Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦 @ev_fedorenko Twitter profile | Pikagi

Pikagi

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

@ev_fedorenko

13,258

Followers

2,628

Following

130

Media

5,675

Statuses

I study language using tools from cognitive science and neuroscience. I also like snuggles. @evfedorenko .bsky.social

Massachusetts, USA

https://t.co/53dVatimiu

Joined June 2018

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

Pinned Tweet

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

28 days

Thrilled to share a review on THE LANGUAGE NETWORK AS A NATURAL KIND—a culmination of ~20 yrs of thinking about+studying language from linguistic, psycholinguistic, and cog neuro perspectives. @NatRevNeurosci With the amazing @neuranna @tamaregev 🥳 🧵1/n

Tweet media one

19

247

831

Last Seen Profiles

@thequinneverly

@coloradotravis

@the_sues

@Irish_PokerOpen

@LTHPVisuals

@FranceShemale

@jachiam0

@TheLucyGarner

@MaraEva46614819

@Rutgers_ADM

@va__avo0

@yar0chka

@wisloou

@keylaReyna04

@jalaiyahha

@derekhough

@banquasocial_

@Youssefalthiabi

@WWF_Kenya

@rcavada

@cestpasnoam

@RedWallPleb

@mohamedbouhafsi

@gh16203490

@monstat

@lHFqTDf8IC15510

@Momo27673556

@Averyrussell_11

@sukastw41325413

@_drt3

@sukastw41325413

@jiggymedia_

@sukastw41325413

@AfnanQmade

@IsthmianLeague

@sukastw41325413

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

In 2016, a woman (age 54 at the time) contacted us who was living without her left temporal lobe. She didn't know about her missing temp. lobe until age 25. She never experienced any head trauma/injury, so the temp. lobe was likely lost as a result of pre/perinatal stroke. 1/n

Tweet media one

94

1K

8K

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

As promised, a🧵on language and thought. The relationship between language and thought has long been pondered and debated. It may be one of the deepest and most exciting questions in cognitive science. 1/n

45

472

2K

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Psyched to share the first results from a ~7yr journey, from an email I sent to @Nancy_Kanwisher in 2014 about an idea to develop lang(uage) 'localizers' for as many of the world's langs as possible to having fMRI data from native speakers of 45 langs. 1/n

Tweet media one

28

358

1K

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

As with most cases of early brain damage, she had no linguistic or cognitive deficits, but brains like EG's (fake initials) are invaluable for understanding how cognitive functions reorganize in the tissue that remains. I told her we definitely want to study her brain. 2/n

3

23

799

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

I am starting a search for a permanent research scientist in my lab. If you got your PhD in CS, cognitive science, or neuroscience and are interested in language+brains, but are not sure you want to run your own lab and would be happy to work under my guidance, drop me a line.

31

336

776

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

Can we normalize citing co-first authored papers as Author1, Author2 et al. (Year)? Science has changed, with many big projects requiring multiple co-leaders (with diverse knowledge+skills). It doesn't seem like too much to ask to acknowledge both/all co-leaders in this way.

17

74

756

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

This preprint is the first of several papers, each asking a different question about reorganization/plasticity: . This one was led by the wonderful @GretaTuckute with help from @ampaunov @HopeKean @smallhannahe @ZachMineroff @IbanDlank 3/n

6

42

682

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

Thrilled to share the news that I will join the faculty of BCS, MIT in July. I will be hiring a couple of postdocs (with cog neuro, esp. MEG/ECoG, and/or CS/NLP backgrounds) and full-time RAs. Formal ads to come out soon, but in the meantime, feel free to get in touch. Pls RT.

41

138

519

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Thx to the hard work of @ben_lipkin @GretaTuckute and others + @NIDCD funding, we are ready to present to you LanA (Language Atlas)—a probabilistic atlas for the lang network based on lang localizer data from >800 inds (available for both volume and surface brain spaces). 1/n

9

139

502

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

@done_87 There is a lot of redundancy in the brain. It's a good way to build a system robust to damage.

