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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 1d

sorry I shouldn't paint with such broad strokes. Amazing technical progress and advancement of ideas for sure, in certain areas. But in other topics many papers are 'confirmatory' in the sense that they are finding an old idea holds up but with newer techniques - useful info but not game changing

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Aidan Horner @aidanhorner.bsky.social · 2d

If you're interested in the cognitive neuroscience of memory feel free to email me!

I do experimental psychology, brain imaging (fMRI and MEG) and a bit of modelling. Lab is doing stuff on forgetting, aging, schemas, and event boundaries, but we're not limited to that.

#psychscisky #neuroskyence

Aidan Horner @aidanhorner.bsky.social · 2d

It's that time of year when many start thinking about applying for PhDs. If you're applying for a UK PhD position, here is a blog post I wrote a while back that might be helpful

#cognition #psychscisky #neuroskyence #psychjobs

How to get PhD funding in the UK

It is that time of year again. The leaves are turning golden, red, and orange (or just brown), the nights are drawing in, and there is a chi...

aidanhorner.blogspot.com

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 2d

Really great post and hard to argue with his main reasons.

The longer I'm in neuroscience, the less surprising the big new papers are to me, when the opposite should be true

PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 2d

Michael X Cohen on why he left academia/neuroscience.
mikexcohen.substack.com/p/why-i-left...

Why I left academia and neuroscience

Don't worry, this isn't yet another story of rage-quitting.

mikexcohen.substack.com

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 2d

drosophila gene names never fail to crack me up

Screenshot from Neuroscience Bulletin journal webpage with text:

Sandman is a Sleep Switch in Drosophila

Research Highlight | Published: 13 September 2016
Volume 32, pages 503-504, (2016) Cite this article

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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell

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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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 6d

I don't know. Feel powerless

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 6d

had a nice group discussion on "Is NeuroAI the next great thing? Or just a branding trick?"

Some very interesting arguments, summarised in slides below

Slides: "WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE NEUROAI ARGUMENTS FOR
FUTURE NEUROSCIENCE/NEUROSCIENTISTS?
• Neural-network models of the brain as a tool for doing computational neuroscience
(perturbations of brain components, parameters etc)
• SciML methods to fit our biologically-faithful model to data/task
• Ideas and methods developed in AI, might give us new ideas for how the brain works.
• Better data analysis tools.
• Can AI help with linking bottom-up and top-down approaches to neuroscience.
• Get a well paid job."

Slide with text: "WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE NEUROAI ARGUMENTS FOR
FUTURE AI?
Future AI could be improved by neuroscience inspired ideas:
• energy efficiency
• resources
• compactness
• resilience/robustness
• learning from less data
• continual learning/lifelong learning
• uncertainty
• Brain-computer interfaces
• Run natively on neuromorphic hardware"

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 8d

this is very sad news. The world is spiralling into darkness
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Afghan women lose their 'last hope' as Taliban shut down internet

For many women, the internet was their last resource. An internet shutdown threatens to end this.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 8d

now that I am a mere shill for bayesian methods, I really struggle to teach frequentist stats methods to students: t-tests, ANOVA and so on. Confidence intervals are the worst.

imo the naive, natural and most intuitive interpretation of statistical uncertainty is bayesian

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Tamkinat Rauf @tsrauf.bsky.social · 9d

Life satisfaction mostly declines with age. Previous findings (esp. the famous U-shaped age-SWB trajectory) were artifacts of misspecified models. doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell

Dominik Hrebik @dhrebik.bsky.social · 9d

This comic is becoming increasingly realistic.
m.xkcd.com/3056/

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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell

Mike Greicius @mikegreicius.bsky.social · 10d

Not all authors are people these days I’m afraid but your point stands.

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 10d

excellent point

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 11d

I will never sign a review because authors are people and some people are vindictive

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 12d

eLife is great but it was never intended to serve the purpose we're talking about here... it was supposed to be an OA glam journal.

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 12d

Self-publishing carries a huge conflict of interest, and many institutions are notorious for ignoring or trying to sweep bad behavior under the carpet. And even if one is certain, say, HHMI would never do that, self-publishing sets a precedent and there are orgs that would. bsky.app/profile/rich...

Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 12d

We'll probably also see orgs like HHMI push things like data checks upstream, in-house (many institutions, including CSHL, require faculty to run plagiarism and image checks before submitting papers). I'm a bit conflicted about this because of COIs, some bad acts better exposed publicly, etc. 2/n

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 12d

the CoI risk seems like a small risk/downside compared to the levelling-the-playing-field upside?

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 12d

Great minds, folks, etc.

neurodojo.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-...

The Journal of Funding Agency

An argument in scientific publishing is, “Who pays?” For many journals run by traditional, for-profit publishers, usually the library pays. ...

neurodojo.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell

Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · Jul 31

Easy two part solution.

(a) NIH should run its own journal, in house, that pays reviewers for their time and waives all publication fees for any NIH funded project.

(b) Publication fees for any other journal are then not an allowable budget line on NIH grants.

Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · Jul 31

NIH wants to hear from you. No really.

Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

NOT-OD-25-138: Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs NOT-OD-25-138. NIH

grants.nih.gov

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 12d

I still think the major funders should all set up their own PLoS One-style journals (peer reviewed for rigour but not impact) and mandate that if you take their money, you publish the resulting research there, full stop

Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 14d

HHMI adopts Plan U journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13d

If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.

The Independent @the-independent.com · 13d

Every adult in Britain to require new ‘Brit Card’ ID

www.independent.co.uk

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 13d

now this is a disruption i can get behind

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 13d

embracing the ignorance 💪

Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 14d

when you finish your undergrad, you think you know everything

when you finish your masters, you realise you know nothing

when you finish your PhD, you realise nobody knows anything

Evan Torner @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social · 14d

Podcasts and "deep dive" media will try to convince you that you *now* know things, thanks to them.

A PhD, especially one with archival, observational, or observational components, will definitely convince you that you know next to nothing, thanks to the available resources & one's predecessors.

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 14d

Congrats Blake! Best of luck

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