Consumer neurotechnology is coming. We need to talk about it 👇

Super proud to have contributed to this amazing team effort, led by @sreejan.bsky.social and @botoscsabi.bsky.social! We asked: Which AI models learn to play video games like humans, comparing both behavior and internal representations. The answer surprised us! Check out our paper and post below

Out now on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social, a study from our electron microscopy team exploring the connections between excitatory neurons in layers 2,3, and 5 of the mouse brain. 🔬 Check out the study: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.23.720412v1

In 1986, John White published "The Mind of a Worm," the first complete wiring diagram of any animal's brain. 7,000+ synapses in C. elegans, mapped by hand. This year he won the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences. And he's donating his share to OpenWorm.

Important modeling work

1 year ago: "We developed and released tools for automated vulnerability detection. Look how we're using it to secure medical devices!" <everyone shrugs> Today: "Anthropic's new model automates vulnerability detection, but they are not releasing it because it's too dangerous." <everyone freaks out>

Excited to launch a new podcast on the future of neurotech, computing, intelligence, and more. First guest: @maxhodak.bsky.social founder & CEO of @science.xyz building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic restoring meaningful vision for patients with AMD. www.youtube.com/watch?v=24CM...

What is holding #neurotech back from being one of the greatest breakthroughs of our time? Infrastructure. Getting from approval to access takes years — delaying patient access & company capital. PL Neuro aims to break these bottlenecks. Here's our Roadmap: zenodo.org/records/1924...

PL Neuro is officially live! plneuro.xyz We exist to break bottlenecks, accelerate progress in neurotech & NeuroAI, and to invest in innovations that benefit humanity. PL Neuro will focus on 3 core areas: - Neural augmentation - Biologically-inspired intelligence - Whole brain emulation

1/ Neurotechnology is one of the defining opportunities of this century. We’re already seeing the potential to restore function, treat disease, and eventually expand human capability.

Preprint out arguing that we should build the techology to translate (compile) molecularly annotated connectomes into dynamics. I think this is incredibly important. arxiv.org/abs/2603.25713

Galen Buckwalter, a quadriplegic, received a brain implant in 2024 that is allowing him to create music with his thoughts. "It is so empowering to be able to do entirely unique things," he says. I spoke with Galen about the process and the importance of creativity: www.wired.com/story/meet-t...

Meet the Head of PL Neuro, @seanescola.bsky.social. In his new paper, he introduces the idea of “cognitive dark matter." A thoughtful framing of one of the biggest open questions in neuroscience. 👇

Governor of Texas just ordered a statewide medical cybersecurity review based on my team's work for @arpa-h.bsky.social Fantastic real-world impact for patients! 👇 gov.texas.gov/uploads/file...

"Russian flu," the pandemic that hit in 1977, bears an evolutionary signature of having emerged from a lab, perhaps as part of a failed vaccine effort. Covid, mpox, Ebola, and other influenza pandemics don't. Here's my story on a new way to trace the origins of pandemics. Gift link: nyti.ms/46N0W33

Monitoring gene expression in the brain with a simple blood test? In collaboration with @jerzyszablowski.bsky.social & his lab we figured out how to do it nonhuman primates using noninvasive neuroengineering of synthetic serum markers. nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Connectomics is Method of the Year 2025!! @natmethods.nature.com just released the news nature.com/articles/s41... In my perspective piece, I afford some predictions into the future and compare how we are doing vs. genomics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1 year later and wow, exciting to see big things in the works!!!

Our new paper showcasing molecular connectomics with pan-expansion microscopy is out in @natbiotech.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... This wonderful collaboration with @bewersdorflab.bsky.social was led by Ons M'Saad (now founder/CEO of Panluminate) and @allisonphysics.bsky.social. (1/5)

Lots of excitement around open source computational binder design (BoltzGen FTW!), but as far as I can tell it's still ~2x more expensive per target than a traditional campaign with a CRO. (60k runs/target) x (2 mins/run) x ($5/hr for an A100) = $10k/target vs ~$5k with a CRO

I will be co-teaching a summer course at Allen Institute on connectomics education please apply. Travel support, new connectomics data sets and learning directly from the scientists who built these datasets. Details here: alleninstitute.org/events/incor...

I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's increasingly tempting to believe frontier models truly understand concepts and their relationships like humans do. Then I get a figure like this from today's leading model and the illusion is ruined. <sigh>

Is there an academic/industry divide in attitudes about using AI to support discovery? I noticed this post has 3.6k likes on X but only 6 likes on Bluesky. It deserves more attention here!

