Employment
Associate Professor,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2024 – )
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Additional affiliation: Cognitive Science
Tenured: 2024
Assistant Professor,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2015 – 2024)
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Additional affiliation: Cognitive Science
Reappointed: 2018
Postdoctoral Research
Associate, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (2011 – 2015)
Princeton Neuroscience
Institute and Department of Computer Science
Advisors: Kenneth Norman, Ph.D. and David Blei, Ph.D.
Education
Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA (2011)
Advisor: Michael Kahana, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Acquisition, storage, and
retrieval in digital and biological brains
B.S. in Neuroscience (High honors, Magna cum laude), Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA (2006)
Advisor: Robert Sekuler, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Modeling human spatial navigation using a
degraded ideal navigator
B.S. in Computer Science (Magna cum
laude), Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA (2006)
Grants, honors, and awards (selected)
- Linda B. and Kendrick R. Wilson III 1969 Fellowship (2024–2025)
- John M. Manley Huntington Award for Newly Tenured Faculty (2024)
Awarded to recently tenured Dartmouth faculty members who have an outstanding record of teaching and research
- CompX Faculty Grant (2024): Developing the next generation of multi-scale large language
models
Award amount: $15,000; Role: PI
- NSF CAREER Award (2022): Mapping and enhancing the acquisition
of conceptual knowledge using behavior, neural signals, and natural
language processing models
Award amount: $881,612; Role: PI
- Elected member, Memory Disorders Research Society (2021)
- NIMH Grant (2021): Serotonin modulation of the development of
neural circuits underlying reward processing and impulsivity in
adolescents
Award amount: $568,974; Role: Co-I (PI: Katherine Nautiyal)
- NIH Grant Supplement (2019): Dissecting serotonergic and
dopaminergic contributions to the neural circuits underlying impulsive
behavior
Award amount: $93,190; Role: Co-I (PI: Katherine Nautiyal)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse Center for Technology and Behavioral Health Pilot Grant (2019): Linking
mental health and exercise via remote sensing
Award amount: $20,000; Role: Co-PI (PI: David Bucci; Co-PI: Lorie
Loeb)
- Dartmouth Junior Faculty Fellowship (2018)
- Walter and Constance Burke Research Initiation Award (2018)
Award amount: $25,000; Role: PI
- DARPA Grant: Memory Enhancement with Modeling (MEM; 2018)
Award amount: $55,558; Role: PI (sub-award of DARPA RAM
N66001-14-2-4-032)
- i-CORPS Pilot Grant: Developing a mobile device for estimating
dynamic attention states (2018).
Award amount: $3,000; Role: Co-PI (PI: Peter Tse)
- Diamond Research Development Award (2017): Improving memory and context reinstatement at perceptual event boundaries
Award amount: $199,997; Role: Co-PI (PI: Barbara Jobst)
- Dartmouth Leslie Center for the Humanities award for developing a
course incorporating the theme of "revolution" (2017; for
Storytelling with Data; PSYC 81.06).
Award amount: $5,000;
Role: Course Instructor
- Social Impact Practicum (2017; for Storytelling with Data; PSYC
81.06)
Award amount: $2,000; Role: Course Instructor
- Young Minds and Brains (2017): The impact of exercise on attention, memory,
and stress
Award amount: $100,000; Role: PI (with David Bucci, Co-PI)
- NSF EPSCoR Grant (2016): The neural basis of attention
Award
amount: $6,000,000; Role: Co-I (PI: Peter Tse)
- NIMH Ruth L. Kirshstein National Research Service Award for an
Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (2010): The neural representation of
context and its role in free recall
Award amount: $57,762; Role:
PI
- NIH Computational Neuroscience Training Grant (2008)
Role: Trainee
- NIH Systems and Integrative Biology Training
Grant (2006)
Role: Trainee
Publications
Undergraduate trainees are denoted by
underlined text, graduate trainees are indicated by italicized text, and postdoctoral trainees are indicated by underlined and italicized text.
