Neurobiology of inference
from mental computations to neural mechanisms

If you were a cognitive neuroscientist, you’d be devoting your research to the magic of mental computations. If you were an engineer, you’d want to reverse engineer the brain’s algorithms. If you were a physicist, you’d see the brain as a system of recurrent neural networks generating complex neural dynamics. Jazlab consists of a team of explorers at MIT that aim to develop a mathematical framework for connecting the dots between these different levels of description… i.e., understand how dynamic patterns of neural activity in the brain (as well as in artificial neural systems) give rise to algorithms that support mental computations.

To tackle this problem, we work with humans, animal models, and recurrent neural network models. Our work on humans is focused on behavior and the development of normative theories (e.g., Bayesian models) that govern mental computations. We also use human behavior to design experiments for animal models. In animal models, we record and perturb brain signals while animals perform tasks that involve various mental computations. We then combine behavioral and neural data with normative theories, computational models, and artificial neural networks to understand the building blocks of the mind in terms of the mechanisms and algorithms implemented by the brain (as well as artificial neural systems). Our current focus is on the following mental computations:

Statistical inference is about using your knowledge of statistical regularities to make better judgements. For example, if you want to buy stocks, you’ll do better if you have experience with the ups and downs of the market.

Causal inference is about figuring out a cause from the conditions in which an effect occurs. For example, if you fail to log in to your bank account, you may think it is a glitch unless you are aware of some suspicious activity.

Relational inference involves situating an ambiguous observation based on how it relates to other observations. For example, coming out of a subway, you may rely on your relational memory of landmarks to infer which way is north. 

Social inference is about updating beliefs based on actions and experiences of others. For example, you may choose whether to follow someone on twitter based on what others say and do.

Neurobiology of inference

from mental computations to neural mechanisms

If you were a cognitive neuroscientist, you’d be devoting your research to the magic of mental computations. If you were an engineer, you’d want to reverse engineer the brain’s algorithms. If you were a physicist, you’d see the brain as a system of recurrent neural networks generating complex neural dynamics. Jazlab consists of a team of explorers at MIT that aim to develop a mathematical framework for connecting the dots between these different levels of description… i.e., understand how dynamic patterns of neural activity in the brain (as well as in artificial neural systems) give rise to algorithms that support mental computations.

To tackle this problem, we work with humans, animal models, and recurrent neural network models. Our work on humans is focused on behavior and the development of normative theories (e.g., Bayesian models) that govern mental computations. We also use human behavior to design experiments for animal models. In animal models, we record and perturb brain signals while animals perform tasks that involve various mental computations. We then combine behavioral and neural data with normative theories, computational models, and artificial neural networks to understand the building blocks of the mind in terms of the mechanisms and algorithms implemented by the brain (as well as artificial neural systems). Our current focus is on the following mental computations:

Statistical inference is about using your knowledge of statistical regularities to make better judgements. For example, if you want to buy stocks, you’ll do better if you have experience with the ups and downs of the market.

Causal inference is about figuring out a cause from the conditions in which an effect occurs. For example, if you fail to log in to your bank account, you may think it is a glitch unless you are aware of some suspicious activity.

Relational inference involves situating an ambiguous observation based on how it relates to other observations. For example, coming out of a subway, you may rely on your relational memory of landmarks to infer which way is north. 

Social inference is about updating beliefs based on actions and experiences of others. For example, you may choose whether to follow someone on twitter based on what others say and do.

***

Inclusion Statement
All of us in Jazlab aspire to foster a respectful and caring lab culture, a non-discriminatory, fair, and equitable work and learning environment for everyone regardless of their background, race, age, gender, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and personal beliefs. If you are interested in our research and are thinking of joining our team, please read through our basic cultural aspirations, and if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to write to us.

news

» November 2024: New paper! Nick Watters, Alessio Buccino, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in BioRxiv!

» November 2024: Congratulations to Hokyung Sung for passing his quals with 5 stars and officially becoming a PhD candidate at Jazlab!

» October 2024: We are delighted to welcome Valmiri Kothare to Jazlab as a collaborator!

» October 2024: Congratulations to Jazlab postdoc alum, Devika Narain, for winning the 2025 Early Career Award from the Society for the Neural Control of Movement!

» August 2024: We are delighted to welcome Yuelai (Mollie) Feng as Technical Associate I to Jazlab!

» July 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for being appointed as an HHMI Investigator!

» July 2024: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen and co-authors for having their SimCo abstract selected for a Trainee Talk!

