Mariya Toneva

So excited and honored to receive an ERC Starting Grant for the project BrainAlign!! BrainAlign will bring LLMs closer to human understanding by directly aligning them with the human brain. Stay tuned for our findings, and multiple postdoc and PhD openings in the coming years!

I'm recruiting PhD students this cycle! We study how the brain perceives, remembers, and predicts naturalistic experiences like movies and games, using computational tools to analyze behavioral and neural data 🧠 App deadline is 12/2/26 - see our lab pubs on our website www.dpmlab.org/pubs.html

🚨 Very excited to share our latest work: RABBiT: a foundation model for speech- and language-evoked brain activity. 🧠🎧 W/ @mtoneva.bsky.social One model enables: ✅ accurate zero-shot prediction ✅ efficient few-shot adaptation with only 5-10 mins of data ✅ convenient in-silico neuroscience. 🧵👇

🚨 Two open postdoc positions in the ERC-funded project BrainAlign at the Max Planck Institute in Saarbruecken, Germany: position #1 on NeuroAI: postdocprogram.mpg.de/node/58480 position #2 on human-centered LLM evaluations: postdocprogram.mpg.de/node/58481 Application deadline: Oct 13, 2026

Hello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb

This review began with the great Peter Hagoort asking after one of my talks: "What have we actually learned about the brain from brain–DNN comparisons?" 🔥 So eye-opening to survey NeuroAI work across vision and language--many questions have been answered in one field but remain open in the other!

Just landed in Barcelona for #FENS2026! On Wed, I’ll be moderating a panel on AI in neuroscience, 9:45am in Hall B with Mathew Abrams, @wakesleep.bsky.social @rachelparkinson.bsky.social and @mtoneva.bsky.social @satra.bsky.social,

Check out our #ACL2026 Oral paper 🗣️🤖 How do MLMs ground word usage through interactions with the physical and social world? Taking a classical human communication paradigm, we compare 7 MLMs with humans. doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.84

It was a lot of fun to write this piece! Makes me so excited for the symposium about The Modern Neuroscience Lab in the Age of AI at FENS in a little more than 2 weeks 🧠🤖

Really excited to take part in this important discussion!

Happy to announce the 3rd iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), which will take place in Osnabrück September 14th-15th 2026. NEAT is a (deliberately small scale) NeuroAI workshop that brings together researchers from neuroscience and AI. www.kietzmannlab.org/neat2026/ More information below 👇

We're excited to share our new study on decoding brain activity in participants with post-stroke aphasia! We think this is an important step towards cognitive brain-computer interfaces for patients with language disorders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/8

The Cowley Group at CSHL has an opening for a bioAI PhD student to start Fall 2026 to work on closed-loop AI models for visual processing (see below). You *must* have a Master's degree in a quant/eng/cs field. www.cshl.edu/phd-program/... Please reach out to me if interested! I'll be at Cosyne.

📢 PhD position in the NeuroAI of Language Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging Deadline March 20 Please RT 🙏 👇 mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language

Submit an article to our SI "Studying Language Processing in the Era of LLMs" We're interested in papers using cognitive priors to improve LLM, using LLMs to understand the brain’s processing of language, or using theories/methods/tests inspired by cognitive science to understand LLMs, and more!

🏆 Saarbrücken now houses 11 ACM Fellows — about 1/3 of all ACM Fellows in Germany — highest of any location nationwide. This year, only 3 new Fellows in Germany were named, and Saarland University software engineering professor Sven Apel was one! Congrats, Prof. Apel! 👏 🔗 Read more: sic.link/apel

🔬 We're hiring a Junior Group Leader for Data-Driven Digital Twins/System Models in medicine/life sciences at @uni_goettingen! Perfect opportunity for early-career researchers who want to: - Lead their own research group - Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine

🤖🧠I'll be considering applications for PhD students & postdocs to start at Yale in Fall 2026! If you are interested in the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, & AI, I encourage you to apply! PhD link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_... Postdoc link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...

We're seeking the next Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics! Lead cutting-edge research in language & cognition. Nominations (incl. self) due 19 Dec 2025. mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/nominations-and-self-nominations-sought-position-director-max

🚀 ELLIS partners with the newly launched 𝗠𝗮𝘅 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗸 𝗔𝗜 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 to expand doctoral opportunities across Europe. Fully funded PhDs with dual supervision: one advisor in ML/AI, one in an application domain, with optional ELLIS co-advisors. 📅 Oct 1-31 🔗 ellis.eu/news/ellis-p... @maxplanck.de

Happy and proud to see @rjantonello.bsky.social’s work awarded by SNL!

Excited to announce the first workshop on CogInterp: Interpreting Cognition in Deep Learning Models @ NeurIPS 2025! 📣 How can we interpret the algorithms and representations underlying complex behavior in deep learning models? 🌐 coginterp.github.io/neurips2025/ 1/4

Music is an incredibly powerful retrieval cue. What is the neural basis of music-evoked memory reactivation? And how does this reactivation relate to later memory for the retrieved events? In our new study, we used Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to find out. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Had a great time discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain with the UniReps community. Thank you for inviting me! This is a new speaker series and there are already some very interesting speakers lined up -- excited for future discussions! Subscribing to stay up to date ✅

I'm hiring at least one post-doc! We're interested in creating language models that process language more like humans than mainstream LLMs do, through architectural modifications and interpretability-style steering. Express interest here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀 I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales 👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html 👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....