4

15

482

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Thread: "Lack of selectivity for syntax relative to word meanings throughout the language network” is out in Cognition and is a culmination of one line of work, which I have been pursuing for the last ~15 years! Here is the story of how it all unfolded.

9

148

426

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

What happens when parts of the🧠that eventually become a highly functionally specialized language system (left frontal and temporal areas) get damaged at birth or shortly thereafter? Where does the language system live in such brains? Long answer short: it's complicated! 1/n

8

90

365

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

I also would like to thank all the men who wrote to me yesterday saying that they detected sexist undertones in how I was being talked to. Female academics deal with micro (+macro) aggressions daily. Having fellow male colleagues recognize and acknowledge this gives me hope.

8

9

357

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Now out in @NatureNeuro : Congrats @saima_mm and team! (And here is the link to the Research Briefing: )

Tweet card media

The brain responds in similar ways to 45 diverse languages

Nature Neuroscience - The language network in the brain shows similar properties across 45 languages spanning 12 language ‘families’. The language areas are lateralized to the left...

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Psyched to share the first results from a ~7yr journey, from an email I sent to @Nancy_Kanwisher in 2014 about an idea to develop lang(uage) 'localizers' for as many of the world's langs as possible to having fMRI data from native speakers of 45 langs. 1/n

Tweet media one

28

358

1K

11

88

347

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

In this paper, we explored whether EG would show lang. activity in her (fully intact) left frontal lobe. Of course, her lang. network was expected to live in her RH. But most NT individuals also show lang. activity in homotopic areas in the non-lang.-dominant hemisphere. 4/n

1

5

343

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

7yrs ago, my mom died; my dad died a week later.. For 2yrs I couldn't think about going to Russia to sort their place, then I had a baby, then covid hit.. Now, I don't know when/if I will go to Russia again.. At least, they don't have to see the countries they loved fall apart..

Tweet media one

26

5

343

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

So, the q. is basically this: do frontal and temp. lang. areas emerge independently, or are the temp. lang. areas a prerequisite for the frontal lang. areas to emerge? This fig. (a: NT brain; b: EG’s brain) illustrates this research q. [(N)DH=(non)lang.-dominant hemi] 5/n

Tweet media one

3

11

329

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

For those of you who are genuinely interested in learning about methods in cognitive neuroscience, including both the conceptual and technical aspects, I highly recommend @rebecca_saxe 's lectures here: , and subsequent parts

Tweet card media

fMRI Bootcamp Part 1 - Basics of MRI

Rebecca Saxe - MIT

www.youtube.com

4

75

332

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Now online: Broca's area is not a natural kind @TrendsCognSci with @IdanAsherBlank Key message: Broca’s area, or its anatomical subdivisions (e.g., IFGop or IFGri), do not constitute meaningful units of analysis. 1/n

9

132

334

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

MIT and Harvard jointly file a suit against ICE and the US DHS in federal court in Massachusetts:

2

46

335

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

The 1st time I saw how incredibly stable language-localizer activation maps are across runs and scan sessions, my❤️skipped a beat. It still gets me. Here is @LanguageMIT 's language system over the span of 15 yrs. Thank you, @Nancy_Kanwisher for training me to do brains right. <3

Tweet media one

8

28

310

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Some other implications: 1) One hemi. is sufficient to house a lang. system. 2) LH and RH appear equipotential for lang. Some qs for the future: What do the would-be-lang. areas in EG's left frontal lobe do? and Does EG have any articulation areas in her left frontal lobe? 9/n

3

8

290

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Excited to share a new preprint! Bottom line: the system that supports language processing (including syntactic processing) does not process music (including music structure): This work was co-led by @Jessica_ChenXY and @AffourtitJosef Details below. 1/n

