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

It's spooky season, so what better way to spend it than getting horrified by common statistical mistakes? A delightful dark read. It is great to follow the paper's development with reviewers' comments & authors' responses. By Tamar Makin from @plasticity-lab.bsky.social & Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry

I went to see New Dawn Fades last night at @bloomsburytheatre.bsky.social. It was a bittersweet experience. Great play, great music of course, good fun, especially Brian Gorman playing Tony Wilson, but so much struggle and darkness... I raise my virtual hat to Josh Lonsdale's Ian Curtis!

Can looking at art in a gallery impact your #health? New research from @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social and @artfund.bsky.social has compared the body’s responses to viewing original art in a gallery with reproductions in a lab. Click the link to find out more👇 #IoPPNNews bit.ly/47a2Lrr

Nailed it: "When scientists cut loose, it means sitting through academic talks, but maybe while wearing sandals." A graduate student’s guide to department retreats | Science | AAAS

LLMs can be useful for some things, but simulating human research participant responses isn’t one of them

Do yourself a favour and spend 5 minutes watching this.

There are albums that you have listened to such much, that all the songs blend in; you know exactly what comes next. I had my own oddball paradigm yesterday & a beautiful P300 while listening to the The Beatle's Blue Album. I didn't know that the 2023 version had extra songs, e.g. Blackbird

Grazie Sofia! The #Erasmus programme truly changed my life, by enabling me to first go and study in Iceland and then to come to London for the rest of my Erasmus time, where I still am nearly 25+ years later. Now, through #ErasmusPlus, I carry on the tradition and have international collaborations.

That's tomorrow morning's commute soundtrack sorted then!

This is a bit niche, but really interesting! I should have said that I was writing NASA-compatible code when struggling with recursion, pointers of pointers and dodgy memory allocation...

No surprise there!

Worms, flies, zebrafish, mice, rats, human iPSCs Explore how diverse model systems can transform your #Neuroscience research at our BNA Training Academy session. Six expert speakers | Q&A | Certificate of Attendance 👉 Register now: bna.org.uk/events/ems-e... #ModelOrganisms

🏆 Recognising Neuroscience Excellence Applications for 2025 BNA Awards close on 31st October. Open to BNA members: - Outstanding Contribution - Public Engagement - Undergraduate - Postgraduate Apply or nominate today and celebrate neuroscience at its best. bna.org.uk/membership/a...

Read coverage on our article on macroeconomic income inequality, the brain, and mental health in @theguardian.com: www.theguardian.com/science/2025... www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The really interesting history behind something you never really though about. By Francesco Bertelli via

How is this a president?

Such a great insightful video by @dominicwalliman.com! Highly recommended. I had lots of fun today munching on my lunch and discovering more about the world of fungi.

So it looks like there is now an increasing number of people / companies offering services to fix vibe coding problems, as the vibe coders themselves do not have the skills to do it themselves...

In this case, Jeff Somers was just checking for detection rate, without paying attention to the content itself. My guess is that the quality / relevance of the content would degrade more and more as you pass the text repeatedly through these tools, making it paradoxically easier for us to detect...

Really nice and topical letter to read / share, especially as the start of the academic year is around the corner... By @lindsaybrainard.bsky.social

There is nothing like starting the day by stepping out of the house and crashing into a spider web, with the spider ending up on your nose. I am not sure who was the most surprised between us...

We need to keep this in mind when we will eventually use AI to assist us with marking: "Job seekers who use the same AI model to compose resumes as the AI model used to evaluate their application are more likely to advance through the hiring process than those submitting human-written materials"

🧠 We're hiring a computational postdoc! 3+ years with me & @mitulamehta.bsky.social on @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded social cognition/paranoia research at the IoPPN. Lead & develop computational work, collaborate with experimentalists on psychosis/THC data. DM for details! lnkd.in/eCMy9Jf5

Of course they did. All low can they get? We are not even surprised anymore, which is sad...

In a recent interview, JD Vance said that one of his favourite songs is Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. So he is human after all... I really like this live version and he should maybe learn some humility from it...

One of the positives of GenAI is that most of the essays / theses that students hand in these days are well written and easy to read. We can just focus on the science when marking.

You couldn't make this up if you wanted to... "A Italian master painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam has been spotted on the website of an estate agent selling a house in Argentina, more than 80 years after it was taken."

This is what I want to be when I grow up

I still prefer @mattwall.bsky.social's songs, but this is fun! Of course we will all be sick of it within a few days / weeks, but I will enjoy it in the meantime. Maybe this will also help make marking more palatable...

Worrying, but predictable due to over-reliance on tools: see how useless we are at finding directions when GPS is down. "In conclusion, we observed that continuous exposure to AI in colonoscopy might reduce the [Adenoma Detection Rate] of standard, non-AI assisted colonoscopy" via @theregister.com