Excited to share our latest paper in which we discuss merging theory-and data- driven computational psychiatry in a large transdiagnostic cohort study (N=2400)
www.biologicalpsychiatrycnni.org/article/S245...
Christopher Pittenger, Godfrey Pearlson @annierhcheng.bsky.social @sobp-org.bsky.social
DNN models of the brain are getting bigger. Are we replacing one complicated system in vivo with another in silico?
In new work, we seek the *smallest* DNN models of visual cortex, balancing prediction with parsimony.
It turns out these compact models are surprisingly small!
rdcu.be/e5H8G
RIP redundancy reduction?
Beautiful work by Liu & colleagues showing that neural redundancy increases with learning, as predicted by a Bayesian model:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
dot plot of brain prize recipients by year, 2011–2025. each dot represents one winner, blue indicates male and red indicates female.
brain prize recipients over the years.
I remembered that I made this plot last year for a bias watch project (yes, because of that 2013–2018 period 🙃). the prize for this year will be announced later this afternoon, let's see. 🔮
It's like DMV levels of bureaucracy
The amount of pain I'm going through just to get an IRB protocol for running innocuous online behavioral studies...sheesh, do not recommend
How does the brain generalize past experiences without confusing memories? 🧠
Our lab's newest preprint reveals a fundamental division of labor between the cortex and cerebellum that solves this problem. (Check out the cortex-cerebellum video below! 👇) 🧵
I am totally pumped about this new work . "Task-trained RNNs" are a powerful and influential framework in neuroscience, but have lacked a firm theoretical footing. This work provides one, and makes direct contact with the classical theory of random RNNs:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Recently, van der Stigchel and colleagues posted a provocative commentary suggesting that we should be wary of bots in online behavioral data collection (🧵by @cstrauch.bsky.social here: bsky.app/profile/cstr...). But should we? Here is my response letter osf.io/preprints/ps.... 1/5
This post really put together the pieces in a way that floored me. Everything is about to change and we have to confront that reality causalinf.substack.com/p/claude-cod...
After several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus).
Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
NYU's Center for Neural Science is seeking a faculty candidate that would be jointly appointed with our Tandon School of Engineering. We are looking for post-doc applicants with neuroengineering or computational backgrounds.
apply.interfolio.com/182074
Oh nice yeah I agree!
I dunno if it's true that all lines are straight and parallel. I'm guessing that these little guys, with their bendy lines and implied slant, are doing a lot of the work here
🚨🚨New Preprint Alert!🚨🚨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Animal learning is painfully slow (at least initially). Yet, well trained animals can learn very fast, sometimes displaying few-shot inference. How does this transition occur?
Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Hippocampal trace coding dominates and disrupts place coding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.17.706430v1
A new preprint "Anxiety Modulates Event Segmentation" with @yaelniv.bsky.social and colleagues!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
@r74n.com
Just fyi I think this was actually created in 2021 by R74n, and has just recently moved to being hosted on neal.fun
With this one in print, I think I finally earned that PhD... 😅
Presented for the first time at the cosyne when the world ended (March 2020). I'll bring over a summary thread from twitter when it was still twitter...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This is really cool work Dan! I'm curious whether you've looked at correlated firing in the GS modes and if there's anything interesting going on at that level
1 + "...despite trying desperately to work around this restriction"
Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire (!)
and not all-time greats, but other options:
Animal Collective - For Reverend Green
Dismemberment Plan - Spider in the Snow
Thrilled to finally share this work! 🧠🔊
Using a new reinforcement-free task we show mice (like humans) extract abstract structure from sound (unsupervised) & dCA1 is causally required by building factorised, orthogonal subspaces of abstract rules.
Led by Dammy Onih!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I've been inspired to become a founder of a new startup that develops brain-to-brain interface technology. It's called Talk. We're going to reinvent communication for the digital age.
The best part is that we're able to zero-shot transfer the full computational stack already used by your brain!
In the first systematic, multi-node recordings of spiking activity across the human basal ganglia–thalamic circuit, @dennislondon.bsky.social explains how this pathway integrates cognitive variables with ongoing action. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions
rdcu.be/eRVUk
New paper alert! 🚨
We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales
1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit
This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.
Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP
Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks.
@zuckermanbrain.bsky.social
@flatironinstitute.org
@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social
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