The 2026 CSHL Symposium: AI in Biology starts May 26!

In a new study published in @nature.com, CSHL graduate student Emily Isko in the @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social lab discovered an evolutionary difference in Alston's singing mice that allows for enhanced vocal capabilities. Watch this video: www.cshl.edu/what-can-sin... @tonyzador.bsky.social

On central circuit control from my lab, in collaboration with @tonyzador.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

From @tonyzador.bsky.social and crew, a paper showing that neurons' positions in the brain are not just determined by molecular, but also by lineage: www.cell.com/neuron/abstr... #neuroscience 🧪

“Specific expansion of motor cortical projections in a singing mouse” Great new work by @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social E. Isco @cliffscience.bsky.social @xmikezheng20.bsky.social @tonyzador.bsky.social & colleagues on the neural basis of vocal dexterity, now out in @nature.com 🧪🧠

Yes definitely a growing problem in genomics!

good work @tonyzador.bsky.social — I hadn't seen the Vafa study and immediately incorporated it into a talk I'm giving tomorrow.

But how do you increase the chances a model will do OOD? By making it simple. Newton's goal was to predict planetary motion, but 1/r^2 generalized to apples, tides, etc Quoting @andreastolias.bsky.social "the current approach to addressing OOD generalization is to ensure no data are OOD"

Yes!!!! Beautiful essay, @tonyzador.bsky.social.

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

This work started when Christian Pehle, @tonyzador.bsky.social, and I found that training sequentially (consuming/producing one spike at a time) in JAX was prohibitively slow. You certainly can consume multiple spikes in parallel—TLDR; just use an associative scan—but... 2/N

We know about cosmological dark matter despite being unable to measure it because, without it, galaxies would fall apart. By analogy, let's talk about "cognitive dark matter" (CDM): brain functions that meaningfully shape behavior but are hard to infer from behavior alone. New paper! 🧵👇

A great poet once said, “It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” For developing brain cells, it’s both! Published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, Stan Kerstjens & @tonyzador.bsky.social put forward a new theory for how the brain organizes itself during development. www.cshl.edu/a-new-theory...

Turns out that castration increases lifespan across many animals, including humans (added 14-19 years to Korean eunuchs lives). Just imagine how much further life extension could be achieved by adding in caloric restriction! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If the value of labor goes to zero because of AI, it’s not clear how we can continue to organize society around compensated work. How will the majority of people who do not own AI factories get the money to buy the stuff that AI produces? Doesnt that lead to economic collapse?

🤯😡😱🤮 "The Trump administration recently installed Kyle Walsh, a close friend of Vice President JD Vance, as the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)."

I read the caption first and thought the illusion might be because the y-axis was on a log scale, but it's not! My brain was bamboozled regardless.

80% of Democratic voters want a new leader in the Senate. Does that matter at all to Democratic senators?

Nightmare #423: -- 1,140 sq ft spider web -- populated by a metropolis of 111,000 spiders -- in a cave 😱 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/s...

Excessive force. PERIOD! They called them “violent mobs,” but the violence came from the guys with badges and body armor. 📌 Keep sharing videos, everyone, because they’re evidence.

Amen to this from @anamariecox.bsky.social talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/patro...

The oligarchy wants full control of what we watch and read.

Apply to become a CSHL-Simons Fellow in Neuroscience! Run your own lab, pursue bold ideas, join a highly collaborative community! All areas including experimental or computational neuro, including NeuroAI & systems PhD required; ≤~1 yr postdoc www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...

Carney: But this decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country—more particularly, our economic strengths based on close ties to America—have now become our vulnerabilities…

Apply to the new CSHL grad program in BioAI/neuroAI! (Masters degree or equivalent required in a quantitative area such as computer science, physics, mathematics, or engineering) www.cshl.edu/phd-program/...

Number of times the Wikipedia entry about the ship of Theseus has been edited since it was published in 2003 : 2,052 Number of sentences from the original entry that remain today : 0 October 2025 • Source: Harper's research

Trump's thugs aren't just abducting undocumented immigrants. More than 170 American citizens — including children — have been detained and assaulted by ICE since he took office. No one is safe. https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will

Ronald Reagan said it. #NoKings tomorrow 10/18

"I believe that Americans would agree that the government can’t just make people disappear without any process or explanation. Second, because I want to give the government a chance to admit that they were wrong. So far the government has not done so." newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-us-ci...

🚨BREAKING: Rep. Ro Khanna just motioned to SUBPOENA FCC chairman Brendan Carr in the House Oversight Committee to stop the intimidation of private businesses and assault on free speech

Disney is ABC's parent company

Interesting strategy for proposing democracy after 2026

Interesting proposal on how to preserve democracy in 2026

Two flagship papers from the International Brain Laboratory, now out in ‪@Nature.com‬: 🧠 Brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09235-0 🧠 Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09226-1 +

In the 1990s, neuroscientists often complained “that theorists were completely out of touch with experimental data,” says @tonyzador.bsky.social. Today, in part thanks to the Sloan-Swartz Centers, “I very rarely hear that.” By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch... Critical read: As noted by a colleague, from the examples in this article, it is amazing how quickly German physics collapsed (and US exploded) after 1934. #academicsky, #neuroskyence , is there time and a route to prevent the collapse of research in the US?

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I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Axios story about the path forward for restored terminated grants. The administration will continue to pursue appeals and other steps. www.axios.com/2025/06/24/n...

New editorial about disingenuous science standards. Cites @standupforscience.bsky.social to take action to push back

Nice write up on @joshdubnau.bsky.social's "transposon storm" hypothesis: Alzheimer’s and ALS may be triggered by reawakened viral-like jumping genes that spark inflammation and kill neurons. Antiviral drugs could stop the storm. knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Chess, not checkers. Or eating the pieces in the orange overlord’s case.

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

Pentagon announces that it has formally accepted the "palace in the sky" jet from Qatar. Plain and simple violation of the Emoluments Clause without congressional approval. Don't think this is over.

HASSAN: What is habeas corpus? NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country HASSAN: That's incorrect

WARREN: Can POTUS legally tell the IRS to change someone's nonprofit status? BILLY LONG: I'm not able to answer WARREN: You can't read these words and tell me what those words say?! LONG: I can read the statute and I did WARREN: Then tell me what they mean!

CSHL Professors @tonyzador.bsky.social y.social and Alexei Koulakov explain how a quirk of evolution—the way our DNA passes down instructions to build a brain—might be a key factor when it comes to designing smarter AI. Take a listen: www.cshl.edu/podcasts/at-...

Makes sense since the administration seems hell bent on n driving the US and the globe into recession. 🧪 www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...