Language of Thought Lab

🔬 Research Directions

LoT Lab focuses on three key research themes to understand the fundamental components of intelligence:

• 🧠 Intuitive Physics as World Model
  Exploring how the brain builds internal models of the physical world to enable perception, prediction, and simulation of the environment.

• 🎯 Bayesian Theory of Mind
  Investigating how the brain models the minds of others (ToM), enabling social inference and dynamic strategy updates during interaction.

• 💭 Probabilistic Language of Thought in Games
  Studying how the brain develops a compositional and generalizable probabilistic language of thought during complex gameplay—supporting knowledge construction and transfer.

We work closely with leading experimental neuroscience labs and adopt a cross-species (human, monkey, rodent) and cross-modal (behavioral experiments, neural recordings, mathematical modeling) approach to build a unified cognitive framework.

Our goal is to systematically reveal the computational principles underlying perception, decision-making, and symbolic reasoning in the brain.

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🌱 Lab Philosophy

We believe that great science stems from genuine passion and persistent curiosity. LoT Lab embraces the following research culture:

1. Balance breadth and depth – Pursue broad knowledge while cultivating deep expertise in your own research direction.
2. Bridge theory and data – Maintain creative tension between data-driven and hypothesis-driven approaches, aiming ultimately for theory-driven science.
3. Be a bridge across disciplines – Strive to produce interdisciplinary work respected by experts in each contributing field.

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📬 Contact

Qianli Yang
School of Psychology and Cognitive Science
East China Normal University
No. 3663 Zhongshan North Road, Shanghai

Email：
qlyang AT psy.ecnu.edu.cn
yangqianli90 AT hotmail.com
(please replace “AT” with “@”)

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