I’m grateful that we at least had 2 years of a government trying to fix things apart from their own image, but I wish they had got to universities before the “let’s actually govern” strategy imploded.

One more week to apply for OxCIN Global Scholars! 🎯For early-career MRI researchers in the Global South 💻Remote 1-year affiliation with OxCIN 🧠Training in MRI physics & FSL 🌎Build global connections 🗓️Deadline 28 June 2026 🔗https://www.oxcin.ox.ac.uk/about/training/global-scholars Please repost!

This is such a great opportunity for early career neuroimaging researchers in the Global South and for our centre. Come join our @oxcin.bsky.social community!

The extent of the IF obsession is evident from any and every Google search for a journal - even venues that don't warrant one. This literally makes or breaks journals - non-profits are hit particularly hard - and it stifles innovation and distorts science. 2/2

This is the most British use of the word "Allegedly" imaginable. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New analysis from @rjpartington.bsky.social highlights how BREXIT has left the UK economy smaller and weaker than it would otherwise have been. Worse off outside the EU. Clear charts, clear story. Worth a read. 🔗 theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/14/how-uk-economy-changed-since-brexit-vote-charts

Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.

All data, analysis code & relevant docs are publicly available. Ready for anyone to start making their own discoveries 💡 See code & data availability section of manuscript :) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This project builds on work establishing the behaviour done at Champalimaud in Lisbon with @michaelfsp.bsky.social, Beatriz Godinho, Christian Machens, and @ruimcosta.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This paper is so cool that it’s finally convinced @thomasakam.bsky.social to join Bluesky

It has been super fun to work on this, where we learned that: 1) Mouse PFC is needed for model-based override of habits. 2) Separate PFC populations encode a 'policy' and the current 'value'. 3) The policy and value codes alternate theta sweeps towards the goal. ...and much much more!

Structured and flexible representations in medial-frontal cortex support goal-directed navigation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.729603v1

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is one of the coolest things I have been involved with. Truly flexible navigation in mice. Real insight into how mPFC computes the plans. Great fun to see what PFC is doing with those hippocampal theta sweeps. From the awesome @peterdoohan.bsky.social and (now on bsky) @thomasakam.bsky.social

Pretty place for a conference :)

Maybe. In the way that magic is wild and amazing. But I wish we didn’t do this. I wish we didn’t headline stuff that goes “here is a mad thing that we didn’t think about”. I wish we waited until we understood it to give it the headlines.

“What if failure isn’t a personal shortcoming, but a structural feature of academic life?” In @ecrLife, Dr Marina Cano and Dr Rosa García‑Periago discuss "Women, Failure and Academia." buff.ly/S7tRd9o?utm_...

Alex is awesome. Awesome science. Awesome supervisor. Awesome person. (Also Swiss Mountains and salaries :)

It’s no coincidence that elife features so heavily throughout this article. Our transparent publication system has been the ideal sandbox for these ideas for a number of teams either independently using our data, or collaborating with us. It’s super fun to be dreaming of the future.

This is definitely not the worst thing about writing papers.

This is the May cover of NN but it has already been debunked on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Such a clear statement about the ridiculous pace of publishing (not just NN).

1/7 🧠 My journey into development begins with this work and question: how does the brain's spatial navigation system develop? We found that the neural networks for spatial navigation (tori and rings) are preconfigured and only later anchor gradually to the world with experience! 🧵

Hmm - I wish I knew what social media thought of this @tpvogels.bsky.social opinion

Fun fact: I was asked on radio Oxford just to talk about the Acknowledgements on this paper :)

We are looking for two Research Assistants to conduct experiments and data analyses investigating the neural mechanisms of strategic and social decision-making using head-fixed (1) and freely-moving (1) behavioural paradigms in mice. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

What is the most interesting part of the brain? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

I do this all the time. With recent grants, sometimes old grants. With papers. With talks that I think went well. I don't think it's time wasted. It's about learning what good looks like, and reminding yourself that sometimes you can be good. 2 of the most important things for an academic.

Does the brain really know what word is coming next? Insight article by @rjantonello.bsky.social about fascinating research article in @elife.bsky.social by @ines-schoenmann.bsky.social, @mheilbron.bsky.social and others. elifesciences.org/articles/111... elifesciences.org/articles/106...

New peer-reviewed paper w/ @mheilbron.bsky.social, @predictivebrain.bsky.social & Jakub Szewczyk! Pre-onset brain encoding has been taken as evidence that brains–like LLMs–predict upcoming words. We show that the same signatures arise in systems that cannot predict. (elifesciences.org) (1/8)

johnduncananimalandthinker.substack.com First four posts – operating principles; “the other”; two things to teach schoolchildren.

Last year my book The Animal and the Thinker came out. Basic idea – how the operating principles of instinct and reason together answer big human questions. Right and wrong. Culture wars. Family and work. The meaning of life. That sort of thing. Now as an add-on I’m starting a blog…

This looks absolutely amazing. Rats composing long action sequences out of short ones. mPFC constructing the long sequence on the fly. Reusing the primitive representations but composing them with progression along the composite. One of the most impressive things I have ever seen a rodent do.

(And @lhuntneuro.bsky.social has spent the thousand years growing that moustache…)

***4-year Career Development Research Fellowship in Psychology now available at Oxford!*** Open to all areas of Psychology, including Cognitive/Behavioural Neuroscience. PhD in last three years, or be about to submit (some exceptions apply). Deadline: 21st May. www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/vac...

People are great.

Yes very very impressive Scott Waddell

Oh my god, the alt text is a gift. 😹

This is awesome. Kam and Pip are both great!

My son has his version of Cosyne today :)

This is really cool!

What are the systems in neuroscience that we really have something that we can call “explanation” at all relevant levels, other than reflexive feed-forward like circuits. Here are a few that I would argue are getting there. Obviously not complete explanations but genuinely satisfying.

Scientific publishing: Rethinking how research is reviewed and published Review of how the loss of impact factor affected submissions at eLife - uneven drop across countries, but generally holding up remarkably well and shows a new model is possible elifesciences.org/articles/110...

As I've said, the biggest obstacles to innovation in sci comm are Impact Factor & PubMed [for many, without one/being listed, you might as well not exist, and the inclusion criteria constrain process, format, etc]. bioRxiv shows you can get by without them. eLife may do it for peer review venues.

Your regular reminder of the extent of the problem

Hiring, promotion and tenure committees, grant review boards, institutional leadership, and every scientist whose knee jerk response to hearing of a new journal is to ask “what’s its impact factor?”, time to step up…

And if @elife.bsky.social were to achieve nothing more than cure scientists of Impact Factor addiction the project could be considered a triumph.

“Authors [&] reviewers tell us that they have had a more constructive experience…choosing eLife not because of our impact factor, but because of our process” 👆 eLife comtinues to provoke debate but this is perhaps the most important point elifesciences.org/articles/110...

It is absolutely astonishingly impressive how much work scientific publishers have managed to shunt onto authors, who aren't paid, while they continue to increase their enormous profits. The submission process itself takes about 5 hours. I miss the 90s 😢