Shervin Safavi's Avatar

Shervin Safavi

@neuroprinciplist

searching for principles, adaptive behaviors, empirical approach, integration | doing comp neuroscience & psychiatry | PI @cmc-lab.bsky.social | previously @maxplanckcampus.bsky.social (Peter Dayan & Nikos Logothetis)

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12.08.2023
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Latest posts by Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist

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πŸ“’πŸ“’Β Announcing this year's conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience & AI (Rome, 9-12th June). We’ve got a stellar line-up and venue, and invite everyone to join:

www.neuromonster.org

05.03.2026 08:30 πŸ‘ 23 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

Can electrical microstimulation be used to steer cortical population activity on- and off-manifold? Our new preprint says yes β€” using data-driven control in macaque PFC. Joint work with @gbarzon.bsky.social, Anandita De, Isaac Moran, Conner Carnahan, and Luca Mazzucato.

05.03.2026 00:05 πŸ‘ 53 πŸ” 15 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Experimenting with an AI-curated neuroscience feed. It scans the entire firehose in real time, prefilters for neuro/cogsci keywords, then a local LLM scores each post for scientific substance. A ranking algorithm blends that quality score with engagement to surface the best discussion. Try it out!

02.03.2026 07:30 πŸ‘ 33 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 2
Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution posted on March 2, 2026 We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual...

πŸš€ Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share πŸ™

02.03.2026 10:45 πŸ‘ 59 πŸ” 62 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 3

The deadline to apply for the Brain Prize Cajal summer course in Computational Neuroscience has been extended to March 9! We’re excited for you to join us in sunny Lisbon! Please do not hesitate to send in an application and learn about computational neuroscience! @gjorjulijana.bsky.social

27.02.2026 19:05 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 11 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If you want freedom to work on what you are curious about with secure funding until you retire, and you love rural areas near the sea, this is for you. 🧫🦠

28.02.2026 15:34 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Today I am excited to introduce respyra - an open-source Python toolbox for respiratory tracking experiments in interoception research!

Now on PyPI (pip install respyra) with a preprint on PsyArXiv:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

GitHub: github.com/embodied-com...

27.02.2026 12:55 πŸ‘ 97 πŸ” 25 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 2
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A tribute to David MacKay β€œI didn’t know David personally but was a great admirer of his work.” β€œDavid seemed to have infinite patience.” β€œHe treated the audience with respect, trusted them with complexity, and showed that r...

The tribute to David Mackay has attracted only around 60 signatures.

Let's change this!

He wrote one of the best textbooks ever written, "Information theory, inference and learning algorithms", not to mention incredible seminal and influential work in that area.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

24.02.2026 18:06 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This study is super cool (connecting ecology and perception), that suggest some aspects of animal's perception (temporal precision) is shaped by their environment (which somehow resonates w our proposal on internal foraging perspectives on perceptual selection www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)

24.02.2026 13:51 πŸ‘ 28 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Next Consciousness Club is this Wednesday 25th Feb at 11am UK time!

Anat Arzi @anatarzi.bsky.social will be talking about "The Dynamics of (Un)Consciousness: Insights from Olfaction and Respiration"

All welcome, for more info and how to join please see: metacoglab.org/consciousnes...

22.02.2026 17:53 πŸ‘ 29 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1
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Neuronal spiking in the mammalian forebrain is dominated by a heterogeneous ground state Neuronal firing patterns have significant spatiotemporal variability with no agreed-upon theoretical framework. Using a combined experimental and mode…

With this one in print, I think I finally earned that PhD... πŸ˜…
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...

18.02.2026 19:00 πŸ‘ 147 πŸ” 38 πŸ’¬ 10 πŸ“Œ 1

In our Learning Club @cmc-lab.bsky.social today (Feb 19, Thu, 2pm CET), @neurostrow.bsky.social will tell us about his recent paper (πŸ‘‡). Want to attend? Send an empty email to virtual talk-link-request@cmclab.org to get the link!

18.02.2026 23:30 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Thrilled to finally share this work! πŸ§ πŸ”Š

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...

16.02.2026 13:01 πŸ‘ 150 πŸ” 52 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2
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Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain - Nature Communications How humans process competing information when making multi-alternative decisions remains unclear. Here, the authors show that the brain resolves the trade-off between β€œevaluating within” and β€œcomparin...

New paper alert πŸ“£ #Neuroskyence

"Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain" @natcomms.nature.com

together with @ycaoneuro.bsky.social @maryamtohidi.bsky.social @donnerlab.bsky.social @ktsetsos.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧡1/

12.02.2026 14:41 πŸ‘ 41 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 3
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PhD opportunities The School of Convergence Science at Imperial College London is inviting applications for fully funded PhD studentships on research projects that sup...

PhD opportunity in "The role of neural development in multimodal intelligence" with me, @marcusghosh.bsky.social and @flor-iacaruso.bsky.social. Read details below πŸ‘‡.

