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Evelina Fedorenko (Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦) of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a 2025 Troland Research Award recipient! She is recognized for groundbreaking contributions and insights into the language network in the human brain. Congratulations! Learn more about her research: nasonline.org/award/troland-… #NASaward

Our language neuroscience lab (evlab.mit.edu) is looking for a new lab manager/FT RA to start in the summer. Apply here: tinyurl.com/3r346k66 We'll start reviewing apps in early Mar. (Unfortunately, MIT does not sponsor visas for these positions, but OPT works.)

New preprint! In “Naturalistic Computational Cognitive Science: Towards generalizable models and theories that capture the full range of natural behavior” we synthesize AI and cognitive science works into a perspective on pursuing generalizable understanding of cognition. Thread:

Really beautiful experiments clearly illustrating a fascinating interaction between different types of ICL!

Recent work by Md Rifat Arefin, Oscar Skean, & CDS' Ravid Shwartz Ziv and Yann LeCun shows intermediate layers in LLMs often outperform the final layer for downstream tasks. Using info theory & geometric analysis, they reveal why this happens & how it impacts models. nyudatascience.medium.com/middle-layers-…

Very important work by Md Rifat Arefin , Oscar Skean, Yann LeCun, and Ravid Shwartz Ziv on richness of information content in intermediate layers in LLMs. highly recommended

*Layer by Layer: Uncovering Hidden Representations in LMs* by Md Rifat Arefin Ravid Shwartz Ziv Yann LeCun A concept known as "matrix entropy" helps analyzing the superior performance of middle layers' embeddings (compared to the last one) from several perspectives. arxiv.org/abs/2502.02013

New brain/language study w/ Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦! We applied task-agnostic individualized functional connectomics (iFC) to the entire history of fMRI in the Fedorenko lab, parcellating nearly 1200 brains into networks based on activity fluctuations alone. doi.org/10.1101/2025.0… . 🧵

As a child growing up in the former Soviet Union, Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦 studied English, French, German, Polish, and Spanish. Today she is is working to decipher the internal structure and functions of the brain’s language-processing machinery. news.mit.edu/2025/evelina-f…

New paper!🧠**The cerebellar components of the human language network** with: Hannah Small Moshe Poliak Greta Tuckute Ben Lipkin agata wolna Anila D'Mello and Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦 biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 1/n 🧵

This was great fun to do. Thanks Hannah Fry. I hope I didn't say anything too silly.

Accepting the first of two 2025 Troland Research Awards is Evelina Fedorenko of MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, for groundbreaking contributions and insights into the language network in the human brain. 🧠 #NASaward #NAS162 Watch now: ow.ly/R6gP50VIsih

Hi, happy to share that our paper "Layer by Layer: Uncovering Hidden Representations in Language Models" was accepted to ICML as a spotlight! 🥳🥳🥳 Oscar Skean, Md Rifat Arefin, DanZhao, Jalal Naghiyev and Yann LeCun

How do language models generalize from information they learn in-context vs. via finetuning? We show that in-context learning can generalize more flexibly, illustrating key differences in the inductive biases of these modes of learning — and ways to improve finetuning. Thread: 1/

MIT Mentor: Nancy Kanwisher @[email protected] (center) has guided more than 70 PhD students + postdocs during her career, including Ev (like in 'evidence', not Eve) Fedorenko 🇺🇦 (left), Josh McDermott (center) + @Rebecca_Saxe (right), who are now her colleagues at the McGovern Institute. Learn more: indd.adobe.com/view/dce9d2fc-…

It was an honor to speak at the Kempner Institute at Harvard University on how some of our recent works can be interpreted as an application of rational analysis to language model behaviors — seeing both their successes and failures through the lens of adaptation to the properties of their training data.

🎉 We’re thrilled to announce the first ELLIS × Unireps Speaker Series (Reading Group associated with ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program) session is happening soon! 🔜 🗓️ When: 29th May 2025 – CET 📍 Where: ethz.zoom.us/j/66426188160 🎙️ Who: Andrew Lampinen (Keynote) &

I loved reading it. Science is about listening to nature, not imposing a simplified picture we wish to see. The real bottleneck of progress is often our psychological fear and defensiveness from clinging to hypotheses/method, rather than technical issues.