Research
Meaning in the brain
How does the human brain store and operate over conceptual knowledge? Is knowledge domain-specific or domain-general? Does the brain have dedicated machinery for navigating the conceptual space? What is the role of the language brain network in semantic/conceptual processing?
Meaning in large language models
What aspects of world knowledge are learnable from distributional patterns in text? Do large language models have robust internal models of objects, agents, properties, and events in the world? Do models operate over world knowledge representations in a way similar to humans?
Inner speech & thought
How can we measure people's subjective experiences of inner speech imagery? Do inner speech experiences mediate behavioral performance and neural activity evoked by diverse cognitive tasks? Can we predict how strongly a person relies on inner speech from brain activity alone? And can inner speech support reasoning in AI systems?
Methods matter
How can we leverage the synergy between neuroscience and AI to design better methods for probing and interpreting intelligent systems? What is the optimal tradeoff between simplicity and fidelity when designing neural probes? Can we use the power of flexible new tools like Julia to develop better analysis practices?