- Fitzpatrick PC, Heusser AC, Manning JR (2025) Text embedding models yield
high-resolution insights into conceptual knowledge from short multiple-choice
quizzes. Nature Communications: In press.
- Stropkay HF, Chen J, Latifi MJ, Rockmore DN, Manning JR (2025)) A stylometric application of large language models. arXiv: 2510.21958.
- Manning JR (2025) Why we're so preoccupied by the past. Scientific American, online.
- Owen LLW, Manning JR (2024) High-level cognition is supported by
information-rich but compressible brain activity
patterns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 121(35): e2400082121.
- Xu X, Zhu Z, Zheng X, Manning JR (2024) Temporal
asymmetries in inferring unobserved past and future events. Nature
Communications, 15: 8502.
- Jolly E, Sadhukha S, Iqbal M, Molani Z, Walsh T, Manning JR,
Chang LJ (2023) People are represented and remembered through their
relationships with others. PsyArXiv: bw9r2.
- Ziman K, Lee MR, Martinez AR, Manning JR (2023) Category-based
and location-based volitional covert attention are mediated by
different mechanisms and affect memory at different timescales.
PsyArXiv: 2ps6e.
- Manning JR, Whitaker EC, Fitzpatrick PC, Lee MR, Frantz AM,
Bollinger BJ, Romanova D, Field CE, Heusser AC (2023) Feature and order
manipulations in a free recall task affect memory for current and future lists.
PsyArXiv: erzfp. (Under second round of reviews at Psychological Review)
- Fitzpatrick PC, Manning JR (2023)
davos: a Python package "smuggler" for constructing
lightweight reproducible notebooks. SoftwareX: in press.
- Manning JR (2023) Context reinstatement. In Kahana MJ and
Wagner AD, Ed. Handbook of Human Memory. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press. Chapter 38.
- Manning JR (2023) Identifying
stimulus-driven neural activity patterns in multi-patient intracranial recordings.
In Axmacher N, Ed. Intracranial EEG for Cognitive
Neuroscience. New York, NY: Springer. Chapter 48.
- Manning JR, Notaro GM, Chen E, Fitzpatrick PC
(2022) Fitness tracking reveals task-specific associations between
memory, mental health, and physical activity. Scientific
Reports, 12: 13822.
- Kumar M, Anderson MJ, Antony JW, Baldassano C, Brooks PP, Cai MB,
Chen P-HC, Ellis CT, Henselman-Petrusek G, Huberdeau D, Hutchinson BJ,
Li PY, Lu Q, Manning JR, Mennen AC, Nastase SA, Richard H,
Schapiro AC, Schuck NW, Suo D, Turek JS, Vo VA, Wallace G, Wang Y,
Zhang H, Zhu X, Capotă M, Cohen JD, Hasson U, Li K, Ramadge PJ,
Turk-Browne NB, Willke TL, Norman KA (2022) BrainIAK: the brain
imaging analysis kit. Aperture, 1(4): 1–19.
- Scangos KW, Khambhati AN, Daly PM, Owen LLW,
Manning JR, Ambrose JB, Austin E, Dawes HE, Krystal AD, Chang
EG (2021) Distributed subnetworks of depression defined by direct
intracranial neurophysiology. Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience, 15: doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.746499.
- Chen HT, Manning JR, van der Meer MAA (2021)
Between-subject prediction reveals a shared representational geometry
in the rodent hippocampus. Current Biology, 31:
1–12.
- Owen LLW, Chang TH, Manning JR (2021) High-level
cognition during story listening is reflected in high-order dynamic
correlations in neural activity patterns. Nature
Communications, 12(5728): doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25876-x.
- Manning JR (2021) Episodic memory: mental time travel or a
quantum 'memory wave' function? Psychological Review, 128(4):
711–725.
- Chang LJ, Jolly E, Cheong JH,
Rapuano K, Greenstein N, Chen PHA, Manning JR (2021)
Endogenous variation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex state dynamics
during naturalistic viewing reflects affective
experience. Science Advances, 7(17): eabf7129.