For a decade, my white whale as a neuroscientist has been working to convince public+private funders to "go big" on post-mortem human tissue analysis, so we can define circuit disruptions in disease and just maybe link them with molecular drivers. This remains as tough a sell today as 10 years 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.

Very excited that the clinical trial results for our PRIMA retinal prosthesis are published today in the New England Journal of Medicine! This is the first time that patients who are blind due to photoreceptor loss have been able to intuitively see again. www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qT...

Applying new tools to entire brains, starting with C. elegans, offers the opportunity to uncover how molecules work together to generate neural physiology, and how neurons generate behavior, write @kordinglab.bsky.social and @eboyden3.bsky.social. #neuroskyence bit.ly/48EzEO8

Combinatorial protein barcodes enable self-correcting neuron tracing with nanoscale molecular context https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678648v1

Settle a debate for me: If you could hook up a fruit fly brain to a completely new set of end effectors, could it learn to use them for goal-directed behavior? To what extent is an insect brain evolutionarily specialized for controlling its body? #FlyBCI

How to make frontier AI models safer and accelerate drug discovery with the connectome. We are featured in this @ifp.bsky.social article by @adammarblestone.bsky.social & @andrewcpayne.bsky.social ifp.org/mapping-the-...

There is a famine currently affecting 640k children in Sudan, driven by military action funded by a key US ally in the Middle East. It's been widely reported in the media since 2023. Yet no condemnation by public figures, no demonstrations in the US. Why does no one care?

Amazing work

(1/7) New preprint from Rajan lab! 🧠🤖 @ryanpaulbadman1.bsky.social & Riley Simmons-Edler show–through cog sci, neuro & ethology–how an AI agent with fewer ‘neurons’ than an insect can forage, find safety & dodge predators in a virtual world. Here's what we built Preprint: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06981

The writing's on the wall that the future of neuroscience is team science. The key question is how to balance support for "top-down" vs "bottom-up" collaborative research efforts. I agree teams of early career researchers deserve greater agency. Thoughtful piece by @neuralreckoning.bsky.social 👇

This 👇 is a major advantage of optical circuit mapping approaches over non-destructive (i.e. non FIB) serial section EM. Fewer failure modes that prevent tracing across distinct imaging volumes.

Thought problem: If you could deeply phenotype a whole brain - mapping all ultrastructure and connectivity, plus in situ proteomics, metabolomics and transcriptomics - would that be sufficient to constrain a model of its function under all conditions? What's the minimal data needed for emulation?

Gratified by today's news of a $155M seed round for DNA data storage newco Atlas, built on technologies developed under the IARPA MIST program. It validates my "if we de-risk it investors will come" thesis. Also means my public service has now driven >$1B of economic activity 🙂

I've said it publicly before and I'll say it again: science awards that preferentially recognize individuals are an anachronism. This just doesn't reflect how much of today's impactful science gets done. 4/

I received an email that I've personally been nominated for "2025 Breakthrough of the Year" for MICrONS, by a science org I won't call out here. 🧵

“The MICrONS advances published in this special issue of Nature are a watershed moment for neuroscience, comparable to the Human Genome Project in their transformative potential"

“The MICrONS advances published in this special issue of Nature are a watershed moment for neuroscience, comparable to the Human Genome Project in their transformative potential"

We submitted an OpEd on the economic and national security importance of basic science shortly after the election (i.e. before any cuts began). No media outlet would publish it. Now that the horse has left the barn, suddenly every outlet has OpEds on the importance of basic science funding.

🚨 There are 30M legacy medical devices in the US and 6.2 vulnerabilities per device. Our health infrastructure is NOT SECURE. To fix it, we need tools that automate vulnerability detection and remediation at scale. Today, my team is releasing those tools. 🧵

A top journal has an upcoming special issue on transformative neuroscience advances (10 papers!) that were driven by an ARPA program's focused R&D approach. But so far, the funding agency seems unwilling (unable?) to publicly discuss how its work delivered this impact. 1/

Joshua Sanes: "If I were starting my career today, I would focus on human neurobiology."

Trump has rescinded the Bioeconomy EO, calling it "radical biotech and biomanufacturing initiatives." www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

A colleague who recently advertised a postdoctoral position in cancer research told me he's been flooded with resumes from US government staff with 20+ years of experience. I imagine this is happening across fields.