» July 2024: We are excited to welcome Zoe Boundy-Singer to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for receiving the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Gabe Stine for his SCSB fellowship renewal!

» June 2024: New Paper! Sujaya Neupane, Ila Fiete, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature!

» June 2024: We are delighted to welcome two MIT UROPs, Mahdi Afshari and Lucas Shoji, to Jazlab!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for being selected as the recipient of a Friends of McGovern Institute Student Fellow for 2024-2025!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi who will be starting his own lab at CMU this coming fall!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for successfully defending his PhD thesis and joining Jazlab as a postdoc!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi for being awarded the prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Fund career award!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri who is now a full professor at MIT!

» May 2024: We are excited to welcome Sol Markman to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Neelima Valluru who has been admitted to the graduate program at Mount Sinai!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Gabe Stine for receiving a DEIJ Impact Award for the Postdoc Association!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for receiving the BCS Award for Graduate Teaching!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Jack Gabel for being accepted to the highly selective Okinawa Comp Neuro summer school in Japan!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Meg Potta for having been selected as an EECS nominee for a School of Engineering Fellowship!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen for receiving a top score in the McGovern Travel & Tech competition!

» March 2024: We are delighted to welcome Tara Sarma as our newest MEng Student!

» February 2024: Congratulations to Nick Watters, Mahdi Ramadan, Jack Gabel, and Ruidong Chen for winning the first and second place prizes in the MIT BCI Hackathon!

» February 2024: New Paper! Mahdi Ramadan, Cheng Tang, Nicholas Watters, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv!

» January 2024: New Paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and collaborators from National Autonomous University of Mexico publish in Science Advances!

» December 2023: We are delighted to welcome Meghana Potta to Jazlab as our newest graduate student!

» December 2023: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for being selected as the 2023-2024 recipient of the prestigious Pillar AI Collective Fellowship!

» October 2023: A huge congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for winning the MIT Ignite Generative AI Entrepreneurship Competition!!!

» October 2023: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for passing his quals with 5 stars and officially becoming a PhD candidate at Jazlab!

» October 2023: Congratulations to Alex Ferguson for successfully defending her PhD thesis!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Jack Gabel for securing the 2023 Newton Brain Science Award as a seed grant for his table top project!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi for having his NeurIPS submission, “Neural Foundation of Mental Stimulation: Future Prediction of Latent Representations on Dynamic Scenes” accepted as a Spotlight!

» September 2023: New paper! Mehrdad Jazyeri, Nhat Minh Le, and colleagues publish in PLOS Computational Biology!

» September 2023: Congratulations Aída Piccato for being accepted to the Janelia Workshop on Mechanistic Cognition!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Sujaya Neupane for being selected to give a seminar at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at the medical center at NYU Langone Health as part of our SPiNES (Seminars by Postdocs in Neuroscience: Extramural Series) initiative.

» July 2023: We are delighted to welcome our new Lab Manager, Adhara Martellini, to Jazlab!

» July 2023: Congratulations to Isabella Milanes for completing her summer internship at Jazlab! We wish her the best of luck during her senior year at Florida International University.

» July 2023: Congratulations Nicholas Watters for a McGovern Travel Award for his accepted abstract presentation at the Lakes Conference in Seattle!

» June 2023: Congratulations to Aída Piccato for receiving a Teaching Development Fellow offer for the 2023-2024 academic year from The Teaching and Learning Lab (TLL)!

» June 2023: Congratulation to Gabe Stine for publishing his work from the Shadlen lab in Neuron!

» June 2023: We are delighted to welcome our MIT UROP, Albert Qin, to Jazlab!

» June 2023: We are delighted to welcome our MSRP intern, Isabella Milanes, to Jazlab!

» May 2023: We are delighted to welcome our FHSP postdoc visitor, Adam Gosztolai, to Jazlab!

» May 2023: New paper! Aran Nayebi, Rishi Rajalingham, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and Guangyu Robert Yang publish in arXiv!

» May 2023: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi, Sujay Neupane, Jaedong Hwang, and Hansem Sohn for having their CCN posters selected!

» May 2023: Congratulations to Gabe Stein for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» April 2023: Congratulations to our SCGB Fellow (SURF Program), Chisom Ume, mentored by Mahdi Ramadan, for her admission to Imperial College London this fall!

» April 2023: Congratulations to our SCGB Fellow (SURF Program), Xiaomei Fan, mentored by Sujaya Neupane, for her admission to Stanford School of Medicine this fall!

» April 2023: Congratulations to Alex Ferguson for her DEIJ award celebrating valuable contributions to DEIJ in BCS!

