Sam Nastase
assistant professor of psychology at USC丨he/him丨semiprofessional dungeon master
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🧠 New year, new preprint! Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by Sam Nastase⭕️ At least 40 people, including civilians & members of the Venezuelan military, were killed in the attack, according to preliminary assessments, a senior Venezuelan official reportedly told the New York Times. US forces deployed more than 150 aircraft to eliminate air defenses, clearing the...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseRemember that the US *does not care* about the people of Venezuela. It is not about "narcotrafficking", or "democracy", or whatever propaganda they have going. It is *explicitly* about US control over oil, capital accumulation, and geopolitical power.
- Reposted by Sam NastaseA couple years (!) in the making: we’re releasing a new corpus of embodied, collaborative problem solving dialogues. We paid 36 people to play Portal 2’s co-op mode and collected their speech + game recordings. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03381 Website: berkeley-nlp.github.io/portal-dialo... 1/n
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew preprint w/ Malin Styrnal & @martinhebart.bsky.social Have you ever computed noise ceilings to understand how well a model performs? We wrote a clarifying note on a subtle and common misapplication that can make models appear quite a lot better than they are. osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseInvestigating individual-specific topographic organization has traditionally been a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. But what if we could map visual cortex organization in thousands of brains? Here we offer the community with a toolbox that can do just that! tinyurl.com/deepretinotopy
- Reposted by Sam Nastase📢 @samnastase.bsky.social and colleagues show that aligning ECoG data into a shared space improves how well LLMs predict brain activity during language comprehension. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #compneuro #Neuroscience #ArtificialIntelligence 🔓 rdcu.be/eQzYm
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🚨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
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🤖📈 How do LLMs use their depth? Akshat Gupta led a fun project to find out! We leverage TunedLens (~linear decoding of tokens) to explore how LLMs' internal representations change from layer to layer. Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2510.18871 1/
- Reposted by Sam NastaseI’m excited to share my recent preprint on a neural network model of free recall that learns multiple memory strategies including the memory palace! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseExcited to share our work making an "allostasis-first" case that brain function is most productively framed in terms of its core regulatory function. We also introduce some new ideas in the context of metabolism and cognitive function in Alzheimer's. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseProudly published with @andreaeyleen.bsky.social: A metatheory of classical and modern connectionism. doi.org/10.1037/rev0... We touch on what has been up with connectionism as a framework for computational modelling — & for everything it seems these days with AI and LLMs — pre-2010 vs post. 1/n
- Reposted by Sam Nastasethrilled to share our preprint on false memories in naturalistic recollection! Distinct paths to false memory revealed in hundreds of narrative recalls paper: doi.org/10.31234/osf... w/ phoebehc.bsky.social (co-first) Vy A. Vo @davidpoeppel.bsky.social @toddgureckis.bsky.social thread below 👇
- Reposted by Sam NastaseMy lab at USC is recruiting! 1) research coordinator: perfect for a recent graduate looking for research experience before applying to PhD programs: usccareers.usc.edu REQ20167829 2) PhD students: see FAQs on lab website dornsife.usc.edu/hklab/faq/
- Reposted by Sam NastaseWhy do brain networks vary? Do these differences shape behavior? If every 🧠 is unique, how can we detect common features of brain organization? @rodbraga.bsky.social and I dig in, in @annualreviews.bsky.social (ahead of print): go.illinois.edu/Gratton2025-... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #MedSky 🧵👇
- Reposted by Sam NastaseManaging emotions is not easy - we often get by with a little help. In the NEW Social Interaction and Emotion Lab at Rutgers-Newark, we’ll study how social interactions regulate emotion using experiments, naturalistic data, and multi-modal approaches. ✨ Now recruiting! ✨🙌 Learn more: raziasahi.com
- Reposted by Sam Nastase
MIT Rejects the Compact! I am so proud. "The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief ... - Reposted by Sam Nastase📣 New preprint from the Braga Lab! 📣 The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network Congrats to Dr. Joe Salvo for this epic set of results Big Q: What brain systems support the translation of writing to concepts and meaning? Thread 🧵 ⬇️
- I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.
- Check out the lab website for ideas about the kind of work we'll be doing: shared-minds.github.io All admissions are through the Brain and Cognitive Science area of the Department of Psychology at USC: dornsife.usc.edu/psyc/doctora... Feel free to reach out via email as well!
