🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

🥳 Super excited to share our lab's first preprint, led by @hungyun.bsky.social "Distinct tasks engage shared neural subspaces in human hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/9)

Congratulations to #FlatironCCN director @eerosim.bsky.social#FlatironCCNon his election to the National Academy of Sciences! https://bit.ly/42AEUhl #science #neuroscience

@jhennig.bsky.social has shown that dopamine exerts a real-time effect on conditioned responding, beyond its role in learning: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Another indication that dopamine is more than a learning signal! A joint effort with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social and @mhburrell.bsky.social.

Cosyne invited me to give a long tutorial (4 hours!) on methods to quantify differences high-d neural recordings across animals, brain regions, deep neural nets, etc. The recording is up on youtube. I hope it inspires more research on this fundamental topic! www.youtube.com/watch?v=n44x...

We are recruiting PhD students and postdocs at UIUC ECE interested in learning dynamics, spiking networks, and dynamical systems. Details: rainerengelken.github.io/join/

The Cowley Group at CSHL has an opening for a bioAI PhD student to start Fall 2026 to work on closed-loop AI models for visual processing (see below). You *must* have a Master's degree in a quant/eng/cs field. www.cshl.edu/phd-program/... Please reach out to me if interested! I'll be at Cosyne.

Help! We want to understand multi-task neural representations, but all we have is 24/7 spiking data from human patients in hippocampus and cortex, along with video, audio, speech, heart rate, and so much more! If you can help, please apply to join the lab as a postdoc ☺️ jobs.bcm.edu/job/Postdoct...

Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks. @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social @flatironinstitute.org @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social 1/14

Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists. arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467

At #NeurIPS2025! 🎉 Excited to present Conditionally Linear Dynamical Systems (CLDS). We leverage the dependence of neural dynamics on task covariates to yield an interpretable, flexible model of dynamics. Come meet and check it out! 📍: Poster #2209, Hall C,D,E on Thu Dec 4, 11 am–2 pm, PST. 🧵/6

How prior experience biases new learning for generalization? new preprint is out: 1) behavioral and hippocampal generalization co-emerged in a novel context. 2) BTSP was involved in forming cross-context stable representations, as well as aligning novel neural dynamics to familiar subspace.

Inviting apps for a workshop to develop a project focused on a mechanistic understanding of canonical cortical computations at the circuit level. Deadline is 1/5/2026: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/simons-foundation-now-accepting-applications-for-workshop-on-canonical-cortical-computations

Looking for a PhD program where you can study computational neuroscience? NYU has a fantastic array of researchers covering the field: groups.google.com/g/systems-ne...

Applying to do a postdoc or PhD in theoretical ML or neuroscience this year? Consider joining my group (starting next Fall) at UT Austin! POD Postdoc: oden.utexas.edu/programs-and... CSEM PhD: oden.utexas.edu/academics/pr...

📣 WTI is hiring faculty positions! Are you interested in advancing our understanding of the brain + how it gives rise to cognition? Two calls are open: Open-rank search, Neurocomputation, deadline: 12.1.25 Senior search, Neurodevelopment, rolling review 🔗 wti.yale.edu/opportunities #KnowTogether

New manuscript from the lab! "Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening" Led by superstar grad student Anilu Chavez (not on Bluesky)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very cool work showing how hippocampal representations could span space, and associative/episodic memories. Thanks for the presentation today Sarthak!

🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!) To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website: www.sinclairlab-rice.com Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...

Since I'm back on BlueSky - with @frostedblakess.bsky.social and @cpehlevan.bsky.social we wrote a brief perspective on how ideas about summary statistics from the statistical physics of learning could potentially help inform neural data analysis... (1/2)

Join us at #NeurIPS2025 for our Data on the Brain & Mind workshop! We aim to connect machine learning researchers and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, with a focus on emerging datasets. More info: data-brain-mind.github.io

Efficient coding theories often implicitly or explicitly assume slow changes in tuning (e.g., through synaptic plasticity). Arthur Prat-Carrabin has collected psychophysical data showing that it can be fast, and this can be explained by a gain-adaptive RNN: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

At #ICML2025, presenting work done at @flatironinstitute.org w Matt Smart and @albertobietti.bsky.social on in-context denoising (arxiv.org/abs/2502.05164). Come to Matt’s oral, Thursday, 4:15-4:30 PM, West Ballroom A, and see us right after at poster #E-3207, 4:30-7:00 PM, East Exhibition Hall A-B.

Announcing the new "Sensorimotor AI" Journal Club — please share/repost! w/ Kaylene Stocking, Tommaso Salvatori, and @elisennesh.bsky.social Sign up link: forms.gle/o5DXD4WMdhTg... More details below 🧵[1/5] 🧠🤖🧠📈

Submissions now accepted for a special issue of the Journal of Vision: Choose your stimuli wisely: Advances in stimulus synthesis and selection Submission deadline: Dec 12, 2025 Futher details: jov.arvojournals.org/ss/synthetic...