Looking forward to discussing aligning LLMs to the human brain!

NEUROCOG 2025 is taking place in Brussels Nov 17–18! The theme: AI and the Human Brain 🤖 🧠 We’re thrilled to welcome 6 amazing invited speakers: @evfedorenko.bsky.social, @nicoschuck.bsky.social, @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @jeffreybowers.bsky.social, @irisgroen.bsky.social & @mtoneva.bsky.social

Our ICLR poster is Saturday Morning (Hall 3 + Hall 2B #63)! We (myself with Cory Efird, Alex Murphy and Joel Zylberberg) are excited to share our work searching for Shared Decodable Concepts in the human brain. We used the Natural Scenes Dataset to find the concepts that most drive brain activity…

There is still time until tomorrow to apply for a 4-year Research Fellow post in the Language and Cognition Lab @ UCL!

I am so happy—this is the first 1st author paper I have written, since the cancer diagnosis of my late wife seven years ago. 📑 PAPER ALERT: "Beyond binding: from modular to natural vision" in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2025) sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Together with @autreche.bsky.social, Adish Singla, Krishna Gummadi, Goran Radanovic and Nina Grgić-Hlača, we have multiple open positions postdocs in AI, Computing, and Society at the MPI for Software Systems! Apply by May 13 via the new Max Planck Postdoc Program! www.mpg.de/en/max-planc...

Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction. Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!

Stay tuned for #ARENA Symposium Abstract Representations in Neural Architectures: From Human Cognition to Artificial Intelligence at #teap2025 on 12 March @goetheuni.bsky.social #CognitiveScience #Neuroscience #AI #DNNs #KnowledgeRepresentation #Psychology #ComputationalNeuroscience

One week left to apply! We'll have so much exciting data for projects: for example, neuropixel data from humans while they listen to sentences courtesy of @shaileejain.bsky.social, Eddie Chang, and his group.

Inaugural post on bsky: The ECOLANG Multimodal Corpus, providing audiovisual recordings and annotations of multimodal communicative behaviours by English-speaking adults in dyadic interaction with a child or another adult is now available rdcu.be/eblMF

I'm hiring a full-time research assistant to start this Summer! The lab studies perception and cognition from infancy to adulthood using neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational approaches For more details about the lab and the position, see: vlad-lab.com/join #psychjobs #neurojobs

Our paper on how neural codes track prior events in a narrative and predict subsequent memory for details, led by @collinsilvy.bsky.social, is now out in Communications Psychology! rdcu.be/d93Vc #neuroskyence #psychscisky

🚨Job alert!🚨 Are you curious about curiosity, and looking for a post-doc position? Then please consider applying: www.ru.nl/en/working-a... Feel free to e-mail/DM me if you have questions. Thanks very much for sharing/re-posting!

Would you like to work at Max Planck Society tenured? A new round of the Lise Meitner Excellence Program for #tenuretrack group leaders opened today - pls consider applying! The program aims to recruit and promote exceptionally qualified female scientists. mpg.de/lise-meitner-e… #LiseMeitnerGroups

Excited to share our preprint "Fast-timescale hippocampal processes bridge between slowly unfurling neocortical states during memory search" 🧠✨ We leverage iEEG to elucidate the fast neural mechanisms by which long multimodal narratives are unfurled in continuous memory-search tinyurl.com/wjkr3dvf

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.)

Final Call for Submissions! ⏳ Don't miss your chance to present at the Re-Align Workshop @iclr-conf.bsky.social ! We welcome submissions from ICML, CogSci, and beyond.

Very proud to announce that the first Iris paper received the 2025 Most Influential POPL Paper Award this week. This is a testament to the amazing contributions of a wonderful international network of collaborators. www.youtube.com/live/ZKwpY0g...

Re-Align returns to #ICLR2025! Please consider submitting if you work on how ML / CogSci / Neuro systems represent the world & what factors shape these representations 💭🧠🤖 w/ @thisismyhat.bsky.social @dotadotadota.bsky.social @sucholutsky.bsky.social @eringrant.bsky.social @siddsuresh97.bsky.social

postdoc opportunity in @alexwoolgar.bsky.social and my lab, based in Cambridge UK! seeking someone with excellent analytical skills to join our project using time-resolved human neuroimaging to study receptive language processing in non-speaking autistic individuals 🧠✨ www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/48835/

The #CCN2025 conference 2025.ccneuro.org is looking for area and senior area chairs for the new 8-page track. You can sign up for area chair and form this list we will also invite senior area chairs. We might also nominate you ourselves :-) forms.gle/MTBgZZxQaDY8...

(1/4) The Algonauts Project 2025 challenge is now live! Participate and build computational models that best predict how the human brain responds to multimodal movies! Submission deadline: 13th of July. #algonauts2025 #NeuroAI #CompNeuro #neuroscience #AI algonautsproject.com