- Xie T, Cheong JH, Manning JR, Brandt AM, Aronson
JP, Jobst BC, Bujarski KA, Chang LJ (2021) Minimal functional
alignment of ventromedial prefrontal cortex intracranial EEG signals
during naturalistic viewing. bioRxiv: 443308.
- Ziman K, Manning JR (2021) Unexpected false feelings of
familiarity about faces are associated with increased pupil
dilations. bioRxiv: 432360.
- Heusser AC, Fitzpatrick PC, Manning JR (2021) Geometric models reveal
behavioral and neural signatures of transforming naturalistic experiences into
episodic memories. Nature Human Behaviour:
doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01051.
- Owen LLW, Muntianu TA, Heusser AC, Daly P, Scangos K,
Manning JR (2020) A Gaussian process model of human
electrocorticographic data. {\em Cerebral Cortex}, 30(10):
5333–5345.
- Chang L, Manning JR, Baldassano C, de la Vega A, Fleetwood G,
Geerligs L, Haxby J, Lahnakoski J, Parkinson C, Shappell H, Shim WM,
Wager T, Yarkoni T, Yeshurun Y, Finn E (2020) Naturalistic data
analysis: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3937849.
- Heusser AC, Ziman K, Owen LLW, Manning JR (2018)
HyperTools: a Python toolbox for gaining geometric insights into
high-dimensional data. {\em Journal of Machine Learning Research}, 18:
1–6.
- Ziman K, Heusser AC, Fitzpatrick PC, Field CE, Manning JR (2018) Is
automatic speech-to-text transcription ready for use in psychological
experiments? {\em Behavior Research Methods}:
doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1037-4.
- Heusser AC, Manning JR (2018) Capturing the geometric structure
of episodic memories for naturalistic experiences. Conference on
Cognitive Computational Neuroscience:
doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2018.1267-0.
- Manning JR, Zhu X, Willke TL, Ranganath R, Stachenfeld K, Hassan U,
Blei DM, Norman KA (2018) A probabilistic approach to discovering dynamic
full-brain functional connectivity patterns. {\em NeuroImage}, 180:
243–252.
- Heusser AC, Fitzpatrick PC, Field CE, Ziman K, Manning JR
(2017) Quail: a Python toolbox for analyzing and plotting free recall data.
{\em The Journal of Open Source Software}, 2(18): 424.
- Manning JR, Hulbert JC, Williams J, Piloto L, Sahakyan L,
Norman KA (2016) A neural signature of contextually mediated intentional
forgetting. {\em Psychonomic Bulletin and Review}, 23(5): 1534–1542.
- Anderson MJ, Capota M, Turek JS, Zhu X, Willke TL, Wang Y, Chen P-H,
Manning JR, Ramadge PJ, Norman KA (2016) Enabling factor analysis on
thousand-subject neuroimaging datasets. IEEE Xplore, International
Conference on Big Data (BigData 2016):
doi.org/10.1109/BigData.2016.7840719.
- Benson NC, Manning JR, Brainard DH (2014) Unsupervised
learning of cone spectral classes from natural images. {\em PLoS Computational
Biology}, 10(6): e1003652.
- Manning JR, Ranganath R, Norman KA, Blei DM (2014) Topographic factor
analysis: a Bayesian model for inferring brain networks from neural data. {\em
PLoS One}, 9(5): e94914.
- Manning JR, Lew TF, Li N, Kahana MJ, Sekuler RW (2014)
MAGELLAN: a cognitive map-based model of human wayfinding. {\em
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General}, 143(3): 1314–1330.
- Manning JR, Ranganath R, Keung W, Turk-Browne N, Cohen
JD, Norman KA, Blei DM (2014) Hierarchical Topographic Factor Analysis.
IEEE Xplore, 4th International Workshop on Pattern
Recognition in Neuroimaging: doi.org/10.1109/PRNI.2014.6858530.
- Manning JR, Kahana MJ, Norman KA (2014) The role of
context in memory. In Gazzaniga M, Ed. The Cognitive Neurosciences,
Fifth Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 47.
