This paper is absolutely wild and amazing. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great essay indeed! Another quote: "Karl Popper contrasted clocks, systems that can be decomposed and optimized piece by piece, with clouds, systems whose behavior emerges from complex interactions." (1/2)

interesting thread on the biological implementation of ring attractor manifolds

This is a great article from @juangallego.bsky.social. I still feel less excited about "neural foundation models" than Juan, but I have to say he makes his case very convincingly, both for the advantages and disadvantages. Well worth a read!

A friend just reminded me about our sensorimotor starter pack, so here it is: go.bsky.app/U4oyFgw If you're into sensorimotor control of movement and it's application this should be a good place to start. Also DM to be added, there are a bunch of spots for people to be added

Cool new work on an old important question

What are the real promises and looming perils of neural foundation models? 🧠 I put my thoughts on (virtual) paper for @thetransmitter.bsky.social following a very energised workshop at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social 2025. It's also my first piece for them 😊

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity, writes @juangallego.bsky.social. But will we be able to understand them? #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/why-...

A really cool project!

Thrilled to share the recent preprint / & thesis project of @pearlsald.bsky.social: We had rats actively pursue a moving bait & found a dedicated subset of retrosplenial cortex cells encoding target location (but not boundaries or objects) relative to the head. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

All we are is manifolds in the wind... That's not quite what Juan @juangallego.bsky.social says, but I do wish he sang it to me. We discuss all things neural manifolds, and a little motor control and BCI for spinal injury prosthetics braininspired.co/podcast/234/

Antimatter delivery anyone? I first wrote about plans to transport this wildly volatile stuff (looking at another @cern.bsky.social expt) in 2018 They've finally done it! Amazing ⚛️🧪 This tiny sample of 92 antiprotons is a huge world first My @nature.com story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

In case you missed it-- check out our Paper Skygest preprint! ⤵️

New paper hot off the (pre-)press! We dig into the evolutionary origins of neural computations for behavioral control across mice, monkeys, and humans: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... As our lab's first foray into comparative analysis of neural dynamics, I’m super excited about this work! 1/18

Was an intellectual pleasure working on this with @quiltydunn.bsky.social Someone who also feels that there is a glaring gap in current cognitive science/neuroscience/AI

New paper alert! 🚨 We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales 1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks 2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps. Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

While preparing your #NCMKobe26 abstract, read through the highlights from #NCMPan25! The meeting highlight article is now available for review. Thank you to some of the scholarship winners from 2025 for putting the article together. journals.physiology....

Hello, BlueSky! This is the official account for Janelia conferences & workshops. We’ll share calls for applications, deadlines, and meeting updates. Browse meetings & apply: janelia.news/conferences

Our paper on the "Oneirogen hypothesis" is now up in its revised form on eLife! This is the hypothesis that psychedelics induce a dream-like state, which we show via modelling could explain a variety of perceptual and learning effects from such drugs. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 🧠📈 🧪

Are you thinking about doing neuroscience outreach but want to make it more exciting or hands on? Check out RetINaBox! (A collab led by the Trenholm lab) We tried to bring the experience of experimental neuroscience to a classroom setting: www.eneuro.org/content/13/1... #neuroscience 🧪

👀 #newpreprint: 🎮 Real-time Pong gameplay after #spinalcordinjury by learning to control just one motor unit from paralysed muscle - no implants. Co-led by @juangallego.bsky.social and Dario Farina, with work carried out at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social. 📄👉🔗 shorturl.at/RYuYG

Excited to share @rbrianroome.bsky.social ‘s beautiful paper on development of the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord @science.org This is how the anatomical organization and cell types that process pain, touch, body position and more are laid down. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨📜+🧵🚨 Very excited about this work showing that people with no hand function following a spinal cord injury can control the activity of motor units from those muscles to perform 1D, 2D and 3D tasks, play video games, or navigate a virtual wheelchair By a wonderful team co-mentored w Dario Farina

🚨📜+🧵🚨 Very excited about this work showing that people with no hand function following a spinal cord injury can control the activity of motor units from those muscles to perform 1D, 2D and 3D tasks, play video games, or navigate a virtual wheelchair By a wonderful team co-mentored w Dario Farina