Tweet card media

The human language system does not support music processing

Language and music are two human-unique capacities whose relationship remains debated. Some argue for overlap in processing mechanisms, especially for structure processing, but others fail to find...

www.biorxiv.org

8

69

286

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

The answer is that you don't get any frontal lang. activity absent ipsilateral temp. lang. areas. We tested EG twice (in 2016 and 2019), an there are no reliable lang.-responsive voxels anywhere on the lateral frontal lobe surface. The comparison is 2 NT groups (n=93, n=52) 6/n

Tweet media one

3

6

276

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Now out in @nature : An exciting collaboration with Ziv Williams' group! "...single cells in the human dmPFC ... encode info about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and... distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations"

6

86

281

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

This term, I taught my 1st class at MIT, "Language in the mind and brain". I have ideas for how to improve it next year and plan to make next year's lectures available online. For now, I wanted to share the art I used for the title slides because I had so much fun choosing these!

Tweet media one

6

18

268

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

A few folks recently wrote to me (perhaps because of this popular piece: ) asking about the key papers that provide evidence that language and thought are distinct. I am battling some deadlines, but will post a thread on this next week. Stay tuned.

Tweet card media

Can we think without using language?

Science suggests that words aren't strictly necessary for reasoning.

www.livescience.com

7

26

260

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

My husbnd @LanguageMIT spent Sat+Sun looking after our 3yo so I could work. And he did my laundry and cooked yummy dinners. I know women have been supporting men's careers for centuries, but man, does it feel nice to feel supported like this! Yay for normalizing house husbanding.

4

3

243

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 months

@neuranna Thank you, friend @neuranna ! And a big thank you to all those who have supported me across all the different stages of this long, and often difficult, journey (you know who you are <3). I really wish my parents were here: I wouldn't be here without them and I miss them every day.

45

5

242

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Other papers explore: i) reading-resp. cortex in EG (JinLi @z_saygin ); ii) audit. cortex organiz. in EG and her sister, who is lacking her right temp. lobe (!) ( @tamaregev @ben_lipkin @dlboebinger ); and iii) (re)organization of lang. and social cortex in EG ( @ampaunov ) 10/10

12

2

218

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Importantly, we show that another network (the Multiple Demand, MD, network; Duncan, 2010) is robustly present in EG's left frontal lobe suggesting that her left frontal cortex is perfectly capable of supporting high-level cognitive functions. 8/n

2

1

212

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Thrilled to finally have this out (in PNAS)! Congrats to all the ECRs: @martin_schrimpf @IbanDlank @GretaTuckute @KaufCarina and EghbalHosseini! This work has been truly transformative to my research program. Today it's on MIT's front page: . :)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

@martin_schrimpf

Martin Schrimpf

@martin_schrimpf

4 years

Computational neuroscience has lately had great success at modeling perception with ANNs - but it has been unclear if this approach translates to higher cognitive systems. We made some exciting progress in modeling human language processing #tweeprint 1/

Tweet media one

3

154

533

4

34

191

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Please RT! @saima_mm and I are looking for speakers of conlangs (Esperanto/Klingon/HighValyrian/Dothraki) who might be up for coming to Boston in Nov 2022 (expenses paid/subsidized) to take part in an fMRI study. If interested, please fill out this form:

27

202

187

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Here are some key references, organized by domain (for the fMRI work, most, though not all, studies rely on individual-subject analyses): 15/n @IbanDlank @ampaunov @neuranna @HopeKean @OlessiaJour @raryskin @coryshain @tamaregev @ZachMineroff @saima_mm @Jessica_ChenXY +others ❤️

Tweet media one

5

22

188

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Dear @MCHammer : we'd love to scan (in fMRI) your brain while rapping (to better understand how language production and creativity work) - let me know if you might be up for coming over to MIT to do that!

