Neal Morton

Transformers

I wrote an entry on Transformers for the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (‪@oecs-bot.bsky.social‬). I had to work with a tight word limit, but I hope it's useful as a short introduction for students and researchers who don't work on machine learning:

oecs.mit.edu/pub/ppxhxe2b

I love that the config files Python packages use are in TOML, or Tom’s Obvious Minimal Language.

Thanks for the shoutout, but I think you have the wrong Neal Morton!

My heart goes out to the folks at NIH and other agencies who are losing their jobs today.

🚨PhD Opportunity Alert🚨
The Personalized Treatment Lab seeks a passionate clinical psych candidate w/strong interest in digital phenotyping, passive sensing, & intervention research. If this sounds like you, keep an eye on sites.arizona.edu/personalized... for an updated Applicant Guide…

The Human and Machine Learning Lab is accepting applications for a PhD student to start in Fall 2025. If you’re interested in human learning, machine learning, and #neuroimaging, apply to work with me at UWM! See hamllab.org/positions.html for details. Deadline is 12/1. 🧠📈 #cogpsyc #PsychSciSky #sfn

It’s also easier to keep track of changes when important functions are in separate code modules, without all that extra notebook markup and metadata complicating things.

Interested in cognitive psychology and #neuroimaging? The Human and Machine Learning Lab at UWM is recruiting a Research Coordinator to facilitate cutting-edge behavioral, imaging, and simulation studies of human learning! Apply by April 8.
hamllab.org/positions.html
#cogpsych #psychjob #neurojob 🧠📈

The Human and Machine Learning Lab is accepting applications for a PhD student to start in Fall 2024. If you're interested in #modeling, #machinelearning, #neuroimaging, and #memory, consider applying! See hamllab.org/positions for details. Deadline is 12/1. 🧠📈 #cogpsyc

Looking for tips for overcoming imposter syndrome. I'm (hopefully) in the final push to the end of the PhD yet the self doubt is crushing every bit of productivity out of me.

One more: talk to other PhD candidates. Finishing a PhD is hard and it helps to have extra social support from a group of people that understands. Most people don’t know what it’s like to finish a dissertation, so it takes some extra effort to find good support.

Two tips: (1) review and appreciate what you’ve already done. Write down a list of everything you’ve learned and accomplished so far. (2) try to separate out the work from worrying about the quality of the work. Get in habit of reading/writing/etc. anyway even when you feel like your work is bad.

I'll be exploring a few directions, but this model of learning and generalizing cognitive maps is a good example: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33181068/
For PhDs, there's potential for collaborations or applying for a postdoc fellowship. If you have thoughts about a potential project, get in touch!

If you’re interested in human learning, machine learning, and neuroimaging, apply to get a PhD in my lab! Applications due 12/1. See hamllab.org/positions.html for details.
#neuroskyence #Neuroimaging #NeuroAI #BlackInNeuro #compneuro #PsychSciSky #cogpsyc #cogsci #opensci #psychjobs #neurojobs

Also, I wanna shout out their Success Through Aging Research program (uwm.edu/our/star/). They bring together a yearly cohort of undergrads from underrepresented backgrounds for mentored research experiences. I got to spend a lot of time with this year’s cohort, and they are just phenomenal people.

Human and Machine Learning Lab logo, with three converging boxes around a gear. The gear represents learning mechanisms, and the boxes represent a process of converging on common understanding of human learning and high-performance machine learning.

The Human and Machine Learning (HaML) Lab is recruiting a PhD student to start in Fall 2024. If you’re interested in human learning, machine learning, and neuroimaging, apply to work with me at UWM! See hamllab.org/positions.html for more details about PhD training and the application process.

An overview of my recent research, which I will continue at UWM. I use fMRI to study how representational geometry, i.e., the relationship of neural patterns of different events to one another, reflects structure in the world (Morton et al. 2020, PNAS). I also use representational similarity methods to examine how semantic knowledge about real-world people and places is represented in the brain and how knowledge about different events becomes integrated in the medial temporal lobe (Morton et al. in press, Cerebral Cortex). Finally, I examine how statistical learning about regularities in when events occur provides clues about underlying structure in the world, which is represented in human hippocampus (Pudhiyidath & Morton et al. 2022, JOCN).

I study how the brain organizes knowledge to guide reasoning and decision making. In my new lab at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, I will use fMRI and machine learning to examine how cognitive maps are formed and used to guide behavior in new situations.
#HiSciSky #neuroskyence
hamllab.org