Author | Lightnews

Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 6h

Thanks! We’ll put the code and chat interface out soon :)

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 9h

Congratulations!!

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks! 🧠✨

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks to all coauthors! 🦾
@anthesdaniel.bsky.social
@adriendoerig.bsky.social
@sushrutthorat.bsky.social
Peter König
@timkietzmann.bsky.social

/fin

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

We are convinced that these results mark a shift from static neural decoding toward interactive, generative brain-language interfaces.

Preprint: www.arxiv.org/abs/2509.23941

Brain-language fusion enables interactive neural readout and in-silico experimentation

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized human-machine interaction, and have been extended by embedding diverse modalities such as images into a shared language space. Yet, neural decoding has...

www.arxiv.org

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

CorText also responds to in-silico microstimulations in line with experimental predictions: For example, when amplifying face-selective voxels for trials where no people were shown to the participant, CorText starts hallucinating them. With inhibition we can "remove people”. 7/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

Following Shirakawa et al. (2025), we test zero-shot neural decoding: When entire semantic categories (e.g., zebras, surfers, airplanes) are withheld during training, the model can still give meaningful descriptions of the visual content. 6/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

What can we do with it? For example, we can have CorText answer questions about a visual scene (“What’s in this image?” “How many people are there”?) that a person saw while in an fMRI scanner. CorText never sees the actual image, only the brain scan. 5/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

By moving neural data into LLM token space, we gain open-ended, linguistic access to brain scans as experimental probes. At the same time, this has the potential to unlock many additional downstream capabilities (think reasoning, in-context learning, web-search, etc). 4/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

To accomplish this, CorText fuses fMRI data into the latent space of an LLM, turning neural signal into tokens that the model can reason about in response to questions. This sets it apart from existing decoding techniques, which map brain data into static embeddings/output. 3/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

Generative language models are revolutionizing human-machine interaction. Importantly, such systems can now reason cross-modally (e.g. vision-language models). Can we do the same with neural data - i.e., can we build brain-language models with comparable flexibility? 2/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 1d

Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language.

tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬

1/n

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 15d

In his article “Mysterium Iniquitatis of Sinful Man Aspiring into the Place of God” which is a very sane title (contra its contents ofc)

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 15d

Warren McCulloch

“To the theoretical question, "Can you design a machine to do whatever a brain can do?" the answer is this: "If you will specify in a finite and unambiguous way what you think a brain does do with information, then we can design a machine to do it." Pitts and I have proved this constructively. But can you say what you think brains do?”

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 22d

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Connecting neural activity, perception in the visual system

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked nine experts to weigh in.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · Sep 29

Wow, peak library experience at Princeton!
Looking forward to a week of the “Automated Scientific Discovery of Mind and Brain” workshop - where I will also present my work on CorText and brain-language fusion 🧠

pretty Princeton library with stained glass windows

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congratulations! :)

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

Oscar Woolnough @owoolnough.bsky.social · Sep 3

As it's hiring season again I'm resharing the NeuroJobs feed. Add #NeuroJobs to your post if you're recruiting or looking for an RA, PhD, Postdoc, or faculty position in Neuro or an adjacent field.

bsky.app/profile/did:...

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience @bernsteinneuro.bsky.social · Sep 2

🔍 Large language models, similar to those behind ChatGPT, can predict how the human brain responds to visual stimuli

New study by @adriendoerig.bsky.social @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social with colleagues from Osnabrück, Minnesota and @umontreal-en.bsky.social

Read the whole story 👉 bit.ly/3JXlYmO

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Aug 29

Our target discussion article out in Cognitive Neuroscience! It will be followed by peer commentary and our responses. If you would like to write a commentary, please reach out to the journal! 1/18 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @cibaker.bsky.social @susanwardle.bsky.social

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · Aug 29

incredible Ada Lovelace quote highlighted in a talk by Steve Furber. She spells out the dream of computational neuroscience, 2 centuries ago. The sheer ambition 🤩

Steve Furber powerpoint slide showing picture of Ada Lovelace and a quote: "I have my hopes, and very distinct ones too, of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations--in short, a law or laws for the mutual actions of the molecules of brain. .... I hope to bequeath to the generations a calculus of the nervous system."

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

Lilian Weber @lilweb.bsky.social · Aug 26

In other news, I am now a ✨ COXI ✨ (cognitive scientist in Osnabrück, Germany)

www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/campus-li...

I'll be looking for PhD students & postdocs later this year, so watch this space if combining cognitive modelling, EEG & tFUS to study flexible cognition sounds exciting to you 🚀

New at the university: Prof. Weber!

Osnabrück University welcomes Prof. Dr. Lilian Weber! Since August 15, she has held the professorship "Cognitive Modeling" at the School of Human Sciences. A warm welcome!

www.uni-osnabrueck.de

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · Aug 18

Datasets like NSD & THINGS offer rich stimuli but often test a single task.

After great conversations at #CCN2025 on multi-task studies & generalization in brains & models, I thought I would repost our perspective for those interested in this topic. We need multiple tasks!👉 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Centering cognitive neuroscience on task demands and generalization - Nature Neuroscience

Task demands are a primary determiner of behavior and neurophysiology. Here the authors discuss how understanding their influence through multitask studies and tests of generalization is the key to ar...

doi.org

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Reposted by Victoria Bosch

CogCompNeuro @cogcompneuro.bsky.social · Aug 15

That's a wrap for CCN2025 -- and so planning for CCN2026 in New York is starting today! Save travels to all participants and remember to fill out the feedback survey sent via email!

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · Aug 11

Looking for principles of neural organisation: should we ask what for or how come?
Great kickoff discussions at the “Modeling the Physical Brain” CCN satellite event! #CCN2025 #topography

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