» April 2023: Congratulations to Jason Li for being awarded the Glushko Prize for his undergraduate research!

» March 2023: New poster presentation! Our newest member, Hokyung Sung presents a single-author poster at The Philosophy of Deep Learning conference at NYU!

» March 2023: We are excited to welcome Hokyung Sung to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2023: Congratulations to Jack Gabel on his acceptance to MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science PhD Program!

» March 2023: New poster presentations! Sujaya Neupane, Mahdi Ramadan, Cheng Tang, and Nicholas Watters present at CoSyNe 2023!

» January 2023: New Paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators at École de Neurosciences Paris publish in Neuron!

» January 2023: Congratulations to Hansem Sohn for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University!

» December 2022: New Paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and collaborators publish in Nature Communications!

» December 2022: New Paper! Nicholas Watters, Hansem Sohn, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators publish in arXiv!

» December 2022: New Paper! Sujaya Neupane and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv!

» September 2022: We are excited to welcome Gabriel Stine to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» November 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato for passing her qualifying exams with 5 stars from her committee!

» November 2022: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» November 2022: Congratulations Sujay Neupane for having been selected to present his work at the UCLA rising postdoc series!

» November 2022: New Paper! Congratulations to Hansem Sohn who helped co-author an AutoLFADS paper that got accepted in Nature!

» November 2022: New Paper! Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe and Hansem Sohn for the collaborative paper with Manuel Beiran and Srdjan Ostojic that just got accepted in Neuron!

» October 2022: Congratulations to Jason Li, Nicholas Watters, and Hansem Sohn for their upcoming presentation at NeurIPS!

» October 2022: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Aída Piccato, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature!

» September 2022: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani for being featured on the front page of MIT News!

» September 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato or being awarded the BCS Alder Graduate Student Fellowship!

» August 2022: New poster presentations! Jason Li, Hansom Sohn, Sandy Wang, and Nicholas Watters present at the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.

» August 2022: Congratulation to Mahdi Ramadan for being awarded the K. Lisa Yang ICoN Graduate Student Fellowship for the coming academic year!

» August 2022: Congratulations to Sandy Wang on her acceptance to the occupational therapy program at St. Louis graduate school!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Michael Yoo for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as an assistant professor at the Institution for Basic Science and Sungkyunkwan University!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as a research scientist at Meta (CTRL-labs)!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the Patrick J. McGovern Travel Award!

» July 2022: We are excited to welcome Aran Nayebi to Jazlab as a Postdoc!

» July 2022: We are excited to welcome Neelima Valluru to Jazlab as a Research Support Associate II!

» June 2022: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» June 2022: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson for starting an internship with Denali Therapeutics!

» May 2022: Congratulations to Eli Pollock on successfully defending his PhD thesis!

» April 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» April 2022: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching!

» April 2022: We are excited to welcome Cheng Tang to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2022: New paper! Nhat Le, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and colleagues publish in bioRxiv.

» February 2022: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and colleagues publish in bioRxiv.

» November 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe , Hansem Sohn, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators publish in arXiv.

» October 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and Srdjan Ostojic publish in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

» September 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri, Hansem Sohn, and colleagues publish in arXiv.

» September 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on receiving the Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» September 2021: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on accepting the invitation to become Director of Education for BCS!

» September 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in  Neuron.

» September 2021: We are excited to welcome Chsom Ume, Sandy Wang, Clara Melhem, and Xiaomei Fan to Jazlab as SCGB Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF Program)!

» August 2021: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on being featured on MIT News!

» August 2021: Congratulations to Eli Pollock on receiving the Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research Graduate Student Fellowship!

» July 2021: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the MathWorks Science Fellowship!

» July 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and Srdjan Ostojic publish in arXiv.

» July 2021: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the McGovern Spot award!

» June 2021: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching!

» June 2021: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» June 2021: New paper! Hansem Sohn and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PNAS.

» June 2021: We are excited to welcome Dagim Belete to Jazlab as a summer intern!

» May 2021: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen publishes his work from Cornell University in Journal of Neurophysiology!

» April 2021: We kindly ask you to read this message sent by Pawan Sinha, director of MIT-India and Project Prakash

» March 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on publishing his work from the University of Minnesota in Nature!

» March 2021: We are excited to welcome John Gabel to Jazlab as Lab Manager and Technical Associate!

» March 2021: We are excited to welcome Aída Piccato to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» March 2021: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen on receiging the J. Douglas Tan Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Tan-Yang center at MIT!

