In a new paper, SFI researchers examine the Boltzmann brain, a thought experiment that raises fundamental questions about memory, entropy, and time. The work clarifies how arguments for or against these ideas depend on assumptions about the past that are not fixed by physical laws alone.
bsky.app/profile/neur...
Cool graph.
Does it show an evolution of understanding and necessities? Or does this trend show a fad-like path?
#cosyne2026 attendees (or those who are here in spirit): what do you think?
A related question:
Given the display of "AI guiding neuro", does comps/sys neuro have an identity crisis?
The Whova app #cosyne2026 is so bad this year. It is so dysfunctional. Does not connect or if it does it gives connection error while there is no problem with the Internet. Has anyone had success with the other one?
Here in Lisbon for #cosyne2026
I have not been around bsky for a while. But hey, neurosci/neurai community, I am back.
Colleagues & friends, if you want to chat science over a pint and/or while listening to Fado, DM me
"Silence, too, becomes part of a legacy.
Why are you silent?"
An open letter to @barackobama.bsky.social @obamafoundation.bsky.social examining U.S. principles, Iran, & the consequences of silence. A policy-focused appeal grounded in the legacy of Obama's Cairo speech.
youtube.com/watch?v=x0m3...
Open Letter to President Macron regarding France's hesitation in designating IRGC as a terrorist organization.
youtu.be/BBZCZFmisqg?...
#DANDI #NWB #Sfn2025
Come and see the ecosystem of Open Data in Neurophysiology (DANDI archive & NWB)....there is a whole bunch of tutorials and demos. See 👇
@dandiarchive.org @nwb.org
Come hear about state-driven neural complexity today #SfN25
PP13 - "Deep cortical layer stimulation reveals state-dependent changes in neural excitability"
Poster Session 1-5 pm
Computational Approaches & Experimental Analyses I
Have been out of soc media for a while. Did you miss me?
Back & giving a talk today at ME Sys Neuro satellite before @sfn.org
Dichotomous dynamics of hippocampal and
lateral septum oscillations: state-dependent topology and
directional causality during Sleep and wakefulness
Very happy to have this beautiful review published in Machine Learning: Science and Technology! @iopp-mlresearch.bsky.social
"Superintelligence" has arrived 😂
So this thing won gold in the international math olympiad and yet can't pass the simplest notion of 2nd grade math? lol...this is more like "reasoning" but "without understanding the subject that you are reasoning about"
The review/perspective piece @wbialek.bsky.social traces the roots of the 2024 NobelPrize back to Hinton
& Hopfield, highlighting their foundational contributions to neural networks. It explores the evolution of AI, considers its future through the lens of physics.
journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...
Both submitted work accepted @sfn.org
"Deep cortical layer stimulation reveals state-dependent changes in neural excitability"
“Parametric Stimuli Reveal Functional Subcircuits in Visual Cortex”
Though I am concerned that given the news on travel restrictions we may have a low attendance.
Because you don't burn the whole place to the ground for the fault of a few. This is dumb policy:
"Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer scientist who has been publicly critical of campus protests: “I’ve been a principal investigator for NSF for maybe 50 years, so I’ll be very upset if my grant gets cut.”
Friends, colleagues, I will be in NYC (Flatiron Institute) from Mon-Thu. Ping me if you want to meet up
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
Turns out that the “loudest” neurons are not always the most relevant ones. Great article about a fascinating and important result by @hayleybounds.bsky.social , graduate of @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social neuroscience.
Cool 👇
The extortion continues.... unbelievable.
Congratulations Roxana 👏
🚨New paper🚨
Neural manifolds went from a niche-y word to an ubiquitous term in systems neuro thanks to many interesting findings across fields. But like with any emerging term, people use it very differently.
Here, we clarify our take on the term, and review key findings & challenges rdcu.be/ex8hW
Thanks for sharing these @wbialek.bsky.social
See Les Houches "Ambitions for theory in physics of life" (notes from Bill Bialek)👇
Two new additions to the library:
"Renormalization" by the great Phil Nelson
& "Theoretical Neuroscience" by none other than XJ Wang!
@xjwang.bsky.social thanks for the much needed missing textbook.
Two young radio operators decided and promised each other that if they survived WWII they would create an institute that had never existed before: biology+physics."
(Reinhardt was sentenced by GestapoHe managed to escape execution and hid in Berlin)
www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/776334/a-vir...
Oh hey I was reading about him yesterday!
What an absolutely cool person!
Tommy Poggio on Werner Richardt (founder of Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics @mpicybernetics.bsky.social )
dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/ha...
👇
Good Scientific American story about the letters of dissent from 4 federal science agencies (to date)...
www.scientificamerican.com/article/trum...
No better time to call or email your members of Congress. Next year’s NIH budget is being debated in the Senate. A new nonpartisan campaign is making it easy to defend science and protect America’s innovation. Just follow this link to contact your representatives: www.protectscienceandinnovation.org
Oh hey Tim and Gaute, fav duo :) looking forward to this
I will try. If I immediately die, it is your fault Tim @tpvogels.bsky.social and you will owe me a drink !