- Manning JR, Kahana MJ (2012) Interpreting semantic
clustering effects in free recall. Memory, 20(5): 511–517.
- Manning JR, Sperling MR, Sharan A, Rosenberg EA, Kahana MJ (2012)
Spontaneously reactivated patterns in frontal and temporal lobe predict
semantic clustering during memory search. The Journal of Neuroscience,
32(26): 8800–8816.
- Manning JR, Gershman SJ, Norman KA, Blei DM (2012) Factor
topographic latent source analysis: factor analysis for brain images.
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Workshop on Machine
Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging, 2: Online.
- Manning JR, Polyn SM, Baltuch G, Litt B, Kahana MJ (2011)
Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during
memory search. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 108(31): 12893–12897.
- Jacobs J, Manning JR, Kahana MJ (2010) Response to
Miller: "broadband" vs. "high gamma" electrocorticographic signals.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 30(19): Online.
- Manning JR, Jacobs J, Fried I, Kahana MJ (2009) Broadband
shifts in local field potential power spectra are correlated with single-neuron
spiking in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29(43): 13613–13620.
- Manning JR, Brainard DH (2009) Optimal design of photoreceptor
mosaics: why we do not see color at night. Visual Neuroscience, 26:
5–19.
Invited talks (selected)
- Generative Episodic Memory: Constructing Scenarios of the Past (Keynote Speaker, 2025)
- Brandeis University (2025)
- University of Virginia (2024)
- University of Pennsylvania (2023)
- Cornell University (2023)
- Boston University (2023)
- Harvard University (2022)
- University of California, Irvine (2022)
- Ruhr Universität Bochum (2022)
- Microsoft Research (2022)
- Carnegie Mellon University (2021)
- National Institutes of Mental Health (2021)
- Boston College (2020)
- Facebook Reality Labs (2020)
- University of California, Berkeley (2020)
- University of Oregon (2020)
- Context and Episodic Memory Symposium (2019)
- Society for Affective Science (2019)
- Uber (2019)
- Northeastern University (2018)
- Society for Neuroscience (2018)
- University of Pennsylvania (2018)
- Bard College (2017)
- Harvard University (2017)
- University of Texas at Austin (2017)
- Society for Neuroscience (2016)
- Brown University (2015)
- Columbia University (2015)
- Dartmouth College (2015)
- Georgetown University (2015)
- Johns Hopkins University (2015)
- Context and Episodic Memory Symposium (2014)
- Manhattan Area Memory Meeting (2014)
- Pattern Recognition in Neuroimaging (2014)
- Context and Episodic Memory Symposium (2013)
- University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2013)
- Dartmouth College (2013)
- Charles River Analytics (2012)
- Natick Soldier Systems Center (2012)
- Princeton University (2011)
- Society for Mathematical Psychology (2011)
- University of Pennsylvania (2011)
Software (selected)
- Manning JR, Manjunatha H, Kording K (2023) Chatify: add an LLM-based chatbot "tutor" to
Jupyter notebooks. GitHub.
- Fitzpatrick PC, Manning JR (2022) Davos: import
Python packages, even if they aren't installed. GitHub.
- Manning JR (2021) DataWrangler: format and clean
data, with a special focus on applying natural language processing
models to text data. GitHub.
- Owen LLW, Chang TH, Manning JR (2019) Timecorr
Toolbox: compute high-order correlations in multivariate timeseries
data. GitHub.
- Owen LLW, Heusser AC, Manning JR (2018) SuperEEG Toolbox:
infer full-brain activity patterns from a small(ish) number of ECoG electrodes using Gaussian process regression. GitHub.
- Capota M, Turek J, Chen P-HC, Zhu X, Manning JR, Sundaram N,
Keller B, Wang Y, Shin YS (2017) BrainIAK: Brain Imaging Analysis Kit. brainiak.org.
- Heusser AC, Ziman K, Fitzpatrick PC, Field CE, Manning JR
(2017) AutoFR: a scalable verbal free recall experiment with
automatic speech-to-text transcription.
