Christopher Whyte
@christopherjwhyte.bsky.social
650 followers 570 following 37 posts
Theoretical neuroscientist. PhD student in the Shine lab at Sydney Uni. Research associate at Monash M3CS. Interested in spikes, (nonlinear) neural dynamics, decisions, and consciousness. www.ChristopherJWhyte.com
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Reposted by Christopher Whyte
braininspired.bsky.social
What changes and what stays the same as you scale from single neurons up to local populations of neurons up to whole brains?

Michael and Mac @macshine.bsky.social on the systems approach to study brains across scales.

braininspired.co/podcast/220/
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
anikokusztor.bsky.social
Thank you so much for having me!! I always have a blast chatting with @bethfisher.bsky.social and this time was no different! 💕 Also I loved your reflections in the end and how both of you have change your mind perhaps a bit through sharing your experiences with each other. So cool and precious!
mindsmatter.bsky.social
New episode!! Dr. Anikó Kusztor joins us this week to discuss the results of dissociation, and how they vary from person to person. Link in 🧵
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
claireocallaghan.bsky.social
Adaptive learning is coordinated across behaviour, time and neurobiology (from synapses and dendrites, to astrocytes and the systems level).

If you’ve ever wondered how noradrenaline helps shape these multiscale learning processes, you might like this: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
claireocallaghan.bsky.social
OHBM Oz rego + abstracts now open. Get amongst it!
ohbm-australia.bsky.social
✨✨ We are excited to announce the OHBM Australian Chapter 2025 Annual Meeting! 🧠🇦🇺

📢 Abstract submissions & registration now OPEN (abstract submission closes September 15th at 5pm)

📍 Melbourne 🏙️☕
📅 Wednesday, November 12, 2025

ohbm-aus.github.io/posts/2025-a...

We hope to see you there! 🤩
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
antihebbiann.bsky.social
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
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
thelong1930s.bsky.social
It’s touching and wonderful the amount of people saying reading Pratchett has made them a better person, myself included.

Was it @adamchapman.bsky.social I remembering saying that his downstream positive effect on UK society is something we should increasingly be considering as his readers age?
rhi.bsky.social
He was very good in person with his trans fans too. Growing up going to SF cons, I met many trans people before I even knew what trans meant. I gave my parents very little they needed to accept in their child, so they had lots left over for everyone else. 😉 www.thepinknews.com/2021/08/06/t...
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
anniegbryant.bsky.social
🎊Ain’t no party like a thesis submission party🎊

Honored to have submitted my PhD as a recipient of the Paulette Isabel Jones Career Development Award from The University of Sydney!

Thank you x1000000 to MVP supervisor @bendfulcher.bsky.social & co-supervisor @macshine.bsky.social 😊
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
macshine.bsky.social
I need some help from the #neuroskyence Bluesky-verse. Anyone know the source of this ~quote from Walter J. Freeman Jr.: "the secrets of the brain are hidden by two of God’s own firewalls: neurobiology and non-linear dynamics". I read it yrs ago but can't seem to find my way back to the source.
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
claireocallaghan.bsky.social
Position open for a neuroimaging focused postdoc to come work with us in Sydney

Feel free to get in touch for a chat if you have any questions about it :)

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E...
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
alexfornito.bsky.social
Interested in cortical wave dynamics? Check out our new preprint led by J Cruddas with @jchrispang.bsky.social where review the physics and physiology of cortical waves and their implications for psychological function:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

@nsb-lab.bsky.social
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
nadinedijkstra.bsky.social
After five years of confused staring at Greek letters, it is my absolute pleasure to finally share our (with @smfleming.bsky.social) computational model of mental imagery and reality monitoring: Perceptual Reality Monitoring as Higher-Order inference on Sensory Precision ✨
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
mokriegleder.bsky.social
finally recovered from all the thought provoking discussions I had at @assc28.bsky.social! presented a meta analysis of the current state of consciousness science and why we should leave theory convergence behind (based on work with @mnoichl.bsky.social & @niccolonegro.bsky.social)
moritz kriegleder presenting a slide on the current state of consciousness science
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
carandinilab.net
A new study led by @timothysit.bsky.social reveals that different layers of mouse V1 integrate visual and non-visual signals differently.

Activity is dominated by vision (or spontaneous fluctuations) in L2/3 and by movement in L5. This leads to different geometries.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
bendfulcher.bsky.social
New paper!

We introduce an efficient set of statistical features for fMRI time series (calibrated on mouse manipulation experiments and tested on mouse and human data): catchaMouse16.

Paper: doi.org/10.52294/001...

Code (python/Matlab/C): github.com/DynamicsAndN...
logo of mouse holding banner representing a time-series feature vector
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
saxelab.bsky.social
Pairs well with www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Our results indicate that individual V1 neurons do not signal how the actual visual input deviates from the animal’s predictions, as postulated within the predictive coding framework”

Thrilling to see a major theory get tested!
Cooperative thalamocortical circuit mechanism for sensory prediction errors - Nature
Experiments in mice show that a cortico-thalamic circuit generates prediction-error signals in primary visual cortex that amplify visual input that deviates from animals’ expectations.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
tyrellturing.bsky.social
1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.

But...

🧠📈 🧪
Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors
Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...
www.biorxiv.org
christopherjwhyte.bsky.social
As an Australian I can’t help but feel a little glib at the prospect of everyone else also having to travel for more than 12 hours 😂Hope to see you there, it will be worth it!
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
theassc.bsky.social
Congratulations to Abhilash Dwarakanath who won this year's William James Prize for his brilliant work on the b istability of prefrontal states gating access to consciousness. You can read his paper here: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
jorgefmejias.bsky.social
New paper @pnas.org with Lola Beerendonk, Jan Willem de Gee, Simon van Gaal and others, on pharmacological shifts of performance. We combine psychophysics and pupillometry with computational modeling to provide interesting insights linked to PV-SST-VIP circuits: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
seanmcarroll.bsky.social
Mindscape 320 | Solo: Complexity and the Universe. Our cosmos was once simple, and someday will be simple again. We currently live in the complicated, exciting era of universal history! Enjoy it while it lasts. #MindscapePodcast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...
Title card for podcast episode on complexity and the universe.
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
bendfulcher.bsky.social
New preprint!

Why are long-range connectomic interactions in the cortex dominant in shaping dynamics in some experiments but apparently negligible in others?

We (w/ R Maran, @elimuller.bsky.social) address this question by studying a new hybrid model of cortical dynamics.

arxiv.org/abs/2506.19800
Reposted by Christopher Whyte
dlevenstein.bsky.social
This paper, from @smellosopher.bsky.social et al, is a well-designed spherical cow with a lot of 🥛 to give.

Has been quite influential in how I think of #NeuroAI and ANNs as models for the brain 🐮

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...