Scholar
Hua-Dong Xiong
Google Scholar ID: 8Bv3i7gAAAAJ
Department of Psychology, Georgia Tech
Citations & Impact
Citations
101
H-index
3
i10-index
2
Publications
17
Co-authors
5
list available
Publications
Resume (English only)
Education
- First-year PhD student in the Cognition and Neural Systems Program at the University of Arizona, advised by Robert Wilson.
- Prior to PhD, worked with Xue-Xin Wei at UT Austin.
- Earlier collaborated with Da-Hui Wang at Beijing Normal University.
- Previously used EEG to study working memory.
- Studied counseling psychology with a focus on cognitive behavioral therapy during undergraduate studies.
Background
- Studies computational neuroscience.
- Interested in understanding large language models (LLMs) beyond mechanistic details, exploring how LLMs can enhance collective decision-making and inform policy, aligning LLMs with human priors and ultimate good values, and using mechanistic insights from LLMs and neural network theory to expand the space of cognitive hypotheses.
- Uses models to understand behaviors of both biological and artificial agents and explores how computation could be implemented in neural networks.
- Since the release of GPT-4, research focus has partially shifted toward understanding the emergence of intelligence in large language models.
- Current research interests include: using recurrent neural networks as cognitive models to identify hidden variables in cross-species decision-making; examining how prior information is encoded in working memory via optimization-based neural network models; and investigating how humans use language as a tool for control and agency through dialogue.
Miscellany
- Addicted to exploring complex ideas and writes controversial thoughts on his blog.
- Enjoyed reading as a youth; favorite authors include James Joyce, Milan Kundera, Jorge Borges, Franz Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Edgar Allan Poe.
- Lost patience for long books after high school.
- Addicted to computer games, but only when exams are approaching—now rarely plays due to few exams.
- Enjoys skiing, dark humor, and embarrassing short videos.
- Finds using a second language painful, especially because he struggles to express sarcasm well in English.
- Bad at arithmetic—even messes up single-digit calculations with pen and paper, which makes him doubt his suitability as a computational neuroscientist (though notes that LLMs also fail at simple math).
