publications

2025

1. Categorical rhythmic priors in macaques

   Ameyaltzin Castillo-Almazán, Luis Prado, Nori Jacoby, and 1 more author

   Dec 2025

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2. Characterizing the Large-Scale Structure of Multimodal Semantic Networks

   Raja Marjieh, Pol Rijn, Ilia Sucholutsky, and 3 more authors

   Sep 2025

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3. Neural Correlates of Rhythm in Post-Stroke Aphasia

   Anna V. Kasdan, Marianne Casilio, Katherine Bryan, and 7 more authors

   Neurobiology of Language, Sep 2025

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4. Characterizing the Large-Scale Structure of Grounded Semantic Networks

   Raja Marjieh, Pol Rijn, Ilia Sucholutsky, and 3 more authors

   Aug 2025

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5. Revealing rhythm categorization in human brain activity

   Francesca M. Barbero, Tomas Lenc, Nori Jacoby, and 3 more authors

   Science Advances, Aug 2025

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6. Unsettled Times: Music Discovery Reveals Divergent Cultural Responses to War

   Harin Lee, Manuel Anglada-Tort, Oleg Sobchuk, and 5 more authors

   Jun 2025

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7. Mechanisms of cultural diversity in urban populations

   Harin Lee, Nori Jacoby, Romain Hennequin, and 1 more author

   Nature Communications, Jun 2025

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8. Visual and Auditory Aesthetic Preferences Across Cultures

   Harin Lee, Eline Van Geert, Elif Celen, and 4 more authors

   Feb 2025

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9. Are Expressions for Music Emotions the Same Across Cultures?

   Elif Celen, Pol Rijn, Harin Lee, and 1 more author

   Feb 2025

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10. Characterizing the Interaction of Cultural Evolution Mechanisms in Experimental Social Networks

    Raja Marjieh, Manuel Anglada-Tort, Thomas L. Griffiths, and 1 more author

    Feb 2025

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11. How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution

    Ofer Tchernichovski, Eitan Globerson, Peter Harrison, and 1 more author

    Feb 2025

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12. Institutional Preferences in the Laboratory

    Qiankun Zhong, Nori Jacoby, Ofer Tchernichovski, and 1 more author

    Feb 2025

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13. Reasoning within and between collective action problems

    Ofer Tchernichovski, Seth Frey, Dalton C. Conley, and 1 more author

    Feb 2025

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14. The Dynamics of Collective Creativity in Human-AI Social Networks

    Shota Shiiku, Raja Marjieh, Manuel Anglada-Tort, and 1 more author

    Feb 2025

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15. Visual and Auditory Aesthetic Preferences Across Cultures

    Harin Lee, Eline Van Geert, Elif Celen, and 4 more authors

    Feb 2025

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2024

1. Large language models predict human sensory judgments across six modalities

   Raja Marjieh, Ilia Sucholutsky, Pol Rijn, and 2 more authors

   Scientific Reports, Sep 2024

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2. Characterizing Similarities and Divergences in Conversational Tones in Humans and LLMs by Sampling with People

   Dun-Ming Huang, Pol Van Rijn, Ilia Sucholutsky, and 2 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), Aug 2024

   Abs DOI

   Conversational tones — the manners and attitudes in which speakers communicate — are essential to effective communication. As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly popular, it is necessary to characterize the divergences in their conversational tones relative to humans. Prior research relied on pre-existing taxonomies or text corpora, which suffer from experimenter bias and may not be representative of real-world distributions. Inspired by methods from cognitive science, we propose an iterative method for simultaneously eliciting conversational tones and sentences, where participants alternate between two tasks: (1) one participant identifies the tone of a given sentence and (2) a different participant generates a sentence based on that tone. We run 50 iterations of this process with both human participants and GPT-4 and obtain a dataset of sentences and frequent conversational tones. In an additional experiment, humans and GPT-4 annotated all sentences with all tones. With data from 1,339 participants, 33,370 human judgments, and 29,900 GPT-4 queries, we show how our approach can be used to create an interpretable geometric representation of relations between tones in humans and GPT-4. This work showcases how combining ideas from machine learning and cognitive science can address challenges in human-computer interactions.