6

9

189

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Here are the magnitudes of response to the lang. localizer (Sentences-dark red; Nonwords-light red) in the two sessions: even using the most lang.-responsive voxels (using a portion of the data), you don't see any replicable Sent>Nonw effects in the left frontal lobe. 7/n

Tweet media one

1

2

181

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

@Nancy_Kanwisher @NewYorker : you can do better

2

1

173

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

The first paper on this individual is now out: @GretaTuckute @ampaunov @HopeKean @smallhannahe @ZachMineroff @IbanDlank with a note from EG herself!

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

In 2016, a woman (age 54 at the time) contacted us who was living without her left temporal lobe. She didn't know about her missing temp. lobe until age 25. She never experienced any head trauma/injury, so the temp. lobe was likely lost as a result of pre/perinatal stroke. 1/n

Tweet media one

94

1K

8K

2

36

164

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

"lexico-semantic and syntactic/combinatorial processing are not separable at the level of brain regions - or even voxel subsets - within the language network, in line with strong integration between these ..observed in behavioral language research"

Tweet card media

Word meanings and sentence structure recruit the same set of fronto-temporal regions during...

To understand what you are reading now, your mind retrieves the meanings of words from a linguistic knowledge store (lexico-semantic processing) and identifies the relationships among them to...

www.biorxiv.org

5

50

162

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

4 years ago today I was working on getting this little thing out—the best day of my life❤️

Tweet media one

6

2

163

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

OMG OMG!!! @ericgrimani @FrancisMollica @LanguageMIT got the Ig Nobel prize (!!!) for their amazing work on legal language! You go guys!!

Tweet card media

Here are the winners of the 2022 Ig Nobel Prizes

Maya ritual enemas, constipated scorpions, and moose crash test dummies feature.

arstechnica.com

7

23

154

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Lana (3.5yo): Why does the baby (in a book) have a round belly? Me: Babies are often chubby. They have what's called baby fat. Lana: Mama, but you are not a baby.

9

0

150

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Couldn't get all three to look at the camera, but it's something.

Tweet media one

5

2

144

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

@fd_x Spatial awareness seems intact, but we haven't carefully tested it. She learned another language as an L2 learner and achieved high proficiency!

3

0

141

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Exciting to finally have this out! It has been surprisingly (to me) challenging to publish this paper in spite of clear results and the fact that this is the 1st functional neuroimaging investigation of this cool population. But better late than never. :) Congrats @OlessiaJour !

@OlessiaJour

Olessia Jouravlev

4 years

Is there something special about minds & brains of polyglots? Yes, polyglots use fewer neural resources to process their native language. Evidence for more efficient language processing(?). A new paper at Cerebral Cortex, with @ev_fedorenko , @IbanDlank

5

58

147

5

32

139

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

24 days

The Special Issue (SI) of @jneurolang (the OA flagship journal of the Neurobiology of Language Society @MITPress ) on cognitive computational neuroscience of language🧠🤖 is finally out: Co-edited with AlessandroLopopolo MilenaRabovsky @roger_p_levy 🧵1/n

2

32

138

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Remember the thread (below, for reference) on a woman (EG) who grew up without her left temporal lobe? After @GretaTuckute 's work on EG got covered by @WIRED , a few others reached out. One of them, the amazing @helenwsantoro , is sharing her story in NYT:

Tweet card media

The Curious Hole in My Head (Published 2022)

Born without my left temporal lobe, a brain region thought to be critical for language, I’ve been a research subject for much of my life.

www.nytimes.com

3

17

133

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

I may be looking for a postdoc. Do you know+care about pragmatics / social cog, have experience working with neural data (mostly fMRI for this project), have a deep understanding of statistics, and are fast+productive? If so, please get in touch and send your CV. evelina9 @mit .edu

0

138

132

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

Animal behavior+cognition researchers: what are your favorite recent (or classic!) reviews of complex cognitive abilities (esp. problem solving, Theory of Mind, etc.) in NHPs🐒, corvids / other bird species🦜🦉, elephants 🐘, and cephalopods 🐙? Thank you, thank you!

