Runnan Cao

I am recruiting PhD students for 2026! ⏰✨📝 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 💻💻💻! If you'd like to meet me in person, please come and talk to me at SfN in San Diego this year! 🏷️Lab: labs.utdallas.edu/coconeurolab/ 📔PhD (DDL Nov 15 & Dec 1): bbs.utdallas.edu/academics/grad… ✅Application details: labs.utdallas.edu/coconeurolab/j…

Recent discussions (e.g. @RichardSSutton on @dwarkesh_sp’s podcast) have highlighted why animals are a better target for intelligence — and why scaling alone isn’t enough. In my recent @CMU_Robotics seminar talk, “Using Embodied Agents to Reverse-Engineer Natural Intelligence”, I present a cohesive framework that develops these notions further, grounded in both machine learning and experimental neuroscience. In it, I outline our efforts over the past four years (and our lab’s work over this past starting year) to set the capabilities of humans and animals as concrete engineering targets for AI. By grounding agents in perception, prediction, planning, memory, and intrinsic motivation — and validating them against large-scale neural data from rodents, primates, and zebrafish — we show how neuroscience and machine learning can form a unified *science of intelligence*. This journey culminates in our first task-optimized “NeuroAgent”, integrating advances in visual and tactile perception (including our NeurIPS ’25 oral), mental simulation, memory, and intrinsic curiosity. I also touch on the Contravariance Principle/Platonic Representation Hypothesis, our proposed NeuroAI Turing Test, and why embodied agents are essential for building not just more capable, but also more reliable, autonomous systems. I close with reflections on AI safety and alignment, and the Q&A explores open questions: from building physically accurate (not just photorealistic) world models to the role of autoregression and scale.

Our brain-to-voice synthesis brain-computer interface paper was published in @Nature today! This neuroprosthesis synthesized the voice of a man with ALS instantaneously, enabling him to ‘speak’ flexibly and modulate the prosody of his BCI-voice. 1/7 Paper: rdcu.be/eqH3C

Notice of Rescission of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/n…

Here's the real "final frontier"-understanding how the BRAIN works. This massive BRAIN Initiative effort's a piece of the puzzle to explain what makes us human & what goes wrong in neuro/mental/substance abuse disorders. Marvel at the complexity & beauty. nature.com/immersive/d428…

@LinChujun @LuJunsong19474 Very interesting! Congrats Chujun!

🚨3rd preprint from my lab out! with my awesome grad @LuJunsong19474🌟 How do people mentally represent numerous inferences about others?🤯 Prior work proposed low-dimensional rep with latent dimensions We show high-dimensional network brings new insights🧵👇 doi.org/10.31234/osf.i…

I am recruiting 🚨grad students🚨postdocs🚨visiting scholars🚨for 2025! My lab @UCSanDiego study⭐️person perception⭐️social cognition⭐️using experimental, cross-cultural, computational methods & more! 👉Lab: shorturl.at/kq4qu 👉Grad (DDL Dec 4): shorturl.at/NSkoU

@PsyHongbo @YesLabUcsb @Amber_Chen233 Congrats Amber and Hongbo!

The first NLP + historical psychology paper from @YesLabUcsb. Great work @Amber_Chen233 !

My lab (CoCo-Neuro) at UTD is recruiting a lab manager/tech to start in the summer of 2024 (2 years preferred). If you have a strong computational background and are interested in cog neuroscience, this position is for you! Apply through the official post: jobs.utdallas.edu/postings/26132

@jonathan_daume @ClaraHWhyte @Nature Congrats Jonathan!

I am very excited to share that our paper has now been published in @Nature. We describe a single-cell correlate of theta-gamma phase amplitude coupling and show how these cells are involved in the cognitive control of working memory storage processes. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Me too! Visiting other countries, including my hometown, has been super difficult and time-consuming.

🚨 New paper 🚨 In this new theoretical paper @NYASciences with @LinChujun, Sai Sun, @nanrun2, @KohitijKar, and Shuo Wang, we reviewed recent work on the neural computational mechanisms of social trait and emotion perception from faces. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ny… 🧵

🌟Are you interested in how people think about each other?🌟 🚨Join my lab to advance this knowledge using naturalistic designs, computational methods, & any other new, exciting approaches that you can think of!🤯 PhD application deadline: Dec 6th. See shorturl.at/CU125

@Guo_Jiahui_ @BBSutdallas @UT_Dallas @haxbylab @IGobbini @dartmouth Congrats Jiahui!

I’ll be joining @BBSutdallas @UT_Dallas as an Asst Prof in Jan 2024! Many thanks to my advisors @haxbylab, @IGobbini, Brad Duchaine, colleagues @Dartmouth & all who helped me get here! Interested in #computational #neuroscience #cognition #perception #neuropsychology? Join me! 🧠

Thanks to Runnan Cao (@nanrun2), Lukas Kunz (@lks_kunz), Shuo Wang, & Joshua Jacobs (@neurojosh) for working on this piece with us! Let me know of any access issues - I can send a copy and/or preprint version here: psyarxiv.com/7zmuc/ Questions, comments, etc, welcome!

Great to work this out with these amazing people!

@WashUNeurosurg Congrats Tao!

The McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience awarded a $100K Small Grant to our postdoc fellow, Tao Xie, PhD. Dr. Xie's project studies conditioned fear responses in the #amygdala and aims to contribute to the development of therapies for patients affected by #PTSD.

Pls retweet :) I am recruiting ✨PhD students and Postdocs✨@UCSanDiego Psychology to start Summer/Fall 2023! Come advance the science of person perception & its real-world impacts using #computational #experimental #crosscultural tools! Visit impactlab-ucsd.github.io & see👇