Joao Barbosa
@jbarbosa.org
INSERM group leader @ Neuromodulation Institute and NeuroSpin (Paris) in computational neuroscience.
How and why are computations enabling cognition distributed across the brain?
Expect neuroscience and ML content.
jbarbosa.org
How and why are computations enabling cognition distributed across the brain?
Expect neuroscience and ML content.
jbarbosa.org
Pinned
Joao Barbosa
@jbarbosa.org
· Feb 2
A good time to repost this banger from 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals' by Noam Chomsky in '67
Vance is absolutely correct: universities are - and must be - the enemy.
This is why the Right is attacking scholarship globally. They want to end the privilege Chomsky's talking about in 67
Vance is absolutely correct: universities are - and must be - the enemy.
This is why the Right is attacking scholarship globally. They want to end the privilege Chomsky's talking about in 67
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
If you'd like to study Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, don't miss this info event on Wednesday! 👉 bit.ly/4aX4Yc8 #CompNeuro #BernsteinNetwork
Information Day 2026 - "International Graduate Program(s) Computational Neuroscience" - BCCN
When: January 14th, 2026, 15:00-18:00 CET Where: BCCN Berlin Lecture Hall (Philippstr. 12, Haus 6, 10115 Berlin) & Live-streamed via Zoom Registration: Registration will open in December 2026.…
bit.ly
January 12, 2026 at 4:15 PM
If you'd like to study Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, don't miss this info event on Wednesday! 👉 bit.ly/4aX4Yc8 #CompNeuro #BernsteinNetwork
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
We extracted (parts of) 12 books in experiments with 4 frontier-lab, production LLMs.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
January 7, 2026 at 8:31 PM
We extracted (parts of) 12 books in experiments with 4 frontier-lab, production LLMs.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Excited to be giving the van Vreeswijk Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar this Wednesday, Jan 14, where I'll talk about "Computation Through Neuronal-Synaptic Dynamics"!
www.wwtns.online
www.wwtns.online
Home | Neuroscience | World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar
WWTNS is a weekly digital seminar on Zoom targeting the theoretical neuroscience community. Its aim is to be a platform to exchange ideas among theoreticians.
www.wwtns.online
January 10, 2026 at 7:45 PM
Excited to be giving the van Vreeswijk Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar this Wednesday, Jan 14, where I'll talk about "Computation Through Neuronal-Synaptic Dynamics"!
www.wwtns.online
www.wwtns.online
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Proud of being part of this great paper 🧪
#NEUmap: Large-scale mapping of artificial perceptions for neuroprostheses using spontaneous neuronal activity in macaque and human visual cortex www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S193... by @lozaneuro.bsky.social et al.; #BCI #NeuroTech #blindness
January 10, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Proud of being part of this great paper 🧪
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
By the way, if you’re interested in working together on problems like this, I’m starting my lab at UCSF this summer. Get in touch if you’re interested in doing a postdoc! More info here: wj2.github.io/postdoc_ad (7/7)
W. Jeffrey Johnston - Postdoctoral position ad
wj2.github.io
January 9, 2026 at 7:06 PM
By the way, if you’re interested in working together on problems like this, I’m starting my lab at UCSF this summer. Get in touch if you’re interested in doing a postdoc! More info here: wj2.github.io/postdoc_ad (7/7)
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
📣 Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026 – Join Us in Lisbon! 🧠✨
March 10–11, 2026 • Lisbon, Portugal
pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon2026
Kick off COSYNE week with two days of hands-on, team-based hacking around real electrophysiology data!
✅ Apply now via the event website (limited spots).
March 10–11, 2026 • Lisbon, Portugal
pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon2026
Kick off COSYNE week with two days of hands-on, team-based hacking around real electrophysiology data!
✅ Apply now via the event website (limited spots).
January 9, 2026 at 11:09 AM
📣 Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026 – Join Us in Lisbon! 🧠✨
March 10–11, 2026 • Lisbon, Portugal
pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon2026
Kick off COSYNE week with two days of hands-on, team-based hacking around real electrophysiology data!
