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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 4d

The way Sutton himself interprets the “bitter lesson” in this interview definitely caught a lot of bitter lesson enthusiasts off guard.
LLMs not actually being an example of the bitter lesson was quite a nuance no one saw coming.

youtu.be/21EYKqUsPfg?...

Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end

YouTube video by Dwarkesh Patel

youtu.be

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todd gureckis @toddgureckis.bsky.social · 12d

So far, learning traps seem robust to social learning in our cases. Surprisingly, despite many manipulations that have tried to reduce this learning trap, the most effective has been simply being a child (see @emilyliquin.bsky.social's work on traps in children) osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Aaron Milstein @neurosutras.bsky.social · 5d

Interesting new data on BTSP mechanisms from my old Janelia colleague @hiallen72.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ca2+ Plateau Potentials Reflect Cross-Theta Cortico-Hippocampal Input Dynamics and Acetylcholine for Rapid Formation of Efficient Place-Cell Code

A central tenet of Systems Neuroscience lies in an understanding of memory and behavior through learning rules, but synaptic plasticity has rarely been shown to create functional single-neuron code in...

www.biorxiv.org

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Marlene Cohen @marlenecohen.bsky.social · 15d

New preprint! How can you remember an image you saw once, even after seeing thousands of them? We find a role for humble mid-level visual cortex in high-capacity, one-shot learning. doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.22.677855 🧵🧪1/

Neuronal signatures of successful one-shot memory in mid-level visual cortex

High-capacity, one-shot visual recognition memory challenges theories of learning and neural coding because it requires rapid, robust, and durable representations. Most studies have focused on the hip...

doi.org

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 16d

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways.

I could write a whole article about this, but as one example:

“To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…”
No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

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Bowen Zheng @bwz-brain.bsky.social · 22d

This is in principle justified by Rao-Blackwell theorem? one abstracts the problem enough such that the data we do have is a suffcient statistics for the inference problem.

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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 28d

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Bowen Zheng @bwz-brain.bsky.social · Sep 6

I’m not sure how useful this form is for characterizing part of the brain that does specific computation though. The heart is an important part of keep me alive to do face processing, but it does’t seem useful to say face processing -> heart is active. though it’s logically correct.

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Aug 22

LLRX republished the blogpost www.llrx.com/2025/08/ai-s...

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Ann Kennedy @antihebbiann.bsky.social · Aug 20

I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it!

Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Theoretical neuroscience has room to grow

Nature Reviews Neuroscience - The goal of theoretical neuroscience is to uncover principles of neural computation through careful design and interpretation of mathematical models. Here, I examine...

www.nature.com

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · Aug 20

MIT’s NANDA initiative found that 95% of generative AI deployments fail after interviewing 150 execs, surveying 350 workers, and analyzing 300 projects. The real “productivity gains” seem to come from layoffs and squeezing more work from fewer people not AI.

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

There’s a stark difference in success rates between companies that purchase AI tools from vendors and those that build them internally.

fortune.com

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Aug 12

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge

This week I was looking for info on what cognitive scientists mean when they speak of ‘domain-general’ cognition. I was curious, because the nuances are relevant for something I am researching at t…

irisvanrooijcogsci.com

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Miguel Aguilera @maguilera.net · Jul 24

Our paper just out in Nature Communications!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We introduce curved neural networks naturally introducing high-order interactions showing:
• explosive phase transitions
• enhanced memory retrieval via self-annealing
• increased memory capacity through geometric curvature

Explosive neural networks via higher-order interactions in curved statistical manifolds - Nature Communications

Higher-order interactions shape complex neural dynamics but are hard to model. Here, authors use a generalization of the maximum entropy principle to introduce a family of curved neural networks, reve...

www.nature.com

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Jason Climer @jrclimer.bsky.social · Jul 23

So what drives drift? We looked closely at the neurons and found that a small group of them were stable. These stable neurons were more excitable than neighboring cells, making the fate of the cells predictable.

