New preprint: Neural manifolds that orchestrate walking and stopping Here we develop a new theory for neural generation of walking and how it can stop- Next we test the theory using Neuropixels probes in the lumber spinal cord of freely moving rats. See more: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Love this paper. One of my core scientific memories is learning that african grey parrots and crows have the roughly same number of cortical neurons as rhesus macaques (apologies for a cerebellarphobic post)

Is using the word innate to describe unlearned behaviors really that bad? I see people constantly citing polemics explaining why it’s bad but it seems no more imprecise than other potentially loaded words we use to describe behaviors i.e. adaptive or spontaneous

All models of ducks are wrong but some models of ducks are useful

What a time to be alive

sure, if you enjoy the horrifying limits of human perception

Injecting testosterone in female canaries induces singing. I always assumed this meant that the brain areas for song production would grow much larger but apparently not!

Manifesting a Kekulé style nap today

I will be recruiting PhD students via Georgetown Linguistics this application cycle! Come join us in the PICoL (pronounced “pickle”) lab. We focus on psycholinguistics and cognitive modeling using LLMs. See the linked flyer for more details: bit.ly/3L3vcyA

Very cool large comparative study on the distinctive avian trait neophobia (fear of novelty). Bernd Henrich apparently worked with some wild ravens that loved spaghetti and cheese puffs so much they would eat them out of his hand but became completely terrified if either food was presented in a pile

Counter example: as an infant my first utterance was the fully formed sentence “bring me a xylophone made out of carburetors and doorknobs you useless bureaucrats” In all seriousness I really enjoyed this paper which put me at ease.

Wow what a nice picture I wonder who took it :)