made trait ratings on each video’s main character in random order before rating them on subsequent traits.

Figure 2. Scanner and online participant trait rating results. A. Scanner participants arrive at similar conclusions about characters across versions by the end of each video. B. Trait ratings at the end of the videos are correlated between online and scanner participants. C. The IM manipulation had a significant effect on the trait ratings across the duration of the videos, such that different versions led to different trait impressions. D. Participants who saw different versions changed their ratings for both clip types but changed to a greater degree after seeing the IM segments relative to the NIM.

Figure 3. ISC results. Gaining access to the same mental state knowledge in earlier IM clips led to significantly (p < .05, corrected) more aligned neural activity in subsequent NIM clips across a wide swath of the temporal lobe, as well as the frontal pole and SPL.

Figure 4. Representational similarity analysis results. 4A. RSA pipeline. Clip-specific patterns of brain activity were correlated across movies within segment type (NIM or IM) to create a correlation distance matrix for each participant. Corresponding trait ratings were partitioned into components specific to each of the two versions of each film or shared across both versions. RDMs based on those traits were used to predict the neural RDMs. The resulting coefficients were sorted into matched (version), unmatched (version), and shared across version, and inference was performed via t-tests across participants. See methods section for further details of this analysis. 4B. Prior trait rating results. 1. While watching IM clips of the same version, the prior trait ratings predict activity in the bilateral A1, STS, STG, and right VLPFC. 2. Prior trait rating predicts activity in these regions again in the same-version NIM clips. 3. Across the two versions, while watching the NIM clips, the prior trait ratings predicted activity in the right occipitotemporal cortex. 4C. Trait updating results. 1. While watching NIM clips, the right STS & MTG predict version-matched trait updating. 2. In the unmatched NIM clips, STS & MTG again predict trait updating. 3. Across the two versions, the precuneus and LOC show pattern similarity for trait updating in participants.

February 11, 2026 at 8:26 PM

manushka sondhi 🪅

@whatsonian.bsky.social

🤍

The Marginalian @themarginalian.org.web.brid.gy · 2d

Keith Haring on Creativity, Self-Doubt, and the Love of Life in the Face of Death

"It is very important to be in love with life... Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we 'understand,' there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything."

www.themarginalian.org

February 17, 2026 at 11:37 PM

Reposted by manushka sondhi 🪅

Sam Gershman

@gershbrain.bsky.social

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

January 9, 2026 at 1:27 AM

Reposted by manushka sondhi 🪅

Welcome to Night Vale

@nightvaleradio.bsky.social

I’m doing great {{citation needed}}

December 3, 2025 at 5:05 PM

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Sam McDougle

@actlab.bsky.social

New paper from the lab, "Perceiving Event Structure in Brief Actions," now out in Cognitive Psychology :)

Led by the inimitable Zekun Sun

This was my lab's first foray into event cognition

gift link: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

November 25, 2025 at 3:40 PM

Reposted by manushka sondhi 🪅

Rebecca Frazer

@beccafraz.bsky.social

Out now in Scientific Reports! Despite high correlations, ChatGPT models failed to replicate human moral judgments. We propose tests beyond correlation to compare LLM data and human data.

With @mattgrizz.bsky.social @andyluttrell.bsky.social @chasmonge.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...