www.aft.org/column/why-f... New book by Randi Weingarten President, AFT “They fear what educators do—the teaching of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, power and privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens.”

Trump wants UCLA to pay $1.2 billion to settle allegations it violated civil rights law. I took a look at the more than 7,300-word proposed UCLA settlement. Here's the detailed breakdown of Trump's plan to remake one of the nation's top public campuses: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Very proud of my Brazilian heritage today. (We went to celebrate at our favorite Brazilian restaurant where some menu items were unavailable because of the 50% tariffs Trump imposed to punish Brazil for prosecuting Bolsonaro). Open access article. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/o...

Wait, isn’t Anthropic’s motto Helpful, Honest, and Harmless. If you train AIs on pirated books are you teaching AIs to pirate? (Open access article) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/t...

join us for our Science Fair for Suspended Research, sponsored by the UCLA Faculty Association and the UCLA Brain Research Institute! We are reaching out to the public to show the life-saving research that is at stake in the Trump admin's attack on UCLA research!

Well this is going to be a tragic natural experiment. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

New study by @brendannyhan.bsky.social, @jasonreifler.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrates that prebunking election fraud rumors — by warning about anticipated false claims & filling conceptual gaps that those claims exploit — helps to reduce belief in falsehoods: www.science.org/content/arti...

Despite Supreme Court win, NIH may not quickly kill again some 900 grants on sensitive topics | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

I think there must be a cognitive bias by which we assume that two scientific mysteries must somehow cancel eachother out (looking at you Dr. Penrose).

"When I talk about fish on Bluesky, people ask me questions about fish. When I talk about fish on Twitter, people threaten to murder my family because we’re Jewish." Quote of @whysharksmatter.bsky.social (David Shiffman) arstechnica.com/science/2025...

🚨Another PI job opening in the Neuroscience dept. at @umontreal.ca ! 🚨 www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Rather than voters picking politicians, politicians picking voters. With the redistricting arms race on, I spoke to @samwang.bsky.social for a big-picture view of gerrymandering.

This does have some good news, but it is unclear what this means for the affected researchers other than delay, uncertainty, and disrupted careers.

Open access article: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...

Let’s do this www.universityofcalifornia.edu/get-involved...

How can any American with a shred of respect for democracy and/or education continue to defend this kind of blatantly illegal, corrupt, and self-destructive malfeasance?

relevant

It looks like all NSF/NIH grants to UCLA (including mine and all fundamental neuroscience grants) have been suspended. www.science.org/content/arti...

Cutting funding for life-saving research has nothing to do with attacking antisemitism. It has everything to do with attacking science, universities, and California. And sadly, it is our health, our knowledge and our economy that will pay the price.

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch... Critical read: As noted by a colleague, from the examples in this article, it is amazing how quickly German physics collapsed (and US exploded) after 1934. #academicsky, #neuroskyence , is there time and a route to prevent the collapse of research in the US?

Hey, I wrote a thing. I (and others) think that our sense of time and mental well-being are linked. Here are my thoughts on it. Thanks @psyche.co for the invite! psyche.co/guides/how-t...

I don't disagree and I have data (now rather old but I bet still relevant) to support this. loop.nigms.nih.gov/2011/06/prod...

JOB ALERT: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoc position in Osaka, Japan! Possible start in October 2025 (contact me ASAP), or from April 2026. PLEASE REPOST! #postdocjobs #neuroskyence #neuroscience #psychscisky #compneurosky #neurojobs 1/

Super fun chat with a fellow time enthusiast, @danfalk.bsky.social (author of In Search of Time). (I gave a shout-out to what I believe to be the most mind blowing of the intrinsically mind blowing time-travel movie genre: Predestination)

This is an excellent statement of scientific values that we should all strive to uphold. 🧪🧠🤖 Sharing from @suryaganguli.bsky.social , who said this is the Stanford Med affirmation that all their PhD grads sign. 1/

Cool paper led by @nataliyakosmyna.bsky.social convincingly showing poorer retention when using LLMs for essays. But I wonder if any of the EEG effects can be accounted for by time-on-task? Eg do the effects hold if just the first 5’ (out of the 20’) of EEG are used? arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Physicists have a lot to say about time, but so do neuroscientists -- after all, it's the brain which in some sense creates time, and enables our remarkable capacity for "mental time travel." I spoke with neuroscientist @deanbuono.bsky.social for @nautil.us: nautil.us/does-anybody... #science

Thanks to Maryada (@giacomoi.bsky.social lab)! Due to component variability it is hard to set the weights across neuromorphic devices. Using our crosshomeostatic learning rule, that governs all four weight classes, we drove neuromorphic RNNs into balanced E/I regimes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm extremely proud of the work of Maryada, Saray Soldado-Magraner and colleagues, in collaboration with @deanbuono.bsky.social which shows how their #cross-homeostatic #plasticity model enables analog #neuromorphic #circuits to produce stable recurrent dynamics on our chips!!! rdcu.be/euiv2

The main reason I don't consider IIT to be a valid scientific theory, is: 1. IIT is new law of physics-some simple configurations of matter are conscious 2. Physics is an incomplete puzzle, but we cannot make up new laws wo verifying if the new piece fits with the others (I don't think it does).

Thank you for 17 years of fluffy memories. I'll miss you, but never forget you, my friend.

Nice piece by Ken Jennings “But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter. Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/o...

The Gutting of America’s Medical Research: Here Is Every Canceled or Delayed N.I.H. Grant www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

“Much of U.S. power and influence is derived from our science and technology supremacy,” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/w...

Another tragic consequence of Trump’s economic policy is that when we should be increasing taxes to prepare for an inevitable AI induced-spike in unemployment he is cutting social safety net programs for trillion dollar tax breaks to the rich.

Among all the other horrors they create, mass shootings are also provably ... bad for business. "Mass shootings result in an estimated $27 billion annual revenue loss for U.S. retailers." www.informs.org/News-Room/IN...

“To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.” Harvard Derangement Syndrome www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/o...

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

Really cool new science from the Portera-Cailliau lab on the neural circuit basis of social touch avoidance in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

FAPESP recently announced two new calls to attract international researchers to São Paulo. Both opportunities include grant funding and scholarships, and could be interesting depending on career stage and plans. #neuroskyence #AcademicSky Here is a quick summary of each:

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Sharing a new paper from the lab. This paper, led by Sangyoon Ko, represents a merging of two longstanding research themes in the lab-- adult neurogenesis and systems consolidation. rdcu.be/el18q A short thread follows for those interested. 1/n

Excited and thrilled and humbled that our work is now out at Nature Human Behaviour linking Memorability with Time Perception! I hope you all find it of interest 🙂 Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) #academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science

Our recent research published in PNAS is featured today in the Research and Innovation at City College (RICC) Newsletter. Thanks so much to the CCNY Office of Research @ccnyresearch.bsky.social for your support and interest! thericc.com/exploring-em...

The National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, has fired 1,300 employees and cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. https://cbsn.ws/4daiCrv

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081