» February 2021: New paper! Nicholas Watters, Joshua Tenenbaum, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in arXiv.

» January 2021: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Aída Piccato, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» January 2021: New paper! Hansem Sohn and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv in collaboration with Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and Northwestern University.

» January 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on publishing his work from the Suwon Institute for Basic Science in Phi. Trans. R. Soc. B!

» December 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in JNeurosci with collaborators.

» December 2020: New paper! Hansem Sohn, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Rishi Rajalingham, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Trends in Neuroscience.

» December 2020: New paper! Jing Wang, Eghbal Hosseini, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Adam Akkad, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in eLife.

» October 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri, Seth Egger, Rishi Rajalingham, and Evan Remington publish in Neuron with collaborators.

» September 2020: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on being named a McGovern Rising Star!

» September 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on being named a McGovern Rising Star!

» September 2020: We are excited to welcome Michael Yoo to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» September 2020: We are excited to welcome Ruidong to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» August 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in PNAS with collaborators.

» August 2020: Congratulations to Hansem Sohn on receiving the BBRF Young Investigator Grant!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiing the MathWorks Engineering Fellowship!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on receiving the Presidential Graduate Fellowship!

» August 2020: New paper! Eli Pollock and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PLOS Computational Biology.

» August 2020: New paper! Seth Egger and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature Communications.

» August 2020: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on his renewal of the FRQNT Postdoctoral Fellowship!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson on receiving the Friends of McGovern grant!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham on publishing his work from the DiCarlo lab in Nature Communications!

» July 2020: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on his tenure at MIT!!

» May 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in eLife with NYU collaborators.

» April 2020: Congratulations to Sujaya Neupane on publishing his graduate work from McGill in Reviews in the Neurosciences!

» April 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the Whitaker Health Sciences Fund Fellowship!

» April 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on accepting a graduate position at MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science PhD Program!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the MIT Community Service Fund Award!

» March 2020: We are excited to welcome Nicholas Watters to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» February 2020: New poster presentations! Alexandra Ferguson, T. Vincenza Parks, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Jing Wang, Eghbal Hosseini, Hansem Sohn, Sujay Neupane, Vincent Tang, Mahdi Ramadan, Rishi Rajalingham, and Aída Piccato present at CoSyNe.

» February 2020: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson and Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the CoSyNe Travel Grant!

» February 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Patrick J. McGovern Student Travel Award

» February 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on publishing his Master’s work from Supaéro in Acta Astronautica!

» February 2020: Congratulations to Michal De-Medonsa on being featured on the McGovern Institute website for her Jazlab artwork!

» January 2020: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham on receiving the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship!

» December 2019: New paper! Eli Pollock and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» August 2019: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the MathWorks Engineering Fellowship!

» August 2019: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving an NSF I-Corps Sparks Program Award!

» October 2019: New poster presentations! Sujay Neupane, T. VIncenza Parks, Alexandra Ferguson, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Rishi Rajalingham, present at SfN.

» October 2019: New paper! Seth Egger, Evan Remington, Chia-Jung Chang, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature Neuroscience.

» July 2019: New paper! Seth Egger, Nhat Le, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» July 2019: New paper! Hansem Sohn, Devika Narain, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Neuron.

» July 2019: Michal De-Medonsa writes blog post for McGovern Institute – Do Thoughts Have Mass?

» May 2019: New paper! Morteza Sarafyazd and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Science.

» April 2019: Congratulations to Seth Egger on accepting a postdoc position at Duke!

» March 2019: We are excited to welcome Rishi Rajalingham to Jazlabe as a postdoc!

» March 2019: Congratulations to Vinci Parks on accepting a graduate position at the University of Pittsburgh!

» February 2019: New poster presentations! Chris Cueva, Seth Egger, Nhat Le, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Devika Narain, Eli Pollock, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Hansem Sohn present at CoSyNe.

» October 2018: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on receiving a collaborative grant from the International Development Research Center, Canada!

» October 2018:Jazlab in the news – Mahdi Ramadan and Alexi Choueiri’s common experience as Lebanese evacuees led both to study the human brain at MIT.

» October 2018: New paper! Evan Remington and Vinci Parks publish in Nature Communications.

» October 2018: New poster presentations! Jing Wang, Morteza Sarafyazd, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, Seth Egger, T. Vincenza Parks, and Evan Remington present at SfN.

» August 2018: Congratulations to Evan Remington on completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as a scientist at Biogen.

» August 2018: New paper! Seth Egger publishes in Scientific Reports.

