🎓 Alumni Spotlight: @mmondelli.bsky.social From EPFL to @istaresearch.bsky.social , Marco’s journey in Algorithms & Theoretical Computer Science shows the impact of an EDIC PhD. Today, he’s advancing research in algorithms, coding theory, and data science.

Over the past year, my lab has been working on fleshing out theory + applications of the Platonic Representation Hypothesis. Today I want to share two new works on this topic: Eliciting higher alignment: arxiv.org/abs/2510.02425 Unpaired learning of unified reps: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08492 1/9

Science is a question-answering activity. Whenever someone tries to pose a scientific question about art, it always turns out to really be a question about something else (perception, emotion, etc). This is why many attempts to bring art and science together fall flat.

If you're interested in doing a postdoc at @icepfl.bsky.social , there's still time to apply for the @epfl-ai-center.bsky.social postdoctoral fellowships. Apart from this, I'm also recruiting postdocs in developing novel training algorithms for reasoning models and agentic AI.

Last week, we had three amazing days full of discussions and wondering what curiosity actually means. Thank you to @modirshanechi.bsky.social, @mjgruber.bsky.social, and Lisa Beinborn for being there with us, it was a pleasure. Special thanks to Azzurra Ruggeri for her great talk!

A glimpse at what #NeuroAI brain models might enable: a topographic vision model predicts stimulation patterns that steer complex object recognition behavior in primates. This could be a key 'software' component for visual prosthetic hardware 🧠🤖🧪

🧠 New preprint: we show that model-guided microstimulation can steer monkey visual behavior. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.03684 🧵

After a few days of extensive discussions about curiosity at @rtg2906-curiosity.bsky.social's retreat, I realized—perhaps for the first time—that the word curiosity in Persian (کنجکاوی) literally means "exploring corners"! It's such a vivid way to express curiosity! so amusing to think about it!

🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

I had so much fun organising #CISE2025 conference on Curiosity, Information Seeking & Exploration with Romy Frömer, @hayleydorfman.bsky.social, Ohad Dan, Matt Nassar, Tali Sharot & Jacqueline Gottlieb at beautiful Brown University then hearing about all the amazing research from our speakers…

What influences whether people have fun with a task? Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports! rdcu.be/eI069 Paper summary below 1/4

The neural control & computation lab is recruiting! If you're interested in using large-scale neural population recordings to study how the brain learns to produce complex and flexible behaviours, please get in touch. www.ncclab.ca

Tour de force talk decomposing aspects of novelty, surprise, info gain in multi-state tasks by @modirshanechi.bsky.social Novelty-seeking (visit new states) is common...even when its suboptimal #CISE2025

Wise cartoon posted outside a @princetonneuro.bsky.social PhD student office. Let’s all remember to enjoy the journey today (and all days).

Also happy to announce that our Automated scientific minimization of regret paper got accepted to the AI4Science workshop at #NeurIPS - arxiv.org/abs/2505.17661 with @marcelbinz.bsky.social, @akjagadish.bsky.social & @ericschulz.bsky.social

We are organizing a workshop on Metacognition in Generative AI at @euripsconf.bsky.social in Copenhagen later this year. Submission deadline for short papers is on October 17th.

Successful first CISE poster session at beautiful Brown! #CISE2025 🔭

🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social Thread ⬇️

Come be our colleague at EPFL! Several open calls for positions 🧪🧠🤖 * Neuroscience www.epfl.ch/about/workin... (deadline Oct 1) * Life Science Engineering www.epfl.ch/about/workin... * CS general call www.epfl.ch/about/workin... * Learning Sciences www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

Very much look forward to our workshop (co-organized with @armanbehrad.bsky.social) today with a great lineup of speakers who combine a wide spectrum of approaches and methods to have a joint definition of brain-behavior state! bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co... #BernsteinConference

This is fantastic work. Monkeys show the same pattern of “optimistic” exploration in multi-arm bandits www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Yeah, finally AI cracked the hallmark of human behavior: the noisy TV problem

Turns out humans are not better that simple RL agents guided by surprise/novelty-driven curiosity when facing noisy TV problems! 📺 AGI is closer than we think 😉 #NeuroAI #neuroskyence #compcogsci

New in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... We study how humans explore a 61-state environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.” Results: Participants keep exploring the stochastic part even when it’s unhelpful, and novelty-seeking best explains this behavior. #cogsci #neuroskyence

@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has written another tour de force, showing how efficient coding reshapes numerosity representations in parietal cortex.

