Fan L. Cheng

Can we reconstruct our subjective experiences from brain signals? Check our latest paper in @ScienceAdvances w/ my PhD advisor @ykamit and colleagues. We explore how reconstruction methods can advance understanding of neural representations behind illusion.science.org/doi/full/10.11…

🧠What do neurons “want”?✨ Kempner researchers @WangBinxu and @HombreCerebro have developed a way for neurons to train AI image models to match their “preferences.” Read more about the research, out now in @NatureNeuro, here: bit.ly/4bz47hw #neuroscience #NeuroAI

Absolutely wonderful talk by Roland Fleming on “Grasping: measuring and modeling how we use our hands to pick things up” at @ZuckermanBrain

I am searching for postdocs interested in developing a deeper scientific understanding of any aspect of AI and using this understanding to improve AI systems. If interested please email me materials by Jan 10th 2026: a CV, 3 letters of reference, and a statement of research interests (can be short, just indicating what you would like to work on). The positions are generously funded by grants from @schmidtsciences and @SimonsFdn. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with many labs across @StanfordHAI and also the Simons Collaboration on the Physics of Learning and Neural Computation (physicsoflearning.org).

Bringing our Tactile UMI and additional two tactile fingers to NeurIPS! All three authors @YunzhuLiYZ @XinyueYolandaZ and I will be at our poster for demo on Thu 12:00–15:00 in Exhibit Hall C/D/E, #2400. Otherwise feel free to catch me around the venue Wed–Fri 🙂

I’ll be at #NeurIPS2025 in San Diego (Dec 2–6)! Presenting our "Interpretable Brain Decoding" paper (@KriegeskorteLab,@adeli_hossein,@wenxuan_guo_,@ethanhwang_,@LibraCheng) at the Foundation Models for the Brain and Body Workshop on Dec 6, 3:45–5:00 pm. Happy to chat!

Our "mind captioning" paper is now published in @ScienceAdvances. The method generates descriptive text of what we perceive and recall from brain activity — a linguistic interpretation of nonverbal mental content rather than language decoding. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv…

This is gona be the best Ai detector.. It's an image not a video, try it on whatever Ai you want, they won't see the floating heart. It's the human brain.

The MIT Consciousness Club will have a Zoom option for those who would like to join online. First session Friday, Sept 19, 12pm-1:30pm. For more, see: sites.google.com/view/mit-consc…. You can also register to the email list here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI….

Genie 3 feels like a watershed moment for world models 🌐: we can now generate multi-minute, real-time interactive simulations of any imaginable world. This could be the key missing piece for embodied AGI… and it can also create beautiful beaches with my dog, playable real time

And here’s an experimental podcast-style of paper summary, generated via Notebook LM directed by me! Link: notebooklm.google.com/notebook/9c827…

Realistic-looking images predicted from brain activity ≠ faithful reconstruction of visual experience

Congrats, Paul!

Excited about this update from our team, esp Pingchuan Ma, Honglin Chen, and Damian Mrowca! Sounds more natural and human like, with better translation support. Enjoy the chats while we further improve the model, and let us know what could be even better!

Train your vision SAE on Monday, then again on Tuesday, and you'll find only about 30% of the learned concepts match. ⚓ We propose Archetypal SAE which anchors concepts in the real data’s convex hull, delivering stable and consistent dictionaries. arxiv.org/pdf/2502.12892…

🤖Tall Vega, short Vega - same robot, different altitude 🎡Those fancy vega wheels don't just zoom around - they'll make your table sparkle too! dexmate.ai Besides, we are hiring! AI wizards and hardware hackers - internships and full-time gigs await. Join us and get your personal Vega!

Please share! My Lab (Bytes of Minds) is recruiting Postdocs, RAs, & PhD students! If you are into #MentalHealth #AI #NeuroAI #LLM #HCI #RL #NLP #BCI #XR #ML #DataViz #Media #ComputationalPsychiatry, join us at Mount Sinai, NY's largest health network! 🍎linlab.org @MountSinaiNYC @AIHealthMtSinai @MountSinaiPsych @SinaiBrain @IcahnMountSinai @NeuroRumblr @GradNeuro @PsychJobs @PsychChatter @PurchPsychJobs #Hiring

I’m hiring PhD students in computer science at Columbia! Our lab will tackle core challenges in understanding and controlling neural models that interact with language. for example, - methods for LLM control - discoveries of LLM properties - pretraining for understanding

The Center for Neural Science at NYU is aiming to add another computational neuroscientist to our community: apply.interfolio.com/157767 Come join us!

Impressive work! Integrating vision and tactile “perception” brings us closer to truly human-like robots capable of handling complex, delicate tasks.

Great job opportunity to start a neuroscience lab at the best public university in the world 👇