✅ Apply now via the event website (limited spots).
March 10–11, 2026 • Lisbon, Portugal
pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon2026
Kick off COSYNE week with two days of hands-on, team-based hacking around real electrophysiology data!
✅ Apply now via the event website (limited spots).
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
January 9, 2026 at 1:27 AM
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.
My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
My new gig is PI of the CANN group at Trinity College Dublin and University of Oxford (50/50). Funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, we'll be recruiting postdocs, PhDs and an RA in Dublin and Oxford soon. So exciting! @oxcin.bsky.social @tcddublin.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @tcdscss.bsky.social
January 8, 2026 at 8:19 PM
My new gig is PI of the CANN group at Trinity College Dublin and University of Oxford (50/50). Funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, we'll be recruiting postdocs, PhDs and an RA in Dublin and Oxford soon. So exciting! @oxcin.bsky.social @tcddublin.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @tcdscss.bsky.social
Congratulations!! And what a relief tbh. You didn't tell us where you were moving and I feared the worst (e.g. meta😋)
January 8, 2026 at 8:50 PM
Congratulations!! And what a relief tbh. You didn't tell us where you were moving and I feared the worst (e.g. meta😋)
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Wanna compare dynamics across neural data, RNNs, or dynamical systems? We got a fast and furious method🏎️
The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA):
📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828
💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast...
I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA):
📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828
💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast...
I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
January 8, 2026 at 4:08 PM
Wanna compare dynamics across neural data, RNNs, or dynamical systems? We got a fast and furious method🏎️
The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA):
📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828
💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast...
I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA):
📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828
💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast...
I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
blackstar is possibly my favourite bowie album. Unbelievable that he pull this good bye album literally on his deathbed
January 8, 2026 at 2:34 PM
blackstar is possibly my favourite bowie album. Unbelievable that he pull this good bye album literally on his deathbed
Interesting explanation! (The*) English is weird :)
* 😋
* 😋
January 5, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Interesting explanation! (The*) English is weird :)
* 😋
* 😋
Right, and you use it for other things like "the iphone", the menu/ bar, etc?
January 5, 2026 at 10:50 PM
Right, and you use it for other things like "the iphone", the menu/ bar, etc?
Why without? In the latin languages I know you have to use the article, so to me it always sounded weird without
January 5, 2026 at 10:37 PM
Why without? In the latin languages I know you have to use the article, so to me it always sounded weird without
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
I don't know enough to have my own view on this paper or response, but to me this is science social media at its best: doing post publication peer review of papers that make big claims. Bravo @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
January 5, 2026 at 7:43 PM
I don't know enough to have my own view on this paper or response, but to me this is science social media at its best: doing post publication peer review of papers that make big claims. Bravo @alexanderhuth.bsky.social
Very nice, but there's a 'but' right after:))
January 5, 2026 at 10:32 PM
Very nice, but there's a 'but' right after:))
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Using quantitative brain imaging, the authors show opposite fMRI BOLD signal to metabolic activity due to variable oxygen extraction across the human cortex. This questions the canonical interpretatio...
www.nature.com
January 5, 2026 at 5:22 PM
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Although the current chaos is worse, that weekend in 1983 felt pretty full on! And it left worries that echo today. An FCO planner noted that the success of the operation meant that ‘the US rather than the Soviet Union was likely to risk the threat or use of force elsewhere’. End
January 4, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Although the current chaos is worse, that weekend in 1983 felt pretty full on! And it left worries that echo today. An FCO planner noted that the success of the operation meant that ‘the US rather than the Soviet Union was likely to risk the threat or use of force elsewhere’. End
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Episode #36 in #TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast: On low-dimensional manifolds in motor cortex – with Sara Solla @sasolla.bsky.social
theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn36
Manifold analysis has changed our thinking on how cortex works. One of the pioneers of this modelling approach explains.
theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn36
Manifold analysis has changed our thinking on how cortex works. One of the pioneers of this modelling approach explains.