Launched in 2023, Imaging Neuroscience is now firmly established, with full indexing (PubMed, etc.) and 700 papers to date. We're very happy to announce that we are able to reduce the APC to $1400. Huge thanks to all authors, reviewers, editorial team+board, and MIT Press.

Interested in doing a Ph.D. to work on building models of the brain/behavior? Consider applying to graduate schools at CU Anschutz: 1. Neuroscience www.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-pro... 2. Bioengineering engineering.ucdenver.edu/bioengineeri... You could work with several comp neuro PIs, including me.

Looking for a PhD next year? Want to come and work on the next generation of OPM-MEG/EEG biomarkers in computational psychiatry? Apply for our MRC iCase studentship with @mkflugge.bsky.social, collabs with @lilweb.bsky.social + industrial placement at P1Vital: www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/gradua...

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dear Editor, Thank you for submitting your review request to Tomer Ullman. As you may know, we decline a substantial proportion of reviews requests without sending them out for further evaluation. After careful consideration, we regret to say we cannot offer to take on this review.

The #BernsteinConference starts very soon! As preparations are underway, enjoy a poem by our speaker Luca Mazzucato from @neuroai-uoregon.bsky.social ✍️ You can still join us -- register at on-site rates by October 2! All info here 👉 bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co... #CompNeuro

In this 'How to' Comment, @gribblelab.org gives advice on how to think about one's academic website and how to go about building one. #AcademicWebsite www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’ve been doing a cultural competency paper and this is clearly the frontier task. One time a Persian gym buddy insisted so hard that they actually preferred sleeping on the floor that, rather than heading home post-workout, I took their bed. Every Persian I tell this to laughs at me.

Happy to announce our paper got accepted to #NeurIPS! @akjagadish.bsky.social @marvinmathony.bsky.social @ericschulz.bsky.social & Tobi Ludwig arxiv.org/abs/2502.00879

Beautiful and clear results showing that temporal difference error calculation is hardwired in the dopamine/striatum mircocircuits: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... from @malcolmgcampbell.bsky.social and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵

🎉 "High-dimensional neuronal activity from low-dimensional latent dynamics: a solvable model" will be presented as an oral at #NeurIPS2025 🎉 Feeling very grateful that reviewers and chairs appreciated concise mathematical explanations, in this age of big models. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/2

This is cool! People evaluate agents by the algorithms that drive their behavior direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

A prominent idea in biology tells us that evolution is not always incremental, but often involves a few important structural changes that open up phylogenetic possibility. Think: single cells ➡️ multicellular life. Solitary individuals ➡️ eusocial colonies.

Who knew that the perfect pasta sauce could lead to a Nobel Prize? Congrats to ISTA postdoc Fabrizio Olmeda and collaborators for winning the Ig Nobel Prize with their research on mastering Cacio e Pepe. Bravo! 🍝 🎉 Getting hungry? Here´s the recipe for delicious research: https://bit.ly/42vlpHm

How does the brain decide? 🧠 Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc. After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up. rdcu.be/eGUrv

This is so interesting!

Isn't MCMC sampling simply like magic? 🪄

Variance partitioning is used to quantify the overlap of two models. Over the years, I have found that this can be a very confusing and misleading concept. So we finally we decided to write a short blog to explain why. @martinhebart.bsky.social @gallantlab.org diedrichsenlab.org/BrainDataSci...

Our new paper "Noisy memory generates value in changing environments" just got published in Adaptive Behavior! doi.org/10.1177/1059... tldr: we find that stochastic encoding of outcomes can perform better than perfect encoding (woot?), esp. if you have asymmetric encoding (for reward vs no reward)

#Cosyne2026 is now open for business! Show us what you got both for the main meeting & workshop proposals 🧠🥳🧠🥳🧠

🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!) To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website: www.sinclairlab-rice.com Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...

🧠How can brains learn new tasks w/o forgetting old ones? Barry, Gerstner & Bellec propose #GateON, a neuro-inspired learning rule: neurons become context-selective & #plasticity can be frozen or unfrozen. Balances #memory & #flexibility, avoiding #CatastrophicForgetting in #AI models. #CompNeuro🧪

⚠️JOB ANNOUNCEMENT⚠️ Postdoctoral Position in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience (Marseille) in collaboration with @alainbarrat.bsky.social. Join us to study higher-order brain interactions in causal learning using information theory and network science. More info www.fens.org/careers/job-...

🧠 “You never forget how to ride a bike”, but how is that possible? Our study proposes a bio-plausible meta-plasticity rule that shapes synapses over time, enabling selective recall based on context