Note there's a very short window for applying (deadline Feb 27).

πŸ€–πŸ§ πŸ§ͺ

www.imperial.ac.uk/school-of-co...

11.02.2026 18:41 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Ever wondered how the Dalmatian Dog effect works?

The human brain can quickly learn from a single experience and generalize it to related experiences β€” an impressive feat so far not matched by AI.

Our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com reveals how this works.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

04.02.2026 17:00 πŸ‘ 84 πŸ” 33 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 4
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πŸ’‘ Our new #preprint is available online!

How do people adapt their decisions when priorities change?
In our new study, we examine how the way people represent value shapes their ability to adjust in multi-goal environments.

πŸ”— OSF link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

It's a thread 🧡

09.02.2026 14:01 πŸ‘ 28 πŸ” 11 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Convocatorias - FundaciΓ³n RamΓ³n Areces

For Spanish researchers interested in postdoc positions: my lab at Amsterdam is looking for candidates to apply for a Ramon Areces postdoctoral fellowship, to work for 2 years on compneuro and digital brains. Deadline Feb 23. Please spread the word! More info: www.fundacionareces.es/fundacionare...

03.02.2026 10:51 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Very happy to see this pre-print out. Our first step towards incorporating individual differences when aligning neural network representations to diverse crowds.

03.02.2026 09:36 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

Built a domain-agnostic peak detection algorithm and now hunting for datasets with known/annotated peaks to test it on πŸ‘€
Any domain worksβ€”signals,bio,astro,finance, spectroscopy, etc.
Got data or know a benchmark? Would love pointers πŸ™Œ

#SignalProcessing #DataScience #TimeSeries #OpenData #Research

28.01.2026 15:18 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

🚨 #CCN2026 Proceedings submissions are open!
CCN 2026 again features an 8-page Proceedings track (alongside extended abstracts). Accepted papers will appear in CCN-Proceedings (CCN‑P) with DOIs on OpenReview.

28.01.2026 16:16 πŸ‘ 33 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 6
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Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces βš‘πŸ§ πŸ’»

Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.

See below for + details and retweet πŸ™

27.01.2026 22:12 πŸ‘ 75 πŸ” 56 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 5
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Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill?
Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes.
Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

21.01.2026 16:31 πŸ‘ 80 πŸ” 35 πŸ’¬ 9 πŸ“Œ 5

All theory is wrong until verified by data. Greatly indebted to @mhyaghoubi.bsky.social, @markbrandonlab.bsky.social, @douglasresearch.bsky.social for finding the hippocampus encoding reward prediction! Grateful to my advisor @cpehlevan.bsky.social, @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social.
#RL #hippocampus

19.01.2026 09:32 πŸ‘ 31 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

How do we achieve few-shot generalization? New work led by @fabianrenz.bsky.social dives into the role of replay in learning and using structure to generalize reward. Dream team effort with Shany Grossman @nathanieldaw.bsky.social Peter Dayan & @doellerlab.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

18.01.2026 15:33 πŸ‘ 74 πŸ” 26 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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main goal for this year: find a new job! πŸ™‚

looking for a role with fun & complex technical challenges & within a great community. my main expertise is in signal processing/EEG/MEG, but topic-wise I am quite flexible.

science/industry both great! starting mid-year. nschawor.github.io/cv

16.01.2026 10:14 πŸ‘ 101 πŸ” 66 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 3

Yes (highly recommended by previous cohort)!

17.01.2026 20:47 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Vacancy β€” PhD Position in NeuroAI for Video Perception in the Human Brain <p><span>Are you interested in using AI to unravel the mysteries of the brain? Do you want to perform cutting-edge NeuroAI research and leverage deep learning to understand human vision? Then check out the vacancy below and apply for a PhD position in this exciting research direction.</span></p>

I have a PhD opening for my #VIDI BrainShorts project πŸ“½οΈπŸ§ πŸ€–! Are you or do you know an ambitious, recent (or almost) MSc graduate with a background in NeuroAI and interest in large-scale data collection and video perception? Check out our vacancy! (deadline Feb 15).
werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

16.01.2026 12:31 πŸ‘ 31 πŸ” 26 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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How Intrinsic Motivation Underlies Embodied Open-Ended Behavior Although most theories posit that natural behavior can be explained as maximizing some form of extrinsic reward, often called utility, some behaviors appear to be reward independent. For instance, spo...

New preprint. A review on Intrinsic Motivation Theories

arxiv.org/abs/2601.10276

In collaboration with an amazing team

16.01.2026 07:29 πŸ‘ 14 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

For the first Learning Club @cmc-lab.bsky.social in 2026, @marcusghosh.bsky.social on Jan 15, Thu, 2pm CET, will tell us about his recent paper (πŸ‘‡) [joint work w/ @neural-reckoning.org]. Want to attend, send an empty email to virtual talk-link-request@cmclab.org to get the link!

14.01.2026 21:42 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0