@languagecycles
Investigating and teaching neurobiology of language @ JGU Mainz, MPI Leipzig, & UK Münster; PI, ERC CoG BALANG & DFG 529614204 & 546844207 & G-BA 01VSF24036; Editor, "The Rhythms of Speech and Language" (CUP); Associate Editor, The Journal of Neuroscience
We wrote a thing -- showing you don't need LLMs to model language production dynamics like the tendency for speakers to reduce predictable words. All you have to do is better model how speech rate varies depending on where a word is and how long the utterance is. arxiv.org/abs/2512.23659
Interested in a PhD intersecting clinical & fundamental language neuroscience? Help us uncover the neurological underpinnings of speech and language disorders! Work with me at UK Münster on a DFG-funded project, together w. Chris Kell & Katrin Neumann. Apply at jobs-sf.ukmuenster.de/job/UKM-PhD-...
another great paper from @mh-christiansen.bsky.social, showing that non-constituents* can be primed
It's more evidence that traditional linguists were mistaken to believe memory was in short supply:
Human memory is compressed, clustered, implicit and vast
We are humbled!!! Thank you, Xinchi Yu!!!
It was such a privilege to introduce recent cool work from Lena Henke and Lars Meyer (@languagecycles.bsky.social) on time windows and language processing in a "Journal Club" piece on Nature Reviews Psychology @natrevpsychol.nature.com! View-only link: rdcu.be/e1xaY
Go work with Benedikt, his research is legit!
AI slop published on your watch: very bad look for HSSComms and Springer/Nature Dear editors, I have failed to locate contact information for most of the academic editors for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; I trust that you will forward this message to them. I want to note that AI slop is being published on your watch in the journal you edit. This paper, out last week (Al-Jarrah 2026), is full of inaccurate claims and includes countless hallucinated references. Even a cursory look at the bibliography shows that at least 10 and probably many more references are bullshit pure and simple; the simplest explanation is that they are confabulated by generative AI, which sheds doubt on the quality of the manuscript as a whole and on the review and editorial processes at your journal. It is a great lapse of editorial judgement to let this kind of obvious drivel pass and I am warning my colleagues at MPI and Radboud to avoid your journal until clear and unambiguous action is taken. You may also want to take note that many people are finding out about this and the online discussion of this paper and of the journal's failing standards is something I hope that Springer Nature cares about. In my opinion the paper does not pass even the most minimal quality assurance checks and is fully against the COPE guidelines on publication ethics. You may want to hold the author accountable for this; I think the only reasonable course is retraction. But the scholarly community also holds the journal accountable. By letting AI slop through, your journal is polluting the information ecology of scientific publishing. Amidst a rising tide of synthetic text, scholarly publishing, with its tradition of human oversight and strong peer revidew, should be one of the last stalwarts to defend the integrity of our research. I look forward to your response and to find out what decisive action you are taking.
Re: the AI slop paper shared by @thomaspellard.bsky.social and @lameensouag.bsky.social, I wrote to the editors — will update when I get a reply, and will be following closely what they do.
Key point is that we should hold the *journal* accountable for this mess
I have a few predictions...
1/n
🧠 How strong is speech decoding from MEG signals? Much stronger during speech production (73% accuracy) than comprehension (~51%) (& Delta & Theta bands carry most relevant information). More discussion in our recent decoding study: doi.org/10.1016/j.cs...
If I could do a second PhD, this would be it. Join John!
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
🏹 Job alert: Two fully funded PhD positions in Natural Language Processing at University of Leipzig
📍 Leipzig 🇩🇪
📅 Apply by Jan 15th
🔗 https://ellis.eu/research/jobs/2025-12-16-two-fully-funded-phd-positions-in-natural-language-processing
Hopkins Cog Sci is hiring! We have two open faculty positions: one in vision, and one language. Please repost!
#wearehiring
We have vacancies @jacobscenteruzh.bsky.social:
* Stabmitarbeiter:in, Swiss EdLab 80 - 100%
* Wissenschaftliche:r Mitarbeiter:in, Swiss EdLab (2 Stellen) 80 - 100%
* Mitarbeit bei der z-proso-Studie (20–50%)
Visit: www.jacobscenter.uzh.ch/en/jobs.html
Happy to share the advent of the new *Journal of Experimental Pragmatics*!
- Diamond Open Access
- innovative, transparent bottom-up reviewing process
Go community! Let's make it a success story!
@irastamon.bsky.social @richardbreheny.bsky.social
Very cool stuff! I am very much enjoying the Neon trackers and its wonderful they show overlap with stationary trackers.
Job announcement!
Research Fellow (65% TV-L 13), to work on co-singing gesture in beatboxing, based at the University of Cologne. Application deadline: 12 January, 2026
Feel free to contact me with any questions about the position.
jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...
Come work with us!!
Two full substitute professorships for Computational Linguistics (1 year) and General Linguistics (1.5 years) at the University of Tübingen. @unituebingen.bsky.social
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...
Thank you, Martin! Thank you for all the guidance and support throughout those years!
Lars Meyer receives #ERC Consolidator Grant from @erc.europa.eu 🥳
For his project "Language in Balance: an Imprint of Brain Electrophysiology? (BALANG)”, Lars Meyer @languagecycles.bsky.social receives funding of up to 2 million euros over the next 5 years. Huge congratulations! tinyurl.com/4a5y78nz
New @jocnforum.bsky.social post by Dariusz Asanowicz, replying to @bradpostle.bsky.social and Chunyue Teng: “Behavioral and Neural Effects of Proactive Control Adjustments on a Trial-by-Trial Basis”
doi.org/10.21428/8e6...
Here is your chance to weigh in on what the psycholinguistic and machine learning community needs regarding preprocessing pipelines, software tools, and data sharing standards for eye-tracking research: An anonymous survey that lasts just 10-15 minutes: www.soscisurvey.de/OpenEye/
People, mark your Kalender *now* to be well prepared for a Language Circle Deluxe Edition with @andrearavignani.bsky.social—18 November, 1:30 PM CET, live at @mpicbs.bsky.social or online at zoom.us/j/94686183586. Let everyone else know, too!
New paper together with Elin Runnqvist and Friedemann Pulvermüller (accepted right before his passing 😔).
Must be the first time I am sad to announce a publication, though I am glad Friedemann still got to see this cool collaborative work published.
A short 🧵 /1
academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...
happy to share our new paper, out now in Neuron! led by the incredible Yizhen Zhang, we explore how the brain segments continuous speech into word-forms and uses adaptive dynamics to code for relative time - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Rhythmic Speech Facilitates Turn-Taking, finds @juletzky.bsky.social. See osf.io/preprints/ps....
👂🧠NCC in an auditory no-report fMRI study 🧠👂
now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social !
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Using inattentional deafness, we show that awareness of task-irrelevant sounds mainly activates stimulus-specific sensory brain areas.
Yes, DJ Brain is now streaming his set online for the kids: kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....
People, mark your Kalender *now* to be well prepared for a Language Circle Deluxe Edition with @andrearavignani.bsky.social—18 November, 1:30 PM CET, live at @mpicbs.bsky.social or online at zoom.us/j/94686183586. Let everyone else know, too!
OPEN PHD POSITION - Come join our group! The IMPRS at @mpi-nl.bsky.social is offering an PhD position on modelling structured meaning in the brain, supervised by me and Helen De Hoop at the Centre for Language Studies in the @dondersinst.bsky.social -
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
