Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Elnaz Alikarami

Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 9d

Fyi if you're an educator looking for videos about the brain and/or how neuroscience is done, check out
@brainfacts.org's YouTube page: youtube.com/@brainfactsorg
It includes submissions to their Brain Awareness Week video contest, which can be quite fun! #neuroskyence

BrainFacts.org

BrainFacts.org is an authoritative source of information about the brain and nervous system for the public. The site is a public information initiative of The Kavli Foundation, the Gatsby Charitable F...

youtube.com

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Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 8d

So excited to see this preprint released from the lab into the wild.

Charlotte has developed a theory for how learning curriculum influences learning generalization.
Our theory makes straightforward neural predictions that can be tested in future experiments. (1/4)

🧠🤖 🧠📈 #MLSky

Charlotte Volk @charlottevolk.bsky.social · 8d

🚨 New preprint alert!

🧠🤖
We propose a theory of how learning curriculum affects generalization through neural population dimensionality. Learning curriculum is a determining factor of neural dimensionality - where you start from determines where you end up.
🧠📈

A 🧵:

tinyurl.com/yr8tawj3

The curriculum effect in visual learning: the role of readout dimensionality

Generalization of visual perceptual learning (VPL) to unseen conditions varies across tasks. Previous work suggests that training curriculum may be integral to generalization, yet a theoretical explan...

tinyurl.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 7d

Bonne chance!

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 7d

Congrats!

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Guillaume Dumas @introspection.bsky.social · 9d

Honored to be awarded the FRQ–IVADO Research Chair in "Social Neuro-AI & Inter-Personalized Psychiatry"!

Grateful to my team & colleagues at @cra-chusj.bsky.social & @mila-quebec.bsky.social, and my family for their support 🙏

Excited to keep bridging social neuroscience, AI & precision psychiatry🚀

IVADO @ivado.bsky.social · 9d

🔷 IVADO announces 6 new #AI #research chairs with the support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec.
Awarded to professors from our 5 partner universities, they reflect the excellence and diversity of AI research in Québec.

👉 ivado.ca/en/2025/09/2...

@fondsrechercheqc.bsky.social #R3AI

IVADO announces the creation of six new research chairs in artificial intelligence with the support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec | IVADO

ivado.ca

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Sylvain Baillet @sylvainbaillet.bsky.social · 7d

Today is my first day as Director, Research & Innovation and CRCHUM Research Centre @crchum.bsky.social
(University of Montreal's main Research & Teaching Hospital).

Also starting a new research group @umontreal.ca.

Stay tuned for updates along this new collective journey!

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MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 7d

"I feel that there’s nothing more important than to pass on, to my son, the little piece of nothing and everything that I’ve observed — the happiness that comes from watching a dragonfly, spider, frog, lizard, elephant, parrot, mouse, orangutan, or ladybug."

Self-Medicating Chimps, Pugilistic Shrimp, and Other Remarkable Animals: An Illustrated Guide

A catalog of wondrous beings, excerpted from Emmanuelle Pouydebat's book "Atlas of Poetic Zoology."

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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WIRED @wired.com · 7d

Jane Goodall understood better than most the impact humans have had on the planet. Having witnessed so much environmental deterioration during her lifetime, she was as much an activist as a scientist.

Read our piece from 2024 on the legendary primatologist. 💚

Jane Goodall Thinks It’s Not Too Late to Save the World

The world, the famed primatologist says, isn’t what it used to be—but there’s still time to save it, if we treat crises like climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty as one.

www.wired.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 8d

What sort of NHP? If you don’t mind.

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 17d

I am playing with Muse device as a part of my work, Today I tried the resistance meditation that is centered around refuge.
I realized that I have no stability refuge except my family, which are in Iran so not a real refuge…
I am more nervous after my meditation now 🤦‍♀️

Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 17d

Awesome work!

