Cogan Lab
@coganlab.bsky.social
The Cogan Lab at Duke University: Investigating speech, language, and cognition using invasive neural human electrophysiology
http://coganlab.org
http://coganlab.org
Thank you to all the patients who participated in our work, our colleagues in the Viventi lab, and our neurosurgeon collaborators!
@dukebrain.bsky.social
@dukemedschool.bsky.social
@dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social
5/5
@dukebrain.bsky.social
@dukemedschool.bsky.social
@dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social
5/5
August 19, 2026 at 7:31 PM
Thank you to all the patients who participated in our work, our colleagues in the Viventi lab, and our neurosurgeon collaborators!
@dukebrain.bsky.social
@dukemedschool.bsky.social
@dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social
5/5
@dukebrain.bsky.social
@dukemedschool.bsky.social
@dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social
5/5
Nature Human Behaviour also published a Research Briefing on the work, with a short overview of the findings, check it out!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How speech plans become spoken sequences - Nature Human Behaviour
Speaking requires the brain to rapidly convert planned speech into precisely ordered vocal movements. Intracranial recordings reveal a cascade of neural processes in which syllable-level plans in the ...
www.nature.com
August 18, 2026 at 2:09 PM
Nature Human Behaviour also published a Research Briefing on the work, with a short overview of the findings, check it out!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A big thank you to all the patients for participating in our research, all our co-authors including the Viventi Lab, and our neurosurgical team
@dukebrain.bsky.social @gregoryhickok.bsky.social @dukemedschool.bsky.social @dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social @dukeubme.bsky.social
5/5
@dukebrain.bsky.social @gregoryhickok.bsky.social @dukemedschool.bsky.social @dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social @dukeubme.bsky.social
5/5
August 18, 2026 at 2:07 PM
A big thank you to all the patients for participating in our research, all our co-authors including the Viventi Lab, and our neurosurgical team
@dukebrain.bsky.social @gregoryhickok.bsky.social @dukemedschool.bsky.social @dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social @dukeubme.bsky.social
5/5
@dukebrain.bsky.social @gregoryhickok.bsky.social @dukemedschool.bsky.social @dukeneurosurgery.bsky.social @dukeubme.bsky.social
5/5
Shared latent representations of speech production for cross-patient speech decoding
Nature Communications
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
3/3
Nature Communications
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
3/3
Shared latent representations of speech production for cross-patient speech decoding - Nature Communications
Current speech brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) rely on patient-specific decoding approaches. Here, the authors show that patient-specific data can be aligned to a shared space that preserves speech i...
doi.org
August 17, 2026 at 3:09 PM
Shared latent representations of speech production for cross-patient speech decoding
Nature Communications
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
3/3
Nature Communications
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
3/3
Distinct neural processes link speech planning and execution
Nature Human Behaviour
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
2/3
Nature Human Behaviour
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
2/3
Distinct neural processes link speech planning and execution - Nature Human Behaviour
Direct recordings from the human brain reveal a hierarchy in planning to speak, with neural activity organizing whole syllables before the individual sounds that compose them are sequenced.
doi.org
August 17, 2026 at 3:09 PM
Distinct neural processes link speech planning and execution
Nature Human Behaviour
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
2/3
Nature Human Behaviour
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
2/3
Thank you to the authors @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social / @utaustin.bsky.social for your work, and we look forward to following its progress!
cc:
@shaileejain.bsky.social @amandalebel.bsky.social @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
cc:
@shaileejain.bsky.social @amandalebel.bsky.social @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
Thank you to the authors @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social / @utaustin.bsky.social for your work, and we look forward to following its progress!
cc:
@shaileejain.bsky.social @amandalebel.bsky.social @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
cc:
@shaileejain.bsky.social @amandalebel.bsky.social @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
❔3⃣: The decoder was trained on speech perception and successfully generalized to imagined speech, suggesting that it captures a shared semantic representation across tasks. How well would you expect this type of model to generalize to overt speech production?
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
❔3⃣: The decoder was trained on speech perception and successfully generalized to imagined speech, suggesting that it captures a shared semantic representation across tasks. How well would you expect this type of model to generalize to overt speech production?
❔2⃣ (con't): While this is kind of expected from a non-invasive decoder trained purely on speech perception data, what is the actual floor for reconstruction accuracy we should be looking for in
a viable semantic decoder?
a viable semantic decoder?
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
❔2⃣ (con't): While this is kind of expected from a non-invasive decoder trained purely on speech perception data, what is the actual floor for reconstruction accuracy we should be looking for in
a viable semantic decoder?
a viable semantic decoder?
❔2⃣: Looking closely at the qualitative examples for imagined speech, even the general gist seems pretty far off from the target transcripts in some cases.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
❔2⃣: Looking closely at the qualitative examples for imagined speech, even the general gist seems pretty far off from the target transcripts in some cases.
❔1⃣ (con't): However, could this drop in accuracy instead reflect a shift in attention away from the background story and toward the cognitive task? If so, was there any evidence that the decoder outputs reflected the content or demands of the
cognitive task itself?
cognitive task itself?
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
❔1⃣ (con't): However, could this drop in accuracy instead reflect a shift in attention away from the background story and toward the cognitive task? If so, was there any evidence that the decoder outputs reflected the content or demands of the
cognitive task itself?
cognitive task itself?
❔1⃣ : To test if the decoder could be consciously resisted, the authors showed that subjects silently performing cognitive tasks lowered decoding performance relative to passive listening.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
❔1⃣ : To test if the decoder could be consciously resisted, the authors showed that subjects silently performing cognitive tasks lowered decoding performance relative to passive listening.
🤍3⃣ (con't): The ability to independently decode
the same narrative content from regions such as prefrontal cortex and association cortex has important implications for the resilience and flexibility of future semantic BCIs.
the same narrative content from regions such as prefrontal cortex and association cortex has important implications for the resilience and flexibility of future semantic BCIs.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
🤍3⃣ (con't): The ability to independently decode
the same narrative content from regions such as prefrontal cortex and association cortex has important implications for the resilience and flexibility of future semantic BCIs.
the same narrative content from regions such as prefrontal cortex and association cortex has important implications for the resilience and flexibility of future semantic BCIs.
🤍3⃣: The finding of highly redundant semantic representations across multiple, distinct cortical networks was very interesting.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
🤍3⃣: The finding of highly redundant semantic representations across multiple, distinct cortical networks was very interesting.
🤍2⃣: The ability of the decoder to generalize across multiple task conditions is very compelling and shows the robustness of the underlying semantic representations.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
🤍2⃣: The ability of the decoder to generalize across multiple task conditions is very compelling and shows the robustness of the underlying semantic representations.
🤍1⃣: The integration of a generative language model prior with the encoding model was a very clever way to solve the inverse problem.
July 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
🤍1⃣: The integration of a generative language model prior with the encoding model was a very clever way to solve the inverse problem.