arXiv:2609.35599v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: When recalling lists of concepts (e.g., animals) during the semantic fluency task (SFT), both humans and large language models (LLMs) organise thei...
By Luke Leckie, Peter M. Todd, Jacob G. Foster
The paper presents a network-based framework that links cognitive skills, LLM architectures, and datasets to uncover the cognitive patterns of Large Language Models. It identifies module communities within LLMs that exhibit skill distributions partially mirroring distributed cognitive organization seen in avian and small mammalian brains, yet distinct from the focalized specialization of specific biological systems. The study highlights that LLM skill acquisition benefits from dynamic, cross-regional interactions and neural plasticity, suggesting fine-tuning should leverage distributed learning dynamics rather than rigid modular interventions.
By Kushal Raj Bhandari, Pin-Yu Chen, Jianxi Gao
arXiv:2608. 08159v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly reported to exhibit human-like neural and cognitive signatures, including concept cells, mental number lines, and cognitive maps.
By Yuqi Wu, Shengming Zhao, Jie Chen
The study investigates whether language models tailored to specific cognitive domains better align with corresponding brain systems. By prompting and fine‑tuning large language models into six domain experts—sensory, spatial, numerical, reasoning, social, and abstract—the authors find that each expert’s representations more closely match the brain region associated with its domain than other experts. This domain‑specific alignment holds across multiple base models and fMRI datasets, while overall prediction accuracy remains largely unchanged, indicating that regional alignment can be obscured when summarizing across the brain.
By Zhivar Sourati, Mengxuan Helen Wu, Nona Ghazizadeh, Jonas Kaplan, Morteza Dehghani, Samuel A. Nastase
arXiv:2609.14384v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: What must a neural system be capable of to implement language? Current research annotates stimuli with linguistic variables and tests which electrodes,...
By Elliot Murphy
The paper introduces NeuroCognition, a benchmark based on three neuropsychological tests—Raven's Progressive Matrices, Spatial Working Memory, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test—to evaluate foundational cognitive abilities in large language models (LLMs). It finds that while LLMs excel on text tasks, their performance drops on image-based and more complex tasks, and they fail different parts of the same tasks compared to humans. NeuroCognition correlates with standard general-capability benchmarks yet measures distinct cognitive skills, highlighting where LLMs align with or diverge from human-like intelligence.
By Faiz Ghifari Haznitrama, Faeyza Rishad Ardi, Alice Oh