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Alison Phipps አሊሰን @alisonphipps.bsky.social · Jul 21

DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO GET FOOD AND WATER IN TO GAZA.
This is from Lemkin Institute begging..... we are all begging.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is
calling on every single leader in the world: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO GET FOOD &
WATER INTO GAZA RIGHT AWAY. Even if it takes bypassing the reports, meetings, endless conferences, parliamentary sessions, UN sessions, and all the other regular diplomatic
channels that have led nowhere. Just do it. Genocide must not be allowed to continue while we all
watch. We must not allow mass starvation in Gaza.
We cannot wait any longer. IF YOU HAVE POWER, USE IT. HISTORY WILL DEMONSTRATE THE RECTITUDE OF
YOUR ACTIONS.

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Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · Jul 17

Really interesting results, suggesting that long-term place field stability is not from long-lasting synaptic plasticity, but is instead from an increased *probability of plasticity induction* in subsequent days.

Formation of an expanding memory representation in the hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience

Multiday imaging of CA1 neurons during learning reveals that the representation stabilizes as the number of readily retrievable, information-rich and stable place cells increases and suggests novel me...

www.nature.com

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Bowen Zheng @bwz-brain.bsky.social · Jul 16

“this is an unfair comparison because the model has not been trained on all data that has ever existed and on all future data that will be digitalized! Our foundation model is omniscient which renders the concept of generalization null!!!!”

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Rosanne Rademaker @rademaker.bsky.social · Jul 2

Who doesn't like a good model of the brain? Yet, from simple regression to neural nets, some limitations keep popping up (e.g., overfitting) @mjwolff.bsky.social & I saw some cool but puzzling data, ran a quick analysis & found one such limitation: model mimicry. Now in #naturecommunications &🧵below

Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors

Nature Communications - Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors

rdcu.be

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Hannah Payne @hannahpayne.bsky.social · Jun 11

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!

When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️

The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar

bit.ly/3HvWSum

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Kate Watson @loreandordure.com · May 8

It occurred to me last night that microwaves are kinda like LLMs.
Remember when they first came out, people bought microwave cookbooks, and special vented plastic cookware, and they were going to change the way we cooked and ate forever?
Now we use them for defrosting mince, and reheating cold tea.

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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · Apr 2

We’re excited about this project! We present a model of motor savings without the need for context.

Mahdiyar Shahbazi @mahdiyar45.bsky.social · Apr 2

Excited to share my latest work with @oliviercodol.bsky.social, supervised by @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social and @paulgribble.bsky.social, where we introduce a context-free model of savings in motor learning:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A Context-Free Model of Savings in Motor Learning

Learning to adapt voluntary movements to an external perturbation, whether mechanical or visual, is faster during a second encounter than during the first. The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, k...

www.biorxiv.org

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Guido Meijer @guidomeijer.com · Mar 27

Kilosort4 detects a LOT of neurons, I recorded 15k neurons in one year 🤯 Traditionally, one would curate these detected units to see if they are well isolated single neurons. This is not feasible anymore, so today let's look at three options that are out there to automate this process! 🤖👇

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Mar 26

I’m hiring a full-time lab tech for two years starting May/June. Strong coding skills required, ML a plus. Our research on the human brain uses fMRI, ANNs, intracranial recording, and behavior. A great stepping stone to grad school. Apply here:
careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...
......

Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab

MIT - Technical Associate I, Kanwisher Lab - Cambridge MA 02139

careers.peopleclick.com

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Nature Neuroscience @natneuro.nature.com · Mar 25

Behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP), not Hebbian spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), explains heterogenous place field shifting in the mouse hippocampus 🧠🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Synaptic plasticity rules driving representational shifting in the hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience

Madar et al. report that behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP), not spike-timing-dependent plasticity, explains heterogeneous place fields shifting in the hippocampus. The probability of BTS...

www.nature.com

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Mark Haselgrove @markhaselgrove.bsky.social · Mar 8

In contrast to the wide spread applause that this piece seems to be getting, I disagree with a lot of what is said here.

1/N

Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · Mar 6

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

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