Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

Either you know you are a neuroscientist, or you don't. Either way, apply to join our lab before March 31 2026! :-)

Is mental imagery a single process? Our meta-analysis of 46 fMRI studies suggests not. We find a key divide between object imagery (visualizing an object in rich detail) and spatial imagery (mentally transforming objects). This split mirrors the ventral and dorsal streams of vision

Please circulate widely! Open positions at the Vision Lab, Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) sites.google.com/site/visionl... How to Apply: forms.gle/vWa1PwUrcpWf... Deadline : March 31 2026

Today I received a note from a grad student who lives in Tehran. Her note gives you firsthand experience of what it’s like to live in a city that is being bombed, and what it’s like to be young and feel despair about your future. rezashadmehr.blogspot.com/2026/03/hope...

What's My JND? 0.0046 Can you beat it? www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...

Humanoid robots can run, crawl, and sort objects in flashy demos. So why can’t they reliably climb stairs or open doors? @johnpavlus explains:

Join us in Woods Hole for Methods in Computational Neuroscience (MCN) at MBL (July 24–Aug 21). Four weeks of computational + systems neuroscience, hands-on training, and close interaction with an exceptional faculty.

DNN models of the brain are getting bigger. Are we replacing one complicated system in vivo with another in silico? In new work, we seek the *smallest* DNN models of visual cortex, balancing prediction with parsimony. It turns out these compact models are surprisingly small! rdcu.be/e5H8G

Come to IISc for open day, when all departments showcase fun demos!

Here's a striking visual illusion - the 9 purple dots. Focus your eyes on the top left dot. That one is more purple than the others, right? Now try another dot... that one becomes the purple one! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41744429/

Proud of my colleague Doug Weber for bringing in a much needed reality check to this discussion on the promise of brain implant tech. Story: www.statnews.com/2026/02/26/b... Archive: archive.today/jsk0t @cmu-neuroscience.bsky.social

Fantastic post by Colin Raffel, "We Are Over-Indexing on Paper Acceptance," drafted in May 2021 (!) but only posted now. The more things change.. Last sentence: "If you want to judge a researcher’s quality, the only meaningful way is to read their papers and judge for yourself."

Why do children struggle to recognise objects in cluttered scenes more than adults? Our new paper looks at the development of visual acuity and crowding across childhood, and the way the visual system fine tunes our ability to see detail: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Like someone said on the thread, thanks. I hate it 😏

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The best nerdy valentine poem ever 😏

The amazing Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social speaks tomorrow Wed at noon east coast time in the Bisan Lecture Series. Title: What People Learn from Punishment Register here to get the Zoom link!: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... scientists4palestine.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?...

The visual world is composed of objects, and those objects are composed of features. But do VLMs exploit this compositional structure when processing multi-object scenes? In our 🆒🆕 #ICLR2026 paper, we find they do – via emergent symbolic mechanisms for visual binding. 🧵👇

Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

Ever wondered how the Dalmatian Dog effect works? The human brain can quickly learn from a single experience and generalize it to related experiences — an impressive feat so far not matched by AI. Our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com reveals how this works. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Watch this fascinating video about our Indian Face Perception Project, featuring an interview with a face blind person! youtu.be/urN9_ygKOc0

Thrilled to share our paper in @pnas.org! "Neural synchrony links sensorimotor cortices in a network for facial motor control" With superb team: Ianni GR (co-first), Rassi E, Rouse AG, Schieber MH, Yazdani F, Prut Y, Freiwald WA. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Face paredolia in an actual fruit bowl at home 🙂

Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

Its the AI version of Moravec's paradox: What we find hard (literature, art, math), AI will find easy What we find easy (seeing, hearing, moving, laundry), AI will find hard. "We are least aware of what we do best" - Marvin Minsky en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec...

This is such a bizarre illusion - the helmet leads to an expectation of a face inside and all I saw was a blurred out face until I realized what's really happening...

Our awesome poster trilogy happening Tuesday morning! Don't miss it.

Come check out our lab at SFN this week!

Want to know how does the brain encode mass of objects while looking at them? I bring insights to this question from my NHP recordings in my upcoming talk at SfN San Diego, 15-Nov 1.30 PM (abstract 9562 / NANO004.03). Looking forward to all the exciting engagements! #SfN25

Come join us for this exciting event next week. You can't possibly have anything better to do next Saturday 🙃

In a study now out in @eLife, @GeorginJacob @PramodRT9 and I have some exciting results: a novel computation that helps the brain solve disparate visual tasks, a novel brain region that performs this computation....what's not to like?! Read on.... 1/n elifesciences.org/articles/93033

Apply to our awesome PhD program! Deadline Apr 6 cns.iisc.ac.in/academics/ph...

Matthew Smith and I cowrote this obituary about Carl Olson, who passed away recently. Carl was my postdoc mentor and was absolutely amazing. I will miss him💔 authors.elsevier.com/c/1knqf3BtfH...

Two new studies from our team we're particularly happy about: Study 1: ai.meta.com/research/pub... Study 2: ai.meta.com/research/pub... Blog 3: ai.meta.com/blog/brain-a...

"Academics from poorer backgrounds are both more likely to not publish and to have outstanding publication records. Academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts, but are less likely to receive recognition" 👀

New paper on informed consent! I’m so proud of this work led by @rachelschlund.bsky.social. We show that regardless of how clueless WE feel about the terms we agree to when signing a contract or clicking accept, others assume we knew what we were getting into. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The true measure of learning is not the time and energy you put in. It’s the knowledge and skills you take out. "Trying harder isn’t always the answer. Sometimes it’s working smarter, and other times it’s working on something else altogether." www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/o...

Special article on consciousness featuring several #CNSIISc faculty and our neuroconsciousness initiative. connect.iisc.ac.in/2024/12/the-...

I promised to write about my thoughts on the status of the field of neuroAI, some of the big challenges we are facing, and the approaches we are taking to address them. This is super selective on the topic of finding a good model but in my view it affects the field as a whole. Here we go. 🧵

A really cool and clever "second-order" method to gauge how we perceive the occluded parts of objects!

Although it took an exceptionally long time to get this out to you all, I am extremely proud of my first manuscript . This study could not have been possible without @sparuniisc.bsky.social invaluable guidance and the excellent resources and support from @psychopy.org. Please read below:

In a new study, out now in Attention Perception & Psychophysics, Thomas Cherian (@thomascherian.bsky.social) and I have some fascinating insights into what we see behind an occluder. Like all good things, the origin of this study was simple curiosity. Consider the picture below:

Another huge influx of colleagues to BlueSky this week, so let me attach the fully updated Neurophysiology starter pack for anyone interested. go.bsky.app/9FY1ReG

There’s actually at least 12 types of paper in neuroscience (stolen from X), who knew?

Come attend the awesome Bangalore Cognition Workshop at IISc from June 15-21 2024! Apply at forms.gle/kfA1obX8CkPg... Deadline: Feb 29 2024 Please circulate widely!

Amazing! I did not know about these fish before.