- Reposted by Sam NastaseAs 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/
- 🚨 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
- Reposted by Sam NastaseFinally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
- Reposted by Sam NastaseI've only read the abstract and I already know this paper is so very correct 👀
- The myth of optimality in human movement science www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseThe psych job market may not be dead... but it is gravely injured 😬 So far it's looking like the Trump administration's attacks on higher ed/research are going to have more than 2x the impact on the job market as the covid-19 pandemic. #psychjobs #neurojobs #academicjobs
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew 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
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🚨 Just over a week left to register for the #CNSP2025 Online Workshop (details in post below)! 🚨 Link to the workshop registration form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
- 🚨Registration now open for #CNSP2025 Workshop! Date: 2–3 September 2025 Location: Online (Zoom) Registration Fee: €30 (financial support available) Registration Deadline: 31 August 2025 For more information and to register, follow the link: cnspworkshop.net/workshops.html
- Reposted by Sam NastaseThe rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!
- Reposted by Sam NastaseI will unfortunately have to skip SCiL this year, but I am thrilled to share that Jwalanthi will be presenting this work by her, @rjha.bsky.social, me, and @kmahowald.bsky.social on a tool that allows you to project contextualized embeddings from LMs to interpretable semantic spaces!
- Reposted by Sam NastaseMusic is an incredibly powerful retrieval cue. What is the neural basis of music-evoked memory reactivation? And how does this reactivation relate to later memory for the retrieved events? In our new study, we used Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to find out. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Check out Zaid's open "Podcast" ECoG dataset for natural language comprehension (w/ Hasson Lab). The paper is now out at Scientific Data (nature.com/articles/s41...) and the data are available on OpenNeuro (openneuro.org/datasets/ds0...).
- We recorded ECoG data in nine subjects while they listened to a 30-minute story. We provide a minimally preprocessed derivative of the raw data, ready to be used.
- We also provide word-level transcripts and stimulus features ranging from low-level acoustic features to large language model embeddings.
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View full threadFinally, we developed a set of interactive tutorials for preprocessing and running encoding models to get you started. Happy to hear any feedback or field any questions about the dataset! hassonlab.github.io/podcast-ecog...
- How do different languages converge on a shared neural substrate for conceptual meaning? Happy to share a new preprint led by Zaid Zada that specifically addresses this question:
- There are over 7,000 human languages in the world and they're remarkably diverse in their forms and patterns. Nonetheless, we often use different languages to convey similar ideas, and we can learn to translate from one language to another.
- Previous research has found that language models trained on different languages learn embedding spaces with similar geometry. This suggests that internal geometry of different languages may converge on similar conceptual structures:
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View full threadWe're really excited to share this work and happy to hear any comments or feedback! Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2506.20489 Code: github.com/zaidzada/cro...
- Really excited to share our new preprint led by @ahmadsamara.bsky.social with Zaid Zada, @vanderlab.bsky.social, and Uri Hasson titled "Cortical language areas are coupled via a soft hierarchy of model-based linguistic features" doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- Language comprehension emerges from the coordinated activity of a number of different brain areas. Different cortical language areas surely make unique contributions to language processing, but why do we observe such overwhelming functional similarity across regions?
- We propose that different regions of the language network are coupled to one another via a multidimensional space of shared linguistic features. This shared space can serve as a "communication channel" to coordinate the contributions of different regions to the overall network.
