Curriculum Vitae

Employment and Education

Publications

Electronic versions are provided as a professional courtesy to ensure timely dissemination of academic work for individual, noncommercial purposes. Copyright and all rights therein resides with the respective copyright holders, as stated within each paper. These files may not be reposted without permission.

• Preprints

• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., & Tamir, D. I. (under revision). The brain represents people as the mental states they habitually experience. [Preprint] [Data & code]
• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., Mildner, J. N., & Tamir, D. I. (under revision). Neural representations of others’ mental states grow less distinct with social distance. [Preprint] [Data & code]
• Zhao, Z., Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (submitted). Accurate Prediction of Emotion Transitions is Associated with Social Benefits [Preprint] [Data & code]

• 2019

• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., & Tamir, D. I. (2019). The social brain automatically predicts others’ future mental states. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(1), 140-148. [Preprint] [Data & code] [Blog]

• 2018

• Tamir, D.I.*, Thornton, M.A.* (2018). Modeling the predictive social mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(3) 201-212.
  *equal contributions [PDF] [Commentary by Rebecca Saxe]
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2018). Theories of person perception predict patterns of neural activity during mentalizing. Cerebral Cortex, 28(10), 3505-3520. [PDF] [Data & code] [Blog]

• 2017

• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2017). Consistent neural activity patterns represent personally familiar people. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1583-1594. [PDF] [Data & code] [Blog]
• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (2017). Mental models accurately predict emotion transitions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(23), 5982-5987. [PDF] [Data & code] [Blog]
• Rodriguez, S. B.*, Thornton, M. A.*, & Thornton, R. J. (2017). Discrimination of Wine Lactic Acid Bacteria by Raman Spectroscopy. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, 44(8), 1167-1175.
  *equal contributions [PDF] [Data & code] [Blog]

• 2016

• Tamir, D. I.*, Thornton, M. A.*, Contreras, J. M., & Mitchell, J. P. (2016). Neural evidence that three dimensions organize mental state representation: Rationality, social impact, and valence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(1), 194-199.
  *equal contributions [PDF] [Data & code] [Blog] [Commentary by Dubois & Adolphs]

• 2013

• Rodriguez, S. B., Thornton, M. A., & Thornton, R. J. (2013). Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics for identification and strain discrimination of the wine spoilage yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Zygosaccharomyces bailii, and Brettanomyces bruxellensis. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 79(20), 6264-6270. [PDF] [Blog]
• Thornton, M. A., & Conway, A. R. (2013). Working memory for social information: Chunking or domain-specific buffer? NeuroImage, 70, 233-239. [PDF]

• Working manuscripts

• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (in preparation). Derivation and validation of the FAACTS action concept taxonomy.
• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (in preparation). Perceptions accurately predict the transitional probabilities between actions.

Conference Presentations

• Thornton, M. A., Burkart, D., & Tamir, D. I. (2019, February). Comparing the conceptual structure of affect across cultures via the application of word embeddings to international social media. Talk presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, Portland, OR.
• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (2019, February). Perceptions accurately predict the transitional probabilities between actions. Poster presented at the Social Cognition preconference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, Portland, OR.
• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., & Tamir, D. I. (2018, May). Neural representations of people and mental states reflect predictive coding of future states . Talk presented at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting, San Francisco, CA.
• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., & Tamir, D. I. (2018, March). Neural representations of people and mental states reflexively encode predictions of future states . Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, Atlanta, GA.
• Thornton, M. A., Weaverdyck, M. E., & Tamir, D. I. (2017, March). Neural representations of others’ mental states grow less distinct with psychological distance. Poster presented at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society annual meeting, Los Angeles, CA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2017, January). Theories of person perception predict patterns of neural activity during mentalizing. Talk presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, San Antonio, TX.
• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (2017, January). Mental models accurately predict emotion transitions. Talk presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, San Antonio, TX.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2016, April). Theories of person perception predict patterns of neural activity during mentalizing. Poster presented at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society annual meeting, New York, NY.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2016, February). Theories of person perception predict patterns of neural activity during mentalizing. Talk presented at the Social Brain Sciences Symposium, Waltham, MA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (2016, January). Representing other minds. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, San Diego, CA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2016, January). Theories of person perception predict patterns of neural activity during mentalizing. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting Social Cognition Preconference, San Diego, CA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2015, April). Ventral medial prefrontal cortex supports a multidimensional code for similarity to self. Talk presented at the Social and Affective Neuroscience annual meeting, Boston, MA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2015, March). Ventral medial prefrontal cortex supports a multidimensional code for similarity to self. Poster presented at Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting, San Francisco, CA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2014, April). The neural organization of person knowledge. Poster presented at Social and Affective Neuroscience Society annual meeting, Denver, CO.
• Thornton, M. A., Tamir, D. I., Contreras, J. M., & Mitchell, J. P. (2014, April). Neural organization of mental state knowledge. Poster presented at Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting, Boston, MA.
• Thornton, M. A., Tamir, D. I., Contreras, J. M., & Mitchell, J. P. (2014, February). Neural representations of mental states are encoded according to agency and experience. Talk presented at Social Brain Sciences Symposium, Chestnut Hill, MA.
• Thornton, M. A., & Mitchell, J. P. (2013, July). Efficiency in social working memory. Poster presented at Wellcome Trust Summer School on the Biology of Social Cognition, Hinxton, UK.
• Thornton, M. A., Contreras, J. M., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012, December). Greater FFA pattern similarity for other-race than same-race faces. Talk presented at Social Brain Sciences Symposium, Cambridge, MA.

Software

Honors and Awards

• 2015 Sackler Scholar in Psychobiology
• 2015 Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Trainee Award
• 2014 Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching
• 2013 Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching
• 2012 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
• 2011 Edward E. Jones Memorial Thesis Prize, Princeton University
• 2011 Summa cum laude, Princeton University
• 2011 Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University
• 2011 Sigma Xi, Princeton University
• 2009 Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence, Princeton University

Teaching and Advising

• 2018 Instructor, Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth (MIND), computational summer school
• 2013-2015 Teaching Fellow, Psychology 1950, Intermediate Statistical Analysis in Psychology, Harvard University
• 2011 Senior Peer Academic Advisor, Princeton University
• 2008 Mathematics Instructor and Summer Advisor, Upward Bound

Invited Talks

• 2018 Dartmouth College, Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth
• 2018 New York University, Concepts and Categories Seminar
• 2018 Princeton University, Social Research Seminar
• 2017 Dartmouth College, Center for Social Brain Sciences
• 2017 Princeton University, Neuroscience of Social Decision Making

Professional service

• Ad hoc reviewer – Frontiers in Psychology, Social Neuroscience, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, The Journal of Neuroscience, Neuropsychologia, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Nature Human Behaviour, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, NeuroImage, Psychological Review, Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience

Memberships

• Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (2013-Present)
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2015-Present)
• Association for Psychological Science (2018-Present)
• Cognitive Neuroscience Society (2013-2015)