Markus Meister
@mameister4.bsky.social
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Neuroscientist. Long-form opinions at
https://markusmeister.com
.
@erictopol.bsky.social
posted this diagram earlier today. When I pointed out the obvious AI slop and copious errors, he blocked me. But you can also find it on his substack. Topol poses as a serious medical person, but disseminating such graphical nonsense is disqualifying. Unfollow.
2 days ago
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Markus Meister
Dinu F Albeanu
9 days ago
Adam Kampffās passion for understanding and explaining the world was unmatched. Living by example and not ever compromising on his dreams, Adam was uncanny in making people realize they can learn and understand anything and everything. Keep his dream alive! In his own words:
tinyurl.com/ye29csw3
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Come on Konrad, why do you cave so easily? Here, let me try it for you: 1. Spikes are (to good approximation) the only events that matter. 2. Extracellular fields are one way by which spikes interact with each other. 1/2
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Observed at an SfN poster session?
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about 1 month ago
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Markus Meister
Daniel Pollak
about 1 month ago
#SfN25
's hottest club is Poster X8 Tuesday Morning. This club has everything: mice hunting robotic bait, quantitative behavior modeling, chronic superior colliculus Neuropixel data, and GLM encoding/decoding, not to mention the cheap new DAQ EVERYONE's been rumbling about. See you there!
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If you are looking for a postdoc with interests in animal cognition and behavior, be sure to talk to Jieyu Zheng: you won't regret it!
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about 1 month ago
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That image is from 1961 and an idealization. Here is an actual trajectory of fixational eye movements. The dots are 2 ms apart. If a midget ganglion cell, with single-cone receptive field, fires at 100 Hz, then every spike reports about a different cone. How can we ever read anything?
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about 2 months ago
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That's nothing! The US, as we know, is an agrarian economy, optimized for growing soybeans exported to China. The yearly production of soybean seeds, if placed end to end, forms a chain of beads 10^10 km long: the distance from the Sun to Pluto and back. It streams at about 0.1% the speed of light.
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about 2 months ago
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Sure, China has invented the future, with innovations like high-speed trains and all-electric traffic. But no-one talks about the Jim Beam Soda Fountain! Dispenses everything from straight Bourbon to 3 different cocktails. Beating Kentucky at its own game...
3 months ago
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Human intelligence is overrated and not a useful yardstick for AI - a polemic.
markusmeister.com/2025/09/15/w...
3 months ago
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What a cool public science project!
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/w...
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5 months ago
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I learned a lot from reading this book on climate science: "Unsettled?" by Steven E. Koonin. Sure, it comes from a contrarian perspective, but it's quantitative, well-sourced, and nuanced in its critique. Lots of useful pointers to go explore the primary literature.
5 months ago
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Markus Meister
7 months ago
I wrote about the government's attacks on Harvard. Hope this reaches a few persuadable minds.
prosyn.org/PhWi74r?h=Ky...
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Defunding Harvard Hurts America | by Adam Ezra Cohen - Project Syndicate
Adam Ezra Cohen explains the real-world consequences of canceling federal research grants in the name of fighting antisemitism.
https://prosyn.org/PhWi74r?h=KyJ1iCfV0xnUH8DKbL64MCzhdH6F8X2MTVL%2fTB5dfwU%3d
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If you're planning a course with mathematical methods content, or use such methods in your own work, please take a look at "Mathematics in Biology", by Meister, Lee, and Portugues, published at MIT Press. 1/2
@portugueslab.bsky.social
mitpress.mit.edu/978026204940...
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Mathematics in Biology
Biology has turned into a quantitative science. The core problems in the life sciences today involve complex systems that require mathematical expression, ye...
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049405/mathematics-in-biology/
7 months ago
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A sobering assessment of consciousness studies from Hakwan Lau: "the label āconsciousnessā may eventually serve little other function but to signal that the associated studies are subpar and overinterpreted compared to mainstream cognitive neuroscience research"
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8 months ago
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I'm with David Sussillo's critique here. If you want answers you have to ask concrete questions. Black-box modelling of huge data volumes won't get you any closer.
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9 months ago
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Here it is finally: Our mathematical methods book for life scientists! Aimed at advanced undergrads and beginning grad students, plus all those who want a deeper look at the math behind quantitative biology.
@portugueslab.bsky.social
. 1/3
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10 months ago
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Markus Meister
Carl Zimmer
12 months ago
I wrote about a scientific paper called āThe Unbearable Slowness of Beingā which finds that the human brainās throughput is just 10 bits per second. Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/s...