3. Global music discoveries reveal cultural shifts during the war in Ukraine

   Harin Lee, Manuel Anglada-Tort, Oleg Sobchuk, and 5 more authors

   May 2024

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4. Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report

   Yuto Ozaki, Adam Tierney, Peter Q. Pfordresher, and 72 more authors

   Science Advances, May 2024

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5. Giving Robots a Voice: Human-in-the-Loop Voice Creation and open-ended Labeling

   Pol Rijn, Silvan Mertes, Kathrin Janowski, and 3 more authors

   In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2024

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6. Tracing the mechanisms of cultural diversity through 2.5 million individuals’ music listening patterns

   Harin Lee, Nori Jacoby, Romain Hennequin, and 1 more author

   May 2024

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7. Characterizing the Large-Scale Structure of Grounded Semantic Networks

   Raja Marjieh, Pol Rijn, Ilia Sucholutsky, and 3 more authors

   Apr 2024

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8. Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

   Nori Jacoby, Rainer Polak, Jessica A. Grahn, and 31 more authors

   Nature Human Behaviour, Mar 2024

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9. Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales

   Raja Marjieh, Peter M. C. Harrison, Harin Lee, and 2 more authors

   Nature Communications, Feb 2024

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10. Studying the Effect of Globalization on Color Perception using Multilingual Online Recruitment and Large Language Models

    Jakob Niedermann, Ilia Sucholutsky, Raja Marjieh, and 4 more authors

    Feb 2024

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11. Using Gibbs Sampling with People to characterize perceptual and aesthetic evaluations in multidimensional visual stimulus space

    Eline Van Geert and Nori Jacoby

    Feb 2024

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2023

1. Incentivizing free riders improves collective intelligence in social dilemmas

   Ofer Tchernichovski, Seth Frey, Nori Jacoby, and 1 more author

   Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov 2023

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2. Feeling the Beat: Temporal Predictability is Associated with Ongoing Changes in Music-Induced Pleasantness

   Neomi Singer, Nori Jacoby, Talma Hendler, and 1 more author

   Journal of Cognition, Jul 2023

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3. Composite Representations Lead to Multiple Geometrical Approximations to the Structure of Musical Pitch

   Raja Marjieh, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Nori Jacoby

   Jun 2023

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4. Poor synchronization yet adequate tempo‐keeping in adults with autism

   Keren Kasten, Nori Jacoby, and Merav Ahissar

   Autism Research, Apr 2023

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5. Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality

   Reyna L. Gordon, Daphne O. Martschenko, Srishti Nayak, and 5 more authors

   Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Feb 2023

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6. Large-scale iterated singing experiments reveal oral transmission mechanisms underlying music evolution

   Manuel Anglada-Tort, Peter M.C. Harrison, Harin Lee, and 1 more author

   Current Biology, Apr 2023

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7. Analyzing diffusion as serial reproduction

   Raja Marjieh, Ilia Sucholutsky, Thomas A. Langlois, and 2 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Apr 2023

   Abs

   Diffusion models are a class of generative models that learn to synthesize samples by inverting a diffusion process that gradually maps data into noise. While these models have enjoyed great success recently, a full theoretical understanding of their observed properties is still lacking, in particular, their weak sensitivity to the choice of noise family and the role of adequate scheduling of noise levels for good synthesis. By identifying a correspondence between diffusion models and a well-known paradigm in cognitive science known as serial reproduction, whereby human agents iteratively observe and reproduce stimuli from memory, we show how the aforementioned properties of diffusion models can be explained as a natural consequence of this correspondence. We then complement our theoretical analysis with simulations that exhibit these key features. Our work highlights how classic paradigms in cognitive science can shed light on state-of-the-art machine learning problems.

