It’s incredible that I can now do this. Googling decent graphics for class is over. The prompt is visualizing the predictive coding architecture of the cerebral cortex.

Hello #SfN25, come see our poster about cellular memory and multiple kinds of pattern detection operating in kidney cells. Poster LBP077 1-5pm 🧠🫘

“One Hand Clapping reclaims the story of life from a cold, indifferent universe and brings it back into the warmth of the fire circle, where stories make sense of mysteries and offer guidance for how to live.” Thank you @sadieding.bsky.social and @wsj.com for this amazing review!

Thank you Harvard Science Talks for a warm welcome!

Boston! Join us this Wednesday at 6pm at the Harvard Science Center for my book talk! Get your free ticket here: www.eventbrite.com/e/nikolay-ku...

Does a Roomba have agency? Explain pls.

One Hand Clapping is currently #1 top new release in evolutionary psychology on US Amazon! 😲🤩

Evan and I share an appreciation for the beauty of life’s building blocks — check out this discussion of One Hand Clapping, and my work on cellular memory youtu.be/pyg6MkM8kz0

Fantastic review of One Hand Clapping in New Scientist!

Great discussion of my upcoming book, One Hand Clapping, on the BBC Instant Genius pod. How do you get from nature’s ideas, to sea slug’s ideas, to human ideas? Where do you draw the line? And what will the next thing be? Get a good sense of the book in 30 min. podscan.fm/podcasts/ins...

One Hand Clapping is out Oct 21 in North America and Oct 28 everywhere else. Preorder now! www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1493...

Nothing feels as sci fi as shipping genes on a piece of paper. This DNA came from Australia, got lost in Singapore but made it to NYC. We’ll put these genes that someone designed halfway around the world into a drop of water and then into our cells, and they will express them. How insane is that.

I’m sorry but what is contextual reasoning and normative criteria if not statistical priors and lexical associations?

Super interesting. Seen these beautiful flowers in the Adirondacks. So, are they just parasites on fungi? Seems so hard to imagine the hosts can’t knock them off with some enzyme if all they do is leech nutrients. Is there still something in it for the fungus? Do the flowers also disperse spores? 🤔

The big q is what exactly do you get with neuron+astro plasticity that you can’t get with neurons alone. My bet is that astros act like spatial buffers of plasticity. They retain less specific information than neurons but integrate the average state of the neighborhood and broadcast it locally.

In this episode, @braininspired.bsky.social talks with @niko-kukushkin.bsky.social about his new book, ‘One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind.’ #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...

My book, One Hand Clapping, landed in the NYU bookstore! Preorder yours today! Out everywhere Oct 21 www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-hand-c...

Describing this as a “break” on the immune system is the wrong metaphor. It implies that the immune system is static at rest, gets going upon infection, and then needs to be stopped, like a car. NOTHING in biology is static. Everything is an equilibrium. It’s not a break, it’s a counterweight.

To hold something steady on an outstretched hand, you press down on your wrist with your second hand (e.g. cops holding guns in movies). That, in a nutshell, is why we need these T-regulatory cells that work against actual antiviral T-cell fighters. Congratulations!

Ubiquitin is made in a five-pack. The last monomer has a tail. Apparently this last tailed ubiquitin is a special "fast ubiquitin" for stress. An E4 ligase (which extends already existing Ub chains and so forces them into the proteasome) grabs it under stress. Tell me AI could have predicted this

If you are in NYC, join us for my book launch party! Tuesday October 7th 5:30pm, NYU, Liberal Studies lobby, 726 Broadway, 6th floor (non-NYU: dm me to register). Conversation between myself and Prof. Jared Simard, our resident classicist! Books available! Slavic food! events.nyu.edu/event/onehan...

What can a cell remember? A lot more than you think. My latest, for @quantamagazine.bsky.social, is on memory beyond the brain—in tiny unicellular creatures and the smallest, most ancient parts of ourselves: www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-c...

Ever wondered where memory truly lives? 🧠 In our latest episode, we welcome Prof. Nikolay Kukushkin @niko-kukushkin.bsky.social (NYU), to discuss the biology of memory and consciousness. ▶️ Watch the full clip here: youtu.be/VY9gqT7rs_A 🔗 More: linktr.ee/neuroscience...

We may not sense the progress bar, but human beings are running low on memory. Here’s what we can do. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smal...

Had a great time talking about sea slugs, cellular memory, and my upcoming book with Shekerah and Fatu of We Love Science. Listen here: "Ep 66: Memory and the Human Mind - The Work" at www.buzzsprout.com/1720419/epis...

