In the 17th century, Johannes Kepler calculated the densest way to pack circles or spheres. Today, biophysicists are using his ideas to example how chloroplasts pack optimally in a plant cell.

I had vaguely heard of "one-shot learning" brain plasticity and this @quantamagazine.bsky.social article by Yasemin Saplakoglu offers a good overview of what “behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity" (BTSP) is / could be.

A spooky classic, both the poem and this The Simpsons' episode segment. The annual The Treehouse of Horror episodes coming out for Halloween were always my favourites.

Sobering and really interesting episode of this great podcast. It is good to hear a balanced, reasonable view on what AI will be and probably won't be able to do.

How do exclusion and adversity drive social learning in adolescence? Here, @drjk.bsky.social, Lyn Ellett and I show that social exclusion reduces adolescent belief flexibility about others at a later point in time, and reduces the ability to generalise from social cues - 🧵 1/5

From labs to Glastonbury 🎪🧠 BNA Local Groups brought SenseShift to the festival to explore perception, mental health & neurodiversity with the public. This is what happens when local ideas get support. Want to be part of it? Join your local BNA group www.bna.org.uk/resource/sen...

From dementia prediction to brain-inspired AI - and the ethics in between. One day. Big questions. Register here: bna.org.uk/events/aiand... #ArtificialIntelligence #Neuroscience #AI #BrainScience #HealthcareInnovation #Neurotechnology #Research

Really cool hyperscanning research from up the road. We should get you down to the @kingsioppn.bsky.social to present this @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social !

When Soviet Youth Bootlegged Western Rock Music on Discarded X‑Rays: Hear Original Audio Samples

If you have ever wondered what is involved in proposing a new emoji, check out @neilcohn.bsky.social 's proposal for the newly released Fight Cloud emoji.

Watch Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bending Masterpiece Free Online h

Did you know King’s is home to one of the largest tissue banks in the UK? This #BrainAwarenessWeek, Dr Claire Troakes invites us into the London Neurodegenerative Diseases Brain Bank – driving neuroscience research both in King’s and around the world. @kingsioppn.bsky.social #ScienceAtKings

My worst nightmare!

It's fine, we can just sit outside on the pavement to do our non-digital research.

Interesting long read demonstrating what could have been predicted. I have had students telling me that it is easier & faster for them to do things without AI. @drkatedevlin.bsky.social “AI brain fry” [...] mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity"

The little guys are learning now. Come on cortical organoids, we need you strong to fight AI!

We never retire, we just fade away like our treasured t-shirts

Just received the new book @neilcohn.bsky.social. I am looking forward to delve in it, as ChatGPT would say!

From data to Viz - Find the graphic you need #oldaily https://www.downes.ca/post/78858 Tom Woodward links to three interesting graphing resources in one post.

If you’re going to write a tutorial paper describing a tool or method, it makes a world of difference showing the paper to someone unfamiliar with the tool and asking them to recreate the examples. Some of these papers can be really tricky to follow

After taking 7 years to write and draw, my new graphic novel, Speaking in Pictures, about language, cognition, comics, and visual communication is out in less than a week! At long last! www.visuallanguagelab.com/sip

A safe and nurturing environment is key to promoting youth mental health. On this #ChildrensMentalHealthWeek we recommit to finding out what promotes resilience in children and young people - find out more about our research here: www.qmul.ac.uk/wiph/centres...

Interesting thread to start the day with! I think that I will wait to have breakfast first before looking at the articles...

Abstracts close 10 February! BNA members are invited to submit abstracts for the BNA Members’ Meeting 2026 (22–23 April, online). A great chance to share your work, get feedback, and connect with the neuroscience community. Submit here: www.bna.org.uk/events/ems-e...

Irony alert: Anthropic helps UK.gov to build chatbot for job seekers

This is not something that I ever found myself thinking about, but now I am curious...

