Melissa Franch, PhD

@mfranch.bsky.social

Postdoc in the Hayden lab at Baylor College of Medicine studying neural computations of natural language & communication in humans. Sister to someone with autism. F32 NIDCD Fellow | Autism Research Institute funded | Simons F2F | she/her. melissafranch.com

@itsafronomics.blacksky.appReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

TLDR: Female faculty report devaluation—defined as feeling excluded, disrespected, mistreated, or held to different standards— at higher rates than men.

And among female faculty, WOC were much more likely to report devaluation than White women, holding all else equal. This is #TheDoubleTax.

Women of color were more likely to report devaluation as compared to all other groups
@cp-neuron.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

Neuron continues its three-part series on neuroscience and AI with “Neuroscience and AI: Emerging Synergies”.
Explore how brains and AI are converging, from language models and scientific discovery to more brain-like AI systems.
The synergy deepens.
www.cell.com/neuron/issue...

Photo, no description
@elliot-murphy.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

New work out today!

The result of a 15 year project to offer genuine linking hypotheses between linguistics and neuroscience: a revised research program, and its first result - a novel neural binding operation ('Meld') capturing core properties of natural language syntax 🧵

arxiv.org/abs/2609.14384

@nicolecrust.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

The Grand Plan for brain & mind research is in terrific hands with the researchers at Baylor College of Medicine! From an excellent panel discussion across silos to many insightful conversations with PIs and trainees, I'm a bit blown away by what they are up to here. Impactful & exciting.

Poster for Reimagining Brain Therapies
@benhayden.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

And in some patients we measured gaze as well. We find that gaze has its own maps, and those are also semi-orthogonalized. So in debates about whether primate hippocampus does gaze or place, the answer is “both, and their codes are rotated”.

@skoslov.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

New preprint! Posterior cingulate is often linked to memory in humans but decisions in monkeys yet there's little consensus about its functional neuroanatomy. We recorded LFPs+single units in humans during matched value and memory based decisions, finding convergence in dorsal, but not ventral, PCC.

biorxiv.org
@nicolecrust.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

The superposition of these two studies — both incredible — reflect a snapshot of "one big thing" systems neuroscience has yet to resolve. In mice: 1. Task-related signals are everywhere. 2. Absent large swaths of "everywhere," suprisingly sophisticated learning & behavior remains.

Post by Enny van Beest, "Brainwide representation of navigation"Post by Jieyu Zheng, "How fast can mice learn complex mazes?"
@ennyvb.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

Textbook: tracking position during navigation is primarily the job of the hippocampus. Recent findings suggest a more complicated story.

Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region!

With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net

@rtommccoy.bsky.socialReposted by @mfranch.bsky.social

🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 (The result of an 8-year project!) LLMs seem very different from symbolic systems. Yet LLMs excel in symbolic domains (e.g., language/code/math). How do they do it? Our finding: LLM representations have implicit symbolic structure! Link in thread ⬇️ 1/n

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