Here's a biological mystery that stumps me. What's the deal with iodine in thyroid hormones? OK, it helps the hormone pass through the membrane and bind to the receptor. But steroids do that without any exotic atoms. Why iodine, and why thyroid? Any experts?

So true. Vitamins are ridiculous.

Time travelers would be amazed by how much we plan for future health. We take vitamins, count fiber, exercise, and do Dry January — all for benefits we won't see for years. But it might be that even shorter-term patterns leave lasting imprints on our body. 🧵

One of the odd things about non-neural memory we study is how long it lasts — in neurons same genes get deactivated in hours, in kidney cells they stay on for days. This might be why. Neurons repress memory genes stronger. Increases information capacity? Claude Shannon again!!

ARE YOU KIDDING

A reminder that our NYC Russian book club meets to discuss Vladimir Sorokin’s “Day of the Oprichnik” in two weeks, Sunday 26 Jan, 3:30pm, Toné Cafe, Brighton Beach! DM to join.

Swiss guard uniforms are actually camouflage in dichromatic vision

What a metaphor for the unpredictability of the real world. We are trying to solve climate change and cancer and we can't even figure out what's going on with tennis balls. Real life is an infinite parameter space. defector.com/has-the-tenn...

Excellent piece about our recent paper on cellular memory. And yet: quotation marks in the post, and “memory-like processes” in the article. I suspect the authors get it when I emphasize it’s not a metaphor —that’s the whole point—but then the editors just can’t let it go without conditionalizing.

The connection between body and emotion is deep and many interpret our research on non-neural memory in that vein: kidneys store trauma, hearts carry personality. Here’s a much more realistic connection: the insula. A brain region that literally builds emotional awareness out of bodily states.

Honored to be on #NPR for this Christmas segment about our research on memory outside the brain. Will it help students do better on finals? I wish. Happy holidays! #neuroscience #memory #brain #christmas academicminute.org/2024/12/niko...

Tried using Claude as a scantron for finals today and it’s absolute garbage—reads every question and answer but can’t figure out how many mistakes there are. Reminds me of the Pirahã who can talk about each child but can’t tell you how many they have. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We think of our own, biological memory the way we think of computer memory: the more, the better. But that’s not what evolution intended when it created learning. Learning is not just about storing information: it is about choosing what to store and what to discard. 🧵/1

It’s obviously good advice for English speakers, but— does this reflect a Eurocentric left-to-right bias? I wonder what’s more intuitive for Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking scientists.

Being a prof is great. In September I get out of things by saying “the semester just started so it’s crazy”. In October I say “oof well we’re in the thick of the semester”. In December—“well it’s the end of the semester, so, you know”. And in the summer—hell, gotta plan that semester. #highered

This is crazy. A virus creates this zombie spiral which takes a ubiquitin ligase adaptor from the cell and uses it to label a transcription factor, needed for antiviral defence, for destruction. It’s like when the Bene Gesserit do their TAKE OUT YOUR KNIFE—DRIVE IT IN YOUR THROAT #cellbiology #dune

This reminds me about a decade-old Soylent-era conversation with my wife about a true bachelor chow — can you make one? She would ask “but what about X?” (vitamins, fiber, flavonoids, diversity of flavor and nutrients) and I would answer “it’s in the chow!” Eventually she said I was being a tech bro

Okay so gamma is bottom-up data, alpha is top-down prediction, beta is dopamine, delta is synaptic downscaling, and theta episodic memory. What have I oversimplified beyond reason?

Don’t quote me on this, but this is why my personal exercise routine is to run until I smell acetone.

A great feature about our research by @scinews.bsky.social. Had a bit of a philosophical debate with the editors: initially “memory” was in quotation marks, and the first sentence conditionalized it as “metaphorical”. But I stood my ground. There’s no sense in which “brain memory” is more “real”!

My students treat spelling like an obsolete chore. But studies show that how we learn to spell determines more than just writing, and might in fact shape our abilities, personalities, and even, quite possibly, national cultures. 🧵

I’m such a city boy I’ve ever actually seen a tractor plough IRL. Nothing lays bare the raw power of machine age quite like it. In Brazil, I read about the reaction of Amazonians to seeing a metal axe cut down a tree for the first time — I imagine this, to a farmer, was similar.

I know this is intended as a spoof but I don’t think it’s that silly, just highlights the concept of scale. Along the same lines: all terrestrial vertebrates are a rare form of weird fish.

Yes but the same exact thing happened in Russia by totally independent means so the evolutionist in me concludes the selective pressure is more universal.

Imitation, to culture, is what replication is to genes. What an incredible example of cultural imitation in non-human animals. I’m on Whidbey Island for Thanksgiving, right here in the Puget Sound — will be watching out for fashionable orcas!