Santani Teng

Getting asked about how academics can continue to do science & inspire trainees even in the midst of a continued (escalated) assault on science, reason, truth, & human rights. I don’t have great answers.

I would love to hear from mentors about advice they’re giving to trainees/ colleagues.

I need everyone to go read this thread, because @echodislocation.bsky.social gave a very detailed response (with linked articles!) to @pedroblack42.bsky.social orginal question, asking if bats percieved an 'image' when echolocating!

This is such a fascinating area of research!

#batsky 🦇🧪🌎

Thank you for the tag! We spend a lot of time thinking about these questions, so it's exciting whenever someone else asks them! (And they're far from a closed case I think, so I'd never claim to have the last word on the topic.)

Very cool! Do you have an interpretation of *why* the unexpected words were more strongly predicted? Seems counterintuitive and different from stronger post-onset response to expectancy violation.

Frontiers | Object recognition via echoes: quantifying the crossmodal transfer of three-dimensional shape information between echolocation, vision, and haptics Active echolocation allows blind individuals to explore their surroundings via self-generated sounds, similarly to dolphins and other echolocating animals. E...

Final thing: Trying something analogous with blind/blindfolded humans (echolocating an object, then identifying it by *touch*) shows that crossmodal information transfer is very hard and even humanity's finest echolocators struggle with it. But it's possible! Kind of.
doi.org/10.3389/fnin...

Bottlenose dolphins perceive object features through echolocation - Nature Nature - Bottlenose dolphins perceive object features through echolocation

But some cool papers suggest that *dolphins* can reliably match a visually learned object to its echo and vice versa. (The key in these and the bat expts is first-presentation recognition, vs. learning an arbitrary visual-echo pairing via repetition.)
doi.org/10.1038/natu...
doi.org/10.1121/1.41...

Integrating vision and echolocation for navigation and perception in bats Egyptian fruit bats integrate vision and echolocation in a task-dependent manner.

E.g.: fruit bats can learn to tell objects apart using echolocation & transfer the learning to vision. But 1) visual➡️echo transfer doesn't work, and 2) echo➡️vision learning/transfer suck unless it's totally dark, suggesting reliance on vision rather than integration w/echoes. doi.org/10.1126/scia...

To get at @pedroblack42.bsky.social's question, you can test this by having a bat learn object shapes with vision, echolocation, or both (ie in a dark vs light room, and/or with hard vs foam-covered objects.) Then test the recognition in a non-trained modality.
bsky.app/profile/pedr...

I work with humans, so am kind of a spectator to animal echolocation myself, but it must depend on how you define "generating an image." Are echoes converted to specifically *visual* imagery? Or do they produce an abstracted mental representation that is also accessible to the bat's visual system?

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Asking informally: does anyone know someone who might be interested in a postdoc focused on understanding changes in memory representations driven by attention using EEG? ⚡️Thanks!

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - Braille Institute Read easier with Atkinson Hyperlegible Font, crafted for low-vision readers. Download for free and enjoy clear letters and numbers on your computer!

periodic reminder of the existence of Atkinson Hyperlegible, a free font available from the Braille Institute designed to improve readability for people with low vision

I use it in talks because it's pretty and also because, as an audience member, I am perpetually squinting at people's slides

A second fellowship position at SKERI, funded for 2 years and open to all applicants, is now available! See below for details about us and the application process 👇🏼
#postdoc #neurojobs

We (the Institute) now have TWO fellowship openings!
-1-year T32 slot, apply by 12/10/25
-2-year unrestricted slot, apply by 1/30/26

Otherwise process is the same:
Find a lab you want to work with, propose a project with your mentor, submit application.

#postdoc #neurojobs

Windows 10 end of life is today, and a lot of people don't want to switch to 11 because they fucking hate it but didn't know what they could do to get the Extended Security Updates; well it seems like this might be something:

Enjoyed seeing the infancy of EEG expressed in the opening paragraph. "It is now eight years since Berger (1929) first put forward the claim to have led off from the human skull potentials of cerebral origin." 👶

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Thanks tweety! Can confirm: He is, and Somebody will.

Do a postdoc with us in San Francisco! A fellowship slot in vision science, clinical vision, blindness, or rehabilitation is available via a NEI T32 slot: 👇🏼

View from your office onto Giessen and surrounding villages.

Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026.

The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.

Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...

I'm super lucky to have bright, curious, and diligent interns in the lab - especially since we don't have our own students, so they come to us from places like @usfca-pr.bsky.social. Well deserved recognition for Ariana and Jade!

🔬Two innovative accessibility studies are close to full funding!

Help push them past the finish line:
experiment.com/projects/brain-dynamics-in-braille-reading-letters-to-language

experiment.com/projects/how-can-ultrasonic-wearables-be-most-useful-for-humans

#Neuroscience #SupportScience

YouTube video by Women's Stories Who is Grace Hopper?

Who was Grace Hopper?

#COBOL
#FLOW-MATIC
#WomenInSTEM
#WyrdWomen

Home Page - Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience The Georgetown Difference We are invested in providing a transformative experience through holistic training, accessible resources, and personalized career strategies to help you reach your aspiration...

(please repost) If you're looking for a #neuroscience PhD program - and interested in human brain plasticity and reorganization (neuroimaging in people born with blindness, deafness or without hands), my lab is accepting students this cycle. Email me!

New paper: the ‘Double Ring Illusion’!
Does the visual system integrate *intuitive physics*? This new illusion developed by Brent Strickland and I offers a straightforward demonstration – one that you can experience yourselves!
Demos in thread👇
[1/6]

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

One project measures the #EEG dynamics of naturalistic braille reading. The other explores artificial ultrasonic #echolocation for blind and low-vision travelers. Every contribution helps the lab develop equipment, recruit participants, and prepare future grants. Visit the project pages for details!

🚨 Help my lab at @skeriresearch.bsky.social advance innovative research on the technology, perception, and neuroscience of accessibility! The Teng Lab has launched a pair of campaigns through @experiment.com.
🧠 experiment.com/braille
🦇 experiment.com/robinecho

Excited to share that our paper "Continuous affect tracking reveals that overestimation during the recollection of affect is idiosyncratic and stable" is out now in @ARVOJOV !

doi.org/10.1167/jov....

A short thread on the findings below 👇🏽📷(1/7)

This is one of the many reasons why we must fund #science.