» June 2018: New paper! Evan Remington, Devika Narain, and Eghbal Hosseini publish in Neuron.

» April 2018: We are proud of Eli Pollock’s work, organizing a visit with other MIT students and postdocs to Capitol Hill to advocate for increases in federal science funding.

» March 2018: New paper! Chia-Jung Chang and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PNAS.

» February 2018: New paper! Devika Narain and Evan Remington publish in Nature Communications.

» January 2018: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on receiving the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral fellowship!

»January 2018: We are excited to welcome Sujaya Neupane to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» January 2018: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the CoSyNe New Attendee Award!

» December 2017: New Paper! Jing Wang, Devika Narain, and Eghbal Hosseini publish in Nature Neuroscience.

» October 2017: New poster presentations! Hansem Sohn, Jing Wang, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Seth Egger present at SfN.

» October 2016: New poster presentations! Eghbal Hosseini, Jing Wang, and Evan Remington present at SfN.

» October 2015: New poster presentations! Evan Remington and Seth Egger present at SfN..

» October 2014: New poster presentations! Jing Wang and Seth Egger present at SfN.

Inclusion Statement

All of us in Jazlab aspire to foster a respectful and caring lab culture, a non-discriminatory, fair, and equitable work and learning environment for everyone regardless of their background, race, age, gender, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and personal beliefs. If you are interested in our research and are thinking of joining our team, please read through our basic cultural aspirations, and if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to write to us.

news

» November 2024: New paper! Nick Watters, Alessio Buccino, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in BioRxiv!

» November 2024: Congratulations to Hokyung Sung for passing his quals with 5 stars and officially becoming a PhD candidate at Jazlab!

» October 2024: We are delighted to welcome Valmiri Kothare to Jazlab as a collaborator!

» October 2024: Congratulations to Jazlab postdoc alum, Devika Narain, for winning the 2025 Early Career Award from the Society for the Neural Control of Movement!

» August 2024: We are delighted to welcome Yuelai (Mollie) Feng as Technical Associate I to Jazlab!

» July 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for being appointed as an HHMI Investigator!

» July 2024: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen and co-authors for having their SimCo abstract selected for a Trainee Talk!

» July 2024: We are excited to welcome Zoe Boundy-Singer to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for receiving the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Gabe Stine for his SCSB fellowship renewal!

» June 2024: New Paper! Sujaya Neupane, Ila Fiete, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature!

» June 2024: We are delighted to welcome two MIT UROPs, Mahdi Afshari and Lucas Shoji, to Jazlab!

» June 2024: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for being selected as the recipient of a Friends of McGovern Institute Student Fellow for 2024-2025!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi who will be starting his own lab at CMU this coming fall!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for successfully defending his PhD thesis and joining Jazlab as a postdoc!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi for being awarded the prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Fund career award!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri who is now a full professor at MIT!

» May 2024: We are excited to welcome Sol Markman to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» May 2024: Congratulations to Neelima Valluru who has been admitted to the graduate program at Mount Sinai!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Gabe Stine for receiving a DEIJ Impact Award for the Postdoc Association!

» April 2024: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri for receiving the BCS Award for Graduate Teaching!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Jack Gabel for being accepted to the highly selective Okinawa Comp Neuro summer school in Japan!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Meg Potta for having been selected as an EECS nominee for a School of Engineering Fellowship!

» March 2024: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen for receiving a top score in the McGovern Travel & Tech competition!

» March 2024: We are delighted to welcome Tara Sarma as our newest MEng Student!

» February 2024: Congratulations to Nick Watters, Mahdi Ramadan, Jack Gabel, and Ruidong Chen for winning the first and second place prizes in the MIT BCI Hackathon!

» February 2024: New Paper! Mahdi Ramadan, Cheng Tang, Nicholas Watters, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv!

» January 2024: New Paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and collaborators from National Autonomous University of Mexico publish in Science Advances!

» December 2023: We are delighted to welcome Meghana Potta to Jazlab as our newest graduate student!

» December 2023: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for being selected as the 2023-2024 recipient of the prestigious Pillar AI Collective Fellowship!

» October 2023: A huge congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan for winning the MIT Ignite Generative AI Entrepreneurship Competition!!!

» October 2023: Congratulations to Cheng Tang for passing his quals with 5 stars and officially becoming a PhD candidate at Jazlab!

