Erica Busch

New preprint! Thrilled to share my latest work with @esfinn -- "Sensory context as a universal principle of language in humans and LLMs" osf.io/preprints/psya…

Today in @Nature, we report human sensory #assembloids—the most complex 3D assembloids to date—comprising four integrated parts to recapitulate aspects of the spinothalamic pathway that processes pain stimuli. We use this model to investigate cellular/early circuit level features of genetic pain syndromes. More details to follow. Work pioneered in the lab by the brilliant Ji-il Kim and Kent Imaizumi, and in close collaboration with @GregScherrer25! Link below 👇

This is just the TL;DR of these super cool results — highly suggest perusing the paper for more! & take a peek at the supplement for some fun tidbits from participants’ reports on their experience of the experiment 8/8

Yet, during the session where the perturbation went “outside-manifold”, participants couldn’t learn (within the same 1 hour session of training). Together — we think these results show that manifold geometry is a critical ingredient for more learnable human neurotech! 7/8

That is, if we knew how a participants’ brain activity is naturally structured, we could figure out types of activity that would be easier or harder for them to learn to control. 4/8

Our idea? If we could characterize the geometric structure, or ‘intrinsic manifold’, of the brain activity we were training people to control, we could leverage it to accelerate learning. 3/8

We aimed to tackle a significant challenge for human neurofeedback and brain-computer interfaces: it’s *really* hard to learn to control your own brain! Humans generally show variable BCI learning, really long training times, and high rates of non-response in these tasks. 2/8

New preprint! Excited to share our latest work “Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry” ft. outstanding former UG Chandra Fincke, @g_lajoie_ , @krishnaswamylab, & @wutsaiyale's Nick Turk-Browne 1/8 doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

Our lab (thefinnlab.github.io) is excited to review PhD applications this cycle! Check us out if you wanna do interesting stuff with brains and behavior in the woods 🌲🧠🌲Apply to Dartmouth Psych&Brain Sciences via Guarini Grad School (graduate.dartmouth.edu/admissions-f...) by Dec 1!

Our latest in @TrendsCognSci on embracing, rather than mitigating, variability in the search for biological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders Available here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1k32t4sIRvTB… Thanks to the dream team (@AFornito, @JegTiego, @LindenParkes, @AvramHolmes, @amarquand)!

Come join us this Monday (10/21) for a fun celebration of our friend Sheri on this beautiful fall day! @WuTsaiYale @YalePsychology There will be dogs, food, lawn games, and crafts 🥰

Tomorrow morning at #SfN2024 I’ll be sharing preliminary results from my first infant fMRI project! Stop by my poster “Hippocampal contributions to relational memory in human infants” at U34 (Tuesday 8-12) to say hi and learn more 👋🧠

I am recruiting PhD students for 2025! ⏰✨📝 My lab @BBSutdallas @UT_Dallas studies human cognitive neuroscience 🧠🧠🧠 in high-level perception and cognition using neuroimaging, naturalistic stimuli, computational methods, and AI models 🤖🤖🤖 in both typical and neuropsychological populations 💻💻💻! 🏷️Lab: labs.utdallas.edu/coconeurolab/ 📔PhD (DDL Dec 1): bbs.utdallas.edu/academics/grad… ✅Application details: labs.utdallas.edu/coconeurolab/j…

@smickdougle Should also be made into a slack emoji….

should this be my new academic profile pic [no]

Heading to @CogCompNeuro? Come check out my poster tomorrow (A62) and contributed talk in Section V to learn more about our study using manifold learning to enhance neurofeedback learning! @g_lajoie_ @KrishnaswamyLab 2024.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=572

It's finally here: Visual routines meets navigational affordances -- in mazes! My work with Brian Scholl has now been published in JEP: General. Read through APA or my website ( now live at kimwwong.github.io ) psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-04…

Our cortical surface template, onavg (short for OpenNeuro Average), is published in @naturemethods. Onavg evenly samples different parts of the cerebral cortex, leading to improved performance of various analysis and reduced computational time. @Guo_Jiahui_ @IGobbini @haxbylab

Check out our review on how the prefrontal cortex integrates memory systems across timescales to guide adaptive behavior! And we detail the many plastic changes observed in PFC with learning and training, from single neurons to brain-wide activity patterns