Hi RL Enthusiasts! RLC is coming to Montreal, Quebec, in the summer: Aug 16–19, 2026! Call for Papers is up now: Abstract: Mar 1 (AOE) Submission: Mar 5 (AOE) Excited to see what you’ve been up to - Submit your best work! rl-conference.cc/callforpaper... Please share widely!

A new, long paper on evolution - natural induction - split into 2: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsfs/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsfs/article... @RichardWatson90 and Tim Lewens

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Our paper on event-based delay learning is now published! @neworderofjamie.bsky.social @drtnowotny.bsky.social TL;DR: It’s now possible to train synaptic delays in large-scale spiking neural networks with high temporal precision—even in recurrent connections. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Interesting discussion! 👇🏽

I'm more and more convinced that low-dimensional manifolds in the brain are just an artifact of the experimental designs and analyses we use... 🧠📈 🧪

Seems to be a losing battle to make people understand that Wheeler's "It from Bit" does not mean "reality is made of information" (it was about defending an epistemic view of quantum mechanics, where the wave function isn't real, only measurement outcomes are), and likewise...

Entertaining and wide-ranging panel discussion on consciousness at the @crick.ac.uk hosted by @profbriancox.bsky.social and featuring me, @anilseth.bsky.social @kathaschmack.bsky.social and @cosmicskeptic.bsky.social Check it out, let us know what you think! www.lnk.to/AQOSConsciou...

Is there any evidence for anti-Hebbian plasticity during sleep? This is an old hypothesis that continues to get cited (and to appear in some computational models), yet I haven't been able to find any study that shows this. There's ample evidence of synaptic downscaling, but that's different.

𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 Looks quite interesting. "Collective coordination" as state where unspecialized cells coordinate behavior through distributed signaling before specialized tissues like the brain can emerge. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #neuroskyence

Interested in studying in a MSc or other postgraduate taught programme at the IoPPN? We're offering 10 scholarships for applicants starting in September 2026. Learn more and apply before 20 February 2026: www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...

Just to annoy all neuroscientists... (and others) Even drawing this in terms of spikes and waves is just missing the point that biological complex systems are multilevel and have dense interlevel interactions. We're not in the domain of physics where one averages point particles in a chamber...

Preprint time: “Symmetries at the origin of hierarchical emergence” arxiv.org/abs/2512.00984 On how symmetries generate hierarchical macroscales and shape the structure of our beliefs, making high-dimensional inference tractable

Preprint time: “Symmetries at the origin of hierarchical emergence” arxiv.org/abs/2512.00984 On how symmetries generate hierarchical macroscales and shape the structure of our beliefs, making high-dimensional inference tractable

Join us in ASSC 2026 !

The Computing Science Dept. at the University of Alberta has multiple faculty job openings. Please share this broadly. We have a great environment! - CS Theory: tinyurl.com/zrh9mk69 - Network/Cyber Security: tinyurl.com/renxazzy - Robotics/CV/Graphics: tinyurl.com/ypcsfbff

Out now in @commsbio.nature.com! We studied brain-heart interactions during mind wandering and mind blanking. Mind blanking is associated with a greater heart/brain decoupling, complicating the idea of an attentional switch between external & internal environments! 🧠🔄🫀🧪

Wow. Just wow. A decision in direct conflict with all the ideals of the Reith Lectures.

Jonny Smallwood @themindwanders.bsky.social was a beloved friend and mentor. He was taken from us too soon. His was a beautiful mind who understood the beauty of minds. As ever before, his kind voice guides me and his work will continue. We miss you Jonny. www.cbs.mpg.de/news/obituar...

A series of recordings from the second rendition of the best conference on theoretical AI alignment (ILIAD) just dropped! youtube.com/playlist?lis...

1/🧵 Out today in @frontiersin.bsky.social : “Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there?” By @axc.bsky.social @liadmudrik.bsky.social, & me (a CIFAR & @erc.europa.eu production 🧠). www.frontiersin.org/journals/sci...

🚨The Formalism-Implementation Gap in RL research🚨 Lots of progress in RL research over last 10 years, but too much performance-driven => overfitting to benchmarks (like the ALE). 1⃣ Let's advance science of RL 2⃣ Let's be explicit about how benchmarks map to formalism 1/X

It makes sense that evolution selected neural circuits that make us to “want” certain things, as that ensures robust proactive behaviour… But why that wanting has to be experienced at all, instead of acting simply as an unconscious compulsion? (I think of this as the “little hard problem”)

Is the the neuroimaging community (broadly conceived) submitting to 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 again????? Not to be publication police but the shift had seemed major 1-2 years ago. Looking at the editorial board it seems to have serious scientists once more. Curious about thoughts of the community.

