Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · 3d

Maybe this is useful? In context learning in RNN compared to cognitive science in 2016
arxiv.org/abs/1611.05763

Also in context learning even in spiking RNN without synaptic plasiticity in 2018
arxiv.org/abs/1803.09574

Learning to reinforcement learn

In recent years deep reinforcement learning (RL) systems have attained superhuman performance in a number of challenging task domains. However, a major limitation of such applications is their demand ...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Lea Duncker @leaduncker.bsky.social · 5d

Travel awards are available for undergraduate students looking to attend #Cosyne25! The application is short, and the deadline is Nov 12. @cosynemeeting.bsky.social

Application: shorturl.at/6NEyk

More info: www.cosyne.org/travel-grants

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Travel Grants — COSYNE

Apply for COSYNE 2026 Travel Grants to support your participation in Lisbon and Cascais, Portugal. Grants are available for students, postdocs, and PIs, including programs for Childcare, Presenters, N...

www.cosyne.org

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Valentin Schmutz @bio-emergent.bsky.social · 19d

🎉 "High-dimensional neuronal activity from low-dimensional latent dynamics: a solvable model" will be presented as an oral at #NeurIPS2025 🎉

Feeling very grateful that reviewers and chairs appreciated concise mathematical explanations, in this age of big models.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Kathy Rastle @kathyrastle.bsky.social · 7d

** New ** Seeking Postdoctoral Research Fellow (3 yrs) for ESRC project on skilled reading in Arabic. Based in my lab at @rhulpsychology.bsky.social and collaborating with @denisdrieghe.bsky.social (Soton) and Sami Boudelaa (UAE). Please share! jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Job Opportunity at Royal Holloway University of London: Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Applications are invited for a 3-year, full-time Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.This position is funded by an ESRC resear...

jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 10d

New in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We study how humans explore a 61-state environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.”

Results: Participants keep exploring the stochastic part even when it’s unhelpful, and novelty-seeking best explains this behavior.

#cogsci #neuroskyence

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 12d

Today is the last day for submissions to the free online SNUFA spiking neural network workshop! This is a great opportunity to present your work (hundreds of participants and sometimes thousands of YouTube views per talk), and abstract submission is easy (300 words). Do it now! 🤖🧠🧪

snufa.net/2025/

SNUFA 2025

Spiking Neural networks as Universal Function Approximators

snufa.net

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Martin Jaggi @mjaggi.bsky.social · 13d

We're hiring again for AI research engineering roles: Join the team behind the Apertus LLM, if you share our passion to work on impactful AI that's truly open.

careers.epfl.ch/job/Lausanne...

AI Research Engineers - Swiss AI Initiative

careers.epfl.ch

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Friedemann Zenke @fzenke.bsky.social · 21d

Truly honored (and a little overwhelmed) to see our work featured in The Transmitter's "This Paper Changed My Life." Huge thanks to @neural-reckoning.org for the kind words - and to our amazing community that keeps pushing spiking neural network research forward 🙏

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 21d

In our latest “This paper changed my life,” @neural-reckoning.org explains how @fzenke.bsky.social's 2019 paper, and its related coding tutorial SpyTorch, made it possible to apply modern machine learning to spiking neural networks.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-c...

This paper changed my life: Dan Goodman on a paper that reignited the field of spiking neural networks

Friedemann Zenke’s 2019 paper, and its related coding tutorial SpyTorch, made it possible to apply modern machine learning to spiking neural networks. The innovation reinvigorated the field.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 22d

Submissions (short!) due for SNUFA spiking neural networks conference in <2 weeks! 🤖🧠🧪

forms.cloud.microsoft/e/XkZLavhaJe

More info at snufa.net/2025/

Note that we normally get around 700 participants and recordings go on YouTube and get 100s-1000s views.

Please repost.

SNUFA 2025

Spiking Neural networks as Universal Function Approximators

snufa.net

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Emilie Macé @mace-lab.bsky.social · 27d

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧵1/

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 29d

📣 NEW -- In The Economist, discussing the privacy perils of AI agents and what AI companies and operating systems need to do--NOW--to protect Signal and much else!

www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

An illustration of me, and the headline: "AI agents are coming for your privacy, warns Meredith Whittaker
The Signal Foundation’s president worries they will also blunt competition and undermine cyber-security"

To put it bluntly, the path currently being taken towards agentic AI leads to an elimination of privacy and security at the application layer. It will not be possible for apps like Signal—the messaging app whose foundation I run—to continue to provide strong privacy guarantees, built on robust and openly validated encryption, if device-makers and OS developers insist on puncturing the metaphoric blood-brain barrier between apps and the OS. Feeding your sensitive Signal messages into an undifferentiated data slurry connected to cloud servers in service of their AI-agent aspirations is a dangerous abdication of responsibility.

