The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
@gunnarblohm.bsky.social
CoSMO, Neuromatch, Neuro4Pros co-founder.
Comp neuro at Queen's U 🇨🇦 studying sensorimotor control.
Vice-Director (Queen's) of Connected Minds.
Mentor, dad, brewing, gardener, artist, antifa.
Renaissance man. Believer in humanity!
http://compneurosci.com/
Comp neuro at Queen's U 🇨🇦 studying sensorimotor control.
Vice-Director (Queen's) of Connected Minds.
Mentor, dad, brewing, gardener, artist, antifa.
Renaissance man. Believer in humanity!
http://compneurosci.com/
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Okay, I see this stuff about OpenClaw (née Clawd, then Moltbot for a bit) has escaped its bounds and is now getting glowing reviews in normal media.
DO NOT INSTALL THIS.
DO NOT INSTALL THIS.
February 6, 2026 at 11:13 AM
Okay, I see this stuff about OpenClaw (née Clawd, then Moltbot for a bit) has escaped its bounds and is now getting glowing reviews in normal media.
DO NOT INSTALL THIS.
DO NOT INSTALL THIS.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Final paper of my PhD 🤗
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.
However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.
However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
Misspecified models create the appearance of adaptive control during value-based choice - Communications Psychology
In a new computational analysis of previous work, this study shows that a control-free mechanism better accounts for value-based decisions than an account that assumes top-down control invigorating th...
www.nature.com
February 3, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Final paper of my PhD 🤗
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.
However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.
However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
February 3, 2026 at 2:11 PM
Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Chatbots already crippling MTurk…
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
(Heard someone call this an “existential crisis for the behavioral sciences”).
Now implications for public opinion research in contested environments… watch out.
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
(Heard someone call this an “existential crisis for the behavioral sciences”).
Now implications for public opinion research in contested environments… watch out.
February 2, 2026 at 1:31 AM
Chatbots already crippling MTurk…
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
(Heard someone call this an “existential crisis for the behavioral sciences”).
Now implications for public opinion research in contested environments… watch out.
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
(Heard someone call this an “existential crisis for the behavioral sciences”).
Now implications for public opinion research in contested environments… watch out.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Today's dinner: Paella! 😋
February 1, 2026 at 10:55 PM
Today's dinner: Paella! 😋
😲
Good advice from an ophthalmologist Dr Glaucoflecken (I know - still not sure it's a real name) on what to do if you get tear-gassed.
Looking at you, #Minnesota Warriors for Democracy & Justice!
Also #Minneapolis. Y'all know we always got you, right?
Peace & love!
Looking at you, #Minnesota Warriors for Democracy & Justice!
Also #Minneapolis. Y'all know we always got you, right?
Peace & love!
January 31, 2026 at 4:00 AM
😲
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
While humans spontaneously dance to a beat, the evolutionary origins of this ability remain debated. Behavioral work has shown that primates can move to auditory rhythms after training.
Our question was: How does this association emerge in the brain?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10....
Our question was: How does this association emerge in the brain?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10....
Reward-driven emergence of auditory pattern encoding in the primate motor system
The ability to anticipate rhythmic patterns is fundamental to human experience, enabling music appreciation, speech comprehension, and dancing in sync to music. How the brain learns to use acoustic information to guide motor behavior remains a key question whose neural underpinnings and evolutionary origins are debated, especially in non-human primates. To understand how brain areas involved in motor control naively respond to predictable tone patterns, we recorded large single neuron populations across primary somatosensory (S1), primary motor (M1), dorsal premotor (PMd), supplementary motor (SMA), pre-supplementary motor (preSMA) cortices, globus pallidus interna (GPi), and medial geniculate body (MGB) of a rhesus monkey. During passive listening (Experiment 1) with a reward only at the end of each trial, primarily the MGB, not motor areas, responded to the auditory tone patterns, ruling out the spontaneous entrainment of motor activity to auditory patterns. Almost all areas robustly
www.biorxiv.org
January 30, 2026 at 7:41 PM
While humans spontaneously dance to a beat, the evolutionary origins of this ability remain debated. Behavioral work has shown that primates can move to auditory rhythms after training.
Our question was: How does this association emerge in the brain?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10....
Our question was: How does this association emerge in the brain?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10....
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Trump trying to destabilise Canada from within.
Trump officials met group pushing Alberta independence from Canada
Separatists from oil-rich province try to capitalise on friction between White House and Mark Carney
www.ft.com
January 29, 2026 at 12:06 AM
Trump trying to destabilise Canada from within.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Wrote about that here.
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2026...
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2026...
Trump’s America Comes for Alberta | The Tyee
The country must respond to this flagrant violation of Canadian sovereignty.
thetyee.ca
January 29, 2026 at 12:24 AM
Wrote about that here.
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2026...
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2026...
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
“Imagine how they lie when there’s no evidence to contradict them.”
Watch this powerful message from Jon Stewart.
Watch this powerful message from Jon Stewart.
January 27, 2026 at 7:59 PM
“Imagine how they lie when there’s no evidence to contradict them.”
Watch this powerful message from Jon Stewart.
Watch this powerful message from Jon Stewart.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
We should use AI not to remove friction but we should use AI to *add* friction. The problem is not a lack of good ideas. The problem is that bad ideas are everywhere. Adding AI carelessly will just add more bad ideas that sound like good ideas. As if we didn't already have enough of that.
“The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up their work in much the same way that chatbots are now embedded into popular programming editors.
