Leonardo Dalla Porta
ldallap.bsky.social
Leonardo Dalla Porta
@ldallap.bsky.social
Physicist by training working in Neuroscience (PhD). Into brain states and their transitions. Newbie climber
https://ldallap.github.io/
I'm really happy to share our latest work:

“Cholinergic heterogeneity facilitates synchronization and information flow in a whole-brain model”

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Cholinergic heterogeneity facilitates synchronization and information flow in a whole-brain model
The human brain displays substantial regional variability in molecular, anatomical, and physiological organization. Yet, how this heterogeneity shapes large-scale neuronal dynamics remains poorly unde...
www.biorxiv.org
October 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Disconnecting part of the brain sends it into a deep sleep

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Disconnecting part of the brain sends it into a deep sleep
Study on the effects of surgical epilepsy treatment adds to researchers’ understanding of unconsciousness.
www.nature.com
October 20, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
#Hemispherotomy is a surgical treatment for #epilepsy by disconnecting a portion of the #cortex. Michele Colombo, Jacopo Favaro, @anilseth.bsky.social, Marcello Massimini &co show that the isolated cortex has #EEG patterns resembling deep #sleep or #anesthesia @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3J9ci8X
October 17, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Have you ever wondered what is the brain activity left in a cortical hemisphere after structural isolation?

Check it out:
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans
Hemispherotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for treating refractory epilepsy by disconnecting a significant portion of the cortex. This study shows that the isolated cortex exhibits EEG patterns resem...
journals.plos.org
October 17, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Now out in Advanced Intelligent Systems: Exploiting underlying data geometry, we classify brain states efficiently using Riemannian manifolds. A lightweight and interpretable alternative to DNNs. Spearheaded by
@arnauya.bsky.social!

Check it out: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Riemannian Geometry for the Classification of Brain States with Intracortical Brain Recordings
Geometric machine learning is applied to decode brain states from invasive intracortical neural recordings, extending Riemannian methods to the invasive regime where data is scarcer and less stationa...
advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Brainwide hemodynamics predict EEG neural rhythms across sleep and wakefulness in humans | bioRxiv
Brainwide hemodynamics predict EEG neural rhythms across sleep and wakefulness in humans
The brain exhibits rich oscillatory dynamics that play critical roles in vigilance and cognition, such as the neural rhythms that define sleep. These rhythms continuously fluctuate, signaling major ch...
www.biorxiv.org
July 27, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Attractors are usually not mechanisms - new blog post: open.substack.com/pub/kording/...
Attractors are usually not mechanisms
The mathematical objects can not be. And the "attractor models" have not been established as mechanisms in mammals
open.substack.com
July 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Are you at the @cnsorg.bsky.social conference?

Do you like networks? Brain-like networks? Pretty and structure rich networks? 🙇‍♂️🧠🕸

Come to my Poster 204 this afternoon (or anytime today)!!

The poster is right next to the coffee! ☕️ 😉

#CNS2025 #CNS2025Florence 🇮🇹🍝
July 7, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Doing this might make you smarter ... (www.vice.com/en/article/d...) News coverage of our study on unsupervised learning in mice by @zhong-lin.bsky.social + @marius10p.bsky.social

#neuroscience #AI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Doing This Might Actually Make You Smarter
You’re scrolling through TikTok with the sound off. Waiting in line for a coffee. Watching a guy try to parallel park for the third time...
www.vice.com
July 2, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Bruchas about an absolutely banger recent paper from his group that tracked down cells in the brainstem that subtlety and precisely control the output of the locus coeruleus. Check out my interview here. I hope you like it as much as I did!
May 8, 2025 at 3:22 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
I'd put these on the NeuroAI vision board:

@tyrellturing.bsky.social's Deep learning framework
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@tonyzador.bsky.social's Next-gen AI through neuroAI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@adriendoerig.bsky.social's Neuroconnectionist framework
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
April 28, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
🧠🌡️ New preprint out!

BRAIN TEMPERATURE may be a key factor in understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease and brain cancer:

doi.org/10.31219/osf...

