Cian O'Donnell
@cianodonnell.bsky.social
Computational neuroscientist.
Senior Lecturer at Ulster University in the Great City of Derry, Northern Ireland.
"not articulate enough"
https://odonnellgroup.github.io
Senior Lecturer at Ulster University in the Great City of Derry, Northern Ireland.
"not articulate enough"
https://odonnellgroup.github.io
Flu carnage here. 1/3 of my kid's nursery class are off, hearing similar things in other local schools.
Primary kids here get a free, in-school flu vaccine but the uptake is far from 100% 😞
Primary kids here get a free, in-school flu vaccine but the uptake is far from 100% 😞
It's a very very bad flu season this year. If you haven't gotten your vaxx yet (looks at herself*) get it. At minimum it will make your infection less bad.
*(Time got away from me and I'm too chicken shit to mix Covid and Flu vaccines so I got my Covid shot but not my flu . I will tomorrow!)
*(Time got away from me and I'm too chicken shit to mix Covid and Flu vaccines so I got my Covid shot but not my flu . I will tomorrow!)
A New Flu Variant May Make Cold Season Brutal This Year
U.S. flu rates remain low, but experts are keeping an eye on a new strain that’s been linked to unexpectedly early and severe seasons in several other countries
www.scientificamerican.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Flu carnage here. 1/3 of my kid's nursery class are off, hearing similar things in other local schools.
Primary kids here get a free, in-school flu vaccine but the uptake is far from 100% 😞
Primary kids here get a free, in-school flu vaccine but the uptake is far from 100% 😞
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
This is £600m from the same university sector that is pretty close to collapse in a growing number of major institutions?
Many of them universities that are among the biggest employers in the very ‘left behind’ towns and cities that Labour talks so much about…
Many of them universities that are among the biggest employers in the very ‘left behind’ towns and cities that Labour talks so much about…
i: Reeves to unveil £600m raid on foreign student
university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
November 24, 2025 at 7:45 PM
This is £600m from the same university sector that is pretty close to collapse in a growing number of major institutions?
Many of them universities that are among the biggest employers in the very ‘left behind’ towns and cities that Labour talks so much about…
Many of them universities that are among the biggest employers in the very ‘left behind’ towns and cities that Labour talks so much about…
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
World-models in your head
Talking with a lot of people, they have rather shocking different kinds of world-models. I believe that people have somewhat specialized simulators. Let me list some and then give you the chance to ad...
docs.google.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
So excited to see our latest paper out today in @natcomms.nature.com! Studies led by the amazing @margestelzner.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... VTA GABA neurons have a unique role in economic decision making - they integrate reward seeking motivation and the current cost of seeking
Ventral tegmental area GABA neurons integrate positive and negative valence - Nature Communications
The role of ventral tegmental area GABA neurons in behavior is unclear. Here, authors show that VTA GABA but not dopamine neurons integrate positive and negative valence to encode motivational conflic...
www.nature.com
November 24, 2025 at 4:18 PM
So excited to see our latest paper out today in @natcomms.nature.com! Studies led by the amazing @margestelzner.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... VTA GABA neurons have a unique role in economic decision making - they integrate reward seeking motivation and the current cost of seeking
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
📍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?
🧵⬇️
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?
🧵⬇️
November 24, 2025 at 4:43 PM
📍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?
🧵⬇️
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?
🧵⬇️
One example of how multiplexing might be implemented in the brain was shown in the great work by Thomas Akam with Dmitri Kullmann, a decade ago.
The papers are cited well but the general multiplexing idea never really took the field by storm as much as it deserved
www.nature.com/articles/nrn...
The papers are cited well but the general multiplexing idea never really took the field by storm as much as it deserved
www.nature.com/articles/nrn...
November 24, 2025 at 10:07 AM
One example of how multiplexing might be implemented in the brain was shown in the great work by Thomas Akam with Dmitri Kullmann, a decade ago.
The papers are cited well but the general multiplexing idea never really took the field by storm as much as it deserved
www.nature.com/articles/nrn...
The papers are cited well but the general multiplexing idea never really took the field by storm as much as it deserved
www.nature.com/articles/nrn...
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
For more than a decade now the government’s answer to how to fund universities has been to make money from overseas students.
The last lot then tried to discourage students from coming here.