17

31

130

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

P.S. Some people say: well, maybe what you (Ev) call lang is just "externalization", and what e.g., Chomsky meant is some earlier stage. And sure, if you redefine language as thought (earlier stage), then yes, they are the same, but of course, the claim is then vacuous. 20/20

24

3

126

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

I expect marriages between US citizens and F1 visa holders to spike in the next ~2 months. That's probably what I would've tried to do back in my day to keep pursing my passion for science instead of going back to poverty and hunger in a country where people have no rights.

2

6

126

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Many, however, have argued that language is at the very core of complex thought: Chomsky and Wittgenstein most famously perhaps. 3/n

Tweet media one

5

4

117

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

9 months

I am sorry, @saima_mm , @maya_taliaferro and other junior female scientists who have contributed to this exciting work. I am sorry for the mysogyny we have to deal with every. single. day. I will keep fighting for you and for making the field healthier and more inclusive.

@wmatchin

William Matchin

9 months

This is "cool" work that doesn't make meaningful scientific contribution. They claim that certain "fictional conlangs... were created to differ from natural languages", yet abundant evidence that these languages are based on natural languages. See e.g.

11

9

120

6

7

121

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Ray Jackendoff sets up this question beautifully in his 1996 book (he proceeds to argue for the relative independence between the two). 2/n

Tweet media one

1

7

115

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

E.g., can they do math? solve logic puzzles? appreciate music? understand what someone is thinking? It turns out that the answer is YES to all these qs. The only thing these patients lack is the ability to convert abstract conceptual representations into a verbal format. 14/n

6

3

115

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

I am looking for a professional artist/illustrator to help create some images for human cognitive neuroscience articles / book chapters. If interested, please send your resume + samples to evelina9 @mit .edu. Thanks!

32

39

109

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

8 months

Thrilled to share this tour de force co-led by SammyFloyd+ @OlessiaJour ! 8yrs in the making! "A tripartite structure of pragmatic language abilities: comprehension of social conventions,intonation processing,and causal reasoning". W/ @ZachMineroff ; co-supervised w/ @LanguageMIT 1/n

2

30

115

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

What a helpful review paper: ‘Hierarchy’ in the organization of brain networks "One of the most popular concepts in systems neuroscience is that of ‘hierarchy’. However, this concept has been interpreted in many different ways ...

Tweet card media

‘Hierarchy’ in the organization of brain networks | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...

Concepts shape the interpretation of facts. One of the most popular concepts in systems neuroscience is that of ‘hierarchy’. However, this concept has been interpreted in many different ways, which...

royalsocietypublishing.org

1

26

113

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

People often talk about how syntax is key for conveying complex meanings. It helps distinguish 'cat chase dog' from dog chase cat'. Turns out you mostly don't need formal grammatical marking (word order & morpho) for inferring the right complex meanings. Word meanings do the job.

@kmahowald

Kyle Mahowald

2 years

🍳🥚👩‍🍳 How often do we need word order to know the chef cooked the egg, as opposed to the egg cooking the chef? New preprint with @ediachek @LanguageMIT @ev_fedorenko @rljfutrell . Thread.

11

35

180

11

9

114

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Now in press at @jneurolang : Composition is the core driver of the language-selective network (with @FrancisMollica @MattSiegelman @ediachek @spiantado ZachMineroff @rljfutrell @HopeKean PengQian) IMHO, one of the coolest discoveries our group has made

3

29

112

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Next week, @saima_mm and @MayaTaliaferro , with help from other labbies, will scan 50+ conlang speakers! We will also have a special event on 11/11 2-5:30pm EST with conlang creators and researchers (see below). Register here: (Thanks @mcgovernmit !!)

Tweet media one

1

22

109

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

wow - very cool: Bayes in the brain -- revealing the neural code of uncertainty

Tweet card media

A neural basis of probabilistic computation in visual cortex

Nature Neuroscience - Although Bayesian models provide good accounts of perceptual decisions, it is unclear how their components are represented in the brain. This paper addresses this question by...

