Dr. Uri Hasson

Biography

The Hasson Lab investigates the underlying neural basis of human-to-human communication, natural language processing, and language acquisition in children, materializing within real-world contexts. Research studies focusing on neural responses to natural stimuli such as audio-visual narratives have led to the realization that existing models do not adequately capture the variance present in real-life contexts. Inspired by successes in deep learning for modeling natural stimuli, the lab aims to develop new theoretical frameworks and computational tools that elucidate the neural basis of cognition as it appears in the real world. For example, natural language processing offers insights into how language is used to communicate thoughts in daily life, which represents an attempt to model cognition within real-world contexts. The lab aims to model brain responses while individuals engage in open-ended conversations. The dataset consists of ECoG data collected continuously from the brains of epileptic patients during unrestricted conversations with doctors, friends, and family members over a week-long hospital stay. Recent advances in deep language models provide a new theoretical framework for studying natural language processing in the human brain, and the lab explores shared computational principles that differ between brain processing and deep neural networks.

Research Interests

Experience