January 3, 2026 at 9:21 AM
Episode #36 in #TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast: On low-dimensional manifolds in motor cortex – with Sara Solla @sasolla.bsky.social
theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn36
Manifold analysis has changed our thinking on how cortex works. One of the pioneers of this modelling approach explains.
theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn36
Manifold analysis has changed our thinking on how cortex works. One of the pioneers of this modelling approach explains.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.
January 2, 2026 at 5:52 PM
1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain
No two neurons are the same, yet models often treat neural populations as pools of
identical and interchangeable elements. Here, Dahmen et al. highlight recent theoretical
advances that reveal the imp...
www.cell.com
January 2, 2026 at 2:22 PM
At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
"Simple heuristics to run a research group" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 1, 2026 at 7:16 PM
"Simple heuristics to run a research group" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Bye bye 2025, a divisive year,
with many divisors: 3, 5, 9, 15, 25, 27, 45, 75, 81, 135, 225, 405, 675.
Happy 2026 = 2*1013
Just two primes
Cheers!
with many divisors: 3, 5, 9, 15, 25, 27, 45, 75, 81, 135, 225, 405, 675.
Happy 2026 = 2*1013
Just two primes
Cheers!
December 31, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Bye bye 2025, a divisive year,
with many divisors: 3, 5, 9, 15, 25, 27, 45, 75, 81, 135, 225, 405, 675.
Happy 2026 = 2*1013
Just two primes
Cheers!
with many divisors: 3, 5, 9, 15, 25, 27, 45, 75, 81, 135, 225, 405, 675.
Happy 2026 = 2*1013
Just two primes
Cheers!
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
But as well as social norms, the lyrics also reflect deeper societal moods.
Back in the 1980s, sentiment analysis shows, pop songs were often about positivity and anticipation. Since then, they have taken a turn towards anger, sadness and even disgust
3/6
Back in the 1980s, sentiment analysis shows, pop songs were often about positivity and anticipation. Since then, they have taken a turn towards anger, sadness and even disgust
3/6
December 28, 2025 at 11:55 AM
But as well as social norms, the lyrics also reflect deeper societal moods.
Back in the 1980s, sentiment analysis shows, pop songs were often about positivity and anticipation. Since then, they have taken a turn towards anger, sadness and even disgust
3/6
Back in the 1980s, sentiment analysis shows, pop songs were often about positivity and anticipation. Since then, they have taken a turn towards anger, sadness and even disgust
3/6
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Cost of 1 spike: 10^8 ATP (~3-7 bits)
Cost of adding 1 nucleotide to a string: 1 ATP (2 bits)
Cost of releasing 1 typical extracellular vesicle (exosome ~100nm): ~10-100 ATP
Conjecture: it's more energy-efficent (in bits/ATP) to communicate between neurons with RNA packaged in exosomes
Cost of adding 1 nucleotide to a string: 1 ATP (2 bits)
Cost of releasing 1 typical extracellular vesicle (exosome ~100nm): ~10-100 ATP
Conjecture: it's more energy-efficent (in bits/ATP) to communicate between neurons with RNA packaged in exosomes
December 8, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Cost of 1 spike: 10^8 ATP (~3-7 bits)
Cost of adding 1 nucleotide to a string: 1 ATP (2 bits)
Cost of releasing 1 typical extracellular vesicle (exosome ~100nm): ~10-100 ATP
Conjecture: it's more energy-efficent (in bits/ATP) to communicate between neurons with RNA packaged in exosomes
Cost of adding 1 nucleotide to a string: 1 ATP (2 bits)
Cost of releasing 1 typical extracellular vesicle (exosome ~100nm): ~10-100 ATP
Conjecture: it's more energy-efficent (in bits/ATP) to communicate between neurons with RNA packaged in exosomes