"We are watching two disciplines trade their worst habits. Neuroscience is mistaking benchmarked prediction for understanding, and machine learning is mistaking mechanistic language for mechanism. ..."

Too adorable not to post. She's making sure you see the sign. #birdoftheday #birds #owls #adorable

I know for a fact that Anthropic used an illegally uploaded version of one of my books for their training data. The way I feel about it does not factor into this at all.

omg, nailed

The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Happy #LebowskiDay to all who celebrate

#DynamicsClub in March: 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗚𝗮𝘀𝘁 @rgast.bsky.social will share his work on neural heterogeneity and network function (PMID: 38198531, 41475350) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41475350/ March 6 (Friday) at 11am PT / 2pm ET Join us in person at UCLA or on Zoom: lingyunxiong.github.io/DynamicsClub/

This paper on how the brain may do gradient descent is very cool: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Delighted to see that @ohbmossig.bsky.social has confirmed dates for the 2026 @ohbmofficial.bsky.social brain hack! ohbm.github.io/hackathon2026/ 11-13 June Thur-Sat, in the usual 3 days before the meeting, at the Campus Victoire, University of Bordeaux Looking forward to it!

me and the peer reviewer i suggested

University of Groningen: ⭐ no more big-tech by 2030 ⭐ Google Workplace 🚫 Windows 🚫 MS Office 🚫 ChatGPT 🚫 A huge challenge! Meeting culture won't get us there. Dedication and focus will. 💪🚀 Let's get to work. ukrant.nl/magazine/we-... @rug.nl @rug-gmw.bsky.social #science

Alchemists be like

Just out in @nature.com BME: Our Review unpacks intracortical microstimulation: axons, not somas, drive activation; direct + indirect pathways shape perception; parameters interact with neuron type, layer, and network; long-term use limited by neural depression & tissue response. 🧠⚡ rdcu.be/eZbTz

Anyone have a thought about this weird mol on my hand?

Useful browser extension to help assess issues in papers: - retraction check - PubPeer comments check - tortured phrases check - fake references check We need more tools in this spirit to help make sense of science.

At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Greetings from Kyiv, where the night brought missiles and drones. Explosions still continue this morning. Emergency power outages. Heating problems. Residential buildings hit.

Christmas Procession in Kyiv. View from the bell tower of St. Michael's Monastery. I want the world to see this.

anyone got any advice on the following situation? I wrote and did a big chunk of the admin for a large MRC grant which also also awarded. I am named in the Staff breakdown on the grant as "researcher co-lead" with 100%FTE, and I am mentioned by name as "postdoctoral researcher Maria Niedernhuber"

The Tasselled Wobbegong is a master of disguise that can eat a fish almost as big as itself in one gulp. It's classified as a shark, but when it lays on the sea floor it looks like a harmless rug if you manage to see it. But with powerful jaws and sharp teeth they are no fish to mess with.

This is such a great visualization of the carbon cycle and of how humanity has completely altered it within a geological instant, by @rarohde.bsky.social:

Relatable Corvid

This is a scandal. Public universities should be banned from paying these insane buyouts for college coaches. No pro sports teams are paying $33 million to fire their incompetent coach, so why are colleges paying this kind of money?!?

And I swear, once again, this is not dunking on kids. We are seeing this at all levels--even grad students. AI + social media has had a profound impact on how we think and process our world, and we can't stop to reflect on it, because billionaires keep hurling addictive tech at us.

“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”

Hello New York! Giving a Swartz seminar at NYU today, come say hi! as.nyu.edu/departments/...

Tonight was a very bad night.

“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.” aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

We’re hiring a technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8968

Today, as the Fed cuts, is another good day to note how we’ve just totally normalized & moved on from the unprecedented violation of central bank independence that Stephen Miran represents. This would’ve been a huge scandal requiring his resignation from at least one post in any prior admin. Now? 🤪

The whole Third Term Project isn’t actually about Trump. The people behind it know he will likely be dead or enfeebled by 2029. It is about them, the vastly unpopular group around Trump, wanting to grift us forever without elections.

A year ago, I launched my book #OnFreedom in a war zone – in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 35 seconds from Russian artillery. Today, I'm launching the paperback in Portland, Oregon. Which is NOT a war zone. There is a difference in the real world between what's a war and what is not, and between truth and lies.

once you understand that we never outgrew wanting to watch gladiatorial battles and throw tomatoes at people in the stocks and eat junk food at public hangings the internet makes a lot more sense

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

Cops led us into the street as the new “protest zone” and then beat us repeatedly. Got hit in the face with a baton. Leaving to pick up my friends who were arrested. Stay safe out there.

This month’s Discover ASAP features @rgast.bsky.social, PhD, of CRN Team Surmeier 🧪 He introduces PyRates, an open-source tool for generating code across languages to model complex biological systems. See how it advances computational neuroscience and #Parkinsons research. 📺 Watch: bit.ly/4h7Y5Wk

Great option for supporting Ukraine and getting something visible to show that support. Also check out @memorysteel.bsky.social if you want something to add to your key chain!

Please join me in a new campaign to help protect Ukrainians in a very special way. My Ukrainian friends chose to call this campaign Freedom is Action. They are making an important point. One way to find our own courage is to act in support those who are showing it snyder.substack.com/p/freedom-is...

“I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney.” - George Retes, U.S. citizen and veteran.

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

what's worse is that they don't even know they're being excluded

President Macron: “We were very naive to leave our public space to social media networks controlled by US or Chinese companies that don’t share our interests and not interested in survival of our democracies.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggN...

A couple of related-unrelated thoughts that have swirling in my head: 1. This is a bad time to become a new PI in the US. Probably the worst since WWII. If you're negotiating for a position, know your road is way harder than it was for the people on your TT committee. Negotiate accordingly.

Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, "like it was soft ice cream." grist.org/climate/trou... #Arctic #Climate #Heat #Ice #Svalbard #Environment #Geography

I know antifa isn't a real organization because I don't get 40 texts a week from them asking for donations.

WGA Statement on ABC’s Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!

If professors can be fired for discussing topics not explicitly mentioned in the course description and/or not toeing the ideological line of elected political leaders, there is no academic freedom in Texas.

Today, after one of the biggest attacks on Ukraine, I saw an appalling indifference from the world. Thank you to those who still care. There are truly so few of you.

The streets of Chicago are full with tens of thousands of people standing up to ICE and Trump. Join us.