Scientists have long debated whether neurons are jacks of all trades or tend to specialize in one thing. Now @stefanofusi.bsky.social, @lorenzoposani.com & Liam Paninski present new evidence in @nature.com shedding light on how the brain performs complex tasks. tinyurl.com/yj3ew8en

Out today on @nature.com! Connecting neural specialization, population geometry, and their functional implications across the cortical hierarchy. So grateful for this beautiful and fun collaboration with @shuqiw.bsky.social, S Muscinelli, L Paninski, and @stefanofusi.bsky.social!

Our paper "Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy" is now out in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41... In this paper, we studied whether the brain is well-organized and interpretable, both globally and locally. (See thread below.)

📂 We're sharing code of a classic from the lab! A biologically inspired RL model from Frémaux, Sprekeler @sprekeler.bsky.social & Gerstner (2013, PLOS CB): a continuous-time actor–critic using spiking neurons that learn to navigate a water maze

Specialized neurons are the exception, not the rule, in cortex. The brain is complex, go figure! www.thetransmitter.org/neural-codin... #neuroscience

We always see that 1) neural responses are very diverse 2) the shattering dimensionality is as high as it can be. Now also in an extensive analysis of the IBL dataset. Wonderful collaboration with @lorenzoposani.com, Shuqi Wang, Samuel Muscinelli, Liam Paninski. Many new analyses in this new version

Talk on "High-dimensional neuronal activity from low-dimensional latent dynamics" at NeurIPS 2025 with @haydari.bsky.social now accessible online 🎥: neurips.cc/virtual/2025... Please reach out if you have any comments or ideas for follow-up work!

Our new preprint 👀