This lot just want the money back.
But then how do we fund ourselves?
Crazy.
The last lot then tried to discourage students from coming here.
This lot just want the money back.
But then how do we fund ourselves?
Crazy.
i: Reeves to unveil £600m raid on foreign student
university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
November 24, 2025 at 7:43 AM
For more than a decade now the government’s answer to how to fund universities has been to make money from overseas students.
The last lot then tried to discourage students from coming here.
This lot just want the money back.
But then how do we fund ourselves?
Crazy.
The last lot then tried to discourage students from coming here.
This lot just want the money back.
But then how do we fund ourselves?
Crazy.
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
It's been SEVEN hours and
fifteen days
fifteen days
November 23, 2025 at 2:33 AM
It's been SEVEN hours and
fifteen days
fifteen days
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
“AI workers said they distrust the models they work on because of a consistent emphasis on rapid turnaround time at the expense of quality.”
Meet the AI workers who tell their friends and family to stay away from AI
When the people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least, it shows that incentives for speed are overtaking safety, experts say
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM
“AI workers said they distrust the models they work on because of a consistent emphasis on rapid turnaround time at the expense of quality.”
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
The final version of our paper "Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of multiregion brain cell count data", by Dimmock et al, is now available online at eLife:
elifesciences.org/articles/102...
Thanks to @cianodonnell.bsky.social and Conor Houghton who involved us in this project.
elifesciences.org/articles/102...
Thanks to @cianodonnell.bsky.social and Conor Houghton who involved us in this project.
Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of multiregion brain cell count data
Bayesian hierarchical models offer powerful statistical tools for neuroscientists to analyze whole-brain cell count data, as demonstrated here using two example datasets from different laboratories.
elifesciences.org
November 22, 2025 at 10:27 AM
The final version of our paper "Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of multiregion brain cell count data", by Dimmock et al, is now available online at eLife:
elifesciences.org/articles/102...
Thanks to @cianodonnell.bsky.social and Conor Houghton who involved us in this project.
elifesciences.org/articles/102...
Thanks to @cianodonnell.bsky.social and Conor Houghton who involved us in this project.
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Hi, scientist here:
This statement from the Trumpers at CDC is not how scientific truth works.
This is a Merchants of Doubt rhetorical trick. No study can prove a negative. Scientific evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism. 🧪
This statement from the Trumpers at CDC is not how scientific truth works.
This is a Merchants of Doubt rhetorical trick. No study can prove a negative. Scientific evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism. 🧪
This is completely disgusting. Today, the CDC updated their vaccine safety page. It now says:
“The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism”.
“The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism”.
November 20, 2025 at 4:55 AM
Hi, scientist here:
This statement from the Trumpers at CDC is not how scientific truth works.
This is a Merchants of Doubt rhetorical trick. No study can prove a negative. Scientific evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism. 🧪
This statement from the Trumpers at CDC is not how scientific truth works.
This is a Merchants of Doubt rhetorical trick. No study can prove a negative. Scientific evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism. 🧪
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
My book "The Brain, in Theory" on the publisher's website (out in April 2026):
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
The Brain, In Theory
Why engineering and computational analogies are poorly suited to the study of biological cognition
press.princeton.edu
November 18, 2025 at 8:25 AM
My book "The Brain, in Theory" on the publisher's website (out in April 2026):
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
That's what's frustrating. Because we have a model building toolkit in the form of ANNs, but we don't have enough/the right data to use it to its full potential. (This was less frustrating before we had the well functioning toolkit)
November 17, 2025 at 3:30 PM
That's what's frustrating. Because we have a model building toolkit in the form of ANNs, but we don't have enough/the right data to use it to its full potential. (This was less frustrating before we had the well functioning toolkit)
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Synergy mediates long-range correlations in the visual cortex near criticality. Hardik Rajpal et al, a collaboration with @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social (and one of the outputs of the EPSRC/Wellcome Statistical Physics of Cognition project)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Synergy mediates Long-Range Correlations in the Visual Cortex Near Criticality
Long-range correlations are a key signature of systems operating near criticality, indicating spatially-extended interactions across large distances. These extended dependencies underlie other emergen...
www.biorxiv.org
November 16, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Synergy mediates long-range correlations in the visual cortex near criticality. Hardik Rajpal et al, a collaboration with @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social (and one of the outputs of the EPSRC/Wellcome Statistical Physics of Cognition project)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
SfN meeting numbers trending downward over past decade. Be curious to see the 2025 count in the current political climate
November 15, 2025 at 7:59 PM
SfN meeting numbers trending downward over past decade. Be curious to see the 2025 count in the current political climate
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
This is an absolutely delightful read that i strongly recommend for everyone in science.