š§Ŗ
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Human Thought Is Far Slower Than Your Internet Connection (Gift Article)
A new study is āa bit of a counterweight to the endless hyperbole about how incredibly complex and powerful the human brain is,ā one researcher said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/science/speed-of-thought.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kU4.7HAd.-eMMX1V8joYY&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&tgrp=ctr
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Markus Meister
The Transmitter
about 1 year ago
"[Itās] the largest unexplained number in brain science. I feel like neuroscience should pay more attention to it ..." said Marcus Meister when
@claudia-lopez.bsky.social
sat down with him and
@jieyusz.bsky.social
for a Q&A about the brain's information-processing rate.
#neuroskyence
bit.ly/3ZXxWTf
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Explaining āthe largest unexplained number in brain scienceā: Q&A with Markus Meister and Jieyu Zheng
The human brain takes in sensory information roughly 100 million times faster than it can respond. Neuroscientists need to explore this perceptual paradox to better understand the limits of the brainā¦
https://bit.ly/3ZXxWTf
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The unbearable slowness of being: Humans still clock in at just 10 bits/s. Even after peer review :) Share link:
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kHVa3BtfH...
. ArXiv:
arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
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https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1kHVa3BtfH9BQG
about 1 year ago
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After being gifted the most magical computing device on the planet, humans use it to organize more vicious fist fights. Does anyone still think that human intelligence is a useful milestone on the way to machine intelligence?
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/t...
#NeuroAI
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How Student Phones and Social Media Are Fueling Fights in Schools
Cafeteria melees. Students kicked in the head. Injured educators. Technology is stoking cycles of violence in schools across the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/technology/school-fight-videos-student-phones.html?smid=url-share
about 1 year ago
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Horace Barlow, by all accounts, was thinking about 30 years ahead of his time. Here is a transcript of the opening keynote I gave at a symposium honoring Horace's scientific legacy:
markusmeister.com/2024/12/14/h...
.
about 1 year ago
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If you're a student interested in quantitative life science, and you don't have this book on your shelf yet, this is the best time to correct that!
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about 1 year ago
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Markus Meister
Steven Strogatz
almost 2 years ago
The third edition of my textbook, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, was published today. You can preview the first 68 pages on Google Books, or take a look at the preface below to see what's new. The main new thing is a chapter on the Kuramoto model! Hope you enjoy it.
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Have you had private doubts whether we'll ever understand the brain? Whether we'll be able explain psychological phenomena in an exhaustive way that ranges from molecules to membranes to synapses to cells to cell types to circuits to computation to perception and behavior?
about 1 year ago
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Flying Lufthansa during the presidential debate. Weāre told that āunfortunatelyā the WiFi is broken. Clever move to ensure a peaceful flight.
over 1 year ago
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From my file of "papers that keep on giving", this beautiful review from Mike Land on eye movements in everyday life:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16516530/
. I read this back when, but came across it again now with different needs, and learned a whole set of orthogonal things.
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Eye movements and the control of actions in everyday life - PubMed
The patterns of eye movement that accompany static activities such as reading have been studied since the early 1900s, but it is only since head-mounted eye trackers became available in the 1980s that...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16516530/
over 1 year ago
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Why is reality so slow? Why can we only have one thought at a time? Why do we need so many neurons? Will Elon Musk's Neuralink really speed up his cognition? For answers and more questions check out our new review: "The Unbearable Slowness of Being".
arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
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The Unbearable Slowness of Being
This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
over 1 year ago
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Are you going to
#CCN2024
? And are you ready to question your beliefs about rodent hippocampus and cortex? Then see the talk and poster by Jieyu Zheng and Rogerio Guimaraes. Details:
jieyusz.github.io/publication/...
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Mice in the Manhattan Maze: Rapid Learning, Flexible Routing and Generalization, With and Without Cortex
My main project, using a novel tool to study complex cognition in mice and the role of cortex!
https://jieyusz.github.io/publication/manhattan_ccn
over 1 year ago
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A few days ago, the journal eLife published a self-study on the first year of its new publishing model, and it is well worth a look. Here are some notes based on my own experience with the journal as author and reviewing editor:
markusmeister.com/2024/03/17/a...
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almost 2 years ago
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Guilty pleasure last week: watching "Beckham" on Netflix. Lots of unexpected insights! Trigger warning for England fans: features the "hand of god" goal.
about 2 years ago
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Got to experience general anesthesia again today. What a miracle! From "lights on" to "lights out" and back, both transitions were instantaneous. These methods have improved so much since I got tonsils out as a kid.
about 2 years ago
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Saw a fantastic art documentary yesterday: "Anselm" by Wim Wenders. The scale of the ambition and accomplishment here is stunning.
about 2 years ago
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