Happily, it’s not too late. There is much that can still be done, particularly when it comes to protecting the sanctity of private data. What’s needed is a fundamental shift in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents. First, privacy must be the default, and control must remain in the hands of application developers exercising agency on behalf of their users. Developers need the ability to designate applications as “sensitive” and mark them as off-limits to agents, at the OS level and otherwise. This cannot be a convoluted workaround buried in settings; it must be a straightforward, well-documented mechanism (similar to Global Privacy Control) that blocks an agent from accessing our data or taking actions within an app.

Second, radical transparency must be the norm. Vague assurances and marketing-speak are no longer acceptable. OS vendors have an obligation to be clear and precise about their architecture and what data their AI agents are accessing, how it is being used and the measures in place to protect it.

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Janelia Research Campus @hhmijanelia.bsky.social · 29d

Become a Theory Fellow at Janelia.

🔍 Use computation & theory to tackle biological problems.
🖥️ Leverage state-of-the-art computational infrastructure
🤝 Collaborate across scientific disciplines

Apply by Nov. 3 @ https://janelia.link/theoryfellowprogram

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · Sep 2

🤖📰 Effective YESTERDAY: China has mandated a digital watermark for all AI-generated content.
www.cac.gov.cn/2025-03/14/c...
Translating in 🧵.

Chinese writing, with last phrase highlight.
Something like,

第七条互联网应用程序分发平台在应用程序上架或者上线审核时,应当要求互联网应用程序服务提供者说明是否提供人工智能生务。互联网应用程序服务提供者提供人工智能生成合成服务的,互联网应用程序分发平台应当核验其生成合成内容标识相关材料。
第八条服务提供者应当在用户服务协议中明确说明生成合成内容标识的方法、样式等规范内容,并提示用户仔细阅读并理解相关理要求。
第九条用户申请服务提供者提供没有添加显式标识的生成合成内容的,服务提供者可以在通过用户协议明确用户的标识义务和后,提供不含显式标识的生成合成内容,并依法留存提供对象信息等相关日志不少于六个月。
第十条用户使用网络信息内容传播服务发布生成合成内容的,应当主动声明并使用服务提供者提供的标识功能进行标识。
任何组织和个人不得恶意删除、篡改、伪造、隐匿本办法规定的生成合成内容标识,不得为他人实施上述恶意行为提供工具或者得通过不正当标识手段损害他人合法权益。
第十一条服务提供者开展标识活动的,还应当符合相关法律、行政法规、部门规章和强制性国家标准的要求。
第十二条服务提供者在履行算法备案、安全评估等手续时,应当按照本办法提供生成合成内容标识相关材料,并加强标识信息共范打击相关违法犯罪活动提供支持和帮助。
第十三条违反本办法规定的,由网信、电信、公安和广播电视等有关主管部门依据职责,按照有关法律、行政法规、部门规章的处理。
第十四条本办法自2025年9月1日起施行。

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · Sep 1

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

James Dyke @jamesgdyke.info · Aug 31

www.instagram.com/p/DN71fEHE_-...

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · Aug 29

incredible Ada Lovelace quote highlighted in a talk by Steve Furber. She spells out the dream of computational neuroscience, 2 centuries ago. The sheer ambition 🤩

Steve Furber powerpoint slide showing picture of Ada Lovelace and a quote: "I have my hopes, and very distinct ones too, of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations--in short, a law or laws for the mutual actions of the molecules of brain. .... I hope to bequeath to the generations a calculus of the nervous system."

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 9

Happy to help, Elife is great

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 8

Other idea: All reviewers/authors could be invited to vote within a pool once a year to reflect top 10% for instance.

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 8

It could be automated, reviewers are asked whether they want to write a statement and support test of time award, 1+ or 3+ years after pub. The statement should be accepted by editors/other reviewers.

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 8

Elife needs to award for high quality and impact more visibly. This is important to make the great rejection-free system sustainable.

Either via test of time awards or spotlight papers.

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Reposted by Guillaume Bellec

Joao Barbosa @jbarbosa.org · Jul 7

Is there any Bernstein member out there willing to support my membership application? 🙏

@bernsteinneuro.bsky.social is one of my favorite conferences and I have been going for a while, but never became a member and would like to.

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 7

There are also direct sleeper train Vienna - Paris 😜 but last time I checked it did not have the mini cabin option

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 7

This is a direct line Vienna - Roma.

You leave around 19h from Vienna and arrive in Roma around 10h if you want. I stopped around 7h midway in Florence.

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 7

If you are at CNS, check out the "Brain inspired computing" workshop tomorrow.

I will talk at 9h30 about perturbation testing and measuring brain gradients with electrophysiology

Paper
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Workshop info:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Brain-Inspired Computing Workshop Program - July 8th, 2025

Brain-Inspired Computing Workshop Program - July 8th, 2025 Organizer: Yuliang Zang & Guozhang Chen Time: 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM Speaker: Rui Ponte Costa, University of Oxford Title: ...

docs.google.com

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Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · Jul 7

This summer I am on a scientific train tour 🧪🧠 🚂 now in Florence for CNS conference.

Austrian night trains are amazing. I tested the new mini-sleeper cabin (economy class).

5 ⭐ sleeping experience, but a bit small to eat the (included!) breakfast 🍞 ☕

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