Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Francesco Poli

@francescopoli.bsky.social

2.9K followers 730 following 180 posts

Rubicon research fellow at the University of Cambridge. Drinking massive amounts of tea and doing some research in between. Learning, information-seeking, cognitive and brain development. Comp modelling ethusiast. He/him. 🍉 https://francescpoli.github.io/

francescpoli.github.io

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · Jun 25

Out now in Science Advances! We find that infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament. This has be so much fun to work on and ended up being my favourite personal paper! So excited it's out!

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

Volatility-driven learning in human infants

Infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament.

www.science.org

1 14 43

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 4d

"If we believe in democratic order, let us put science and knowledge back at the heart of things, let us put scientific authority back at the heart of things, let us put culture, education and learning back at the heart of things..."

1 72 370

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 4d

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

Defend Democracy @defenddemocracy.bsky.social · 4d

President Macron: “Europeans, let's wake up!

We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks.”

defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...

99 2.3K 7K

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · 12d

Why are we still sending our work to Wiley and other publishing companies so that they can profit from it? There's so many better options now, for example: psychopen.eu/journals/

3 10

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · 13d

Incredible study by Raut et al.: by tracking a single measure (pupil size), you can model slow, large-scale dynamics in neuronal calcium, metabolism, and brain blood oxygen through a shared latent space! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1 17 66

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · 14d

So cool!

Kris Jensen @kristorpjensen.bsky.social · 14d

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time!

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

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Thomas Luo @thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social · 21d

How does the brain decide? 🧠

Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.

After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.

rdcu.be/eGUrv

Transitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions - Nature

Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neura...

www.nature.com

14 96 250

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · 20d

If only unions existed/had power

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Jessica Sommerville @jessicas.bsky.social · 27d

📣📣📣 Hi Everyone! I'm accepting PhD students for the Fall 2026 cycle! Our lab topics include the developmental origins and elaboration of moral cognition/prosocial behavior, persistence, and optimism. More info below!!

7 8

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Quark Bee @quarkbee.bsky.social · Sep 7

it's a hyper capitalist racket, and the fact that ***academia*** (full of all those gigantic galaxy brains) collectively still hasn't managed to burn it to the fucking ground says a lot about how deep these exploitative structures run

1 2 23

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Quark Bee @quarkbee.bsky.social · Sep 7

so ORGANIZE

this is a labour issue - collectively, you are NOT powerless

stop upholding systems that exploit you, chew you up and spit you out ... and that steal and lock away the knowledge you create from the rest of us out here

2 2 30

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · Sep 6

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

230 9.8K 12K

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · Sep 6

@fluxsociety.bsky.social is there a lost and found at #Flux2025? I lost my coat and jumper during today's poster session. Thanks!

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Nora Maria Raschle @noramraschle.bsky.social · Sep 2

@sofiascatolin.bsky.social
💡 Parent-Child Functional Neural Similarity and Its Association With Child Mental Well-Being
📅 Saturday | Posters III
🕙 10:15–11:45AM | Goldsmith Hall
🎤 Flash talk: Saturday | 9:10–9:15AM | Hyde Suite 1&2
✨ As the Beatles sang: in the end, it’s all about the love we share

1 2 10

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · Aug 26

Interesting on how publishers respond when concerns are raised 👇 My own experience:

Springer, 3 journals, No action
Elsevier, 3, No action
CUP, 1, No action
Brill, 1, No action
Emerald, 1, No action
Frontiers, 1, No action
Qeios, No action
Cell Press, 1, Editorial note
Royal Society, 1, Retraction

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · Aug 24

Huge variability documented in how publishers respond when informed about a problematic body of work by a research group. www.jclinepi.com/article/S089...
#publishers #retractions

Bar chart showing % of articles retracted, with expression of concern, or no action from different publishers. 100% no action from Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer; 100% retraction from Taylor and Francis.

2 7 30

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Tianmai Michael Zhang @tianmai.bsky.social · Aug 25

This RedNote post shocked me today.

An anonymous user says they are going to upload 60 papers to arXiv soon and are looking for “citation partners” to boost citation counts together by citing each other.

Something is seriously wrong in the system of evaluating researchers by citation counts.

4 15 23

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Wisskomm.de @wisskomm.de · Aug 25

How is science fighting back against attacks in the US? The project @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social encourages researchers to publish in local newspapers in their hometowns. The goal: remind people of the value of science 👇
www.wissenschaftskommunikation.de/one-goal-is-...
#scicomm #wisskomm

9 15

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · Aug 20

It looks super interesting, can't wait to read it in detail. I really like this work too: proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/...
Would be curious to know what you think of it!

Compositional generalization through abstract representations in human and artificial neural networks

proceedings.neurips.cc

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Jascha Achterberg @achterbrain.bsky.social · Aug 20

Great and detailed blog post on compositionality, written by Eric Elmoznino:

ericelmoznino.github.io/blog/2025/08...

#compneuro #neuroai #neuroscience

Defining and quantifying compositional structure

What is compositionality? For those of us working in AI or cognitive neuroscience this question can appear easy at first, but becomes increasingly perplexing the more we think about it. We aren’t shor...

ericelmoznino.github.io

2 7 20

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.bsky.social · Aug 19

I mean, Trump has got everyone kissing his arse *by being an enemy*.

How do we imagine that kissing his arse will stop him being an enemy, when being an enemy is working so damn well for him?

Are we stupid? Are we even stupider than Donald Trump? Maybe we are.

3 2

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Sandra Romero Pinto @sromeropinto.bsky.social · Aug 13

My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf

TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .

Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model

Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...

rdcu.be

1 32 110

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · Aug 7

Wow: tenure letter writers’ publication records (h-index) are better predictors of tenure decisions than candidates’ own publication record.

Jin X. Goh | 吴晋勋 @jinxungoh.bsky.social · Aug 7

Another paper from the same group: "External review letters are more closely related to letter writer characteristics than candidate productivity."

External review letters in academic promotion and tenure decisions are reflective of reviewer characteristics

We examine validity and bias in external review letters (ERLs) in academic settings. ERLs play a critical role in promotion and tenure (P&T) decisions…

www.sciencedirect.com

4 22 69

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · Aug 5

Yeah unfortunately it's a no-go. I always travel with a Palestinian flag to join rallies wherever I can, and I don't want to find out what would happen to me if I tried to get in the US with it. Also, boycotting Trump, I guess. But it's really sad.

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Pau Formosa-Jordan @pauformosa.bsky.social · Aug 4

Introducing five concepts from dynamical systems to decode developmental regulatory mechanisms, have a read! @perez-carrasco.bsky.social‬ @roederlab.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social This effort started in a morphogenesis meeting @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social‬ in 2023. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Adapted from Fig. 1 from Kadiyala et al 2025.

1 35 69

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · Aug 2

At 18:30 UK time, I will be presenting my work on learning and exploration across development at the @cogscisociety.bsky.social Glushko Dissertation Prize Session! #CogSci participants can join at this link: underline.io/events/489/s...

CogSci 2025

The 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

underline.io

6 24

Reposted by Francesco Poli

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · Jul 31

This is intetresting, paper argues that dopamine also encodes "action prediction errors", i.e. differences between actions you predict you will make and actions you do, regardless of reward. Could be used to reinforce habits for repetitive voluntary behaviours:

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

🧠📈 🧪

Dopaminergic action prediction errors serve as a value-free teaching signal - Nature

Dopaminergic action prediction error signals are used by mice as a value-free teaching signal to reinforce stable sound–action associations in the tail of the striatum.

www.nature.com

10 49