8. On the Informativeness of Supervision Signals

   Ilia Sucholutsky, Ruairidh McLennan Battleday, Katherine M. Collins, and 7 more authors

   In The 39th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Apr 2023
9. Words are all you need? Language as an approximation for human similarity judgments

   Raja Marjieh, Pol Van Rijn, Ilia Sucholutsky, and 4 more authors

   In The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations , Apr 2023

2022

1. Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report

   Yuto Ozaki, Adam Tierney, Peter Pfordresher, and 72 more authors

   Nov 2022

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2. Aesthetics of musical timing: Culture and expertise affect preferences for isochrony but not synchrony

   Kelly Jakubowski, Rainer Polak, Martín Rocamora, and 2 more authors

   Cognition, Oct 2022

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3. Timbral effects on consonance illuminate psychoacoustics of music evolution

   Raja Marjieh, Peter M. C. Harrison, Harin Lee, and 2 more authors

   Jun 2022

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4. Genome-wide association study of musical beat synchronization demonstrates high polygenicity

   Maria Niarchou, Daniel E. Gustavson, J. Fah Sathirapongsasuti, and 51 more authors

   Nature Human Behaviour, Jun 2022

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5. Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality

   Reyna L Gordon, Maria Niarchou, Daphne Martschenko, and 4 more authors

   May 2022

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6. Studying the Effect of Oral Transmission on Melodic Structure using Online Iterated Singing Experiments

   Manuel Anglada-Tort, Peter M. C. Harrison, and Nori Jacoby

   May 2022

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2021

1. The Development of Rhythmic Categories as Revealed Through an Iterative Production Task

   Karli M Nave, Chantal Carrillo, Nori Jacoby, and 2 more authors

   Dec 2021

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2. Passive attention in artificial neural networks predicts human visual selectivity

   Nori Jacoby

   Dec 2021

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3. Slow update of internal representations impedes synchronization in autism

   Gal Vishne, Nori Jacoby, Tamar Malinovitch, and 3 more authors

   Nature Communications, Sep 2021

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4. Cross-cultural mood perception in pop songs and its alignment with mood detection algorithms

   Harin Lee, Frank Hoeger, Mark Schoenwiesner, and 2 more authors

   arXiv, Sep 2021

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5. Extreme precision in rhythmic interaction is enabled by role-optimized sensorimotor coupling: analysis and modelling of West African drum ensemble music

   Nori Jacoby, Rainer Polak, and Justin London

   Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Aug 2021

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6. Exploring Emotional Prototypes in a High Dimensional TTS Latent Space

   Pol Rijn, Silvan Mertes, Dominik Schiller, and 4 more authors

   In Interspeech 2021, Aug 2021

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7. Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

   Nori Jacoby, Rainer Polak, Jessica Adrienne Grahn, and 31 more authors

   Jul 2021

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8. Building sustainable global collaborative networks: Recommendations from music studies and the social sciences

   Patrick E. Savage, Nori Jacoby, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, and 15 more authors

   Jun 2021

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9. Experimenting With Online Governance

   Ofer Tchernichovski, Seth Frey, Nori Jacoby, and 1 more author

   Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Apr 2021

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10. Serial reproduction reveals the geometry of visuospatial representations

    Thomas A. Langlois, Nori Jacoby, Jordan W. Suchow, and 1 more author

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mar 2021

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11. REPP: A robust cross-platform solution for online sensorimotor synchronization experiments

    Manuel Anglada-Tort, Peter M. C. Harrison, and Nori Jacoby

    Jan 2021

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12. Passive attention in artificial neural networks predicts human visual selectivity

    Thomas A. Langlois, H. Charles Zhao, Erin Grant, and 3 more authors

    In Neural Information Processing Systems, Jan 2021

2020

1. Gibbs Sampling with People

   Nori Jacoby

   Jan 2020

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2. Perceptual fusion of musical notes by native Amazonians suggests universal representations of musical intervals