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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 20d

The CTRL-Labs decoding model paper is out! Saw this presented at Cosyne this year, very cool to see it out.

I would say this is the clearest demonstration of scaling laws in neural decoding to-date.

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

🧠📈 🧪

A generic non-invasive neuromotor interface for human-computer interaction - Nature

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

www.nature.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 18d

Your own grown?

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Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 21d

If you're interested in spiking neural networks, you should know about surrogate gradient descent and @fzenke.bsky.social's SPyTorch tutorial which shows just how easy it is to apply this method that's changing the whole field. Check out my paean below. 👇

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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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 21d

I don’t think the lather happens much, you can denounce misogynous liars dead or alive!
Do trainees have such strong feelings though? I would prefer my teacher to say that to me transparently, that has more lessons in it than anything.

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Reposted by Elnaz Alikarami

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 21d

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

my wife (2nd author) just published in Cell

working from home is not without pressure you know?

#neuroscience

Distinct circuit motifs evaluate opposing innate values of odors

Evaluating the innate value of objects is critical for expressing adaptive behaviors. However, where and how this computation takes place in the brain…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 21d

🫀 Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the most sensitive markers of autonomic regulation.
It’s not about hype—it’s about whether neuroscience can inform accessible tools for improving physical and mental health.

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 21d

I am digging into use of HRV in sleep research with the folks in the field.

In my latest article, I unpack the science of HRV biofeedback—and how wearable tech is translating this from controlled lab settings into everyday use for stress, sleep, and performance.

medium.com/@elnaz.karam...

Heart Rate Variability, Biofeedback, and the Future of Personalized Regulation

Your heartbeat is more than just a rhythm. The autonomic nervous system orchestrates rapid adjustments to maintain balance across…

medium.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 21d

Exactly! So much can go wrong if these aspects are not considered in peer review process.

Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 21d

Looking forward to it!

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Katharina Schmack @kathaschmack.bsky.social · 24d

"Sleep, like aging, may be an inescapable consequence of aerobic metabolism."

Really enjoyed this thought-provoking paper 🧠💤🪰 - congrats to @rafsarnataro.bsky.social and team on this impressive work!

No wonder the Krebs cycle always put me to sleep 😅

#neuroskyence

Nature @nature.com · Jul 22

Nature research paper: Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep

go.nature.com/40oC7Y4

Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep - Nature

Research on Drosophila neurons shows links between the need to sleep and aerobic metabolism, indicating that the pressure to sleep may have a mitochondrial origin.

go.nature.com

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 22d

5/ Structures like peer review and publishing are not neutral, they shape what becomes accepted as “scientific truth.”

Would it be feasible to run an experiment focused on these angles of social influence in research? Neuroscientists are also social humans! @mi3lab.bsky.social

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 22d

4/ A meta-research shows how publication selection bias shapes whole fields, as significant findings dominate meta-analyses (doi.org/10.48550/arX...).

These dynamics remind us that science is also a social process, subject to the same influence mechanisms.

Footprint of publication selection bias on meta-analyses in medicine, environmental sciences, psychology, and economics

Publication selection bias undermines the systematic accumulation of evidence. To assess the extent of this problem, we survey over 68,000 meta-analyses containing over 700,000 effect size estimates f...

doi.org

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 22d

3/ Also, a paper suggests that conservatism bias is real—novel proposals are less likely to be funded (doi.org/10.1287/mnsc...).
Not so new publication says peer review processes frequently suppress negative or null results, skewing the record toward positive findings (doi.org/10.1258/jrsm...).

Conservatism Gets Funded? A Field Experiment on the Role of Negative Information in Novel Project Evaluation | Management Science

doi.org

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Elnaz Alikarami @elnaza.bsky.social · 22d

2/ Research shows how peer review and publishing can amplify consensus and bias results:
Reviews of the system highlight that panels often favor prestigious institutions, familiar methods, and accepted topics over disruptive ideas (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...).

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...

doi.org

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