New work on automated (interpretable!!) experimental design, led by @noemielteto.bsky.social See 👇 for thread

Agentic coding makes it possible to specify a neuroscience model in hours instead of months, writes @briandepasquale.bsky.social. The field risks becoming prolific but shallow—generating models faster than we can generate insights. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

I have been so excited about this project. In many ways the most surprising thing to me was how seemingly similar the AI-discovered models were to simple ones I thought I understood, even though they fit way better. This means we can also really get what makes them work.

New preprint! Very excited to share our new work introducing DataDIVER, for automatically discovering interpretable computational models from scientific data 📊🤿 See below for a visual summary from my magnificent co-lead @kevinjmiller.bsky.social ! 👇

The US/Iran war and escalating rhetoric are already disrupting civilian life and academic infrastructure across the region. We drafted a letter in defense of academic life, and to mobilize concrete support for affected students, scholars, and collaborations. Please check Sepi’s message and sign.

Some reports say over 500 schools, 55 libraries, & 25 universities hit. You can debate the numbers, but hitting Sharif University & Beheshti is like hitting MIT & Stanford. I keep wondering: How would the scientific community respond differently if it was those universities? What’s the difference?

Last night, US/Israeli strikes bombed Sharif University, my alma mater, heavily damaging the IT Center, Philosophy of Science building, EE, and more. Trump spoke of sending Iran "back to the Stone Age." That is the goal of this war. Scientists worldwide should speak up against these atrocities.

There are universities in Iran being bombed, the Weizmann Institute in Israel was bombed, Gaza universities destroyed, and US science and universities under authoritarian attack. I have friends and colleagues doing neuroscience in or from those places. Across countries, we have much in common.

How can machines achieve the kind of flexible learning mastered by our brains? That’s what our own @neurokim.bsky.social is trying to find out! Learn more about ARNI’s work on natural and artificial intelligence: youtu.be/gM8YCaiAWrc?... #BrainAwarenessWeek

#Cosyne2026 workshops pro tip: It's often hard to pick a single workshop due to fomo about the cool workshops you *cannot* attend. I recommend a buddy system: Have a friend go to a different session, and then both of you report back at the next meal.

Wonderful work by @weijiazh.bsky.social at #Cosyne2026, who beautifully navigated a busy poster session yesterday!

Awesome work by esteemed colleague @jessegeerts.bsky.social at #Cosyne2026

Hippocampal sequences encode recent history independent of task relevance. Poster in today's session (2-149) at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social . led by @gabymichel.bsky.social (collab w Spruston Lab at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social )!

Poster in today's session (2-115) at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social : Parallel dopamine signals support hierarchical reinforcement learning of motor sequences 🧠 by @arnavraha.bsky.social , an awesome student working with me + Vikram Gadagkar

Fabulous keynote session at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social. @neurokim.bsky.social and I kicked off the meeting and introduced Chris Olah. m.youtube.com/watch?v=koGy...

I have just arrived at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social ! During my flight, as I thought about opening remarks (and had a glass of wine), I got to reflect on why I love neuroscience. Maybe other folks are doing the same and would like to read or add, so I thought I'd do something unusual and share!

Pleased to see some friends' names here :) notdivided.org

Updated work from @jessegeerts.bsky.social extending his results on transitive inference in transformers (including LLMs!) updated paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04289 bleeprint (what are we calling these?) below ⬇️

Researchers are using LLMs to analyze the literature, brainstorm hypotheses, build models and interact with complex datasets. Hear from @mschrimpf.bsky.social, @neurokim.bsky.social, @jeremymagland.bsky.social, @profdata.bsky.social and others. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

Our summer program values mentorship as much as scientific skill-building, connecting Africa’s talents with experts in both #academia and #industry. Grateful to @neurokim.bsky.social & @ankahira.bsky.social for inspiring our 2025 cohort. @columbiauniversity.bsky.social @astra-zeneca.bsky.social

🧠 How do transformers learn relational reasoning? We trained small transformers on transitive inference (if A>B and B>C, then A>C) and discovered striking differences between learning paradigms. Our latest work reveals when and why AI systems generalize beyond training data 🤖

New work on relational reasoning in transformers! TLDR: Inductive biases of In-Weight and In-Context Learning in transformers are really different for relational reasoning, and pretraining can make a big difference for in-context. Check out @jessegeerts.bsky.social's thread for more!

This is fucking insane

💥 Do we now have all the components necessary to reach #AGI, or are there more discoveries to be made? Can the study of the brain help provide them? We tackle these questions and more at our Conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience and AI in sun-soaked Split, Croatia: www.neuromonster.org

Tomorrow is our @cosynemeeting.bsky.social workshop on Graph Neural Networks! From molecules to circuits to biomechanics to reasoning behaviors to social behaviors, neuroscience is rich with geometrically structured data. Our goal: demystify GNNs, talk opportunities for 🧠

@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

Her lab does impressive foundational work on geometric statistics and manifold learning, sure to be an amazing talk! Come for the GNNs, stay for the manifolds! #cosyne2025 @neurokim.bsky.social

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

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 = 🫶

Sign these petitions to release detained students: www.change.org/p/free-mahmo... www.change.org/p/free-rumey... www.change.org/p/release-un... @change.org

Beautiful piece about Rumeysa Öztürk, the tufts student who was abducted and detained for political speech, which paints a picture of a warm, compassionate, beloved member of the Tufts community (my alma mater) from those who know her. as.tufts.edu/epcshd/news-...

