While much of machine learning is retrospective (learn the past distribution) learning in biology is prospective (learn for the future) - here we discuss some implications for neuroscience (with @tdverstynen.bsky.social, Josh Vogelstein, Pratik Chaudhari): www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

So great! To paraphrase @lucinauddin.bsky.social: If we (researchers) aren't clear, it has downstream effects on translation (eg to) psychiatry. We must strive not just to publish papers, but to be clear!

How might AI shape the future of work? @kordinglab.bsky.social (Neuroscience) & @imarinescu.bsky.social (@pennsp2.bsky.social) have developed an interactive model that incorporates assumptions from both their fields to predict how AI will affect wages, jobs & the overall economy tinyurl.com/49b7vzmm

In which @kordinglab.bsky.social argues LLMs are more like an electric motor than a drill, and starts to build a drill for scientific research. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

New post: The Electric Motor and the Drill LLM chat bots are like electric motors: can do anything, bad at everything. The problem is UI/UX. AI should be more like power tools. I built a science planner around this philosophy. 10,000 scientists use it now. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

I'm biased, but I think Neuromatch has done a lot of good in helping make computational science education accessible. Please consider donating to help us continue!

How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all times, Yes, I teach it to students daily, and refer to it in lots of papers. Sorry. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

PlanYourScience.com is live! 🔥

Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I am recruiting graduate students for the experimental side of my lab @mcgill.ca for admission in Fall 2026! Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.

Interesting mystery. It is known that animals can learn to control neurons pretty much anywhere in the brain. But they can not learn to ignore hunger which probably means they can't turn of hunger sensing neurons. How is that avoided in the brain? They even have DA inputs.

VTA DA neurons. I read they have heterogenous projections to cortex. And they have different tuning curves in terms of Reward, punishment, hunger, etc. Computationally it would make a lot of sense that the relevant reward signals make it to the right cortical areas. Known? Computationally important.

Professors: Running a class with research projects? You and your TAs will never have enough time to carefully guide every student through gap, hypotheses, experiment, data analysis, etc. I think every larger course running research projects should use this.

As we are having a discussion on neural codes: @earlkmiller.bsky.social is entirely right that the "only spike rates matter" idea that is so prominent in neuroscience has no credible evidence. We simply do not currently know how neurons code relevant information. Oscillations are likely part of it.

DYK, you can see many of our seminars on our YouTube page! "Behind the CV" talks with Weiji Ma & Konrad Kording have thousands of views. The newest talk is Allie Sinclair on "Resistance and Resilience: Science Communication and Advocacy in a Federal Funding Crisis" www.youtube.com/@pennmindcor...

I think almost all scientific projects should be planned carefully. And I think an app can dramatically improve that. So I wrote an app for that (free for now, if you can fund this let me know). I tested it quite a bit (>8000 users in beta so far). try it: planyourscience.com

It is a good day. Reached inbox zero after months of never getting below inbox five.

Working on an abstract and could use some help? Join us on Tuesday, December 2 for a virtual abstract-writing workshop led by our P.I. Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social Register for free at

I have so many issues with this podcast with @earlkmiller.bsky.social . I think that this podcast nicely shows why I have trouble with such approaches. Lets go through some of the claims.

Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, Editor-in-Chief, now reporting for duty. 🫡 Catch me at the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience Booth (3928) today and tomorrow from 2-3 pm if you want to chat about your manuscript or what JUNE is up to. #SfN2025 #SfN25 @sfn.org

Put your belief about how ai and bi, capital and labor interact and simulate the economy using our intelligencesaturation.org simulator. Depending parameters you obtain runaway success with wages going to infinity, the evisceration of wages, or everything in between.

Incidentally this is the first time that writing a paper made me buy put options.

New @brookings.edu paper w. @kordinglab.bsky.social : Artificial Intelligence Saturation & the Future of Work. Wages can ↗️&↘️with #AI automation, as humans are pushed into physical jobs. In the longer run, intelligence saturation limits benefits from #AI. www.brookings.edu/articles/art... #EconSky

AI is growing exponentially at a timescale of months while the economy is growing at a timescale of decades. How should we model the economy with rapidly increasing intelligence tech and slowly increasing physical tech? New AI+econ paper.

𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸? In a sense yes, but does network science help us understand the brain as a complex system? Intriguing paper. If anything the paper has 800+ refs! #neuroskyence #complexsystems doi.org/10.1016/j.pl...

Motor control friends. I have an optotrak. It used to be $50k. I will never use it. Anyone need one?

A reminder:

You will find this paper interesting and relevant too: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

People emphasizing circles in dimensionality reduced trajectories are emphasizing the wrong thing imho. In a spatiotemporally low-pass world, dimensionality reduction literally reveals the fourier bases.

40 Percent of Stroke Animal Studies May Have Problematic Images Red flags during a literature review led to the discovery of over 200 papers on animal models of stroke with duplicated images, which is likely an underestimate. www.the-scientist.com/40-percent-o...

Still beta-testing the app that helps people plan science, make it super clear, design their todos, and write a first version of the paper. Feeling overwhelmed by the countless aspects of doing science? Try this (for free): planyourscience.com

(1/2) University of Pennsylvania computational neuroscientist and @neuromatch.bsky.social co-founder @kordinglab.bsky.social shares his advice for career success in neuroscience. “The field has so much of an appetite for new ideas,” he says. #neurosociety #compsci #neuroscience

(2/2) Watch his full talk in Neuro&CompSci as part of the Neuro& webinar series from the @youthneuro.bsky.social:

Cracking the worm would provide a test bed for how molecular recipes generate neural physiology. And it would allow us to understand how neurons work together to yield emergent brain functions, write @kordinglab.bsky.social and @eboyden3.bsky.social. www.thetransmitter.org/computationa...

Enjoyed discussing "Why Science & Philosophy Need Each Other" w Megan Peters @meganakpeters.bsky.social We discuss the importance of engagement between science & philosophy, our experience w this & simplified conceptions of science & philosophy 🧠📕 Thanks Tev Naidu! #philsky #philsci #sciencesky

I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Square News about the government's attempt to extort universities. nyunews.com/opinion/gues...

Excited that this work discovering cross-species signatures of stabilizing foot placement control is now out in PNAS! pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @antoinecomite.bsky.social

Time to do the worm.

It was fun writing this essay, about bottom-up neuroscience and how we might simulate entire brains, using data collected via new technologies (expansion microscopy, optogenetics, whole brain voltage imaging, and more), with @kordinglab.bsky.social!

This is amazing and moves scientific publishing into the modern age in a MAJOR way. @qedscience.bsky.social by @odedrechavi.bsky.social and team, and planyourscience.com by @kordinglab.bsky.social, are my gamechanging life-hack recommendations for all scientists!

Hear @dyamins.bsky.social and yours truly discuss causality and ml: x.com/kordinglab/s..., www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-54...

The Nobel prize in Econ to Phillipe Aghion is for innovation. Key driver for future world. And he is coauthor and mentor of my wife @imarinescu.bsky.social . Amazing development!

here the trick is to unpack the word *understanding* it’s not about what each neuron does, but the rules shaping the behaviour of biological systems! "rules for development and learning in brains may be far easier to understand than their resulting properties" 👇👌 arxiv.org/abs/1907.06374

🚨Big news!🚨 The lab is relocating to Lisbon, joining a great team of experimental and theoretical neuroscientists, and the Neurotechnology Warehouse, a new initiative to bridge basic and translational research. I'll be sharing postdoc openings soon. Come join us in this new incarnation of the lab!

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft: Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf... 🧵 1/

Such a cool achievement!

Thanks to @pessoabrain.bsky.social and @thetransmitter.bsky.social for featuring our paper and to @aliyarumana.bsky.social and Peter Tse for engaging so generously with the ideas! 😊 www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

I think it is very important to talk more about the deep problems of functional connectivity,

become my colleague at penn bioengineering: apply.interfolio.com/173716

He’s going to spend 25% of his life to live 10% longer, isn’t he? We need to teach opportunity cost more in our schools.