'Temperature matters: Insights into brain thermoregulation and its impact on neural activity and health'
April 16, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
rdcu.be/ehyfl
Finally we see our work published! w/ Arnau Manasanch, @ldallap.bsky.social and Mavi Sanchez-Vives!
Neural models for detection and classification of brain states and transitions
Communications Biology - A deep learning self-supervised hybrid CNN-autoencoder model is used to detect brain states and transitions, like wakefulness, slow oscillations and microarousals, during...
rdcu.be
April 13, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Riemannian Geometry for the classification of brain states with intracortical brain-computer interfaces
arxiv.org/abs/2504.05534
Riemannian Geometry for the classification of brain states with intracortical brain-computer interfaces
This study investigates the application of Riemannian geometry-based methods for brain decoding using invasive electrophysiological recordings. Although previously employed in non-invasive, the utilit...
arxiv.org
April 10, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Despite species and task differences, timescales of these reward history signals (as well as intrinsic timescales) follow the same pattern of cortical hierarchy across different species.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
April 6, 2025 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!
Individual variability of neural computations underlying flexible decisions - Nature
Behavioural experiments to study decision-making in response to context-dependent accumulation of evidence provide testable models that are consistent with the heterogeneity in neural signatures among...
www.nature.com
March 21, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
"What do neural travelling waves tell us about information flow?"

A new preprint is out, with Antoine Grimaldi, Fredo Chavane and @martinavinck.bsky.social
What do neural travelling waves tell us about information flow?
In many behavioral conditions, neural activity propagates within and across brain regions as traveling waves, revealing the importance of analyzing spatiotemporal dynamics in electrophysiological data...
www.biorxiv.org
February 26, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
I didn't know this one!

The first manifoldian (as in a description of neural population covariance patterns) plot I am aware of is by Gilles Laurent's group www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Intensity versus Identity Coding in an Olfactory System
We examined the encoding and decoding of odor identity and intensity by neurons in the antennal lobe and the mushroom body, first and second relays, respectively, of the locust olfactory system. Incre...
www.cell.com
February 22, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Trajectories in state space are shown in Figures 3 & 4 of Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks (Diesmann et al, Nature, 1999).
Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks - Nature
Nature - Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks
www.nature.com
February 22, 2025 at 6:59 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
Se inaugura el Centro de Neurociencias Cajal (CNC), que englobará al @institutocajal.bsky.social y al CINC bajo el paraguas del @ci2a.bsky.social. El traslado del Instituto Cajal a sus nuevas instalaciones en Alcalá de Henares se hará en los próximos meses www.ciencia.gob.es/Noticias/202...
Diana Morant: “El Centro de Neurociencias Cajal va a permitir que España dé un salto cualitativo en la investigación neurocientífica a nivel internacional”
Diana Morant: “El Centro de Neurociencias Cajal va a permitir que España dé un salto cualitativo en la investigación neurocientífica a nivel internacional”
www.ciencia.gob.es
February 17, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
It's finally out!

Visual experience orthogonalizes visual cortical responses

Training in a visual task changes V1 tuning curves in odd ways. This effect is explained by a simple convex transformation. It orthogonalizes the population, making it easier to decode.

10.1016/j.celrep.2025.115235
February 2, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
What's the right way to think about modularity in the brain? This devilish 😈 question is a big part of my research now, and it started with this paper with @solarpunkgabs.bsky.social, finally published after the first preprint in 2021! 🤖🧠🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dynamics of specialization in neural modules under resource constraints - Nature Communications
The extent to which structural modularity in neural networks ensures functional specialization remains unclear. Here the authors show that specialization can emerge in neural modules placed under reso...
www.nature.com
January 23, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Leonardo Dalla Porta
**The ultimate systems #neuroscience paper!**

Recording every spike, every stimulus, every action during person's first half of life to predict second half?

The future of papers and neuro, are we almost there yet? That would great discussion to have online.

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
Imagining the ultimate systems neuroscience paper
A growing body of papers on systems neuroscience and on giant simulations of neural circuits involves data beyond the point that anyone can reasonably understand end to end. Looking ahead, “paper-bots...
www.thetransmitter.org
December 7, 2024 at 5:36 PM