Joint junior faculty position in Computational Neuroscience, between Ctr for Computational Neuroscience at @flatironinstitute.org and the CUNY Graduate Center @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social . Application deadline: 16 Jan 2026! www.simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/car... cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

New paper led by wonder postdocs Francesca Greenstreet and @jessegeerts.bsky.social and @clopathlab.bsky.social trying to understand why –in the "what for" sense– there are multiple motor learning systems –supervised and RL-based– in the brain. Check out Jesse's 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧠 New year, new preprint! Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Cool basal ganglia preprints today! 2 on DA/ACh 1. @paulkramer.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 2. @arifahamid.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Motor learning @juangallego.bsky.social and @clopathlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This

Great to see this paper on sensory expectations in motor control from @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social and @andpru.bsky.social out in Nature today! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience 🧪

We give examples for less striking number of neurons here. For different species, tasks, and brain areas, it's always the same observation: PCA overestimates the dimensionality -except for one very simple task- and this overestimate gets worse w the number of neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Go work with Juan! I can vouch that this will be a very cool project.

Super happy for having been awarded an @erc.europa.eu Consolidator Grant to continue our basic neuroscience work on the neural basis for motor control and motor learning. What a great way to set things up here at Champalimaud! 🎉 🚨 Job Alert for postdocs research technicians, and PhD students in 🧵

I was admittedly a little sad when our SCI study didn’t initially feature in “the list” but am really happy to see it now! (On my wife’s 30th birthday too!) Many thanks!! @andpru.bsky.social, @gribblelab.org, @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social superlab.ca/posts/2025-1...

This review below by Herz and Brown, about effort, bradykinesia in Parkinson disease is really such an excellent read. If you are interested in dopamine, basal ganglia, motor control and motivation, this is really a must read 👌 doi.org/10.1093/brai...

If you want to do a PhD on any area of neuroscience --from basic science on vision, decision-making, foraging, motor control, learning.... in flies, rodents or zebrafish, computational or theoretical work, or are interested in more translational/clinical research-- apply to our great PhD program !!!

I'd definitely go see this, based on the preprint

Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

My spicy take would be that neural manifolds may not be disprovable given how the brains we are aware of are built, and the challenges are: (1) whether they give us understanding beyond single neuron descriptions (2) whether they have "causal power" A recent attempt at this youtu.be/oxQyKByqDSU?...

It feels like the converastion about manifold dimensionality is back, so I thought I'd share a paper that explains nicely why measuring the "embedding dimensionality" of a manifold (e.g., counting PCs) can be very different from its actual "intrinsic dimensionality (DoFs) doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

Still 11 days to submit your talk or a panel with a few of your favourite topic diving into any of the zillion topics that are relevant to our community! #NCMKobe26

Life Sciences PhD studentships available in amazing Glasgow! Deadline Jan 12 General details here: www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl... My project, on cognitive mapping in 3D space in mice and humans, available here: www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl...

Garrett Stanley and I are leading the recruitment of a senior faculty position in BME at Georgia Tech and Emory, focused on Neural Engineering. Come talk to us, we're looking for a leader in research and training, in areas with neurotranslation potential. More details here: lnkd.in/eusCqCSR

Adding this to my to buying list because the @braininspired.bsky.social episode was great! (And I learned that Schrödinger used code in a different way than I thought he did when I read his book... Well the first half of the book)

Come share your passion about motor control, sensory systems, neurophysiology, neurotechnology, and more at #NCMKobe26 !!

A very nice contribution to the field, adding more evidence on how our expectations and goals shape upcoming motor commands. Congrats to the wonderful team!

A chemical extracted from carrot roots helped pave the way for flat-screen TVs, and six other discoveries that unintentionally changed the world. Perfect talking points for when you need to defend basic science, whether it’s to your grumpy uncle or your MP. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🚨Job alert🚨 The lab has up to *3 postdoc openings* for comp systems neuroscientists interested in describing and manipulating neural population dynamics mediating behaviour This is part of a collaborative ARIA grant "4D precision control of cortical dynamics" euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/383909

Reminder this is happening this Wed/Thu. Free spiking neural network conference - registration required (see below).

Apply to become a CSHL-Simons Fellow in Neuroscience! Run your own lab, pursue bold ideas, join a highly collaborative community! All areas including experimental or computational neuro, including NeuroAI & systems PhD required; ≤~1 yr postdoc www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...