Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Could the logic of life be shaped by the architecture of biological circuitry? In this paper, @manlius.bsky.social shows how genetic, metabolic, and social networks can govern slow evolutionary dynamics in a unified nonequilibrium framework. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Non-invasive brain surface stimulation targeting personalized SCAN alleviated symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease. See the videos below.(www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

#ProtistsOnSky no 'swimming' by 𝘝𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘺𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢, definitively no 'staying still'. just a relaxed walk towards the lunch...

This is happening today.

New perspective on the evolutionary potential of symbiotic interactions! Is there something special about symbiosis that leads to new traits and adaptations? If so, how would we know and how would this work? academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Why don’t neural networks learn all at once, but instead progress from simple to complex solutions? And what does “simple” even mean across different neural network architectures? Sharing our new paper @iclr_conf led by Yedi Zhang with Peter Latham arxiv.org/abs/2512.20607

Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Infants organise their visual world into categories at two-months-old! So happy to see these results published - congratulations Cliona and the rest of the FOUNDCOG team.

This Thursday (Feb 5th) we're hosting Dr. Salvador Durá-Bernal with a talk on “Large-scale biophysical models of neuronal circuits to study brain function and disease”. Here's the registration link and the abstract: cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Discovered @patrickmineault.bsky.social's excellent Good Research Code Handbook today, which was always awesome, but is even more necessary as more scientists consider integrating coding agents into their workflows. goodresearch.dev

The recording of George Mashour's talk "Consciousness and the dying brain" is now available: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz7o....

Are episodic and semantic memory really that different? Using closely matched tasks, we found no substantial neural differences between recalling personal experiences and general knowledge: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02390-4

Brain modularity is a concept inspired by how we make machines. But brains are not made by people. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

New paper out at PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Revisiting the high-dimensional geometry of population responses in the visual cortex with @jpillowtime.bsky.social. The review took forever because a reviewer was doubtful our new estimator can infer eigenvalues beyond the rank of the data! (1/6)

Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻 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 🙏

We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867

Happy to share our preprint with @neworderofjamie.bsky.social , @danakarca.bsky.social and @drtnowotny.bsky.social ! We’ve been working on a neuron position learning algorithm by coupling space and time! See manuscript below 👇

The extended version of my thesis procrastination project/subcortex visualization package is out now in both Python and R, now that I’ve graduated 🤠 This figure shows the 9 atlases included (and counting)! Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Website: anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

Decoding behavior with minimal and interpretable agent models www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Some days I wake up feeling like a minimal agent model

"The accounts from the massacre in Mashhad, Iran’s second-most populous city, are a small window into one of the most lethal government actions the Iranian regime has taken in recent history."

The interplay between poverty and the human brain connectome across the lifespan: A systematic review - ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Anatomical White Matter Tracts Span the Cortical Hierarchy to Support Cognitive Diversity | bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 New paper from @comunelab.bsky.social ! 🧪🧠 If you do connectome analysis from correlations, you’re probably averaging at some point (and you probably don't give it much thought). But when is it OK? 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s42... 🧵 1/

ADHD treatments move beyond stimulants www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reminder that this is happening today.

New study examines 20+ years of armed conflict data across Africa. Researchers @kushwaha.bsky.social and @spintheory.bsky.social identify three conflict archetypes, but also show that classification does not necessarily help to predict the severity of conflicts. Learn more: shorturl.at/81pkf

What kinds of cognitions are possible? Are there discrete classes of cognition? Here's our new paper with @brigan.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social @mitibennett.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2601.12837 We explore basal, neural and human-AI spaces.

A worm, H. miamia, appears to have a diffuse 'brain' without regional specialization. "Early brains may have arisen through the condensation of diffuse nerve nets into unregionalized brains, with regionalization evolving secondarily." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This Thursday at 3PM (UTC), we'll host @barabasi.bsky.social at the Making Connections seminar series. I'm sure it'll be a very stimulating and inspiring talk, so if you'd like to join, register via the link below: sites.google.com/view/makingc...

Over the years, I have written a few Jupyter/Rmd/Matlab notebooks that attempt to teach some statistical concepts, particularly in neuroimaging. You can find them here: www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/rik.h..., though I will say a bit more about each one in a number of posts over next few days.

Introducing a new scientific computing library: syntropy. Syntropy is a comprehensive package for information theory, aimed at both theoreticians and data analysts working on discrete, continuous, and mixed data. 1/N github.com/thosvarley/s...

This book is a wonderful, synthetic and richly illustrated journey through the natural history of the vertebrate brain 🤩 A big thank you to the authors 🙏 "A major theme in the evolution of the telencephalon has been the emergence of novel pathways... 1/2

Excellent piece about Iran but this quote is highly applicable to current US admin tactics: “Fear is the cement of every authoritarian structure. Not ideology, not theology, not even brute force on its own can keep the towering edifice in place. Fear does” Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/o...

It's a small contribution, but I finally bit the bullet and removed all references to Twitter/X from my website. Where previously I had embedded tweeprints on my website, I've now pasted all the content into something without links/mentions of twitter, e.g. here neural-reckoning.org/pub_multimod...

Despite many negative world news, I still feel very positive about the future of science and computational neuroscience. Together, we will work on reducing the negative impact of brain diseases! I will open two PhD positions in 2026. Informal inquiries (with a CV attached) are appreciated.

Wanna compare dynamics across neural data, RNNs, or dynamical systems? We got a fast and furious method🏎️ The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA): 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828 💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast... I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉

Effective Graph Resistance as Cumulative Heat Dissipation arxiv.org/abs/2601.00330

Throughout this work, we found it really helpful to organize our thinking along 'Marr's three levels of analysis': 1. the computational problem 2. the algorithmic solution 3. biophysical implementation Check out our review laying out this conceptual framework here: buff.ly/NE4JEOA

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

𝗦𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 If we leave aside the more extreme discussions about "everything everywhere" and modularity this is a very cool paper. So much can be done with data from 260 regions and 60K neurons. doi.org/10.1101/2025... #neuroskyence

And also wishing them a swift and decisive victory. May there be freedom. Why is no one saying this part? I want to come visit Iran.

Reports of widespread protests at universities and beyond across Iran. Thinking of students and scholars there, and wishing them safety and a brighter future.

Here is the link to download the PDF of my course#5 on Biological computation. I present & discuss Self-tuning, Adaptation and Learning in biological (non-neuronal) systems, in particular during embryonic development. This course contains various personal ideas/proposals. tinyurl.com/hcpwsbtm

I've got a fully-funded PhD studentship open at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social, investigating social learning about metacognition & awareness, w/ behavioural studies & neuroimaging (fMRI) - thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk More details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPV831/p... #cogsci #neuroskyence

OOF

⚠️ New paper alert and what a way to end 2025! 🎉 Happy to share our story “Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals.” published today in Nature Neuroscience. Sleeping dragons 🦎 and functional ultrasound! Read the full paper here: rdcu.be/eWJHb 1/8

Causation, correlation, and attempts to explain ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease). Great article on a devastating disease. #philsci #philsky