Is anyone really surprised by this? "So I agree this isn't just wiring up of dependencies, and neither is it copied from existing implementations: it's a uniquely bad design that could never support anything resembling a real-world web engine." by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in @theregister.com

Essential reading these days...

I think we're currently in the "radium skin cream" phase with AI. When we discovered radioactivity, people tried to cram into everything, and it didn't end well. AI is a discovery at least as important as radioactivity, and at least as dangerous.

It is great to see the return of the mighty @thevinylvault.bsky.social ! I am looking forward to more banter and fierce musical debates!

A Brief History of Surrealist Art: From the Bible and Ancient Egypt to Salvador Dalí’s Dream Worlds

🔬 Beginner-friendly #microscopy training with Dr Adrian Garcia-Burgos from @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social #Undergrads, #PhD students, #postdocs & #ECRs welcome. Hands-on guidance, imaging & analysis skills. Secure your spot 👇 www.bna.org.uk/events/ems-e... #ResearchTraining

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

Nice one: "“Anna Karenina scenario” a nod to the opening line of the classic Tolstoy novel: Perhaps successful AI models are all alike, and every unsuccessful model is unsuccessful in its own way."

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

Interesting to see that things haven't moved much since I was a student. We still debate global workspace theory of consciousness despite decades of neuroscience/psychology research on the topic: "Shouldn't the difference be as obvious as peering through a keyhole versus standing in an open field?"

Fun way to spend 18 minutes during these liminal days when we don't even know what day of the week it is, and we don't care.

The introduction of spaces between words revolutionized reading and writing, transforming how individuals engage with texts and think. This innovation facilitated silent reading, deep reflection, and personal expression in writing.

Last week, the BNA joined the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee's Christmas Reception to champion UK #neuroscience, celebrate our members’ achievements, and highlight key policy priorities. Read more: www.bna.org.uk/resource/bna...

What a sad state of affairs...

Enough said: "The developers can’t debug code they didn’t write. Product managers can’t explain decisions they didn’t make. Leaders can’t defend strategies they didn’t develop" & "The developers who’ve been using AI since day one won’t have the architectural understanding to teach" by Josh Anderson.

We tested one of the most common prompting techniques: giving the AI a persona to make it more accurate We found that telling the AI "you are a great physicist" doesn't make it significantly more accurate at answering physics questions, nor does "you are a lawyer" make it worse.

Linus, the creator of Linux and Git, is so savage 🤣. He doesn't hold back. Linus Torvalds is OK with vibe coding as long as it's not used for anything that matters www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/l...

Today I have seen more “just use Linux” messages than ever before. Gurl, until Linux can absolutely get down plug-n-play like behavior, the general public will not be ready for Linux unless everyone gets a huge dosage of computer literacy. And I will tell you now, from teaching adults: hahahahaha

Learn how to write cleaner, reusable, and well-documented code with Dr Sanjay Manohar (University of Oxford).
Practical tips in Python, MATLAB & R to boost your workflow and avoid common pitfalls. 📅 27 Nov 2025 | 🕑 2–5 pm Register here: www.bna.org.uk/events/ems-e... #coding #MATLAB

Is there anything worse than seeing this note on an empty plate in the kitchen at work?

I am not sure what kind of experiment is going on at the Pears Maudsley Centre, but it looks like fun! @kingsmaudsley.bsky.social @maudsleycharity.bsky.social @kingsioppn.bsky.social

Join us on 26 Nov (12 - 1pm GMT) for a webinar sharing early findings from @UCL’s REPAIR Project, exploring structural inequities in funding, recognition & career progression. Free to attend Register here: www.bna.org.uk/events/ems-e... #ResearchCulture# STEMEquity #Neuroscience #AcademicCareers

The challenge in learning using AI is very similar to the same learning issue discovered about internet search When we are given answers we think we learn, but we don’t. Learning is work. However, things like the “learning modes” from the AI providers help, as does using AI for tutoring not answers