What is the probability of an image? What do the highest and lowest probability images look like? Do natural images lie on a low-dimensional manifold? In a new preprint with Zahra Kadkhodaie and @eerosim.bsky.social, we develop a novel energy-based model in order to answer these questions: 🧵

1/6 Why does the brain maintain such precise excitatory-inhibitory balance? Our new preprint explores a provocative idea: Small, targeted deviations from this balance may serve a purpose: to encode local error signals for learning. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... led by @jrbch.bsky.social

New #NeuroAI #compneurosky preprint! To better understand how target-directed learning works in the brain, we sought to engineer an artificial neural network capable of solving complex image classification tasks that comprises only experimentally-supported biological building blocks. (1/15)

Super excited for our #VSS2025 symposium tomorrow, "Model-optimized stimuli: more than just pretty pictures". Join us to talk about designing and using synthetic stimuli for testing properties of visual perception! May 16th @ 1-3PM in Talk Room #2 More info: www.visionsciences.org/symposia/?sy...

🧠🤖 Computational Neuroscience summer school IMBIZO in Cape Town is open for applications again!   💻🧬 3 weeks of intense coursework & projects with support from expert tutors and faculty   📈Apply until July 1st! 🔗https://imbizo.africa/

Gave a talk at my parents’ retirement community to describe how science is done, and what is at stake. There was a ton of interest, and anyone can do this. Get the word out about how science affects everyone. I’m happy to share slides with anyone who asks- just get in touch! youtu.be/BY_SFgi-Cig

Exciting news!! I’m joining the tenure-track faculty at University of Colorado Boulder this fall as an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience! The Sosa Lab will study how memory is shaped by cognitive and physiological demands, including during pregnancy and the postpartum period. 🧵

We are presenting our work “Discriminating image representations with principal distortions” at #ICLR2025 today (4/24) at 3pm! If you are interested in comparing model representations with other models or human perception, stop by poster #63. Highlights in 🧵 openreview.net/forum?id=ugX...

Symposium at the annual VSS meeting on generative models for vision science

Excited to announce that our paper on "Comparing noisy neural population dynamics using optimal transport distances" has been selected for an oral presentation in #ICLR2025 (1.8% top papers). Check the thread for paper details (0/n). Presentation info: iclr.cc/virtual/2025....

This paper is the result of >20 yrs of hard work by talented students, postdocs and collaborators, but none more than my co-author Ren Ng and his team in EECS. 1/n Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Applications close TODAY (April 14) for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop. All you need to apply is a CV and a 1 page abstract. 🧠🗽

Our short film about our co-founder Jim Simons was nominated for the @Telly Awards. Help amplify the story of his incredible life and contributions to math and basic science by voting for our film here: peoples.tellyawards.com/PublicVoting... #science #philanthropy

Cool project led by Victor Geadah, fitting smoothly time-varying (and condition-varying) linear dynamical systems to neural activity. arxiv.org/abs/2502.18347

If you want to feel small and insignificant, stare up at the stars in the sky. If you want to feel how immensely profound, impossibly complex, and just outright improbable your existence is, gaze at the stars in this 1mm^3 cube and realize it's less than a millionth the volume of your own brain.

📣 Grad students and postdocs in computational and theoretical neuroscience: please consider applying for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! All expenses are covered. Apply by April 14. jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org

I had an awesome time at this! Made some great friends as well; some I still see almost every day! Highly highly recommend

Already feeling #cosyne2025 withdrawal? Apply to the Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! Applications due April 14th jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org

Image representations are often compared in terms of their global geometry. I'm excited to present work at #cosyne2025 that proposes a method for comparing image representations based on their *local* geometry. Poster: 8p tonight #1-112

We are presenting two exciting projects tonight at #Cosyne2025! 🧠🧑‍🔬 [1-032] Changes in tuning curves, not neural population covariance, improve category separability in the primate ventral visual pathway [1-112] Comparing image representations in terms of sensitivities to local distortions

I'm hiring a postdoc! If you're interested in studying how biological neural networks learn adaptive/flexible sensory representations, please reach out at [email protected]. I'll also be at Cosyne if you'd like to chat about projects.

Applications are open for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! A two-day workshop 7/10-7/11 in NYC for PhD students and postdocs. All travel paid. Apply by April 14th.🧠🗽🧑‍🔬http://jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org/ @flatironinstitute.org @simonsfoundation.org

For the Idaho Statesman 🥔, Professor Melanie Samuel explains how science funding drives cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer— and the devastating impact of mass firings in Health & Human Services. Happy Homecoming 🧪🧬🔬🏠 www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/read...

New results! Visual adaptation changes the geometry of V1 population activity: frequent stimuli elicit smaller responses but become more discriminable. Similar results are seen in ANNs trained with metabolic constraints, suggesting these changes emerge from efficient coding. bit.ly/3VJHXRn

Come check out our #NeurIPS2024 spotlight poster on feature learning tomorrow! 📍 East Exhibit Hall A-C #2102 📅 Thu 12 Dec 4:30 p.m. — 7:30 p.m. PST 📝 arxiv.org/abs/2406.06158