0

39

107

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Inspired by recent efforts to reduce barriers for young scientists (esp. URM) approaching PIs, some BCS faculty are now adding 'unofficial bios' to humanize the science we do. Here is Ted's: and here is mine:

6

3

103

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

Our needy pup Ollie (who needs snuggles at all times) helping ⁦ @LanguageMIT ⁩ teach dependency grammar. A book distilling the crux of natural language syntax coming soon!

Tweet media one

3

5

103

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Are you a finishing/recent PhD looking for a postdoc and interested in language recovery in aphasia? Swathi Kiran @AphasiaLab and I may be looking for one. We're especially interested in supporting underrepresented minorities. Please RT. #BlackInSTEM #LatinosinSTEM @LatinasinSTEM

1

112

101

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Neither does the human language network: sentences with scrambled word orders elicit a response as high as that elicited by intact sentences as long as local PMI among words is high enough (presumably allowing for building complex meanings locally):

@anh_ng8

Anh (Totti) Nguyen

3 years

Do SotA natural language understanding models care about word order? Nope 🙃, 75% to 90% of the time, for BERT-based models, on many GLUE tasks (where they outperformed humans). "marijuana cause cancer" == "cancer cause marijuana" Ouch... 1/4

Tweet media one

19

138

648

2

17

102

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

New position paper on expressive agrammatism in aphasia (w/ @raryskin , @LanguageMIT ). Given growing evidence that humans approximate a Bayesian ideal observer, we revive the “economy of effort” idea where agrammatic output is a rational adaptation to increased production costs. 🧵

3

11

100

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

So excited to finally have this out in the world! I hope that by disentangling language and thought (formal vs. functional linguistic competence), this piece will bring some clarity to the inter-disciplinary discourse about language models. Great job, @kmahowald and @neuranna !

@neuranna

Anna Ivanova

1 year

Three years in the making - our big review/position piece on the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) from the cognitive science perspective. Thread below! 1/

23

395

1K

0

13

99

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Did you know it’s possible to read normally without a visual word form area (VWFA)? We didn’t, but it turns out you can! Distributed neural code seems to suffice.

@jinnnliiii93

Jin Li 李锦

3 years

New preprint! Intact reading ability in spite of a spatially distributed visual word form 'area' in an individual born without the left superior temporal lobe @z_saygin @ev_fedorenko ) (1/7)

2

13

54

0

18

99

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Q2️⃣: Is language necessary for developing our capacity to think? Q3️⃣: Does language affect how we perceive and/or think (once our brain is mature)? Q4️⃣: Does the particular language we speak (e.g., Russian or Tamil or Mandarin, etc.) affect how we perceive and/or think? 5/n

2

4

96

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Now out in @NaturePortfolio @ScientificData . Congrats to @ben_lipkin @GretaTuckute and the rest of the team! The paper: The website where the atlas and the individual maps can be explored and downloaded:

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Thx to the hard work of @ben_lipkin @GretaTuckute and others + @NIDCD funding, we are ready to present to you LanA (Language Atlas)—a probabilistic atlas for the lang network based on lang localizer data from >800 inds (available for both volume and surface brain spaces). 1/n

9

139

502

0

24

93

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Let’s unpack what one may mean when talking about the *relationship* between language and thought. Several distinct questions have been asked about these capacities. Q1️⃣: Do language and (some aspects of) thought/cognition draw on the same machinery? 4/n

10

1

92

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 months

Looking for 1-2 FT RAs to start this summer. It's a 2- year position ideal for folks graduating college this spring who are looking for more research experience before applying to PhD programs in cog sci / neurosci. For full consideration, apply by Mar 15:

1

66

93

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

What we found: The general topography of the lang network is remarkably consistent across langs. 👆 (The variability we see is comparable to the variability we (and now others; e.g., @RodBraga ) have been seeing for years in English native speakers.) 8/n