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View full threadWe're very excited to share this work and happy to hear your feedback! If you're attending #OHBM2025, @ahmadsamara.bsky.social will be presenting a poster on this project (poster #804, June 25 and 26)—be sure to stop by and chat with him about it! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseHow is high-level visual cortex organized? In a new preprint with @martinhebart.bsky.social & @kathadobs.bsky.social, we show that category-selective areas encode a rich, multidimensional feature space 🌈 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence 🧵 1/n
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNow out in Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com : “End-to-end topographic networks as models of cortical map formation and human visual behaviour”. Please check our NHB link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew preprint from the Hasson Lab🪄Delineates coupling b/w regions within the language network AND shows the elements of language that connect them. Led by @ahmadsamara.bsky.social; thanks @samnastase.bsky.social Zaid Zada & Uri Hasson. 💥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🚨Registration now open for #CNSP2025 Workshop! Date: 2–3 September 2025 Location: Online (Zoom) Registration Fee: €30 (financial support available) Registration Deadline: 31 August 2025 For more information and to register, follow the link: cnspworkshop.net/workshops.html
- Reposted by Sam NastaseLMs learn argument-based preferences for dative constructions (preferring recipient first when it’s shorter), consistent with humans. Is this from memorizing preferences in training? New paper w/ @kanishka.bsky.social , @weissweiler.bsky.social , @kmahowald.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2503.20850
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🧵Masked ICE thugs attempted to abduct the school nurse at Cooke Elementary School, located in the densely populated Adams Morgan section of DC. Workers at the school intervened, demanding a warrant and holding up their phones and ICE scurried off without making their arrest.
- Reposted by Sam NastaseSCOOP: The Trump admin appears to be going into a visa database to quietly change students' immigration status. It's coming entirely by surprise — setting students up to be detained without warning. It's Mahmoud Khalil & Rumeysa Ozturk — on a wider scale.
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNearly 1000 teachers, academics, and more are mounting an academic boycott of Columbia. Columbia "is colluding with the current U.S. government's project to destroy higher education and criminalize protest," they say. Signers include Noura Erakat, Marc Lamont Hill, Ruha Benjamin.
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew from Rumeysa Ozturk's lawyer: Rumeysa hasn't been accused of any crime & "DHS has not produced any evidence" that she did anything unlawful. Rumeysa wasn't able to speak to her lawyer for 24+ hours & not until after she was in Louisiana — despite a court order that she not be moved from Mass.
- Reposted by Sam NastaseThe president of Columbia agreed to Trump's demands to purge all academic freedom re Palestine but then privately said she'd slow walk them, which immediately leaked to Bari Weiss's outlet, so then the board purged her too
- Reposted by Sam NastaseThis jibes with contemporary reporting that the raids hit several residential buildings, in each case killing about 15 people and wounding more. Maybe a little more of the conversation should be about how cavalier we apparently are about bombing civilian homes? www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseA different angle showing the kidnapping of Runeysa Ozturk by U.S. secret police in Massachusetts. (via Daniel Boguslaw on Twitter) x.com/DRBoguslaw/s...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew lab paper led by @justfineneuro.bsky.social "Complementary roles for hippocampus and anterior cingulate in composing continuous choice”, now on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Sam Nastase1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!
- Reposted by Sam NastaseWork from Princeton neuroscience professor Uri Hasson, with collaborators at GoogleAI and @hebrewuniversity.bsky.social, reveals the parallels between language processing in our brains and with AI. 📰: research.google/blog/deciphe...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseGoldstein et al. link acoustic, speech, and linguistic data with brain activity during real-life conversations to create a model that predicts neural responses during speech with high accuracy. https://www.nature.c...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseWhy do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseThe future of neuroscience depends on accessible, reusable data. But how do you implement effective data management practices in your lab? Discuss strategies & practical solutions w/ Sam Nastase, Nick Pullen, & Tara Spires-Jones in this webinar from @sfnjournals.bsky.social & Elsevier. #NeuroSky
- Reposted by Sam Nastase🧵 IN SHOCKING MOVE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FIRES UNION PRESIDENT ONE DAY BEFORE CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN, IN FURTHER CRACKDOWN ON FREE SPEECH
- Reposted by Sam NastaseSuspended for Pro-Palestine Speech: My Statement on Yale Law School’s Embrace of AI-Generated Smears 1/3
- Reposted by Sam NastaseNew Lab Preprint! "Independent Continuous Tracking of Multiple Agents in the Human Hippocampus" led by my graduate student Assia Chericoni. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseAs ICE Jails Palestinian Protester, Universities Must Commit to Academic Freedom. Great piece by @hebagowayed.bsky.social and @jesshardie.bsky.social truthout.org/articles/as-...
- Reposted by Sam NastaseUPDATE—Mahmoud's attorney says they do NOT know where he is. They were first told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, NJ. But when his 8-month-pregnant wife tried to visit him, she was told he's not there. They've received reports he may be sent as far away as Louisiana.