   Malinda J. McPherson, Sophia E. Dolan, Alex Durango, and 6 more authors

   Nature Communications, Jun 2020

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3. Categorical Rhythms Are Shared between Songbirds and Humans

   Tina C. Roeske, Ofer Tchernichovski, David Poeppel, and 1 more author

   Current Biology, Sep 2020

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4. Cross-Cultural Work in Music Cognition

   Nori Jacoby, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Martin Clayton, and 17 more authors

   Music Perception, Feb 2020

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5. Gibbs sampling with people

   Peter M. C. Harrison, Raja Marjieh, Federico Adolfi, and 5 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Feb 2020

   Abs

   A core problem in cognitive science and machine learning is to understand how humans derive semantic representations from perceptual objects, such as color from an apple, pleasantness from a musical chord, or seriousness from a face. Markov Chain Monte Carlo with People (MCMCP) is a prominent method for studying such representations, in which participants are presented with binary choice trials constructed such that the decisions follow a Markov Chain Monte Carlo acceptance rule. However, while MCMCP has strong asymptotic properties, its binary choice paradigm generates relatively little information per trial, and its local proposal function makes it slow to explore the parameter space and find the modes of the distribution. Here we therefore generalize MCMCP to a continuous-sampling paradigm, where in each iteration the participant uses a slider to continuously manipulate a single stimulus dimension to optimize a given criterion such as ’pleasantness’. We formulate both methods from a utility-theory perspective, and show that the new method can be interpreted as ’Gibbs Sampling with People’ (GSP). Further, we introduce an aggregation parameter to the transition step, and show that this parameter can be manipulated to flexibly shift between Gibbs sampling and deterministic optimization. In an initial study, we show GSP clearly outperforming MCMCP; we then show that GSP provides novel and interpretable results in three other domains, namely musical chords, vocal emotions, and faces. We validate these results through large-scale perceptual rating experiments. The final experiments use GSP to navigate the latent space of a state-of-the-art image synthesis network (StyleGAN), a promising approach for applying GSP to high-dimensional perceptual spaces. We conclude by discussing future cognitive applications and ethical implications.

2019

1. Universality and diversity in human song

   Samuel A. Mehr, Manvir Singh, Dean Knox, and 16 more authors

   Science, Nov 2019

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2. Universal and Non-universal Features of Musical Pitch Perception Revealed by Singing

   Nori Jacoby, Eduardo A. Undurraga, Malinda J. McPherson, and 3 more authors

   Current Biology, Oct 2019

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3. Surprise-related activation in the nucleus accumbens interacts with music-induced pleasantness

   Ofir Shany, Neomi Singer, Benjamin Paul Gold, and 4 more authors

   Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Mar 2019

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4. Orthogonal multi-view three-dimensional object representations in memory revealed by serial reproduction

   Nori Jacoby

   Mar 2019
5. Uncovering visual priors in spatial memory using serial reproduction

   Nori Jacoby

   Mar 2019

2018

1. Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures

   Rainer Polak, Nori Jacoby, Timo Fischinger, and 3 more authors

   Music Perception, Sep 2018

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2. Analysing Multi-person Timing in Music and Movement: Event Based Methods

   In Timing and Time Perception: Procedures, Measures, & Applications, Mar 2018

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2017

1. Repetition and a Beat-Based Timing Framework: What Determines the Duration of Intervals Between Repetitions of a Tapping Pattern?

   Olivia Murton, Lauryn Zipse, Nori Jacoby, and 1 more author

   Timing & Time Perception, Dec 2017

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2. An auditory illusion reveals the role of streaming in the temporal misallocation of perceptual objects

   Anahita H. Mehta, Nori Jacoby, Ifat Yasin, and 2 more authors

   Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Feb 2017

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3. Integer Ratio Priors on Musical Rhythm Revealed Cross-culturally by Iterated Reproduction