» October 2023: Congratulations to Alex Ferguson for successfully defending her PhD thesis!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Jack Gabel for securing the 2023 Newton Brain Science Award as a seed grant for his table top project!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi for having his NeurIPS submission, “Neural Foundation of Mental Stimulation: Future Prediction of Latent Representations on Dynamic Scenes” accepted as a Spotlight!

» September 2023: New paper! Mehrdad Jazyeri, Nhat Minh Le, and colleagues publish in PLOS Computational Biology!

» September 2023: Congratulations Aída Piccato for being accepted to the Janelia Workshop on Mechanistic Cognition!

» September 2023: Congratulations to Sujaya Neupane for being selected to give a seminar at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at the medical center at NYU Langone Health as part of our SPiNES (Seminars by Postdocs in Neuroscience: Extramural Series) initiative.

» July 2023: We are delighted to welcome our new Lab Manager, Adhara Martellini, to Jazlab!

» July 2023: Congratulations to Isabella Milanes for completing her summer internship at Jazlab! We wish her the best of luck during her senior year at Florida International University.

» July 2023: Congratulations Nicholas Watters for a McGovern Travel Award for his accepted abstract presentation at the Lakes Conference in Seattle!

» June 2023: Congratulations to Aída Piccato for receiving a Teaching Development Fellow offer for the 2023-2024 academic year from The Teaching and Learning Lab (TLL)!

» June 2023: Congratulation to Gabe Stine for publishing his work from the Shadlen lab in Neuron!

» June 2023: We are delighted to welcome our MIT UROP, Albert Qin, to Jazlab!

» June 2023: We are delighted to welcome our MSRP intern, Isabella Milanes, to Jazlab!

» May 2023: We are delighted to welcome our FHSP postdoc visitor, Adam Gosztolai, to Jazlab!

» May 2023: New paper! Aran Nayebi, Rishi Rajalingham, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and Guangyu Robert Yang publish in arXiv!

» May 2023: Congratulations to Aran Nayebi, Sujay Neupane, Jaedong Hwang, and Hansem Sohn for having their CCN posters selected!

» May 2023: Congratulations to Gabe Stein for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» April 2023: Congratulations to our SCGB Fellow (SURF Program), Chisom Ume, mentored by Mahdi Ramadan, for her admission to Imperial College London this fall!

» April 2023: Congratulations to our SCGB Fellow (SURF Program), Xiaomei Fan, mentored by Sujaya Neupane, for her admission to Stanford School of Medicine this fall!

» April 2023: Congratulations to Alex Ferguson for her DEIJ award celebrating valuable contributions to DEIJ in BCS!

» April 2023: Congratulations to Jason Li for being awarded the Glushko Prize for his undergraduate research!

» March 2023: New poster presentation! Our newest member, Hokyung Sung presents a single-author poster at The Philosophy of Deep Learning conference at NYU!

» March 2023: We are excited to welcome Hokyung Sung to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2023: Congratulations to Jack Gabel on his acceptance to MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science PhD Program!

» March 2023: New poster presentations! Sujaya Neupane, Mahdi Ramadan, Cheng Tang, and Nicholas Watters present at CoSyNe 2023!

» January 2023: New Paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators at École de Neurosciences Paris publish in Neuron!

» January 2023: Congratulations to Hansem Sohn for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University!

» December 2022: New Paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and collaborators publish in Nature Communications!

» December 2022: New Paper! Nicholas Watters, Hansem Sohn, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators publish in arXiv!

» December 2022: New Paper! Sujaya Neupane and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv!

» November 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato for passing her qualifying exams with 5 stars from her committee!

» November 2022: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» November 2022: Congratulations Sujay Neupane for having been selected to present his work at the UCLA rising postdoc series!

» November 2022: New Paper! Congratulations to Hansem Sohn who helped co-author an AutoLFADS paper that got accepted in Nature!

» November 2022: New Paper! Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe and Hansem Sohn for the collaborative paper with Manuel Beiran and Srdjan Ostojic that just got accepted in Neuron!

» October 2022: Congratulations to Jason Li, Nicholas Watters, and Hansem Sohn for their upcoming presentation at NeurIPS!

» October 2022: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Aída Piccato, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature!

» September 2022: We are excited to welcome Gabriel Stine to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» September 2022: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani for being featured on the front page of MIT News!

» September 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato or being awarded the BCS Alder Graduate Student Fellowship!

» August 2022: New poster presentations! Jason Li, Hansom Sohn, Sandy Wang, and Nicholas Watters present at the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.

» August 2022: Congratulation to Mahdi Ramadan for being awarded the K. Lisa Yang ICoN Graduate Student Fellowship for the coming academic year!