6

6

90

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Getting excited about the upcoming Neurobiology of Language conference: (Oct 21-24)! Come hear about diverse projects by past, current, and future evlabbies and collaborators—we'd love feedback! 1/n

1

16

90

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

I had such a great time talking with @alanalda — one of the best science communicators ever! (And to clarify: I am in awe of *everything* about my daughter, including her language abilities :))

@alda

Clear+Vivid

3 years

Tomorrow is #ScienceClearAndVivid Podcast day! @ev_fedorenko is in awe of her daughter’s ability to soak up language. She is tackling questions like – can we think without language? And just where in the brain is language anyway? Listen tomorrow! 🧠🧐

Tweet media one

2

4

36

6

11

89

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

Do domain-general executive resources support core linguistic computations, like inhibiting irrelevant meanings or parses, keeping representations active in working memory, or predicting upcoming elements? It seems NO is the answer: 1/3

2

36

83

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Excited to share a new paper led by the awesome Leila Wehbe (not on Twitter): "Incremental Language Comprehension Difficulty Predicts Activity in the Language Network but Not the Multiple Demand Network" 1/n

3

16

84

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

7 months

Yay for scientists who can update their beliefs given new findings

@LakeBrenden

Brenden Lake

7 months

@AndrewLampinen Thanks for the comments Andrew! Indeed, I am a fan of your papers below. Yes, my perspective on compositionality is changing.. I did think it needed to be built-in and I don't believe that anymore.

2

0

61

1

9

82

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

All these qs are exciting. I have mostly worked on Q1️⃣–the q that brought me to cogneuro (and to @Nancy_Kanwisher ), as it cannot be straightforwardly answered with behav. approaches. I would say we have a definitive answer to Q1️⃣. The ans is NO — I review the evidence below. 6/n

2

0

80

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Exciting new work led by the amazing @martin_schrimpf (with @ibandlank @GretaTuckute @KaufCarina EghbalHosseini @Nancy_Kanwisher JoshTenenbaum and me; @mitbrainandcog @MIT_CBMM @mcgovernmit ):

Tweet card media

Artificial Neural Networks Accurately Predict Language Processing in the Brain

The ability to share ideas through language is our species’ signature cognitive skill, but how this feat is achieved by the brain remains unknown. Inspired by the success of artificial neural...

www.biorxiv.org

2

23

83

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

the fact remains that language is not essential for acquiring or employing most non-linguistic capacities. 19/19

2

0

80

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 months

So cooool!!!!

@begusgasper

Gašper Beguš

5 months

Sperm whales have equivalents to human vowels. We uncovered spectral properties in whales’ clicks that are recurrent across whales, independent of traditional types, and compositional. We got clues to look into spectral properties from our AI interpretability technique CDEV.

Tweet media one

98

978

5K

0

10

81

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

I couldn't be more excited about this work: it is possible to drive activity in the language🧠network ⬆️or⬇️ with model (GPT)-selected stimuli in new participants! A really strong test of LLMs as models of human lang processing. A real tour de force by the amazing @GretaTuckute !

@GretaTuckute

Greta Tuckute

1 year

"Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models" Preprint: With an amazing team: @aloxatel @ShashankSrikant @MayaTaliaferro Mingye (Christina) Wang @martin_schrimpf @cvnlab @ev_fedorenko 2/

2

17

59

0

17

79

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

FWIW, my take on that lit is that—to the extent such effects exist—they are subtle, and lang does not fundamentally change the underlying perceptual/conceptual structures (of course, if you can use lang to solve a task, you'll do that). 17/n

5

1

75

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

If you know my early fMRI lang work, you may be familiar with the "SWJN" acronym, which stands for "Sentences, Word-lists, Jabberwocky, Nonword-lists" - the paradigm that began my neurosci career. Here is what my sister @KrisFedorenko made me for my 40th. :) #sistersarethebest

Tweet media one

2

1

76

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Celebrating Mother’s day with princess Lana and Teddy. Missing my mama..

