Kathy Garcia

Computational Cognitive Science PhD @JHUCogSci | BS @Stanford |

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

🚨New preprint w/ Leyla Isik!
Aligning Video Models with Human Social Judgments via Behavior-Guided Fine-Tuning

We introduce a ~49k triplet social video dataset, uncover a modality gap (language > video), and close via novel behavior-guided finetuning.
🔗 https://t.co/eNI9sLpk4t

[Taiwei Shi @taiwei_shi]

Morning traffic at #NeurIPS2025 😅🫠

[Johan Obando-Ceron 👍🏽 @johanobandoc]

I’m very happy to share our paper, Revisiting Rainbow, accepted in the Deep RL workshop @Neurips_Conf. I’ve been working with @pcastr for a few months, and I wanted to share my story, and how this work came to be, in the hope it motivates others in similar situations to mine.

[UniReps @unireps]

🔵🔴 Join us for the UniReps Workshop: Unifying Representations in Neural Models at @NeurIPSConf 2025!

📍 Ballroom 20D, San Diego Convention Center
Dec 6

Don’t forget to fill out the participation form. Joining in person or remotely? We welcome your questions for the panel.
🔗 https://t.co/ETlBS6jaFH

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

Excited to share that I’m at #NeurIPS2025 this year! 🧠

I’ll be presenting at the UniReps Workshop on my work on Social Tokens with @su1001v and @thisismyhat, where we explore how to inject socially relevant visual features into language models to improve social reasoning and alignment.

Super excited to connect with folks working at the intersection of multimodal models and human cognition.

If you’re around, come say hi! And feel free to DM me for a coffee chat ☕️

[Johan Obando-Ceron 👍🏽 @johanobandoc]

🚀 The “Dormant Neuron” [1] work showed that deep RL agents lose capacity when neurons stop activating.

But what if neurons look dormant yet are still learning?

Our #NeurIPS2025 paper revisits this question; using gradients instead of activations to measure real neuronal health. GraMa offers a clearer view of how deep RL agents actually learn, leading to more adaptive and higher-performing agents.

🧵👇Check out the great thread by @JasonLiu106968

[Johan Obando-Ceron 👍🏽 @johanobandoc]

1/3 🥳Excited to share our new paper ‘Simplicial Embeddings Improve Sample Efficiency in Actor–Critic Agents’!

Project your features onto a product of simplices → sparse, stable reps, stronger grads, faster learning.

🧵For more details, check out Pablo’s thread 👇

[Sarath Chandar @apsarathchandar]

At @ChandarLab, we are happy to announce the third edition of our assistance program to provide feedback for members of communities underrepresented in AI who want to apply to high-profile graduate programs. Want feedback? Details: https://t.co/r1u1STRgmV. Deadline: Nov 01!

cc: @Mila_Quebec, @polymtl, @CIFAR_News

[Hannah Small @smallhannahe]

Excited to share new work with @H_Lee_Masson, Ericka Wodka, @SHMostofsky and Leyla Isik! We investigated how simultaneous vision and language signals are combined in the brain using naturalistic+controlled fMRI. Read the paper here: https://t.co/vvmJOcjI4s
1/n

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

✅Together this work shows how different types of human similarity judgments can be leveraged to improve video models.

We also share our large-scale video similarity judgment dataset, and code for hybrid triplet/RSA behavior guided finetuning: (https://t.co/eo19Meg5oQ)

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

🚨New preprint w/ Leyla Isik!
Aligning Video Models with Human Social Judgments via Behavior-Guided Fine-Tuning

We introduce a ~49k triplet social video dataset, uncover a modality gap (language > video), and close via novel behavior-guided finetuning.
🔗 https://t.co/eNI9sLpk4t

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

In follow-up experiments, we show this model generalizes better to novel social tasks and avoids catastrophic forgetting by preserving baseline on action recognition tasks.

[Robin Nusslock @RobinNusslock]

I'm recruiting a graduate student this year! If you’re interested in using MRI to study brain systems involved in emotion and how they link to mental and physical health, please apply! Check out our current projects here. Please share and retweet! https://t.co/3H5XRSvpIp

[Nick Blauch @ ICML 2026 🇰🇷 @nmblauch]

What shapes the topography of high-level visual cortex?

Excited to share a new pre-print addressing this question with connectivity-constrained interactive topographic networks, titled "Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision", w/ Marlene Behrmann & David Plaut.

🧵 ↓ 1/n

[ICLR @iclr_conf]

Who is jetlagged and ready to ROCK!? #ICLR2025

Let's gooooo!!!! 😱😱💪💪

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

Excited to be presenting this paper at #ICLR2025 this week @iclr_conf! Come check our poster if you want to know more!! 🧠🤖

📆 Thur, Apr, 24 3:00-5:30 - Poster session 2 (#64)
📄 https://t.co/FL9uugtqZA

[Kathy Garcia @NeuroKathyG]

📢 Excited to announce our latest pre-print: “Modeling dynamic social vision highlights gaps between deep learning and humans”! 🌟 w/ @emaliemcmahon, Colin Conwell, @michaelfbonner, and @leylaisi🧵 #NeuroAI #CognitiveScience [1/7]

[Robin Nusslock @RobinNusslock]

My lab at Northwestern is hiring! We have openings for a Project Coordinator, Research Assistant, MRI Data Analyst, and Postdoc for studies examining neuroinflammation and mental and physical health. Please RT and share!! Click here for more information: https://t.co/JfB823M61H