GitHub.
- Heusser AC, Fitzpatrick PC, Field CE, Ziman K, Manning JR
(2017) Quail: a Python toolbox for analyzing and plotting free recall
data. GitHub.
- Heusser AC, Ziman K, Owen LLW, Manning JR (2017)
HyperTools: gain geometric insights into high-dimensional data (Python). GitHub.
- Manning JR (2016) Hyperplot Tools: gain
geometric insights into high-dimensional data (MATLAB).
MATLAB
Central File Exchange: 56623.
- Manning JR (2014) Hierarchical Topographic
Factor Analysis:
efficiently identify functional brain networks in fMRI data.
- Manning JR (2013) MATLAB Ipsum: generate filler text using MATLAB. MATLAB
Central File Exchange: 43428.
- Manning JR (2013) Easy resample: simple interface for
interpolating or resampling a 1d signal. MATLAB
Central File Exchange: 43320.
- Manning JR (2012) Chuck Close-ify: automatically create
artwork in Chuck Close's iconic style based on existing photographs. MATLAB
Central File Exchange: 38770.
- Manning JR (2012) Plot fMRI images: quick and easy method
for generating 2d and 3d brain plots. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 36139.
- Manning JR (2012) Generate synthetic fMRI data: generate
synthetic data for testing fMRI analyses and models. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 36125.
- Manning JR (2012) Sane pColor: create 2d images that
don't look blurry in OS X's Preview PDF viewer. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 35601.
- Manning JR (2012) Attach: MATLAB implementation of the attach
function in R. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 35436.
- Manning JR (2012) Get tight subplot handles: allows user to
exert finer control over subplot spacing in MATLAB. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 35435.
- Manning JR (2012) Slices: efficiently slice a tensor
along the nth dimension. MATLAB Central File
Exchange: 35439.
Teaching and instruction
Mentorship (selected)
Senior thesis students are denoted by asterisks
(*)
Postdoctoral Advisees
- Hung-Tu Chen (2024 – 2025; current position: Meta)
- Gina Notaro (2017 – 2018; current position: HRL Laboratories)
- Andrew Heusser (2016 – 2018; current position: PyMC Labs)
Graduate Advisees
- Paxton Fitzpatrick (Doctoral student; 2021 – )
- Xinming Xu (Doctoral student; 2021 – )
- Mark Taylor (Masters student, Quantitative Biomedical Sciences; 2021)
- Caroline Lee (Doctoral student; 2019 – 2021)
- Max Bluestone (Masters student, Quantitative Biomedical
Sciences; 2018 – 2020)
- Deepanshi Shokeen (Masters student, Quantitative Biomedical
Sciences; 2018 – 2020)
- Kirsten Ziman (Doctoral student; 2017 – 2022; current position: Postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University)
- Lucy Owen (Doctoral student; 2016 – 2021; current position: Assistant Professor at University of Montana)
- Tom Hao Chang (Masters student, Computer Science; co-advised with
Qiang Liu; 2016 – 2017; current position: Robinhood)
- Hanli Li (Masters student, Computer Science; co-advised with Qiang
Liu; 2016)
Thesis Committees
- Jane Han (Advisor: James Haxby)
- Lindsey Tepfer (Advisor: Mark Thornton)
- Arati Sharma (Advisor: Kate Nautiyal)
- Clara Sava-Segal (Advisor: Emily Finn)
- Manish Mohapatra (Advisor: Matthijs van der Meer; Graduated 2025)
- Megan Hillis (Advisor: David Kraemer; Graduated 2025)
- Omri Raccah (Advisor: David Poeppel; Graduated 2024)
- Courtney Jiminez (Advisor: Meghan Meyer; Graduated 2024)
- Hung-tu Chen (Advisor: Matthijs van der Meer; Graduated 2024)
- Dhaval Bhatt (Advisor: Meghan Meyer; Graduated 2023)
- Tiankang Xie (Advisor: Luke Chang; Graduated 2023)
