Stephen Mazurchuk

Concept retrieval, language modelling, neuroimaging, neuroscience of consciousness

Research Experience

Medical College of Wisconsin, 2019-2024
Advisor: Jeffrey Binder, MD
Project: Understanding the neurobiology of natural category representation

University of Wisconsin-Madison, summers 2015 and 2016
Advisor: Dr. Peter Schwander
Project: Programming MATLAB scripts for the purpose of image processing, to make it possible to analyze protein structure conformational changes from exceptionally noisy particle projections

University of New York-Buffalo, summer 2014
Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Lovell
Project: Liposomal synthesis and characterization, in particular loading an MR contrast agent (Gd-DTPA) into novel light sensitive drug carriers and attempting to characterize in-vivo release 

Publications

Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Tong JQ, Conant LL, Binder JR. The neural representation of body part concepts. Cereb Cortex. 2024 Jun 4;34(6):bhae213. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae213. PMID: 38863113; PMCID: PMC11166504.

Mazurchuk S, Conant LL, Tong J, Binder JR, Fernandino L. Stimulus repetition and sample size considerations in item-level representational similarity analysis. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, July 2023. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2023.2232903

Tong J, Binder JR, Humphries C, Mazurchuk S, Conant LL, Fernandino L. A Distributed Network for Multimodal Experiential Representation of Concepts. J Neurosci. 2022 Sep 14;42(37):7121-7130. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1243-21.2022. Epub 2022 Aug 8. PMID: 35940877; PMCID: PMC9480893. 

Meeting Abstracts

Mazurchuk S, Anderson A. Extracting Object Feature Norms from Large Language Models. Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, Boston, MA. Aug 2024. [Poster]

Tong JQ, Mazurchuk S, Binder J, Fernandino L. Explicit Experiential Features Outperform Association Norms in Semantic Decoding of Brain Activation. MCW Clinical Neuroscience Day, Milwaukee, WI. May 2024. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Conant L, Binder J, Fernandino L. Artifact concepts are more reliabily represented than animal concepts across the cortex Poster at: Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Marseille FR. Oct 2023. [Poster]

Kim S, Binder J, Tong J, Mazurchuk S, Heffernan J, Conant L. Neural and Experiential Semantic Correlates of the Unergative-Unaccusative Verb Distinction. Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Marseille FR. Oct 2023. [Poster]

Tong J, Fernandino L, Mazurchuk S, Conant L, Binder J. A Shared Representational Code for Object and Event Concepts. Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Philadelphia, PA. Oct 2022. [Poster]

Tong J, Fernandino L, Mazurchuk S, Conant L, Binder J. Category-specific representation of animal, food, tool, and vehicle concepts in the brain. Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Philadelphia, PA. Oct 2022. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Tong JQ, Conant L, Binder J. Activation of Speech, Taste, and Visual Scene Experiential Content During Concept Retrieval. Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Philadelphia, PA. Oct 2022. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Tong JQ, Conant L, Binder J. Experiential and Taxonomic Semantic Representations in the Cerebellum. MCW Graduate Student Symposium. 2022. Virtual. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Tong JQ, Conant L, Binder J. An Experiential Basis for Posterior Middle Temporal Gyrus Body Part Concept Representation. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA. June 2022. [Poster]

Tong J, Fernandino L, Mazurchuk S, Conant L, Binder J. A Common Neural Mechanism Underlying Object and Event Concept Representation. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA. June 2022. [Poster]

Fernandino L, Tong J, Mazurchuk S, Conant L, Binder J. A Set of Ten Experiential Features Outperforms Taxonomic and Distributional Models in Predicting Neuroimaging and Behavioral Data. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA. June 2022. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Tong J, Humphries C, Conant L, Binder J. The Cortical Representation of Body Part Concepts. Society for the Neurobiology of Language. Oct 2021. [Virtual Poster]

Tong J, Binder J, Mazurchuk S, Humphries C, Conant L, Fernandino L. Event associated experiential features are involved in event representation at brain regions preferentially representing event concepts. Society for the Neurobiology of Language. Oct 2021. [Virtual Poster]

Tong J, Mazurchuk S, Fernandino L, Humphries C, Conant L, Binder J. Temporoparietal Specialization for Event Knowledge Demonstrated by Multivoxel Pattern Classification and Representational Similarity Analysis. Society for the Neurobiology of Language. Oct 2020. Virtual. [Poster]

Mazurchuk S, Jagtap J, Sharma G, Flister M, Joshi A. Classifying congenic rats from dynamic near infra-red time series images. World Molecular Imaging Conference. June 2018. [Poster] 

General Interests

Reading, learning physics, bicycling, watching the Bills