New paper with @doctorjosh.bsky.social, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, and co-first author Vaibhav Pai. This one is a doozy - in it we show that we can modulate the degree of emergent, multicellular organization in a Xenobot with an exogenous compound (ATP). 1/N www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Got a great TMLR paper but missed the RLC deadline? Following last year’s success, @RL_Conference is back with a Journal-to-Conference track! Accepted TMLR papers within scope are invited to submit for consideration. Please submit here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘄𝗮𝘆? Fascinating and profound book on what brains are *not* and what they might be. Including criticism of the computational and predictive brain frameworks. You might not agree with some of it but quite thought provoking.

We wrote a book! www.cambridge.org/core/books/s... Consciousness science is a fascinating but bewildering field: many competing theories, little consensus, and big open questions. If you are looking for an accessible guide through this complex landscape, this book is for you.

To be provocative, 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 might be a sleight of hand if you don't know enough math to understand what it means. There, I said it.

How the right embodiment can simplify planing ✨

A computational theory of Aha! moments! New paper explaining why Aha! moments occur & why they feel so good. TLDR: They are a form of meta-cognitive prediction errors i.e. they occur when we surprise ourselves about our own abilities! @rachitdubey.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🎉 📜 NEW #PREPRINT !! 📜 🎉 Spearheaded by Adam Barrett we tried to tackle some of the challenges of IIT. We confront aspects worth delving into, with an incredible team of collaborators, inc. Pedro Mediano, @frosas.bsky.social, Daniel Bor, Lionel Barnett, and @anilseth.bsky.social.

What makes brains (un)conscious? We provide new answers—and a universal mammalian blueprint for information processing—in a cross-species study of humans, macaques, marmosets & mice. Exploring convergent breakdown of integration in: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Led by @loopyluppi.bsky.social

Join us for a postdoc @ the Donders Institute; application deadline March 24. www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

The Mammalian Architecture of Information Integration🧠🧬 For #BrainAwarenessWeek, excited to share our latest work about #Neuroscience of #Consciousness in @nathumbehav.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have been named the winners of the A.M. Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computing, for their work establishing the foundations of quantum information theory. The award comes with a $1 million prize. www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-cryp...

Just out in @natneuro.nature.com! 🧠 “Competitive interactions shape mammalian brain network dynamics and computation” www.nature.com/articles/s41... Is large-scale brain communication purely cooperative — or is competition a core organizing principle? We built 🧠 models to find out: read on🧵👇

Final version of this paper with Richard Watson is out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "Machines all the way up and cognition all the way down: Updating the machine metaphor in biology" (quite a bit different than the original preprint at osf.io/preprints/os...).

Happy to announce this new preprint! In it, we use info decomp (ΦID) on fMRI in Alzheimer's and MCI to explore how info-dynamic representations change. AD saw big decreases in synergy ('deductive' information) and increases in redundancy. Check it out here: 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hot take 🔥 Why math classes work well in uni? Not because that specific math will be useful later, but because solving hard problems makes you build instrumental skills, which enable you to solve other problems later in life … and that is exactly why next token prediction works so well

Indeed, rather than fight against it, it seems life surfs on entropy 🏄

Tomorrow in Amsterdam I’ll be giving a talk about my most recent work on abstractions and world modelling 👇🏽👇🏽

DIEP seminar tomorrow 11am! 🪞 Join us to attend a talk by @frosas.bsky.social (lecturer at the University of Sussex) titled “Mirroring the world: How symmetry shapes hierarchical beliefs” 🤼 Abstract & registration: ias.uva.nl/content/even... See you there!

Why don’t neural networks learn all at once, but instead progress from simple to complex solutions? And what does “simple” even mean across different neural network architectures? Sharing our new paper @iclr_conf led by Yedi Zhang with Peter Latham arxiv.org/abs/2512.20607

There is a new Postdoctoral Research Associate position available in my group, to work on computational analysis of human neuroimaging workflows to develop robust, interpretable and scalable biomarkers of cognitive brain health. Closing date 10th Feb 2026. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

Finally published: “Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A synthesis of multiple EEG, fMRI, and fNIRS studies to map the mechanisms behind the restoring effects of nature on the brain 🧠🌱

We're running a 5th edition of the always-exciting UCL Summer School on Consciousness and Metacognition this year, 8th-10th July 2026 in London. Accommodation and travel expenses are covered. For more information and how to apply, check out metacoglab.org/summer-schoo...

cool work about information decomposition in artificial systems! Synergistic information processing emerges through learning in LLMs and ablating these synergistic components causes large performance drops #NeuroAI 👇👇👇

Preprint time: A Brain-like Synergistic Core in LLMs Drives Behaviour and Learning arxiv.org/abs/2601.06851 LLMs are clearly different from actual brains… but could they share a similar functional architecture related to how they process information?

Looking forward to participate in this workshop on high-order interactions and multivariate information theory: mithic2026.github.io

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 Annual reminder that the book is open access. How do we think of the brain as a deeply interconnected system with highly distributed, non hierarchical processing. Want to learn about the brain from a fresh perspective? #neuroskyence mitpress.mit.edu/978026254460...

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”)