Brian DePasquale
@briandepasquale.bsky.social
📤 1583
📥 405
📝 48
science.
https://briandepasquale.github.io
reposted by
Brian DePasquale
Mark Pullinger
23 days ago
Puccini and Toscanini had a stormy friendship. One Christmas, Puccini sent Toscanini a panettone, forgetting they had fallen out. Remembering later, he sent a telegram “PANETTONE SENT BY MISTAKE. PUCCINI”. He received a telegram back “PANETTONE EATEN BY MISTAKE. TOSCANINI”! 😂
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Brian DePasquale
Itai Yanai
26 days ago
Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it. PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!
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derek guy
28 days ago
thinking of the introverted woman who said she's never felt FOMO. she's only felt ROMO (Relief Of Missing Out)
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Dan Goodman
about 1 month ago
Great read. Too many people assume that the role of theory papers in neuro is to "explain neural data". I'm not even sure we can explain anything yet. Data is more like a muse for theory.
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Noah Bressman, PhD
about 2 months ago
The Batman Effect, just published in NATURE: When an experimenter dressed as Batman boarded a train, passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seats to another “pregnant” experimenter than if Batman wasn’t present (67.21% vs. 37.66%)
#SciComm
1/2
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect - npj Mental Health Research
npj Mental Health Research - Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-025-00171-5
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🔔 NEW PREPRINT FROM THE LAB ‼️ We introduce a new ML model, LoRAX, for predicting olfactory responses from chemical features, a tricky problem that benefits from progress in ML for biochem. We combine LoRA fine-tuning with protein and chemical foundation models,
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Low rank adaptation of chemical foundation models generate effective odorant representations
Featurizing odorants to enable robust prediction of their properties is difficult due to the complex activation patterns that odorants evoke in the olfactory system. Structurally similar odorants can ...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.686628v2
about 2 months ago
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Brian DePasquale
Sam Rodriques
2 months ago
Today, we're announcing Kosmos, our newest AI Scientist, available today. Kosmos makes fully autonomous scientific discoveries at scale by analyzing datasets and literature, and is the most powerful agent for science so far. Beta users estimate that Kosmos does 6 months of work in a single day.
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Brian DePasquale
Kenneth Harris
2 months ago
1. New preprint resolving a conundrum in systems neuroscience with an AI scientist, and humans Reilly Tilbury, Dabin Kwon,
@haydari.bsky.social
,
@jacobmratliff.bsky.social
,
@bio-emergent.bsky.social
,
@carandinilab.net
,
@kevinjmiller.bsky.social
,
@neurokim.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Characterizing neuronal population geometry with AI equation discovery
The visual cortex contains millions of neurons, whose combined activity forms a population code representing visual stimuli. There is, however, a discrepancy between our understanding of this code at ...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.12.688086v1
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First published paper from the depaqlab, led by the supernatural
@ryguy.io
! Glad to add a new software resource to the neuro community for fitting SSMs, including hierarchical models and switching GLMs, and many others! If you love Julia and SSMs, this is for you!
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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Brian DePasquale
Oded Rechavi
2 months ago
“The bad review will come from your list of suggested reviewers”
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Brian DePasquale
Eugene Vinitsky 🍒
3 months ago
What if we did a single run and declared victory
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Brian DePasquale
C. Robert Cargill
3 months ago
Ouch. This one cuts to the bone.
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Richard Sever
3 months ago
Chemists call for ban on generative AI for chemical structures: "serious errors could damag[e] the next generation of scientists" As ever, the problem seems to be not AI but lazy application of it and lack of checks. Whether _that_ problem is solvable...
www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-che...
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The chemistry community should ban drawing chemical structures with generative AI, chemists warn
AIs like Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT still make serious errors rendering structural formulae
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-chemistry-community-should-ban-drawing-chemical-structures-with-generative-ai-chemists-warn/4022242.article
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Brian DePasquale
Mike Fainzilber
3 months ago
www.science.org/content/arti...
