Taraz Lee
tarazlee.bsky.social
Taraz Lee
@tarazlee.bsky.social
Associate Professor UMich Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscientist, Basketball Junkie

sites.lsa.umich.edu/tarazlee-lab/
Pinned
I’m very excited to finally see this one in print! Led by the incomparable @brissend.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We find that cognitive processes (e.g. attention, working
memory) undergo error-based adaptation in a manner reminiscent of sensorimotor adaptation. Read on! (1/n)
Errors of attention adaptively warp spatial cognition - Nature Human Behaviour
Brissenden et al. demonstrate that spatial cognition adaptively shifts to counteract errors in the allocation of visual attention, indicating error-driven learning mechanisms previously ascribed solel...
www.nature.com
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Spark friends! If you are here at Psychonomics, let’s get together for a casual meet up at Revival Denver Public House on Saturday at 5 pm. Come by if you want to unwind a bit, see familiar faces, and meet others in our community. Pass this along to anyone who might want to join.
revival-denver.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Upcoming presentations at Psychonomics. We have many super-cool projects on attention and working memory that you don't want to miss! See you in Denver! @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social @xiaojinma.bsky.social @chenyebao.bsky.social @yuezhang-mu.bsky.social @kaitlyndrennan.bsky.social
November 18, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Good morning SFN! CoCoA lab posters today and tomorrow afternoon. Come by LL20 to chat with @jacobsellers.bsky.social about using fMRI and our forced response task to examine the dynamics of control
November 17, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Please come check out our posters Saturday and Sunday! #SfN25 #Neuroskyence
November 15, 2025 at 5:56 AM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Headed to #SfN25? Come by and see the posters from our lab:
more in 🧵👇
#neuroskyence #SfN2025 @sfn.org @neuronline.sfn.org
November 14, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Presenting on contingency representations in PFC during WM on Saturday at SfN! Featuring fMRI and multi-area RNN modeling from my time with John Murray 🤓

And, recruiting a PhD student for Fall ‘26 in my new lab at U-Miami! Check us out here, and feel free to reach out: jam-lab.org (apps due 12/1)
November 14, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Wouldn't have predicted this. I have some reading to do!
November 14, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Very solid tips here
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.

Caveats:
-*-*-*-*


> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees

> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
November 6, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
My lab at Boston University has open positions for a postdoc and PhD students. We study visual perception, attention, and decision making with a focus on temporal dynamics. Check out our recent work here sites.bu.edu/denisonlab/ and email me if you're interested in learning more
November 5, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Our amazing department (Psychology) at U-Miami is hiring in their Adult division, with open topic / focus area! Come apply and check out the job ad here: umiami.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMFaculty/jo...:
November 4, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
I am recruiting a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara for an NIH-funded project on the organization of lateral PFC function--across emotion and cognition--using representational fMRI & TMS. I’d love to find someone w/ a background in cognitive control & computational modeling to complement our team! 🏝️ 🧠 🧲
October 29, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Two incredible scientists (and good people)! Couldn't be more thrilled for them! @actlab.bsky.social @monicarosenb.bsky.social
thrilled!! but speaking after @monicarosenb.bsky.social ??? that's too tough to follow
October 30, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
I am accepting a Ph.D. student to begin Fall 2026. The position would be part of the Cognition and Neuroscience program at Mizzou. Great opportunities to learn eye tracking and ERPs. Ideal candidates will have some background in attentional capture and visual search. If interested, please email me!
October 20, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Thrilled to share our new preprint highlighting distinct neurocomputational mechanisms underlying how reward and punishment determine adaptive cognitive control - a massive fMRI study and collaborative team effort with the @shenhavlab.bsky.social 🧠

Link here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control
Human motivation is fundamentally shaped by one's expectations of the reward they could earn for good performance or the punishment they would avoid for poor performance. However, the extent to which ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 20, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
New Pre-Print:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

We’re all familiar with having to practice a new skill to get better at it, but what really happens during practice? The answer, I propose, is reinforcement learning - specifically policy-gradient reinforcement learning.

Overview 🧵 below...
Policy-Gradient Reinforcement Learning as a General Theory of Practice-Based Motor Skill Learning
Mastering any new skill requires extensive practice, but the computational principles underlying this learning are not clearly understood. Existing theories of motor learning can explain short-term ad...
www.biorxiv.org
October 20, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
🎉 Get ready for Black In Neuro Chapters Week 2025!
🗓 Oct 27–31 — a week of connection, community & celebration 🖤

📣 Chapter Roll Call
🤝 Community Call
🍸 Manhattan Mixer
🧠 1st-ever Chapters SURP Symposium!

✨ Register: linktr.ee/BINchapters

#BlackInNeuro #BINTogether #ChaptersWeek2025
October 15, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
One of my two last (ever) papers on tDCS:
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Does anodal tDCS over M1 really enhance motor sequence learning? A non-replication of earlier findings in a double-blind, pre-registered large-sample study in humans
Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is one of the most widely used noninvasive neuromodulation methods. Despite its popularity, some recent studies highlighted issues about the r...
www.medrxiv.org
October 11, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
New post in @jocnforum.bsky.social by Early Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social: "Principles for proper peer review"

doi.org/10.21428/8e6...
Principles for proper peer review
doi.org
October 6, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
#JNeurosci: Kashefi et al. dissociate between the “what” and “how” components of motor sequence learning and provides evidence for the development of motoric sequence representations that guide optimal movement execution.
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025
September 30, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...
September 24, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
The basic pattern shown in this YouGov survey is that people overestimate minorities and underestimate majorities. This basic pattern--overestimating small proportions and underestimating large ones--is due to *psychophysics*.
December 3, 2024 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
New pre-print day! Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex 🧠 (with Ed Awh & @serences.bsky.social)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex
Increasing working memory (WM) load incurs behavioral costs, and whether the neural constraints on behavioral costs are localized (i.e., emanating from the intraparietal sulcus) or distributed across ...
www.biorxiv.org
September 16, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
Thrilled that our new review "Motor Working Memory" is now in press at TiCS!

@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social
@cellpress.bsky.social

By me +
Hanna Hillman

We argue that a dedicated research program on 'working memory for movements' is long overdue

Link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lmMX4sIRv...
September 15, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
If you run a life science lab where research has either significantly slowed or shut down completely due to Trump administration policies, I’d like to hear your story. I'm a biotech and life sciences reporter for @statnews.com, and you can reach me at [email protected] #journorequest
September 10, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Taraz Lee
New pre-print!

We attempt to survey the two different universes of motor learning research: basic (meetings like NCM, MLMC) and applied (e.g. NASPSA), and consider what these fields can learn from each other and what the future might look like if they can be better integrated.

More in Eric's 🧵 👇
September 12, 2025 at 3:44 PM