» August 2022: Congratulations to Sandy Wang on her acceptance to the occupational therapy program at St. Louis graduate school!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Michael Yoo for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as an assistant professor at the Institution for Basic Science and Sungkyunkwan University!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham for completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as a research scientist at Meta (CTRL-labs)!

» July 2022: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the Patrick J. McGovern Travel Award!

» July 2022: We are excited to welcome Aran Nayebi to Jazlab as a Postdoc!

» July 2022: We are excited to welcome Neelima Valluru to Jazlab as a Research Support Associate II!

» June 2022: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» June 2022: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson for starting an internship with Denali Therapeutics!

» May 2022: Congratulations to Eli Pollock on successfully defending his PhD thesis!

» April 2022: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» April 2022: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching!

» April 2022: We are excited to welcome Cheng Tang to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2022: New paper! Nhat Le, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and colleagues publish in bioRxiv.

» February 2022: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and colleagues publish in bioRxiv.

» November 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe , Hansem Sohn, Mehrdad Jazayeri, and collaborators publish in arXiv.

» October 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and Srdjan Ostojic publish in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

» September 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri, Hansem Sohn, and colleagues publish in arXiv.

» September 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on receiving the Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Simons Center for the Social Brain!

» September 2021: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on accepting the invitation to become Director of Education for BCS!

» September 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in  Neuron.

» September 2021: We are excited to welcome Chsom Ume, Sandy Wang, Clara Melhem, and Xiaomei Fan to Jazlab as SCGB Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF Program)!

» August 2021: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on being featured on MIT News!

» August 2021: Congratulations to Eli Pollock on receiving the Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research Graduate Student Fellowship!

» July 2021: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the MathWorks Science Fellowship!

» July 2021: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri and Srdjan Ostojic publish in arXiv.

» July 2021: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the McGovern Spot award!

» June 2021: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on receiving the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching!

» June 2021: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» June 2021: New paper! Hansem Sohn and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PNAS.

» June 2021: We are excited to welcome Dagim Belete to Jazlab as a summer intern!

» May 2021: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen publishes his work from Cornell University in Journal of Neurophysiology!

» April 2021: We kindly ask you to read this message sent by Pawan Sinha, director of MIT-India and Project Prakash

» March 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on publishing his work from the University of Minnesota in Nature!

» March 2021: We are excited to welcome John Gabel to Jazlab as Lab Manager and Technical Associate!

» March 2021: We are excited to welcome Aída Piccato to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» March 2021: New paper! Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» March 2021: Congratulations to Ruidong Chen on receiging the J. Douglas Tan Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Tan-Yang center at MIT!

» February 2021: New paper! Nicholas Watters, Joshua Tenenbaum, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in arXiv.

» January 2021: New paper! Rishi Rajalingham, Aída Piccato, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» January 2021: New paper! Hansem Sohn and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv in collaboration with Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and Northwestern University.

» January 2021: Congratulations to Michael Yoo on publishing his work from the Suwon Institute for Basic Science in Phi. Trans. R. Soc. B!

» December 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in JNeurosci with collaborators.

» December 2020: New paper! Hansem Sohn, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Rishi Rajalingham, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Trends in Neuroscience.

» December 2020: New paper! Jing Wang, Eghbal Hosseini, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Adam Akkad, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in eLife.

» October 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri, Seth Egger, Rishi Rajalingham, and Evan Remington publish in Neuron with collaborators.

» September 2020: Congratulations to Setayesh Radkani on being named a McGovern Rising Star!

» September 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on being named a McGovern Rising Star!

» September 2020: We are excited to welcome Michael Yoo to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» September 2020: We are excited to welcome Ruidong to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» August 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in PNAS with collaborators.

» August 2020: Congratulations to Hansem Sohn on receiving the BBRF Young Investigator Grant!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiing the MathWorks Engineering Fellowship!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on receiving the Presidential Graduate Fellowship!

» August 2020: New paper! Eli Pollock and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PLOS Computational Biology.

» August 2020: New paper! Seth Egger and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature Communications.

» August 2020: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on his renewal of the FRQNT Postdoctoral Fellowship!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson on receiving the Friends of McGovern grant!

» August 2020: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham on publishing his work from the DiCarlo lab in Nature Communications!

» July 2020: Congratulations to Mehrdad Jazayeri on his tenure at MIT!!

» May 2020: New paper! Mehrdad Jazayeri publishes in eLife with NYU collaborators.