Just over a week to #cosyne2025 workshops! Speaker profile number 2 for GNN workshop w/ @neurokim.bsky.social and Sam Lewallen is @kristinmbranson.bsky.social of @hhmijanelia.bsky.social! Kristin’s lab develops cutting edge machine vision approaches for quantitatively studying animal behavior.

Looking for an exciting fellowship in AI & Neuro, with competitive salary (~£100k)? We got a new position in the lab at Oxford, working with @somnirons.bsky.social and me! 🧪 Our project: encode.pillar.vc/projects/beh... General info: encode.pillar.vc #compneuro #neuroai #neuroscience #sciencejobs

Want to procedurally generate large-scale relational reasoning experiments in natural language, to study human psychology 🧠 or eval LLMs 🤖? We have a tool for you! Our latest #ICLR work on long-context/relational reasoning evaluation for LLMs ReCogLab! github.com/google-deepm... Thread ⬇️

Also shoutout to @jiaxuanqi.bsky.social, @schreinerdrew.bsky.social, Miles Martinez, @jmxpearson.bsky.social & Rich Mooney—amazing that we independently found complementary results & got to publish them together! Super exciting time for DA + motor learning research! 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

TL;DR: Natural behavior is learned through dopamine-mediated reinforcement! Tons more cool analyses by Jon Kasdin, Alison Duffy, Nathan Nadler, (me 😉), Adrienne Fairhall, @neurokim.bsky.social & Vikram Gadagkar in the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... (7/7)

Countdown to #COSYNE2025! Leading up to @cosynemeeting.bsky.social GNN workshop w @neurokim.bsky.social and Sam, allow us to introduce our fabulous speakers, starting with @wesleyqian.bsky.social! Wesley is part of osmo.ai foundling team, using GNNs to digitize smell!

By studying songbirds, our own Vikram Gadagkar, @neurokim.bsky.social, Jonathan Kasdin and colleagues witnessed the role the brain’s reward machinery plays as the brain naturally learns over time through practice. Learn more! zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/songbirds-hi...

Not in my name. If you are a Jewish university affiliate and want to express that cuts to university research do not protect Jews and do not address anti-semitism, consider signing here: forms.gle/prnRbq69a6YN...

Calling all @cosynemeeting.bsky.social attendees! @neurokim.bsky.social, Sam Lewallen and I are organizing a 🔥🔥 workshop on graph approaches to neuroscience, including graph neural networks! For info see sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...

Washington Square Park, Friday 12-3pm in NYC! Safety tips: standupforscience2025.org/protest-safe...

🚨 Neuromatch Academy Course Applications are OPEN for 2025!! 🚨 Get your application in early to be a student or teaching assistant for this year’s courses! Applications are due Sunday, March 23. Apply & learn more: neuromatch.io/courses/ #mlsky #compneurosky #ai #climatesolutions #ScienceEdu 🧪

⚡️ Excited to introduce ZAPBench, our #ICLR2025 spotlight: The Zebrafish Activity Prediction Benchmark measures progress in predicting neural activity within an entire vertebrate brain (70k+ neurons!) Explore interactive visualizations, datasets, code + paper: google-research.github.io/zapbench 🧠🧪

Barto and Sutton receive the Turing award! Amazing recognition for two kind, pioneering, and genuinely inspiring scientists. Congratulations!! awards.acm.org/about/2024-t...

Coming out to Stand Up for Science on Friday at noon? Consider tuning in to this webinar!

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025! Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide! #scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

A new pile of these pins arrived yesterday. DM me an address along with a pledge or description of what you are doing to advocate for science and I'll do my best to send one your way. (Note: it's a bit tricky to do internationally but don't hold back; I'll see if I can solve that problem).

Keynote Speakers: Prof Jay McClelland Prof Eve Marder Prof Wolfgang Maass Prof Christine Constantinople Prof @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social (@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social ) Dr Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social Dr Kim Stachenfeld @neurokim.bsky.social Prof Jakob Foerster

Recruiting phd/postdocs to mentor Undergrad Awardees!! This program brings UGs from across the 🌎 considering a career in neuro research Duties: meet students on 1st day, take them to a poster session, help them feel welcome. Apply: (very short!) form forms.gle/9hCniCA29ky5...

one of the most intriguing projects i've been involved in: automated scientific discovery in an area (human/animal RL) I've been working on forever. can an LLM do the job of my grad students? if it is backed up by super smart scientists incl @pcastr.bsky.social @neurokim.bsky.social & kevin miller