In a system subject to unobserved control, can you infer both the underlying dynamics and the control objective? 🤔 A year ago, I was presenting our work at IEEE CDC on solving this problem for stochastic LQR. arxiv.org/abs/2502.15014 Short 🧵 on the results, and how I think about them a year later.

We took a stab at how to infer both the dynamics and control parameters of partially-observable systems. It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.

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 🧵

A vigorous negative finding Subsecond dopamine transients in the striatum of mice are neither required nor sufficient for specifying the vigor of ongoing forelimb movements www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For the oculomotor nerds out there… we’re excited to share our paired papers on precerebellar circuitry! These two studies look at how internuclear pathways talk to the cerebellum and what that means for eye movement control. 👀🧠 #neuroskyence #science

🔥🔥🔥from @ulisespereirao.bsky.social ^^^

📍Excited to share that our paper was selected as a Spotlight at #NeurIPS2025! arxiv.org/pdf/2410.03972 It started from a question I kept running into: When do RNNs trained on the same task converge/diverge in their solutions? 🧵⬇️

Come check out my SFN nano talk @ 4:15 on Sunday, especially if you’re interested in: - spicy debates in task switching - using control theory to compare latent dynamical systems fit to RNNs and EEG eppro02.ativ.me/appinfo.php?... Stay for the whole ‘Adaptive Choice’ symposium!

New pre-print from our lab, by Lakshmi Govindarajan with help from Sagarika Alavilli, introducing a new type of model for studying sensory uncertainty. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Here is a summary. (1/n)

I’m looking for interns to join our lab for a project on foundation models in neuroscience. Funded by @ivado.bsky.social and in collaboration with the IVADO regroupement 1 (AI and Neuroscience: ivado.ca/en/regroupem...). Interested? See the details in the comments. (1/3) 🧠🤖

How does the brain find its way in realistic environments? 🧠 Using deep RL and neural data, we show that hippocampal-like networks support navigation, learning, and generalisation in partially observable environments—mirroring real animal behaviour. Now out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroAI

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s4...

🚨Pre-print alert! 🚨https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.17.683171v1 Our new study tackles the question: do all neurons in motor cortices (MC) encode movement & coordinate as we move? Answering this question will be key for effectively targeting motor representations in BCIs.

New Pre-Print: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... We’re all familiar with having to practice a new skill to get better at it, but what really happens during practice? The answer, I propose, is reinforcement learning - specifically policy-gradient reinforcement learning. Overview 🧵 below...

Our department started a podcast to let people know about our research and the impact that it has on the public! Please have a listen and subscribe to the series! Also available on Apple podcast, Spotify, and Transistor, www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Please spread the word! I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle (Fall 2026 start) to join my team in a new venture: the neuroscience of mood. If you are curious to learn more, this short talk provides a good overview of why, what and how. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIK...

How do we facilitate working across institutions and borders to improve sensorimotor research and health? Join us for an evening of discussing the future of technology and collaboration in sensorimotor neuroscience. Made possible by the DWIH, held at NYULH! www.dwih-newyork.org/en/event/mot...

The results challenge the texture-bias hypothesis of Geirhos et al. (2019). This is one of those cases where a deep, careful review can add real value. arxiv.org/abs/2509.20234 🧠🤖 #MLSky

This week's sensorimotor superlab reading list is out https://superlab.ca/posts/2025-10-03-list306.html @andpru.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @gribblelab.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor

Tenure-track faculty position in motor neuroscience at Penn State. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

Congrats @vulcnethologist.bsky.social on a great paper! This a cool technology that is the future of tracking motion within the body during behavior. @movementscience.bsky.social this might be what we need for tracking muscles and tendon during movement!