» April 2020: Congratulations to Sujaya Neupane on publishing his graduate work from McGill in Reviews in the Neurosciences!

» April 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the Whitaker Health Sciences Fund Fellowship!

» April 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Walle Nauta Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Nicholas Watters on receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Aída Piccato on accepting a graduate position at MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science PhD Program!

» March 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the MIT Community Service Fund Award!

» March 2020: We are excited to welcome Nicholas Watters to Jazlab as a graduate student!

» February 2020: New poster presentations! Alexandra Ferguson, T. Vincenza Parks, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Jing Wang, Eghbal Hosseini, Hansem Sohn, Sujay Neupane, Vincent Tang, Mahdi Ramadan, Rishi Rajalingham, and Aída Piccato present at CoSyNe.

» February 2020: Congratulations to Alexandra Ferguson and Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the CoSyNe Travel Grant!

» February 2020: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving the Patrick J. McGovern Student Travel Award

» February 2020: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on publishing his Master’s work from Supaéro in Acta Astronautica!

» February 2020: Congratulations to Michal De-Medonsa on being featured on the McGovern Institute website for her Jazlab artwork!

» January 2020: Congratulations to Rishi Rajalingham on receiving the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship!

» December 2019: New paper! Eli Pollock and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» August 2019: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the MathWorks Engineering Fellowship!

» August 2019: Congratulations to Mahdi Ramadan on receiving an NSF I-Corps Sparks Program Award!

» October 2019: New poster presentations! Sujay Neupane, T. VIncenza Parks, Alexandra Ferguson, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Rishi Rajalingham, present at SfN.

» October 2019: New paper! Seth Egger, Evan Remington, Chia-Jung Chang, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Nature Neuroscience.

» July 2019: New paper! Seth Egger, Nhat Le, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in bioRxiv.

» July 2019: New paper! Hansem Sohn, Devika Narain, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Neuron.

» July 2019: Michal De-Medonsa writes blog post for McGovern Institute – Do Thoughts Have Mass?

» May 2019: New paper! Morteza Sarafyazd and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in Science.

» April 2019: Congratulations to Seth Egger on accepting a postdoc position at Duke!

» March 2019: We are excited to welcome Rishi Rajalingham to Jazlabe as a postdoc!

» March 2019: Congratulations to Vinci Parks on accepting a graduate position at the University of Pittsburgh!

» February 2019: New poster presentations! Chris Cueva, Seth Egger, Nhat Le, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Devika Narain, Eli Pollock, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Hansem Sohn present at CoSyNe.

» October 2018: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on receiving a collaborative grant from the International Development Research Center, Canada!

» October 2018:Jazlab in the news – Mahdi Ramadan and Alexi Choueiri’s common experience as Lebanese evacuees led both to study the human brain at MIT.

» October 2018: New paper! Evan Remington and Vinci Parks publish in Nature Communications.

» October 2018: New poster presentations! Jing Wang, Morteza Sarafyazd, Nicolas Meirhaeghe, Hansem Sohn, Seth Egger, T. Vincenza Parks, and Evan Remington present at SfN.

» August 2018: Congratulations to Evan Remington on completing his postdoc at Jazlab and starting a new position as a scientist at Biogen.

» August 2018: New paper! Seth Egger publishes in Scientific Reports.

» June 2018: New paper! Evan Remington, Devika Narain, and Eghbal Hosseini publish in Neuron.

» April 2018: We are proud of Eli Pollock’s work, organizing a visit with other MIT students and postdocs to Capitol Hill to advocate for increases in federal science funding.

» March 2018: New paper! Chia-Jung Chang and Mehrdad Jazayeri publish in PNAS.

» February 2018: New paper! Devika Narain and Evan Remington publish in Nature Communications.

» January 2018: Congratulations to Sujay Neupane on receiving the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral fellowship!

»January 2018: We are excited to welcome Sujaya Neupane to Jazlab as a postdoc!

» January 2018: Congratulations to Nicolas Meirhaeghe on receiving the CoSyNe New Attendee Award!

» December 2017: New Paper! Jing Wang, Devika Narain, and Eghbal Hosseini publish in Nature Neuroscience.

» October 2017: New poster presentations! Hansem Sohn, Jing Wang, Morteza Sarafyazd, and Seth Egger present at SfN.

» October 2016: New poster presentations! Eghbal Hosseini, Jing Wang, and Evan Remington present at SfN.

» October 2015: New poster presentations! Evan Remington and Seth Egger present at SfN..

» October 2014: New poster presentations! Jing Wang and Seth Egger present at SfN.

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