Felipe Diego Toro-Hernández

PhD student in Neuroscience & Cognition

I am a PhD student in Neuroscience & Cognition at the Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), Brazil. My work sits at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psychophysics, semantic memory, natural language processing, and Parkinson’s disease.

My current research focuses on temporal binding and sense of agency, semantic memory navigation and language markers in Parkinson’s disease, and computational approaches to concept processing, including psycholinguistics, NLP, and large language models.

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Research areas: temporal binding, intentional binding, sense of agency, semantic memory, natural language processing, psycholinguistics, fMRI, fNIRS, and linguistic biomarkers in Parkinson’s disease.

Research interests

Temporal binding and sense of agency
Semantic memory navigation and language markers in Parkinson’s disease
Computational approaches to concept processing
Psycholinguistics, natural language processing, and large language models
Neuroimaging analyses with fMRI and fNIRS

Education

PhD in Neuroscience and Cognition, Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), Brazil

2024–Present

Dissociation of temporal binding and agency judgments: searching for differential modulation of implicit and explicit sense of agency.

MSc in Neuroscience and Cognition, Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), Brazil

2022–2024

Affective modulation of intentional binding using linguistic stimuli: psychophysics and neuropsychophysiology.

MSc in Clinical Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI), Chile

2019–2021

Embodied perspective of action verb processing in Parkinson's disease: a review of neuroscientific evidence.

BSc in Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI), Chile

2015–2019

Action verb processing in Parkinson's disease: a situated cognition perspective.

Academic appointments

Graduate Researcher, Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), Brazil

2022–Present

Experimental psychophysics on temporal binding and intentional binding using linguistic stimuli; design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination; natural language processing analyses with verbal fluency and property-listing tasks; neuroimage analyses with fMRI and fNIRS; and supervision of undergraduate research projects.

Research Assistant, Center for Social and Cognitive Neuroscience (CSCN), Chile

2016–2022

Teaching Assistant, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI), Chile

2017–2020

Selected publications

ICLR 2026

Characterizing Human Semantic Navigation in Concept Production as Trajectories in Embedding Space

Toro-Hernández, F. D., Vieira Filho, J., & Cabral-Carvalho, R. (2026). In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026): Proceedings of ICLR 2026.

Cortex

Verb Specificity Effects on Semantic Processing in Parkinson’s Disease

Henrique Salmazo-Silva*, Felipe Diego Toro-Hernández*, Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta Parente, Brenda Miura Lunardi, André M. Cravo, Brendan S. Weekes, João Ricardo Sato, Fabio Godinho, Maria Sheila G. Rocha, & Maria Teresa Carthery-Goulart (2026). Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2026.05.006

*shared first authorship.

Psychological Methods

You cannot just count: A statistical rethinking of semantic richness in free-generation tasks and semantic norms

Lagos, R., Chaigneau, S. E., Canessa, E., Toro-Hernández, F., Bontempo, A., Carthery-Goulart, M. T., & Medina Marín, F. A. (2026). Psychological Methods. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000820

CogSci 2026

Entropy in Semantic Navigation in Blind and Sighted Individuals: The Effect of Visual Experience

Toro-Hernández, F., Lagos, R., & Chaigneau, S. E. (2026). In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12185

CogSci 2026

Clustering and Switching Dynamics in Alzheimer's Disease During Property Listing

Morales, D., Toro-Hernández, F., Lagos, R., & Canessa, E. (2026). In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

CogSci 2026

Comparing Semantic Navigation in Humans and Large Language Models using Natural Language Processing

Paris, G., Cabral-Carvalho, R., & Toro-Hernández, F. (2026). In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12195

npj Parkinson’s Disease

Neurocognitive correlates of semantic memory navigation in Parkinson’s disease

Toro-Hernández, F. D., Migeot, J., Marchant, N., Olivares, D., Ferrante, F., et al. (2024). npj Parkinson’s Disease, 10, 15.

CogSci 2024

Assessing affective modulation of intentional binding effect: A 2AFC psychophysics experiment with emotional words

Toro Hernandez, F. D., Gabiatti, V. N. D., Ramalho, T. M., Cravo, A. M., & Claessens, P. M. (2024). In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 46).

Retos

Funcionamiento cognitivo, masa grasa y actividad física en adultos jóvenes

Zapata, C., Garcia-Quevedo, D., Gartner, M., Ayala-Zuluaga, C., Ramos, S., González-Correa, C., Tapasco, L., Garcia, A., Martínez-Pernía, D., Migeot, J., Toro-Hernández, F., et al. (2024). Retos, 63, 326–337.

Brain and Cognition

An action-concept processing advantage in a patient with a double motor cortex

Miranda, M., Gonzalez Campo, C., Birba, A., Neely, A., Toro-Hernández, F. D., et al. (2022). Brain and Cognition, 156, 105831.

Selected presentations

2025. Affective modulation of temporal binding using linguistic stimuli. Time Research Forum 4, Tokyo, Japan.
2025. Using Large Language Models to Assess Dynamics in Semantic Memory Search of Patients with Parkinson's Disease. Movement Disorders and Parkinson’s Disease International Conference, Hawaii, USA.
2025. Differential semantic memory navigation and brain signatures of abstract and concrete concepts: Evidence from property listing task. SBNEC, São Paulo, Brazil.
2024. Investigating Affective Modulation of Temporal Binding Using Linguistic Stimuli. Cognitive Science Society, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2024. Semantic Memory in Parkinson's disease (PD): Linguistic Features and Neural Correlates. Movement Disorders and Parkinson’s Disease International Conference, Philadelphia, USA.

Awards & funding

Travel grant for Time Research Forum 4, Tokyo, 2025
Travel grant for Movement Disorders and Parkinson’s Disease International Conference, Philadelphia, 2025
Honorable mention at SBNEC annual meeting
FAPESP PhD fellowship
UFABC scholarship for MSc research project

Contact

Email: ftoroher@gmail.com

ORCID: 0000-0003-1237-343X

Lattes: Currículo Lattes