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Perfume scientists tweak cells into having ‘sense of smell’
A study could transform the lab study of olfaction—and may challenge a Nobel-winning hypothesis
https://www.science.org/content/article/perfume-scientists-tweak-cells-having-sense-smell
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Brian DePasquale
samuel mehr
3 months ago
"the quickest way to get a collaborator to return edits on your manuscript is to write down their affiliation wrong" (ancient academic proverb)
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Brian DePasquale
Ahmed El Hady
4 months ago
Can one bring together Reinforcement learning and Drift Diffusion models to understand collective foraging ? Congrads to Jonathan Marienhagen , Lisa Blum Moyse and Dominik Deffner on this new study. Very happy that I was part of this collaboration. Preprint here:
osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Brian DePasquale
New papers in Network Science
5 months ago
PLOS Comput. Biol.: Stochastic activity in low-rank recurrent neural networks
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013371
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Brian DePasquale
Dan Levenstein
5 months ago
“NeuroAI should not remain limited to learning statistical relationships, but should also help in building mechanistic and causal models of neural activity. These models will incorporate biological properties of neural circuits, including cellular characteristics and network properties.” 💯💯💯
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Brian DePasquale
Meg Younger
6 months ago
New preprint from
@darbly.bsky.social
@briandepasquale.bsky.social
and my labs! If you love (or hate) mosquitoes, have a look:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
We used TEM to describe the circuitry used for CO2 detection by mosquitoes. As usual with mosquitoes, nothing is as expected! 🌬️🦟
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Recurrent connectivity supports carbon dioxide sensitivity in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes
The mosquito Aedes aegypti′s human host-seeking behavior depends on the integration of multiple sensory cues. One of these cues, carbon dioxide (CO2), gates odorant and heat pathways and activates hos...
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.29.667487
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Brian DePasquale
John Tuthill
7 months ago
Congrats to the 2025 cohort of McKnight Scholars!
www.mcknight.org/news-ideas/2...
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Brian DePasquale
Lucia Prieto Godino
7 months ago
How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇
bit.ly/44aVm9E
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Brian DePasquale
PLOS Biology
7 months ago
Can
#AI
become a true scientist?
@ninamiolane.bsky.social
explores how new technologies are reshaping scientific discovery, and why human expertise remains essential as we enter a new era of research powered by intelligent algorithms. 🧪
plos.io/4kZi0aB
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The fifth era of science: Artificial scientific intelligence
Can AI become a true scientist? This Perspective explores how new technologies are reshaping scientific discovery, and why human expertise remains essential as we enter a new era of research powered b...
https://plos.io/4kZi0aB
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Tired of your boring old DDM? Check out recent work by grad student
@ryguy.io
that introduces a *state-dependent* DDM using an underlying HMM. We find mice change their speed-accuracy strategy from trial to trial! Code provided! (in Julia of course!)
add a skeleton here at some point
7 months ago
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Brian DePasquale
Itai Yanai
8 months ago
90% of doing science is being open to new ideas.
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Brian DePasquale
Nico Adams
8 months ago
Unsurprising, but nevertheless tragic. Makes it very hard for integrators and multidisciplinarians to exist in academia.
#academicsky
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Brian DePasquale
Athena Akrami
8 months ago
Hivemind, what's the best approach/tool to aggregate neural data across sessions (and animals) in dimensionality reduction analyses, particularly when it's not known how overlapping the pool of neurons are over different sessions?
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Brian DePasquale
Richard Sever
9 months ago
"The core strategy is to slow NIH spending to generate surpluses...then use surpluses as justification for slashing the budget...unspent [$] won’t be because NIH doesn’t have good science to spend on [but] because the administration has blocked spending"
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...
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https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-budget-is-on-a-fast-track
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Brian DePasquale
Blake Richards
9 months ago
Using pretrained vision-language models to align neural signals from different modalities:
arxiv.org/pdf/2407.14020
Cool stuff, though I would still love to see if we could align different neural modalities without the pretrained VLMs... 🧠📈 🧪
#NeuroAI
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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.14020
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Brian DePasquale
Peter Sokol-Hessner
9 months ago
“Science is a smart, low cost investment. The costs of not investing in it are higher than the risk of doing so… talk to people about science.” -
@kevinochsner.bsky.social
makes his case to the field
#sans2025
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Nicole Rust
9 months ago
First big new
@simonsfoundation.org
neuroscience collaboration launches - exciting!! The product of a HUGE competition among the best minds and teams. Congrats to this group:
www.simonsfoundation.org/neuroscience...
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Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience
The mission of the Simons Collaboration on Ecological NEuroscience (SCENE) is to understand how affordances offered by the world shape representations in the mind and the brain.
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/neuroscience/simons-collaboration-on-ecological-neuroscience/?utm_source=Simons+Foundation&utm_campaign=1110398be2-NEURO_SCENE_LAUNCH_2025&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-1110398be2-746269779
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Brian DePasquale
The Transmitter
9 months ago
Olfactory neuroscientists have known for a while that their stimuli stink. A new analysis illuminates the extent of the problem. By
@callimcflurry.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/olfaction/sm...
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Smell studies often use unnaturally high odor concentrations, analysis reveals
It’s time to fashion olfactory neuroscience stimuli based on odor concentrations in the wild, say study investigators Elizabeth Hong and Matt Wachowiak.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/olfaction/smell-studies-often-use-unnaturally-high-odor-concentrations-analysis-reveals/?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250416-unnatural-high-odor-concentration
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Brian DePasquale
Harrison Ritz
9 months ago
Cool project led by Victor Geadah, fitting smoothly time-varying (and condition-varying) linear dynamical systems to neural activity.
arxiv.org/abs/2502.18347
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Brian DePasquale
Venki Murthy
9 months ago
I feel compelled to acknowledge the dread and dismay that many international students in the US are feeling at the moment - we see you, even if we feel rather powerless for now. Here's the very first visa stamp on my Indian passport ~40 years ago to come to UW Seattle for an MS in Bioengineering.
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David Lipshutz
9 months ago
📣 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
add a skeleton here at some point
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Brian DePasquale
Nima Dehghani
9 months ago
@petersenpeter.bsky.social
@jakhmack.bsky.social
@sejdevries.bsky.social
@bingbrunton.bsky.social
@jeremymagland.bsky.social
@briandepasquale.bsky.social
@maryamshanechi.bsky.social
+others not on sky: David Kleinfeld , Tim Gardner, Maryam Shanechi, Carlos Ponce, Eli Schlizerman, Edgar Walker,...
add a skeleton here at some point
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Brian DePasquale
Ida Bae Wells
9 months ago
Can we get more of this? “The Japanese American National Museum will ‘scrub nothing,’ Fujioka said, and instead will highlight the importance of DEI. “Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and inclusion is what we believe in,” Fujioka said.
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Japanese American National Museum takes a stand against DOGE cuts to NEH
The National Endowment for the Humanities warned museums across the country that it was slashing funding, including money previously pledged to places such as LACMA and the Japanese American National ...
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-04-04/national-endowment-humanities-neh-doge-trump-funding-cuts-museums
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Brian DePasquale
Lee Sweetlove
9 months ago
Lots of excellent advice in this piece. The core message - only through writing do you really think and order your thoughts into logical sense. Makes a case for not using AI for 1st draft because you bypass the thinking step
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@naturebiotech.bsky.social
#PlantScience
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An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write - Nature Biotechnology
Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-025-02584-1
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Got for it! But be warned — I’m sensitive to initial conditions!
add a skeleton here at some point
10 months ago
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Brian DePasquale
Jenelle Feather
10 months ago
Already feeling
#cosyne2025
withdrawal? Apply to the Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! Applications due April 14th
jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org
add a skeleton here at some point
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#cosyne2025
GNN workshop w/
@neurokim.bsky.social
was a huge success! For those looking to stay in touch, see GitHub repo for workshop docs, including our tutorial
github.com/depasquale-l...
!
10 months ago
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Brian DePasquale
Russ Poldrack
10 months ago
This is an utterly amazing paper.
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On the Biology of a Large Language Model
We investigate the internal mechanisms used by Claude 3.5 Haiku — Anthropic's lightweight production model — in a variety of contexts, using our circuit tracing methodology.
https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/biology.html
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Brian DePasquale
Zinn Education Project
10 months ago
"I contend what you are doing is against the rights I have as a citizen of this country."
#tdih
1944 Frank S. Emi interrogated when he refused WWII draft while imprisoned (Exec. Order 9066) as a Japanese American by US gov't. Convicted of conspiracy. Read ⬇️
www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/fr...
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March 31, 1944: Frank S. Emi Interrogated
Frank S. Emi protested the draft during Japanese American incarceration and was interrogated.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/frank-s-emi-interrogated/
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@cosynemeeting.bsky.social
Also! Don’t miss a 💡 insightful tutorial on GNNs for connectomics analysis tomorrow at the workshop! Details here:
sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...
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gnnworkshop cosyne2025
It's All Connected!
https://sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnworkshop-cosyne2025/home
10 months ago
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@cosynemeeting.bsky.social
#wheresmikelong
10 months ago
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Rounding out our speakers
@cosynemeeting.bsky.social
GNN workshop is
@dom-beaini.bsky.social
of
@mila-quebec.bsky.social
and
@valenceai.bsky.social
. Come hear him tell us how to learn a…MOLECULE! Don’t forget brains 🧠 are made of chemicals ⚗️ and chemicals + graphs = 🫶
10 months ago
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More 🔥🔥 speakers at
@cosynemeeting.bsky.social
GNN workshop:
@ninamiolane.bsky.social
who runs the
@geometric-intel.bsky.social
lab at UCSB. She will take us beyond 🚀🚀 GNNs, presenting a survey of message passing topological neural networks for neuroscience
10 months ago
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@cosynemeeting.bsky.social
workshops are almost here! Join GNN workshop w
@neurokim.bsky.social
and Sam Lewallen to hear
@herrsaalfeld.bsky.social
head of computation
@hhmijanelia.bsky.social
present on GNNs for learning structure and function underlying neural assemblies
#cosyne2025
10 months ago
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T-3 days to
#cosyne2025
GNN workshop! Join us to hear Gal Mishne of UCSD talk about graph based methods for learning dynamic functional connectivity. Gal has done a TON of great foundational work on graph based approaches to data analysis in neuroscience — not to be missed!
10 months ago
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