Did you know that facial expressions reveal more than meets the eye? 🤯 Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions! We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉 🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO

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

My department at Emory is a hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist! Anyone who's talked to me in the last 4 years knows I cannot say enough good things about my dept and the neuroscience community here. My colleagues are so wonderfully supportive. Postdocs, please apply! apply.interfolio.com/174371

New paper! 🧠💤 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Led by Pauline Dodet - @dreamteamicm.bsky.social We show that #sleep stage mixing predicts poor prognosis in #Parkinson. Stage mixing = intrusions of wake-like activity during sleep, and vice versa. Estimated with hypnodensities extracted from PSG.

Come join our exciting new computational neuroscience groups! Fantastic people, cool mountains, and exciting science!

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.

👁️🧠 New preprint: We demonstrate the first data-driven neural control framework for a visual cortical implant in a blind human! TL;DR Deep learning lets us synthesize efficient stimulation patterns that reliably evoke percepts, outperforming conventional calibration. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

(edited repost) Thrilled to see our computational work on adaptive shaping of behavior (we call it outcome-based curriculum learning) in PLoS Comp Biol! @wl-tong.bsky.social, @gautamreddy.bsky.social & I formalize curricula in any RL task that can be framed as sequential simple-to-complex behavior.

1/ 🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩 #neuroskyence

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...

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨ We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/

Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share my latest work with @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social & @andpru.bsky.social! We asked: How does the motor cortex account for arm posture when generating movement? Paper 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/10

Thrilled to share this work, long time in the making! Carried through creatively by @siddjakes.bsky.social after initial design & piloting by @trackingskills.bsky.social, with help from @trackingactions.bsky.social. Modeling in collaboration with Massimo Vergassola & Nicola Rigolli.

Excited to announce that my first postdoc paper is now online! Links: www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/eAcN7 In it, we examine the perennial question: what changes in the brain when learning a new motor skill? Read more below to find out 👇

Congrats to @alighavampour.bsky.social and @mnlmrc.bsky.social for developing a new paradigm for hand synergy learning. If you are looking for a motor skill task that seems impossibly difficult and really needs to learning to be mastered, here it is: journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

Careful dissection of motor sequence learning by @andpru.bsky.social and @mkashefi.bsky.social. In my humble opinion this should be an instant classic 😏. www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

Are predictions computed hierarchically, or can they be computed locally? Check out our paper! Congrats, Toshitake Asabuki and @colleenjg.bsky.social ! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Thrilled about our new paper with bluesky-less Assaf Ramot. Especially thank you to all the amazing collaborators that have made this happen. x.com/assaframot/s...

🚨 New preprint alert! Our latest study, led by @DrewLinsley, examines how deep neural networks (DNNs) optimized for image categorization align with primate vision, using neural and behavioral benchmarks.

Hot off the presses: big update to our work looking at how adaptive decoders influence neural representations. We added heroic analyses to show in both experiments & models that the structure of what the brain learns is altered by adaptive decoders. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We want to hear from you! We’re conducting a survey on the state of neuroscience. This week’s question is: What are the most important neuroscience findings of the past five years? #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/state-of-neu...

📣 Grad students and postdocs in computational and theoretical neuroscience: please consider applying for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! All expenses are covered. Apply by April 14. jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org

We’re excited about this project! We present a model of motor savings without the need for context.

Looking forward to this @cosynemeeting.bsky.social workshop, which will start at 9:30 AM EST tomorrow! I will speak first at 9:30 AM. If you're at the conference and interested in learning mechanisms in multi-region neural network models of motor control, don't hesitate to join us!

Do not miss Harsha's talk!

Lastly, I will be presenting my recent work on identifying dynamical constraints on learning in feedback-driven circuits, on Day 1 of the #cosyne2025 workshop "Dynamics of brain computations through the lens of control theory" - super stoked to see you all in Montreal!

Looking forward to being part of this workshop - thank you very much to @harshag.bsky.social, Jake Sacks & Matt Golub, especially given that they are accommodating my request for participating remotely! I unfortunately won't be able to travel, following MIT's recommendations for non-US-citizens.