It’s vibe coding, but for science.”
It’s vibe coding, but for science.”
OpenAI’s latest product lets you vibe code science
Prism is a ChatGPT-powered text editor that automates much of the work involved in writing scientific papers.
www.technologyreview.com
January 29, 2026 at 1:15 AM
We should use AI not to remove friction but we should use AI to *add* friction. The problem is not a lack of good ideas. The problem is that bad ideas are everywhere. Adding AI carelessly will just add more bad ideas that sound like good ideas. As if we didn't already have enough of that.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Preprint alert!!! We recorded directly from the human ventral tegmental area (VTA), the principal source of cortical dopaminergic innervation, while patients performed an instrumental learning task. 🧵👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
January 28, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Preprint alert!!! We recorded directly from the human ventral tegmental area (VTA), the principal source of cortical dopaminergic innervation, while patients performed an instrumental learning task. 🧵👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
January 28, 2026 at 4:48 PM
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻
Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.
See below for + details and retweet 🙏
Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.
See below for + details and retweet 🙏
January 27, 2026 at 10:12 PM
Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻
Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.
See below for + details and retweet 🙏
Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.
See below for + details and retweet 🙏
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
How do people compute a sense of confidence? This question is usually addressed using very simple images because we don't know how complex stimuli are represented internally. In a new paper, we addressed this question using artificial neural networks (ANNs).
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Using artificial neural networks to reveal the human confidence computation
Author summary Human decisions are accompanied by a sense of confidence which reflects the decision accuracy. Conventionally, human confidence has been studied using two-choice tasks with simple stimu...
journals.plos.org
January 26, 2026 at 7:18 PM
How do people compute a sense of confidence? This question is usually addressed using very simple images because we don't know how complex stimuli are represented internally. In a new paper, we addressed this question using artificial neural networks (ANNs).
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
"What MAHA produces is propaganda: narratives designed to galvanize belief, build identity, and legitimate a political project.
The term “misinformation” treats this as a knowledge problem.
It’s a power problem."
Superb piece on how science can fight, by @noupside.bsky.social
The term “misinformation” treats this as a knowledge problem.
It’s a power problem."
Superb piece on how science can fight, by @noupside.bsky.social
Misinformation Studies Meets the Raw Milk Renaissance
A review of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science” (The National Academies Press, 2025).
www.lawfaremedia.org
January 26, 2026 at 10:47 PM
"What MAHA produces is propaganda: narratives designed to galvanize belief, build identity, and legitimate a political project.
The term “misinformation” treats this as a knowledge problem.
It’s a power problem."
Superb piece on how science can fight, by @noupside.bsky.social
The term “misinformation” treats this as a knowledge problem.
It’s a power problem."
Superb piece on how science can fight, by @noupside.bsky.social
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Thank you for this, @repdexteror.bsky.social.
Congresswoman Dexter is a physician who worked at research-intensive UW. She is now standing up for science and democracy. 💪
Congresswoman Dexter is a physician who worked at research-intensive UW. She is now standing up for science and democracy. 💪
Federal agents have murdered another person in Minneapolis. Action must be taken by Congress. Impeach Kristi Noem. Impeach Donald Trump. Defund ICE. Republican lawmakers must stand up for their communities and the rule of law. Stay Loud.
January 25, 2026 at 1:05 AM
Thank you for this, @repdexteror.bsky.social.
Congresswoman Dexter is a physician who worked at research-intensive UW. She is now standing up for science and democracy. 💪
Congresswoman Dexter is a physician who worked at research-intensive UW. She is now standing up for science and democracy. 💪
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
We're going to end up learning the hard way all of the lessons that our alliances were built over.
When a Text Message Shatters International Trust
A message sent to the Norwegian prime minister on Sunday could threaten decades of progress in building up the NATO alliance.
lnk.thebulwark.com
January 25, 2026 at 3:00 PM
We're going to end up learning the hard way all of the lessons that our alliances were built over.
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Anyone thinking of going to the Olympics or World Cup, don't
Every country should be having a very serious think about the safety of athletes, players, officials and fans.
It's morally wrong to go and give affirmation to the regime in the US
Every day gets more disgusting, ENOUGH
Every country should be having a very serious think about the safety of athletes, players, officials and fans.
It's morally wrong to go and give affirmation to the regime in the US
Every day gets more disgusting, ENOUGH
January 25, 2026 at 4:01 AM
Anyone thinking of going to the Olympics or World Cup, don't
Every country should be having a very serious think about the safety of athletes, players, officials and fans.
It's morally wrong to go and give affirmation to the regime in the US
Every day gets more disgusting, ENOUGH
Every country should be having a very serious think about the safety of athletes, players, officials and fans.
It's morally wrong to go and give affirmation to the regime in the US
Every day gets more disgusting, ENOUGH
Reposted by The Viking (Gunnar Blohm)
Robert Reich is right: time for a truly massive general strike.
We need to not only express our opposition and our outrage, but to exert actual leverage. Shut things down!
robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-tho...
We need to not only express our opposition and our outrage, but to exert actual leverage. Shut things down!
robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-tho...
Sunday thought: Enough
Time for a truly massive general strike
robertreich.substack.com
January 25, 2026 at 10:41 AM
Robert Reich is right: time for a truly massive general strike.
We need to not only express our opposition and our outrage, but to exert actual leverage. Shut things down!
robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-tho...
We need to not only express our opposition and our outrage, but to exert actual leverage. Shut things down!
robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-tho...