   Nori Jacoby and Josh H. McDermott

   Current Biology, Feb 2017

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2016

1. Rhythm histograms and musical meter: A corpus study of Malian percussion music

   Justin London, Rainer Polak, and Nori Jacoby

   Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Jul 2016

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2. Common modulation of limbic network activation underlies musical emotions as they unfold

   Neomi Singer, Nori Jacoby, Tamar Lin, and 5 more authors

   NeuroImage, Nov 2016

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3. Both Isochronous and Non-Isochronous Metrical Subdivision Afford Precise and Stable Ensemble Entrainment: A Corpus Study of Malian Jembe Drumming

   Rainer Polak, Justin London, and Nori Jacoby

   Frontiers in Neuroscience, Jun 2016

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4. Motion Tracking of a Fish as a Novel Way to Control Electronic Music Performance

   Shaltiel Eloul, Gil Zissu, Yehiel H. Amo, and 1 more author

   Leonardo, Jun 2016

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5. Cue properties change timing strategies in group movement synchronisation

   Juliane J. Honisch, Mark T. Elliott, Nori Jacoby, and 1 more author

   Scientific Reports, Jan 2016

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6. Kulturelle Diversität in der empirischen Rhythmusforschung. Drei Analysen eines Audio-Korpus von Percussion-Ensemblemusik aus Mali

   Rainer Polak, Nori Jacoby, and Justin London

   Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie [Journal of the German-Speaking Society of Music Theory], Jan 2016

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2015

1. Towards a computational model of Dyslexia

   Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Ofri Raviv, Nori Jacoby, and 2 more authors

   BMC Neuroscience, Dec 2015

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2. Assessing the applied benefits of perceptual training: Lessons from studies of training working-memory

   Nori Jacoby and Merav Ahissar

   Journal of Vision, Aug 2015

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3. An Information Theoretic Approach to Chord Categorization and Functional Harmony

   Nori Jacoby, Naftali Tishby, and Dmitri Tymoczko

   Journal of New Music Research, Jul 2015

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4. Lower Bound on the Accuracy of Parameter Estimation Methods for Linear Sensorimotor Synchronization Models

   Nori Jacoby, Peter E. Keller, Bruno H. Repp, and 2 more authors

   Timing & Time Perception, May 2015

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5. Parameter Estimation of Linear Sensorimotor Synchronization Models: Phase Correction, Period Correction, and Ensemble Synchronization

   Nori Jacoby, Naftali Tishby, Bruno H. Repp, and 2 more authors

   Timing & Time Perception, May 2015

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2013

1. Stepwise acquisition of vocal combinatorial capacity in songbirds and human infants

   Dina Lipkind, Gary F. Marcus, Douglas K. Bemis, and 8 more authors

   Nature, May 2013

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2. What does It take to Show that a Cognitive Training Procedure is Useful?

   Nori Jacoby and Merav Ahissar

   In Changing Brains - Applying Brain Plasticity to Advance and Recover Human Ability, May 2013

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2012

1. A general linear framework for the comparison and evaluation of models of sensorimotor synchronization

   Nori Jacoby and Bruno H. Repp

   Biological Cybernetics, Mar 2012

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2. Quantifying phase correction in sensorimotor synchronization: Empirical comparison of three paradigms

   Bruno H. Repp, Peter E. Keller, and Nori Jacoby

   Acta Psychologica, Feb 2012

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3. Automatic web-scale information extraction

   Philip Bohannon, Nilesh Dalvi, Yuval Filmus, and 3 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 2012 international conference on Management of Data - SIGMOD ’12, Feb 2012

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2011

1. Musically puzzling II: Sensitivity to overall structure in a Haydn E-minor sonata

   Roni Y. Granot and Nori Jacoby

   Musicae Scientiae, Nov 2011

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2. Musically puzzling I: Sensitivity to overall structure in the sonata form?

   Roni Y. Granot and Nori Jacoby

   Musicae Scientiae, Jul 2011

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1. Some Computations of Ohtsuki Series

   Nori Jacoby and Ruth Lawrence

   In NATO Science Series, Jul 2011

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