Always liked this humorous piece on how papers are 'lies' constructed to destroy myth and wonder journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Destroying myth and wonder
I've just had the most wonderful day. I spent the entire time notwriting papers. (The only thing I like more than not writing papers is not writing grants and not going to staff meetings.) I cleaned m...
journals.biologists.com
November 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM
This is an absolutely delightful read that i strongly recommend for everyone in science.
seems generally accepted that LLMs can do a decent-but-not-amazing-job on 'thinky' human tasks (student essays, creative writing, science reasoning, papers,grant apps)
Also people seem to think LLMs will inevitably soon catch up to humans
but will they? imo humans' strength is their idiosyncrasies
Also people seem to think LLMs will inevitably soon catch up to humans
but will they? imo humans' strength is their idiosyncrasies
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
November 15, 2025 at 8:49 AM
seems generally accepted that LLMs can do a decent-but-not-amazing-job on 'thinky' human tasks (student essays, creative writing, science reasoning, papers,grant apps)
Also people seem to think LLMs will inevitably soon catch up to humans
but will they? imo humans' strength is their idiosyncrasies
Also people seem to think LLMs will inevitably soon catch up to humans
but will they? imo humans' strength is their idiosyncrasies
another example of "humans shouldn't use AI in place of their own evaluation"
if I don't have time to provide my own evaluation of something I just... say no
if I don't have time to provide my own evaluation of something I just... say no
I had a senior Faculty tell me that he fed someone's CV (who he didn't know) into an AI to write a letter. What is the point of that? What level of delusion is that?
November 14, 2025 at 7:58 PM
another example of "humans shouldn't use AI in place of their own evaluation"
if I don't have time to provide my own evaluation of something I just... say no
if I don't have time to provide my own evaluation of something I just... say no
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
This, right here. The best predictor of productivity is funding the damn grant.
November 14, 2025 at 4:53 PM
This, right here. The best predictor of productivity is funding the damn grant.
my excellent colleague KongFatt WongLin has an opening for a 10-month RA position in NeuroAI (suitable for people with an MSc that don't require a visa to work in the UK)
www.linkedin.com/posts/kongfa...
www.linkedin.com/posts/kongfa...
Jobs at Ulster University | KongFatt Wong-Lin
Research Assistant Position in NeuroAI
I’m pleased to announce that applications are open for a Research Assistant position in NeuroAI, with a focus on computational modelling and machine learning in...
www.linkedin.com
November 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM
my excellent colleague KongFatt WongLin has an opening for a 10-month RA position in NeuroAI (suitable for people with an MSc that don't require a visa to work in the UK)
www.linkedin.com/posts/kongfa...
www.linkedin.com/posts/kongfa...
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Congrats to Ella for her new paper! She asked a really interesting question about how the brain represents uncertainty during hidden state inference, and in a lovely crossover with theoretical work, she shows that in mice, acetylcholine dynamics play a crucial role. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Acetylcholine reflects uncertainty during hidden state inference
To act adaptively, animals must infer features of the environment that cannot be observed directly, such as which option is currently rewarding, or which context they are in. These internal estimates,...
www.biorxiv.org
November 14, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Congrats to Ella for her new paper! She asked a really interesting question about how the brain represents uncertainty during hidden state inference, and in a lovely crossover with theoretical work, she shows that in mice, acetylcholine dynamics play a crucial role. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience
From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this!
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition
From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this!
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition
Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience
The study of foraging is central to a renewed interest in naturalistic behavior in neuroscience. Applying a foraging framework grounded in behavioral …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 14, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience
From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this!
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition
From the amazing @lauragrima.bsky.social and colleagues - definitely looking forward to reading this!
#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition
Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism
Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in
the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential
studies underpinning these...
www.cell.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 PM
New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...