Beautiful example showing that (neuro)-cognitive models can work super well simulating behavior, better than computer vision models, and at the same time allow understanding the underlying mechanisms. Great work by Janos, PhD student in my Lab.
Happy to share that my recent paper with @benjamingagl.bsky.social "Understanding the Neuro-Cognitive Mechanisms of Orthographic Learning in Humans and Baboons" is now published in Springer Nature: Computational Brain and Behavior (link.springer.com/article/10.1...)
We recently posted an extensive update to the *Differences in orthographic processing across species identified by a transparent computational model* preprint with more pigeon data. Also, more extensive analysis and simulation work.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The complete morphology of a single LC-NE neuron.
First off, these cells are gigantic. This one, for example, has >72 cm of axon! To our knowledge, it’s the longest neuron ever fully reconstructed. I leave it to the reader as an exercise to estimate the length of a human LC neuron. 5
At the OEGP conference in Salzburg presenting our consensus based guidelines for reading research and the progress of the german lexicon project that applies the guidelines. Nice to be back at my Alma mater!
Such a mess …
We're excited to announce today's #GeWoNN Journal Club Meeting! Our guest speaker, Daria Kostanian, will talk about "Development of coarse- and orientation-tuning for native letters in children" (Paper link: tinyurl.com/28fb4z89)
TODAY!! 24-3-2026, 11-12 am (CET)
Zoom link👇
tinyurl.com/3m9rfuyx
Today!
Eye-Tracking-BIDS: the Brain Imaging Data Structure extended to gaze position and pupil data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...
We're excited to announce March's #GeWoNN Journal Club Meeting! Our guest speaker, Prof. Katharina von Kriegstein, will talk about "The role of sensory thalami and cortico-thalamic connections in developmental dyslexia"
6-3-2026, 11-12 am (CET)
Register here for the Zoom link👇
tinyurl.com/vk4r2eba
If you're looking for a PhD and you're interested in the cerebellum, predictions, language, and MEG, please apply by 1st March! We have two open positions.
More details here:
benediktzoefel.wixsite.com/home/phd
In case you are interested in letter recognition .... we start in a view minutes at 9!
Happy New Year! 🥳 We're excited to announce January's #GeWoNN Journal Club Meeting! Our guest speaker, Dr Kurt Winsler, will talk about "Experience-Dependent Changes in Visual Processing of Letters".
Date: 21-1-2026, 9-10 am (CET)
Register here for the Zoom link 👇
forms.gle/e25X4FoQ2VUh...
Or as I often say: Friends don't let friends use abbreviations!
Diese Geschichte ist unfassbar.
Weil der Trump-Regierung die Arbeit des Internationalen Strafgerichtshofs nicht passt, wird ein französischer Richter digital de facto ausgelöscht und bekommt keine Kreditkarte und kein Bankkonto mehr:
TODAY! In case you are interested ;)
🚨Now out in *Open Mind* 🚨
"Can we utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate useful linguistic corpora? A case study of the word frequency effect in young German readers"
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
with
@jobschepens.bsky.social @hannawoloszyn.bsky.social @nicolekmarx.bsky.social
Professor Dr Pamela Perniss, Chair of Sign Language Interpreting: German Sign Language - German, talks about her love for her research and educational work and the special contribution sign language makes to people's inclusion in society, education and life👇
andhowaboutyou.podigee.io/28-pamela-pe...
Fun project with much much more nuanced experimenting and discussion of the effects.
Interestingly, over the ten corpora we derived in the study we found a correlation showing that the corpora with lower richness generally generate the more adequate word frequency measures.
However, when using derived frequency to estimate the word frequency effect in the child word recognition behavior model, the fits indicate that the frequency measures based on the LLM corpus captures the effect more adequately than frequency based on the children's book corpus.
Investigating the characteristics that LLMs generate when asked to produce text for children.
We focus on lexical richness and word frequency, showing that the text is generally less rich compared to children's books.
🚨Now out in *Open Mind* 🚨
"Can we utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate useful linguistic corpora? A case study of the word frequency effect in young German readers"
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
with
@jobschepens.bsky.social @hannawoloszyn.bsky.social @nicolekmarx.bsky.social
In the contribution by Elif Ecem Çalışkan, we compare human ratings for semantic variables to those produced by LLMs in the Turkish language, which has not been studied a lot to date.
Looking forward to being part of this symposium at TeaP2026. I will present our TRUST guidelines for reading research and the German Lexicon Project (GLP)
Congratulations to our #GeWoNN members on their accepted symposia at the #teap2026 Conference!
See titles below:
Welcome to join our upcoming Journal Club meetings in Oct & Nov! Happy to have @cyhsieh.bsky.social & Dr. Cosimo Iaia as our guest speakers!
Register to get the Zoom link or sign up as our next guest speaker:
forms.gle/TY6Cuxut87Ej...
More exciting talks coming up. Please share & see you there!
This 2021 paper by @benjamingagl.bsky.social and colleagues is full of important findings and ideas about the temporal structure of reading and speech. I keep coming back to these data.
Eye movements during text reading align with the rate of speech production
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Binz et al. (in press, Nature) developed an LLM called Centaur that better predicts human responses in 159 of 160 behavioural experiments compared to existing cognitive models. See: arxiv.org/abs/2410.20268
Wir brauchen ein sofortiges #Waffenverbot für Privatpersonen – damit sich eine schreckliche Tat wie #Graz nicht wiederholen kann. Jetzt Appell an Innenminister Karner und die Bundesregierung unterzeichnen: actions.aufstehn.at/waffenverbot...