Tweet media one

2

1

77

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

Very exited about this work led by Cory Shain and @IdanAsherBlank , also with @marty_with_an_e and William Schuler: " fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension" 1/4

Tweet card media

fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension

Much research in cognitive neuroscience supports prediction as a canonical computation of cognition in many domains. Is such predictive coding implemented by feedback from higher-order domain-general...

www.biorxiv.org

2

22

73

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Got an email today from a HS student asking about an internship in the lab for "this coming summer" (2021!). Well, I guess some people a) have their shit together, and b) are optimistic that the world will still be here then.

1

0

76

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

22 days

So so excited for this!! <3 A lot of ground covered! :)

@lexfridman

Lex Fridman

22 days

Here's my conversation with Edward Gibson ( @LanguageMIT ), a linguist and psychologist at MIT, heading the MIT Language Lab. We talk all about the human language: syntax, grammar, structure, theories of language, evolution of language, how it reflects culture, and of course LLMs,…

198

345

2K

2

7

76

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

3 years

Psyched about this new research program with @RMarkRichardson @brainmodlab ! Building on @martin_schrimpf et al. (), we combine the highest-quality (intracranial) neural data and ANN models to discover the computations that underlie language processing.

1

11

75

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

Excited to share a new preprint: with LeilaWehbe @IdanAsherBlank @coryshain @rljfutrell @roger_p_levy @tmalsburg @LanguageMIT "Incremental language comprehension difficulty predicts activity in the language network but not the multiple demand network"

Tweet card media

Incremental language comprehension difficulty predicts activity in the language network but not the...

What role do domain-general executive functions play in human language comprehension? To address this question, we examine the relationship between behavioral measures of comprehension and neural...

www.biorxiv.org

2

22

74

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Q2️⃣ is challenging to address, but based on what we know from kids growing up without access to lang, I would say the answer is LARGELY NO (with the intriguing exception of Theory of Mind reasoning). Q3️⃣ and Q4️⃣ remain controversial. I say a few words about those at the end. 7/n

4

3

71

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

"What if researchers studied human language using the same methods and point of view they use to study animal language? They would probably think that humans, like other animals, do not have language" @scharff_scharff , you would like this paper, I think :)

Tweet card media

Animals Have No Language, and Humans Are Animals Too - Yosef Prat, 2019

Language is a cornerstone of human culture, yet the evolution of this cognitive-demanding ability is shrouded in mystery. Studying how different species demonst...

journals.sagepub.com

2

20

74

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

1 year

So hard to do new things when you get older, but I am caving.. Just not enough science here anymore. :( @ev_fedorenko @mstdn .science

2

4

74

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

8 days

Our latest attempt to find regional functional differences among the language areas: all areas are sensitive to word meanings and syntactic structure, and all but one (the posterior temporal area) are also sensitive to semantic composition.Congrats, @coryshain @HopeKean and team!

@coryshain

Cory Shain ([email protected])

9 days

Now out in @JOCN_Journal ! Distributed Sensitivity to Syntax and Semantics throughout the Language Network. . A 🧵...

4

29

86

4

9

73

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

5 years

"Grant reviewers award lower scores to proposals from women... even when they don’t know the gender of the applicant. That’s because male scientists tend to use broader, less specific words — which reviewers seem to prefer" Got it: be more vague.

6

24

71

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

2 years

Such patients have essentially lost all their production and comprehension abilities. The amazing Rosemary Varley (UCL) has been studying this population for many years, asking: can these patients still perform various non-linguistic cognitive tasks? 13/n

1

1

69

@ev_fedorenko

Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦

4 years

One of my fave papers from our group—a collaboration that arose from a puzzle (I was finding lang specificity and John Duncan had long been seeing domain-generality in apparently the same—turns out nearby!—brain regions)—just passed 500 cites.

1

3

70