- Vassiki Chauhan (Advisors: Ida Gobbini and James Haxby; Graduated 2021)
- Emily Irvine (Advisor: Matthijs van der Meer; Graduated 2020)
- Eli Bowen (Advisor: Richard Granger; Graduated 2020)
- Eshin Jolly (Advisor: Luke Chang; Graduated 2020)
- Stephen Meisenhelter (Advisor: Barbara Jobst; Graduated 2020)
- Feilong Ma (Advisor: James Haxby; Graduated 2019)
- Kevin Hartstein (Advisor: Peter Tse; Graduated 2019)
- Beau Sievers (Advisor: Thalia Wheatley; Graduated 2018)
- Kristina Rapuano (Advisor: Luke Chang; Graduated 2018)
- Luke Eglington (Advisor: Sean Kang; Graduated 2018)
- Gina Notaro (Advisor: Solomon Diamond; Graduated 2017)
Specialist Committees
- Yuqi Zhang (Advisors: Richard Granger and James Haxby)
- Covert Geary (Advisor: John Murray)
- Menghan Yang (Advisor: Luke Chang)
- Deepasri Prasad (Advisor: Caroline Robertson)
- Zizhuang Miao (Advisor: Tor Wager)
- Benjamin Graul (Advisor: Tor Wager)
- Yeongji Lee (Advisor: David Kraemer)
- Thomas Botch (Advisors: Emily Finn and Caroline Robertson)
- Dhaval Bhatt (Advisor: Meghan Meyer)
- Clara Sava-Segal (Advisor: Emily Finn)
- Wasita Mahaphanit (Advisor: Luke Chang)
- Jane Han (Advisor: James Haxby)
- Megan Hillis (Advisor: Caroline Robertson)
- Anna Mynick (Advisor: Caroline Robertson)
- Marissa Clark (Advisor: Luke Chang)
- Robert Quon (Advisor: Barbara Jobst)
- Mira Nencheva (Advisor: Casey Lew-Williams)
- Marvin Maechler (Advisor: Peter Tse)
- Eli Bowen (Advisor: Richard Granger)
- Emma Templeton (Advisor: Thalia Wheatley)
- Feilong Ma (Advisor: James Haxby)
- Youki Tanaka (Advisor: Matthijs van der Meer)
Undergraduate Advisees
Service
Professional organizations
- Dartmouth-Kalaniyot (2024 – ) Co-founder, Board member
- National Science Foundation (2023, 2024, 2025) Panel member
- NeuroMatch Academy (2021 – ) Developer and project mentor (computational neuroscience and deep learning tracks)
- Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS; 2021 – 2024) Area
chair (natural language processing and machine learning)
- Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth (MIND) Summer School (2017 – ) Co-founder
Dartmouth committee memberships
- Social (Department Well-Being) Committee (2023–2024, 2024–2025)
- Undergraduate Committee (2021–2022, 2015–2016)
- Graduate Committee (2020–2021, 2016–2019)
- Cognitive Neuroscience Faculty Search Committee (2018)
- Molecular and Systems Biology Faculty Search Committee (2017)
- Cognitive Neuroscience Faculty Search Committee (2016)
Ad-hoc reviewer
Advances in Cognitive Psychology,
Agence Nationale de la Recherche,
American Journal of Psychology,
Cell Reports,
Cerebral Cortex,
Cognition,
Cognition and Emotion,
Cortex,
Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne),
eLife,
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML),
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
International Journal of Social Research Methodology,
Israel Science Foundation,
Journal of Cognitive Psychology,
Journal of Mathematical Psychology,
National Science Foundation (USA),
Nature,
Nature Communications,
Nature Computational Science,
Nature Human Behaviour,
Neural Computation,
NeuroImage,
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS),
Neuropsychologia,
PLoS Biology,
PLoS Computational Biology,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Psychological Reports,
Psychological Review,
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review,
Science,
Scientific Data,
Scientific Reports,
Society for Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS),
Swiss National Science Foundation,
The Journal of Neuroscience