🥲

I deeply sympathise with every word in this post 👇🏽

If you love theory and want to make a difference for AI alignment, please apply and join us! pibbss.ai/pibbssxiliad... (Please share around!)

🚨New paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.05786 *Shapley values beyond game theory* We show that Shapley values aren’t just about dividing payoffs--they are the right way to project down any higher-order structure. We generalise them, and Möbius inversions, in important ways: 🧵

After a long time in the making, my paper on nonequilibrium thermodynamics of Darwinian evolution has been published in Philosophical Transactions B. Updated version: arxiv.org/abs/2112.02809

The usual explanation for great music is that it's predictable but not too predictable. But there's more to it, said @frosas.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. We prefer music when we perceive agency behind it. Improvisation trumps a prepared performance. See paper at www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy.... ⚙️🧫

It’s not the method that makes you causal it’s the assumptions

It is often argued that the origin of life must be related to "phase transitions" This concept is often misused, or even abused. In a new paper with @ricardsole.bsky.social we discuss which types of transitions might be involved and some relevant models. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Nearly 4,000 y ago, Egyptians finished their pyramids Meanwhile, across the ocean, termites in NE Brazil were building something even larger: a hidden empire of 200M mounds, over an area the size of UK 🌍🐜 Still active today, a masterpiece of non-human engineering! 🧪🌐 HT @ricardsole.bsky.social

Finally published: “Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨

Postdoc job! I expect to have an opening at Johns Hopkins for a postdoctoral researcher working somewhere in the broad realms of physics, philosophy, and complexity. Apply at Academic Jobs Online: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30496

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁? Don't miss the Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon. Earl Miller and team will discuss recent paper and we'll have plenty of discussion. Open to all. Sept 12, noon EST-US umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence @earlkmiller.bsky.social

Finally published: “Characterising high-order interdependence via entropic conjugation” rdcu.be/eB3k3 On how a “conjugation” of information illuminates the space possible information-theoretic metrics of high-order phenomena!

Our department is seeking applicants for an Assistant Professor position with a focus on affective science. Please apply and/or pass this along to anyone who might be interested! facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...

Preprint time: “Compatibilist emergence for the science of consciousness” osf.io/preprints/ps... On how a multifaceted understanding of emergence can illuminate the link between consciousness and life!

The first one is some crazy work by @monmitabhar.bsky.social, Tanumoy, @hari-flies.bsky.social and Kamal Kishore. They eavesdropped on worm conversations and found the exciting phenomenon of movement of memory from one worm to another 2/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Third edition of the emergence workshop is almost here! You can register using the QR code on the poster Any questions, you can message me here or send an email!

What is emergence? This is one of the most central ingredients of complexity, and a challenging one to formalize. Here's a paper by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social & Achyth Parola that attempts to classify different forms of emergence. @manlius.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468

🗺️ Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition 📔 We #review the neuroscience of #intuition, and present it as a predictive embodied process, emergent from hippocampal replay & brain metastability 🤝 with S. Kotler, M. Mannino, K. Friston, G. Buzsáki & J.A.S Kelso 🔗 nature.com/articles/s42...

Amazing opportunity 👇🏽

Are you interested in our work on complex physical systems and applications (to neural systems)? Wanna join us in Sydney? 🐨 🦘 We have two open positions: 1. Postdoc position: usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA... 2. Fully-funded PhD position: www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝘁, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? What are the most developed frameworks of the brain basis of motivation? Older ideas, new ideas, etc. #neuroskyence

Applications for next year’s Guggenheim Fellowships are now open! @guggfellows.bsky.social www.gf.org/program/how-...

New bogpost about our paper on world models for safe and interpretable AI sandboxing: www.lesswrong.com/posts/L6Z6K8... Including funky ideas such as what makes a world model, the metaphysical and empirical components of Bayesian beliefs, and the mathematics of the Kantian noumenon…

This is absolutely insane: a LLM of worlds! 🤯🤯 deepmind.google/discover/blo...

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 “Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures,” by Fernando Rosas @frosas.bsky.social 𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑙. in 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑁𝑒𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence